Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week, September 7
Ah, Labor Day. The weather is perfect (unless you’re in New York), there’s a well-placed day off of work, and playoff races are in full swing. It’s a great overall time for sports — football is starting up, and the US Open is headed toward a thunderous final. If your team isn’t in the hunt for October, it can be easy to tune out; I wouldn’t blame you for going somewhere else for your sporting needs. But don’t worry: you can still get your fix of baseball, so long as you’re willing to consume it in five bite-sized increments. Shout out, as always, to Zach Lowe, who was making lists of NBA things he likes and doesn’t like before it was cool.
1. Mandatory Weekly Elly Content
It’s been a while since Elly De La Cruz debuted, but that doesn’t make his talent any less luminous. Yeah, he strikes out too much. Yeah, pitchers have increasingly figured him out as the season wears on. But then he’ll do something that your brain can’t quite process, like fire a missile from outer space to gun down the fastest runner in the game:
I had to watch that play a few times, because the timing just didn’t seem right. Corbin Carroll is moving at a speed that I perceive as uncatchable. The relay throw is too late. No one should be able to throw the ball on this trajectory:
I’m sure you liked that one, but I thought this serendipitous gem was even better:
I mean, how is he in just the right position?!? He just appears out of nowhere to clean up a mess, like he was waiting for exactly this all along. There’s no panic, no indication that this is anything other than a routine play. Even his footwork looks natural:
If you ignore the two defenders who deflected the ball, you can almost imagine that as a routine grounder. A few shuffle steps to gather himself, a smooth transfer, and an easy accurate throw to get Ty France by a step; we see plays like that every day. But the wherewithal to follow the bouncing ball (literally), keep calm, and then spring into action at the last possible moment? That’s the kind of fielding genius that doesn’t come around very often. I can’t get enough of watching De La Cruz, and clearly neither can the teammates he bails out:
2. Tommy Two Walkoffs
I’m sure I’ve mentioned this a few times, but it’s been a rough year for Cardinals fans. I’m not even all that invested anymore, what with being a national baseball writer and all, and I’ve still felt the ennui. I had more fun watching Carlos Alcaraz on Wednesday night than I have watching the Cardinals all year; they’ve just been a slow-moving trainwreck every time I tune in.
I wasn’t watching when the Cardinals took on another of this season’s disaster teams, the Padres. I might feel differently otherwise. Tommy Edman has been the glue to this team for years, excelling defensively wherever the team has needed him, but his bat has been more acceptable than exciting. But you don’t need to be a consistently great hitter to do great things with the bat:
What a rush. The Padres haven’t won a game in extra innings all year, which seems crazy — they have Josh Hader, after all. But the Cardinals held the Padres scoreless in the top of the tenth, and Richie Palacios executed a sacrifice bunt to put the winning run on third base. After an intentional walk, Edman more or less just had to put the ball in play.
That might feel like a cheap walkoff; without a zombie runner, no one would have been on base. That was the only hit Hader gave up all night — naturally, what with the game ending and all. But the next night, Edman had an answer for people like me who think of those extra-inning walkoffs as cheapies:
You might think that Hader is an indomitable closer. He is, in fact, pretty great. But he occasionally struggles with home runs, and Edman is reverse Inigo Montoya — as it turns out, he’s better when he doesn’t bat left-handed. This was a real-deal blown save and loss, and a true walkoff triumph for Edman.
This season is a write-off for St. Louis no matter what happens the rest of the way. It will go down as one of the worst seasons in franchise history. But hope springs eternal, and next year’s Cardinals will likely take a lot of good memories out of the end of this year. Two walkoffs to end San Diego’s slim playoff hopes, thrashing Spencer Strider and the Braves the next week — those are the kinds of things that make baseball exciting even when a team isn’t good. The same guy doing it with multiple walkoffs? That’s delightful no matter where you are in the standings.
3. A Duel of Errant Aces
If you time traveled back to the spring and told Mets fans that Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer would be pitching key games in a tight playoff race in September, they’d probably accept it begrudgingly. Everyone hopes for an easy victory, but the Braves are undeniably excellent; there’s no shame in a close race between two excellent clubs.
Then you’d have to break it to that poor Mets fan: Verlander and Scherzer were pitching against each other. The mental gymnastics would start then. Wait, did the Mets trade one of them away? Why would they get rid of an ace? There’s no such thing as too much pitching, everyone always says. But, in the present day, we know that the Mets imploded and sent their aces to Texas to jump start a retooling effort.
That didn’t make it any less weird to see Scherzer and Verlander facing off in Arlington on Wednesday night. In my mind, the two are forever linked; the two Tigers aces who ventured out of Detroit and won titles for their new teams before meeting up in New York for one last ride. The latest twist in the story would get you laughed out of a Hollywood pitch meeting. They went to the same team, but then got traded to bitter rivals? And then the rivals ended up in a close race? And then the two had to pitch against each other? Come on now, that isn’t reasonable.
Unreasonable doesn’t mean impossible, though. First place wasn’t on the line, but that wasn’t far from the case. A Rangers win would leave them one game out of first, with the Mariners tied with Houston for first. An Astros win would put a bit of distance between the two. Those are the kind of stakes you imagine for a duel in the Texas sun (note: under the Texas lights, it was a night game).
That duel didn’t work out the way I hoped. Scherzer got shellacked, surrendering three homers and seven earned runs in only three innings. Verlander cruised through seven one-run innings, striking out six. The Rangers continued their recent swoon; despite an active and successful trade deadline, they’re uncomfortably close to falling out of the playoff picture. But don’t let that distract you from the poetry of it all. Two of the best pitchers of our generation with the same club in free agency, planning to team up on the rest of the league, ended up facing off against each other instead with everything on the line. It’s a tremendous story, even if the ending doesn’t feel satisfying.
4. Vogey Has Wheels. Just Not Enough Wheels
This spring, the league had a lot of fun with their commercials advertising this year’s new rules. The most memorable, to me, was Daniel Vogelbach openly salivating about his potential first stolen base. It hasn’t happened. He hasn’t even attempted a steal. But I let out a hearty chuckle the first few times I saw that ad, and I don’t think I was alone in that.
Last Saturday, I got to laugh one more time. The Mets, as the previous item noted, are eliminated from playoff contention. They’ve traded away all of their rentals, and even most of their semi-rentals. But they still have games to play, and they found themselves trailing by a run headed into the bottom of the ninth against the Mariners. Vogelbach led off the inning with a single to left field.
For most players, that’s a clean double. Vogelbach isn’t most players, though; he’s not exactly fleet of foot. He’s so slow that he made a commercial poking fun at his own speed. Discretion being the better part of valor, you might expect him to pull up at first. You’d be wrong:
There are a lot of things going on in this play. Sam Haggerty made a smooth transfer from scooping to throwing, hitting the cutoff man in stride:
Cutoff man J.P. Crawford double-clutched the ball, almost like he couldn’t believe there was a play at second given how slowly everything had developed. Even with a slight hesitation, though, an accurate throw got the job done. And plays like this almost always run with a heavy slide and a frowny face from the runner who got thrown out:
Hey, the Mets aren’t winning anything this year anyway. I support Vogelbach pushing the envelope wherever he can, and that would have been a valuable base advancement given the game state. But it’s always going to be funny to me when big men try to do little men things and get burned for it. I have to imagine that he’s done with any baserunning dreams after this setback.
5. The Giants Are So Weird
The Giants are free falling right out of the wild card race. They’re 2.5 games back, and it’s worse than that; both the Reds and Diamondbacks are ahead of them, which means they’ll have to pass three teams to punch their ticket to October. That’s a tall order for a team whose offense has bottomed out in the second half of the year. In their recent six-game slide, they’ve scored zero, zero, one, two, three, and eight runs (hey, even a broken clock is right two times a day).
But even when they’re scuffling, the Giants manage to be interesting to me. Some of that is their stable of weird pitchers. Twins! 100-mph cutters! Perennial fan favorite Ross Stripling! Joc Pederson’s antics are always a good time. Brandon Crawford pitched this year. There’s a lot going on.
Recently, they pulled off one of the strangest double plays I’ve seen to really drive home that they’re the fun weird team. These were happier times; the Giants were 66–63 and locked in a tight battle with the Braves. Things looked like they might spiral out of control: Atlanta had runners on second and third with only one out and led 3–2 with Ronald Acuña Jr. coming to the plate. Then things got weird:
Ah, yes, just your standard 3-1-4-2 double play (don’t mind the umpire calling Orlando Arcia safe, the play was overturned after review). My absolute favorite part is definitely J.D. Davis running the old infield relay throw play:
I suppose that was a safer play than stopping and throwing to first himself, but it was still bizarre. It’s not like you practice that one very often in spring training; Davis was putting a lot of pressure on Scott Alexander to field his throw barehanded, make a clean throw of his own, and have the presence of mind to do all of that with one of the best baserunners in the game bearing down on the bag. Then Thairo Estrada took things to another level with a beautiful throw home:
Even then, the outcome wasn’t a foregone conclusion. Estrada led Patrick Bailey perfectly; his throw took him directly towards Arcia. But Bailey still had to field the ball and make a blind sweep tag to record the out. Emboldened by that tremendous defensive improvisation, the Giants struck back for four runs in the bottom of the inning and held on to win the game. What a delightful team.
Ben is a writer at FanGraphs. He can be found on Twitter @_Ben_Clemens.
"like this" - Google News
September 08, 2023 at 08:05PM
https://ift.tt/LQwmCj3
Five Things I Liked (Or Didn't Like) This Week, September 7 - Fangraphs
"like this" - Google News
https://ift.tt/3k2gvLo
Shoes Man Tutorial
Pos News Update
Meme Update
Korean Entertainment News
Japan News Update
No comments:
Post a Comment