Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week, June 20
Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) this week. I’m not sure if this is by design or simply a scheduling coincidence, but this week was full of compelling matchups between current rivals. The Cubs and Cardinals squared off. So did the Yankees and Orioles. The Guardians and Mariners aren’t exactly rivals, but their series rocked too, and I’m sad I couldn’t find a way to squeeze them in this week. That said, there’s a ton to talk about, so let’s get to it, after our usual nod to Zach Lowe of ESPN, who is surely enjoying a well-deserved vacation after the conclusion of the NBA season. To baseball!
1. Willie Mays
I almost didn’t write about Willie Mays this week. I feel unqualified. What do you say about the greatest baseball player of all time? Mays was like something out of fiction, the platonic ideal of an outfielder. Everyone who saw him play knew it right away: This guy was just different. Statistics alone are a woefully inadequate way of describing him, but those statistics are comical. He hit 660 home runs, batted .301, and walked as often as he struck out. He’s probably the best defensive center fielder of all time. He racked up more than 3,000 hits, won two MVPs, made 24 All-Star teams; the list goes on and on.
That’s not really the story of Willie Mays, though. The story of Willie Mays, for me, is the universal admiration that every baseball player had for him. I’ve never heard a bad word about Mays. He was an idol and a mentor at the same time. He transcended eras, coasts, fanbases; he wasn’t a famous Giants player, he was a famous baseball player. That might even undersell it – he was one of the biggest celebrities in the country. Even nearly 60 years after his heyday, defenders want to be like him. He was the coolest, the best. That never stopped being true.
Plenty of other people have written touching Mays tributes (tons of links). I loved Jay Jaffe’s encapsulation of what Mays meant both on and off the field. I don’t have much to add that hasn’t already been said. But I couldn’t talk about the week in baseball without paying my respects. Willie Mays was a giant in every possible definition of the word. Well, other than physical stature, which makes his overall excellence all the more impressive. There will almost certainly never be another baseball player like him. I see echoes of Mays in every over-the-shoulder catch, every play at the plate, every beautiful day game in San Francisco. May his memory live on forever.
2. Hunter Greene Hitting Corners
Hunter Greene’s career has been a mixed bag so far. He burst onto the scene in the halcyon days of (checks notes) 2022, before every single starter seemed to throw 100 mph. He’s the last starting pitcher prospect I can think of whose standout tool was pure velocity. It hasn’t worked that way in the majors, which is part of why he has a career 4.36 ERA and 4.21 FIP. It seems like velocity alone just won’t do it anymore.
Greene has largely survived by leaning on his slider. This year, though, he’s made some promising fastball changes. The pitch is more vertical than before, which gives him more leeway to attack the zone without falling into the dreaded line of normality that hitters are so adept at attacking.
That’s the how. I’m more interested in the wow, though. I’ve been having velocity fatigue; now that everyone throws so hard, it’s just not fun. On the other hand, spotting 100 mph on the corners is delightful. Greene put together a masterful start on Wednesday – 6 1/3 innings, nine strikeouts, no runs – and his fastball was a key part of it. He came out fastball-heavy and started carving right away. Nick Gonzales is a good hitter, but no one’s a good hitter against this:
Rowdy Tellez spoiled another gem:
Greene had the ball on a string, running his fastball down in the zone when he wanted to:
He stuck the bottom edge to catch Tellez looking:
Andrew McCutchen struck out on a perfect pitch:
Even if the umpire didn’t agree, this one was great too:
This isn’t the first time Greene has appeared to be on the verge of a breakout, but on previous occasions, his slider was doing the heavy lifting. This time, he’s dispensing with the bendy stuff and winning with fastballs. I’ve been guilty of buying into Greene breakouts too soon before, but what can I say? Here I am, again, ready to believe. The combination of great location and overpowering stuff is just too much to ignore.
3. The Immortal Kyle Hendricks
By all rights, Kyle Hendricks should be bad by now. He’s always been one of those “I’m not sure how he does it, but he does it” guys, and he’s been trending less and less effective in recent years. He started this season with the kind of 10-game stretch that usually gets you sent to the phantom IL: 9.38 ERA, only 30 strikeouts and 15 walks in nearly 200 batters faced, and the kind of contact quality that makes you go “Oh right, he throws 85.” In fact, he did get sent to the IL halfway through that streak, and continued to scuffle upon returning. It felt like a sad swan song for one of the most enjoyable Cubs of this generation.
The Cubs have struggled mightily with pitching this year, which means that Hendricks didn’t completely disappear; he merely moved to the bullpen. His first three appearances were hardly the stuff of legends – 10 innings, five strikeouts, four walks, 4.50 ERA, 4.65 FIP – but they were certainly less disastrous than his initial starting run. Maybe he could be a bulk middle reliever and finish out the year that way?
Only, there was good news coming in the form of bad news. Jordan Wicks suffered a fluke injury in the second inning of the June 14 Cardinals-Cubs clash at Wrigley Field. When Craig Counsell looked out to his bullpen, there was old reliable Hendricks, ready to come in and soak up some innings. Longtime Hendricks heads know that he simply cannot lose against St. Louis. The only way he could own the team more thoroughly would be if he married into the DeWitt family. In his career heading into this game, he had a 2.68 ERA against them over 167 2/3 innings. The Cards are batting .244/.285/.377 against him. They don’t get on base or hit for power against him. It’s uncanny – they simply can’t solve him, regardless of who’s on the roster.
Obviously, the streak continued. Hendricks isn’t missing bats these days – not that he was ever a huge strikeout guy, but he’s running a career-low strikeout rate and career-high walk rate. He didn’t miss many bats against the Redbirds – one strikeout in 15 batters faced – but again, they just can’t hit him. They popped the ball up:
They hit it into the ground:
They took awkward check swings:
They missed middle-middle 88-mph fastballs by a mile:
Hendricks left this outing with the first real momentum he’s had all year. Counsell immediately added him to the rotation – there had been an injury, after all. He came back and put a spell on the Giants: 5 2/3 innings pitched, eight (!!) strikeouts, two hits, and a solitary earned run.
Hendricks looked completely broken. He couldn’t buy an out; everything he threw was getting tattooed. Then he faced his favorite opponent, and now he’s back better than he’s been in years. It looks like we’ll get one more chance to enjoy the delightful sight of a Hendricks slowball turning hitters into pretzels. I can’t even be mad. Good work, Cardinals – you’ve rekindled one of the most delightful flames in modern baseball.
4. The Go-Go NL Central
I love steals, and I know I’m not alone in that. Baseball can drag, even for me, when it’s all strikeouts and walks. Adding a burst of athleticism and high-stakes close plays to the proceedings is invariably exciting. I’m glad that the league was able to adjust the incentives enough to bring steals back into the limelight – and the NL Central is surely glad too.
The Reds have the most stolen bases in the majors. The Brewers are right behind them in second. The Cubs are in the top 10 in baseball and third in runs added via steals because they’ve been caught only 12 times. This week, all three groups of speedsters were up to their usual tricks, causing havoc on the basepaths and keeping my eyes glued to them.
The Reds got things started, as they so often do, with Elly De La Cruz. He’s the runaway major league leader in steals, and he ripped off three in three games, beginning Saturday against the Brewers. He can steal in mostly uncontested spots, of course: Down three in the ninth inning, Milwaukee essentially gave him second base as a participation trophy. He can walk, steal second, and then take two more bases on an errant pickoff throw:
And he can steal off of fellow phenom Paul Skenes, though Skenes managed to pick him off earlier in the game:
The Brewers adopt more of a team approach. They stole at least two bags in every game of their set against the Reds, with Brice Turang and Christian Yelich leading the way. Turang is an outright burner; only De La Cruz has more steals. Yelich is more interesting to me – he’s 32, and not quite as fast as he was at his athletic peak, but he’s been an absolute demon since the introduction of the pickoff-throw limit last year: 43 steals, four caught stealings. Yeah, that’ll do. Even Willy Adames has 10 swipes this year. The Brewers are the best baserunning team in baseball, and it’s because they run well from the top of the roster to the bottom.
That leaves the Cubs, and I’ll level with you: They’re the reason I wanted to write this item. The Cubs have only two players with double-digit steals. One of them, Pete Crow-Armstrong, has a 51 wRC+, so he’s not exactly keying their offense. Instead, this is an ensemble effort. They pick their spots and attack opposing weaknesses. This week, that weakness was the Giants’ defending in situations with multiple runners on base. The Cubs ate their lunch:
Curt Casali didn’t even throw here, because there was simply no shot. Seiya Suzuki timed Tyler Rogers too well. Then it happened again:
That was just easy money, and the Cubs were only too happy to accept it. The next day, they kept it going:
When they saw the Giants weren’t throwing through, they just ran it back:
And when the Giants finally did throw through, they couldn’t even make a tag:
Wait, what? Here’s a closer look:
That’s what you should be doing! Those bases were free. The Cubs merely had to ask politely. More of this, please. If your opponent won’t stop what you’re doing, why would you stop doing it? I’m not sure that this is what the league imagined when it implemented the new rules, but I love watching it, just as much as I’m sure catchers hate it.
5. The Battle of the Bronx
The Orioles and Yankees have been circling each other all year. While the Guardians got off to a hot start, neither AL East team was ever far off the pace for the best record in the AL, and each shot past Cleveland in June. The two clubs boast the two best run differentials in the majors. They rank first and second in the AL in both runs scored and runs allowed. They’re also neck and neck for the division title and the bye that comes with it.
The first time the two met this year, the O’s took three out of four to pull a game ahead of New York in the standings. The Yankees took first place back in the interim, but this has the feeling of a race that will remain close all year. This week’s three-game set mattered both for the immediate division lead – an Orioles sweep would give them sole possession of first – and head-to-head tiebreakers. The teams only meet twice more this year: once in July, once in September. If the Orioles won this week’s series, they’d need to win only two of those last six games to secure the tiebreaker.
These games lived up to the billing. On Tuesday, the Yankees jumped out to an early lead before Aaron Judge left after being hit in the hand by an errant Albert Suarez pitch. Nestor Cortes went six shutout innings to back that early offense, and even a two-run homer in the ninth couldn’t bring the Birds back. Judge escaped serious injury and returned to the New York lineup after missing just one game, fortunately enough.
That set things up nicely for the Yankees. They had their pitching set up as well as it has been all year. Gerrit Cole’s first start of the season was Wednesday, and he looked sharp in four innings of work. Four innings, though, put a ton of pressure on the bullpen, and they couldn’t quite keep things together. The New York offense didn’t do enough against Baltimore starter Cade Povich – the Yankees scored a single run despite walking five times and striking out only once. They rallied late to send the game to extra innings, but Judge’s absence hurt, and the O’s scored two in the 10th to knot the series at one.
On paper, Luis Gil against Cole Irvin stacked up well for New York in the climactic game of the series. But the O’s jumped all over Gil right from the start. He didn’t escape the second inning, and soon Baltimore led 8-1. The Yankees managed to battle back eventually, but the Orioles feasted on the middle of the New York bullpen in the meantime and put the game completely out of reach. By the time it ended at 17-5, Jose Trevino was lobbing in knuckleballs and both teams’ stars were taking early showers.
It’s unlikely that this week’s skirmish will be the last word on the AL East race. The Yankees are still in front, after all, and there’s plenty of baseball left to be played. That didn’t make the series any less intense, though, or make either team want it less. These are the kinds of baseball games that get my heart pumping even in the middle of June. More, please.
Ben is a writer at FanGraphs. He can be found on Twitter @_Ben_Clemens.
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