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Wells has 3 singles and 2 SF---a s--l--o--w start for sure---can always use him as a pinch runner---the boy had a SB today to add to his 55 out of 56 coming up
Jose Trevino’s bat is heating up while Austin Wells must be looking at rentals in Scranton.
His only hit in this Toronto series was a good one for the plane ride home...
Aaron Judge is doing a perfect impersonation of the 2023 Giancarlo Stanton. Batting averages have flipped and Stanton leads the team in home runs.
Judge went 1-5 but the last one was the one that counted. Nice win.
Volpe the hero of the game with an incredible 6-3 to end the game.
and a web gem by Volpe ends it...
The dawgs showed up--Yanks bat around in the 9th...
And Torres can borrow Judge's dog. He'd probably make a better fielder.
Judge needs to bring his dog to the plate to help him see the ball. The way he yanks his head off the plate is not pretty.
My take is the Royals and Tigers might surprise everyone and the Pirates are definitely a WAG to go anywhere along with the Angels. Brewers are going to miss Counsell and I miss the Indians of old.
Who knows what the Yankees will do.
Soto has been on base in front of Judge 33 times---crickets
My Opinion on the 7 teams.
Angels- They won't be good. My guess is they lose somewhere between mid 80's to low 90's.
Pirates- They won't hold up. Now they have some good young player, not predicting the usual 90-100 losses. But low to mid 80's losses is very likely.
Royals- I expect them to be competitive. Why, Singer having a bounce back, Lugo is really solid, and Ragans has ace potential in a weak division, did I mention bobby witt has potential to be top 5 player in baseball. I still think they are a bat or two short though from being really good. But why not mid 80's wins, it could happen in that division means they will have potential to win that weak division.
Brewers- They could stay competitive if the CUBS don't fire. I think the cubs are the class of the division, but I also don't think they are great either. I don't think they have enough pitching or hitting to be great. I still believe they will be slightly below .500 and finish either 3rd or 4th.
Guardians- I don't think they have enough pitching with bieber going down. I also don't think there offense will be as good as it come out of the gate. I think they will be low to mid 80's in wins, which means they should be right there in the division. But wouldn't be my choice right now if I had to pick one.
Tigers- Considering torkelson hasn't gotten off to the best start. The fact that there limited offense, and they are over .500 is a positive. Problem is there offense is not good, although I do like some of there pitchers. Hence high 70's to low 80's in win total is where they should come in at.
Yankees- The yankees are a mid 90's win team with a chance for 100 if things go right. Don't take this as there are no flaws every team has them, that is why the number is just mid 90's to 100.
At least that is my take. The Yankees for certain and possibly the royals as the winner of the weak AL Central other than that the rest of these teams I don't think have much staying power in my opinion, although by the nature of the division it won't take to much to stay in the royals division although I like them the best out of the bunch. All is just my opinion, and I could always be wrong though.
Can these 7 teams keep up their early success?
1:27 AM EDT
Will Leitch
https://www.mlb.com/news/teams-enjoying-early-success-in-2024-mlb-season
Worst to best.
Angels
Pirates
Royals
Brewers
Guardians
Tigers
Yankees
R.I.P. Whitey
Former Yankee Aroldis Chapman has meltdown and gets ejected in 2024 return to NY
Welcome back, Chappy!
By Thomas Carannante | Apr 16, 2024
https://yanksgoyard.com/posts/former-yankees-aroldis-chapman-meltdown-ejection-vs-mets-pirates-video-01hvkfwhg2cv
3 struggling Yankees players who need to figure it out before discourse gets toxic
By Thomas Carannante | 8:00 AM EDT
https://yanksgoyard.com/posts/3-struggling-yankees-players-who-need-to-figure-it-out-before-discourse-gets-toxic-01hvmpppjns0
Torres needs to sit as soon as DJ gets back. No bat and spotty D giving games away.
After further review......
Bizarre MLB rule change helps Anthony Rizzo, screws Carlos Rodón
What are we even doing here, and why are we doing it?
By Adam Weinrib | Apr 16, 2024
https://yanksgoyard.com/posts/bizarre-mlb-rule-change-helps-anthony-rizzo-screws-carlos-rodon-01hvkqqppdy7
He was taking a walk in the Park last night.
Looks like MLB is laying the groundwork for a Bauers return:
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/39958530/trevor-bauer-accuser-indicted-fraud-arizona
What you forget through is outside of the cubs who I don't think are great. The cardinals have holes and are aging. The pirates have some good young players, but are still the pirates, hence they are not that good, although they are no longare a 90 loss team anymore, maybe low to mid 80's in losses. The reds have a lineup but also can't pitch. The Central isn't very good. Hence the brewers should hang around unless the cubs runaway and hide.
Not his finest hour----I would have liked him to get a shot tho'
Forget about Torres tonight. With a bit of luck, you'll get to see Volpe try and complete the platinum sombrero.
Brewers usually get off to a hot start, and this year was no different. Sadly, the holes in the pitching staff are starting to shine through, just as Yelich has his first back issue of the season.
Much as I like Wade Miley, a team like Milwaukee can't possibly survive the loss of Burnes and Woodruff and expect to compete. Gotta enjoy any hot streaks while they last!
I have come to the conclusion The mets must really like the brewers, they get swept by them and than go beat up the reds and Pirates for you. LOL.
Watching Gleyber try to play "defense" is about as much fun as a sharp stick in the eye---he ain't hitttin' enough to justify his spot in the lineup---I'd rather watch Caleb Durbin....
Totally agree on baty. The mets have become a team that kills bullpen so far in fact almost half there runs this season have been scored from innings 7-9.
Wendle comes through!
Terrible news if Baty goes down. He was really playing with confidence, for the first time. I'm looking at all the hype over Holliday being promoted to the bigs in Balty...sort of reminds me of the pressure on Baty early on. Seems like the spectre of demotion to AAA weighs heavy on the kids who don't get off to a decent start after being called up.
And wendle makes me look like an idiot with a big hit here. I'm obviously happy to look like and idiot. LOL.
Seeing Joey wendle Play 3b or anywhere is a let down. Hammy for baty. The team tends to score late this year. They love attacking bullpen. That Jones kid has a possibility of being real good, he has great stuff.
Mets with one hit so far tonight. Must be the letdown after reaching .500
Baty who has looked good so far this season, comes out of the game. Hopefully he is not hurt, having said that it is the most likely possibility in my opinion.
He runs like an aircraft carrier--if Rojas put up the stop sign, Stanton would have been halfway home----he did scare the ball out of Jansen's glove tho'
Is the mean and lean Giancarlo Stanton running faster?
It was Donaldson who complained about the sticky stuff since his BA was in decline and he specifically accused Cole of using it to increase his spin rate and strike him out.
Another reason why Cashman was stupid to trade for him. And of course once it was banned his BA never improved.
And to get the same spin without a good grip it created more torque on pitchers' elbows.
The pitch clock and decreased mound visits means the pitcher is now out there on his lonesome once he gets rattled.
MLB has ruined the game to save 26 minutes a game on average. If people are that bored let them stay home and stream episodes of Yellowstone.
Here is the problem in my opinion.
1) Chase for Velocity, this has really gone crazy in the last 10 year. A control pitcher people wouldn't give a look at. Look at how nobody mentions butto as a prospect the guy hit 92-93 occasionally rears back and hit 95. But 95 used to be impressive now 95 is like 91-92 10-15 years ago. Hence the mets wanted to see Megill over him, after seeing him fail and fail again. I don't think guys who throw low 90's even get scouted well, thing is if you have good off speed pitches and you have control, that is far more important than velocity an you have no clue where it is going, you see this a ton with relievers, they hit a ton of batter, simply nobody has a clue where the ball will end up.
I remember when degromm broke in. In the first couple of years he was a very good pitcher, and very few injuries, he threw 95-96 coming in. Inexplicably as his career went on he started to throw harder, heck he would often hit 100-102. Of course he went from a very good pitcher to possibly the best pitcher in baseball for several years. Problem is he became much less durable ultimately leading to arm troubles because in my opinion his career would of been different if he stood at 95-96, I believe he would of been more durable, not that we can ever prove that.
Look at the long career Justin Verlander had. He would often since at like 94-95, and only throw 97-99 in his prime when he needed to in big spots. That is pitching, that will help you with durability, hence the chase for velocity and trying to throw max velocity every pitch I think is creating a decent amount of problems.
2) The Clock- This has added to the pitching problems. If you give pitcher less time to rest in between pitches and they feel the need to rush to get the ball off. Your gonna get more injuries. Now as a fan I like the clock, but I can see why pitchers wouldn't ike it.
3) Sticky Stuff- Lets not forget this. If you have people needing to hold onto the ball tighter, there is a great chance of doing something to the shoulder and elbow. I believe this is another huge issue, that baseball has used the last several years that has made injuries rise as well.
I personally would let the sticky stuff in some form come back. I think that would help a great deal. I also think they need to teach pitchers, specifally when your a non reliever. I think Pitchers especially ones with high velocity, would be better sitting at 90% of max velocity most of the times, and use max velocity in spots. All is just my opinion of course.
John Sterling, longtime Yankees radio voice, retires after 35-year run
Yankees' legendary broadcaster John Sterling.
By Andrew Marchand
Apr 15, 2024
304
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The legendary radio voice of the Yankees, John Sterling, is retiring effective immediately after more than three decades in the booth, he and the team said Monday.
The Yankees and Sterling made the announcement after The Athletic reported on a planned news conference for this weekend in which the 85-year-old Sterling was anticipated to retire, citing health concerns. Sterling has been a broadcaster for 64 years.
The team will recognize his contributions in a pregame ceremony prior to Saturday’s Yankees-Rays game. He was originally slated to call the series.
WFAN will replace Sterling with 37-year-old Justin Shackil and 24-year-old Emmanuel Berbari, who combined are 24 years younger than Sterling. The two are already slated to call the majority of the road games this season with Suzyn Waldman. Neither Shackil nor Berbari are guaranteed to receive the full-time job.
Sterling was the soundtrack to the Derek Jeter-led Yankees title run from 1996 to 2000, when the franchise won four World Series in five years. He also made the call when the Yankees won the World Series in 2009, a team led by CC Sabathia and Alex Rodriguez. Sterling, who began calling Yankees games in 1989, punctuated the team’s wins with, “Thuuuuuu-uggh Yankees win!”
go-deeper
GO DEEPER
Inside the booth with Yankees legend John Sterling for his 36th home opener: 'I'm near the end'
His unique home run calls live in Yankee lore with memorable calls including “Bern, baby, Bern!” for Bernie Williams and “A thrilla from Godzilla” for Hideki Matsui.
While Sterling has never been known for the most precise call of the game, he was a broadcasting version of Lou Gehrig, calling 5,060 consecutive games over 30 years. During the first of his nearly 36 seasons, Sterling missed two games due to the death of his sister. He was on the call for every other game until July 4, 2019, when illness caused him to miss a series.
Sterling called 5,631 Yankees games total (5,420 in the regular season and 211 in the playoffs).
Sterling informed Yankee and WFAN officials that he planned to retire last week, according to officials with direct knowledge. When reached late last week, Sterling declined to say he was officially done with broadcasting. He has been known to change his mind. On Monday, he acknowledged his decision is final.
“I will be very happy in my retirement,” Sterling said on WFAN, the Yankees’ flagship radio station, following the official announcement.
Sterling broadcast the Atlanta Braves and Hawks before becoming the voice of the Yankees. He used his rhythmic nickname style for Hall of Famer Dominique Wilkins, saying, “Dominique, manifique!”
But he will be most remembered for his Yankees years and his uniqueness on and off the air.
Even on the radio, Sterling wore a suit to every game he called. While technology averse, his voicemail on his cellphone greeted callers with, “Hi, congratulations, you have reached …”
He developed a strong bond with much of the Yankees fan base, many of whom went from the crib to adulthood only knowing him as the radio voice of their team.
Required reading
Inside the booth with Yankees legend John Sterling for his 36th home opener: ‘I’m near the end’
Now a Yankees radio icon, John Sterling was launched to stardom in Atlanta
‘Theeeee Yankees win!’: John Sterling exits with a signature call as he prepares to miss his first games in 30 years
You can buy tickets to every MLB game here.
(Photo: Bob Karp / Staff Photographer / USA Today Network)
https://theathletic.com/5417468/2024/04/15/john-sterling-announcement-yankees-retirement/
MLB insiders “pretty worried” by rise in arm injuries to top young starting pitchers
PITTSBURGH, PA - AUGUST 07: Spencer Strider #99 of the Atlanta Braves reacts in the third inning after being pulled after giving up 6 runs on 5 hits against the Pittsburgh Pirates during the game at PNC Park on August 7, 2023 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Justin K. Aller/Getty Images)
By Andy McCullough
Apr 8, 2024
388
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Matt Blake texted Cleveland Guardians pitcher Shane Bieber a conciliatory message over the weekend. As a member of the Cleveland player-development system in the 2010s, Blake aided Bieber’s rise from college walk-on to unanimous American League Cy Young Award winner in 2020. For a time, Bieber represented the modern model for the manufacturing of a big-league ace, a player who added strength to his frame, velocity to his fastball and spin to his offspeed pitches as he ascended the ranks.
By the time Blake sent his text, though, Bieber had become part of a growing, more troubling demographic: talented young pitchers who will spend this season as spectators. Two days after the Miami Marlins announced 20-year-old phenom Eury Pérez would undergo Tommy John surgery, the Guardians disclosed Bieber, 28, would need the same procedure. A recent examination of 25-year-old Atlanta Braves starter Spencer Strider revealed damage to his elbow’s ulnar collateral ligament, which could result in his second Tommy John surgery. In New York, where Blake is now the Yankees pitching coach, the team has lost its ace, Gerrit Cole, until June with elbow inflammation and one of its top relievers, Jonathan Loaisiga, to year-ending elbow surgery.
“As a pitching coach trying to get through nine innings worth of pitching every night over 162 games,” Blake said, “I’m pretty worried.”
Pitching has always been hazardous for its practitioners. There is reason to believe it is only getting more challenging to keep them healthy. The opening days of the 2024 season have demonstrated the inherent fragility of the position. A recent story by The Ringer cited research from former MLB trainer Stan Conte that tallied 263 UCL surgeries in 2023, a steady uptick from 111 procedures performed in 2011. Of the 166 players who began the season on the injured list, as the New York Post reported, 132 were pitchers. If these trends continue, 2024 will be another banner year for arm injuries — and cause for alarm around the game.
The subject prompted sniping between Major League Baseball and the MLBPA on Saturday, as the two sides argued through press releases about the effect of the pitch clock, which was introduced in 2023 and shortened for 2024. MLBPA chief Tony Clark painted the league’s insistence on cutting time off the clock before the 2024 season against the wishes of players as “an unprecedented threat to our game.” MLB countered by citing unpublished analysis from Johns Hopkins University that found no link between the introduction of the clock and the surge of injuries.
The clock, however, was just one area of concern among players, coaches and managers surveyed by The Athletic this weekend. Those conversations presented a tapestry of additional reasons for the injury problem, including the industry’s relentless push for optimization, the encouragement of players to chase maximum velocity and spin, and the usage of training methods that encourage year-round, full-throttle workouts. To some, the explanations are interwoven and intractable. Untangling the knot may require years of research and re-evaluation.
“To protect these guys’ arms is paramount,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “And clearly we haven’t nailed it.”
This season began with baseball’s most heralded pitchers on the shelf. Los Angeles Dodgers starter Clayton Kershaw underwent shoulder surgery last October. Texas Rangers pitcher Max Scherzer is recovering from back surgery, while his teammate Jacob deGrom is rehabbing from a second Tommy John surgery. Houston Astros ace Justin Verlander experienced shoulder soreness in spring training. All those pitchers are 35 and older, the sort of age where the body no longer cooperates with the rigors of the big-league schedule.
Not long ago, Eury Pérez and Sandy Alcántara were on their way to becoming twin aces for the Marlins. Now both will spend 2024 rehabbing from surgery. (Megan Briggs / Getty Images)
For MLB, the more pressing concern is the fleet of arms breaking down soon after reaching prominence. Miami Marlins starter Sandy Alcántara, the unanimous winner of the 2022 National League Cy Young Award, underwent elbow reconstruction last season. So did Tampa Bay Rays pitcher Shane McClanahan, a little more than a year after starting the All-Star Game. Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Brandon Woodruff will miss this season because of shoulder surgery. Same story for Kansas City Royals pitcher Kyle Wright, a 21-game winner for Atlanta in 2022.
“Our sport deserves our best pitchers to be on the mound,” Detroit Tigers manager A.J. Hinch said. “Regardless of the era you’re in, the starting pitcher matchup is the first thing you look at every day. You want the big boys out there. You want the guys that are elite, and more and more are getting hurt.”
To research the problem, MLB commissioned a study last October, which has sprawled to include conversations with 100 people around the game, including medical officials. When the study is completed, the league intends to create a task force and provide recommendations to clubs about how to keep pitchers healthy.
The sport has grappled with the problem since its inception. In another era, pitchers were believed to get hurt by overuse. Teams altered how they used pitchers in hopes of preserving them. Gone are the days of the exhausted starter, pushed to the brink at 125 pitches or more, trying to finish the seventh or eighth inning. The new archetype asks the pitcher not to ease into outings but explode at the outset. Go as hard as you can for as long as you can, is the new mantra. An influx of data about the shape and movement of pitches offered teams granular ways to make pitchers better. The data did not, however, offer an answer for how to keep them healthier.
“I’ve heard through my years managing that we ask less out of starting pitchers because we don’t leave them in the game long enough and they don’t throw 100 pitches as much anymore,” Hinch said. “Yet we ask them for max velo, max shape, max everything, and virtually train year-round.”
Hinch pointed to Tarik Skubal, a 27-year-old Tigers lefty who underwent Tommy John surgery in college and flexor tendon surgery in 2022. Skubal trained this past winter so that when he arrived at spring training, he touched 99 mph in his first session of live batting practice. “Go to Tarik Skubal and tell him, ‘Hey, ease it off and throw 92 mph,’ and see how that works out for you,” Hinch said. “No. Because we’re asking our athletes to compete at the highest level.”
To some retired players, the quest for elevated velocity and spin has put pitchers at risk. Dan Haren, a 13-year veteran who now works as a pitching strategist for the Arizona Diamondbacks, posted on X about his Instagram feed providing footage of “guys throwing weighted balls at max effort against a wall, with a crow hop, with his bros cheering him on.” Added Roberts, “The body is designed, in my opinion, to only take so much force and velocity before it gives way.”
Shane Bieber hadn’t allowed a run over two outings this season when it was announced he would undergo elbow surgery. (Jason Miller / Getty Images)
Some, like Chicago Cubs manager Craig Counsell, suggested pitchers will always try to throw harder. “I don’t think the pursuit of velocity is ever going to end,” Counsell said. “Because it’s something that makes pitchers better. I don’t think we should demonize the pursuit of velocity.”
Yet the industry has championed this trend by shortening the outings of starting pitchers and encouraging them to maximize their output. Not only do pitchers throw their fastballs as hard as possible, they throw offspeed pitches with utmost force, in hopes of generating unique movement and missing bats. “The types of deliveries that create the outlier shapes are probably more stressful in some ways,” Blake said. “I think the maximization of force to create the shapes probably doesn’t help. When you’re chasing 20 inches of break or 20 inches of ride or the high velo, I think there is some level of physical cost.”
Despite protestations from MLB officials, players will continue to complain about the clock. The innovation trimmed 24 minutes off the average game last season. The timer in 2023 granted pitchers 15 seconds to act with the bases empty and 20 with runners aboard. MLB’s 11-man competition committee voted to shave two seconds off the 20-second clock for 2024 despite objections from the players.
Los Angeles Angels pitcher Tyler Anderson suggested pitchers might place more stress on their arm rather than their legs because of the clock. But he doubted any study could show a correlation between decreased time between pitches and increased injuries. The act of pitching was already unhealthy enough. “Rob Manfred knows it’s really hard to prove, would be my guess,” Anderson said.
The union sees the clock as a bogeyman. The commissioner’s office sees their complaint as a straw man. For coaches like Blake, who must navigate the season as injuries continue, the clock is only part of the problem, along with the perilous chase of velocity and spin.
“I don’t think any of them are the most responsible,” Blake said. “But the cocktail of them all is hard to get by.”
https://theathletic.com/5397742/2024/04/08/arm-injury-causes-mlb-strider-bieber-perez/
MLB’s endangered ace crisis: Spencer Strider’s surgery is latest reminder of what baseball has lost
ST PETERSBURG, FLORIDA - JULY 08: Spencer Strider #99 of the Atlanta Braves pitches during a game against the Tampa Bay Rays at Tropicana Field on July 08, 2023 in St Petersburg, Florida. (Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)
By Jayson Stark
Apr 15, 2024
195
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It was just two weeks ago that I had an incredible conversation with Spencer Strider about one of his favorite topics:
The pursuit of greatness.
The hard part was convincing the Braves’ magnetic young ace he could use that word, “great,” to describe himself. Yeah, really. He went 20-5 last season. He led the world in strikeouts. Yet he still didn’t even approach his own definition of greatness.
Does it seem almost incomprehensible that Strider didn’t get a single first-place Cy Young Award vote after a season like that? It does to me … but not to him. In fact, he told me if any voter had actually handed him a first-place vote, he’d have been “embarrassed.”
And why? How even? Because that 3.86 ERA he wound up with wasn’t “acceptable,” no matter how out of whack it was compared with every other number on his stat sheet.
“The strikeouts, the FIP, the wins — I mean, sure, I get it,” Strider said. “But at the end of the day, there’s a spectrum of what’s acceptable for an ERA. And I think mine was a little too high.”
As he spoke that day, you could feel his mind race, his heart throb and his world-class mustache swirl. So it’s hard to digest that the next time we see him pitch probably won’t be until sometime in 2025.
He and the Braves revealed that grim news this weekend. On Friday, Strider paid a visit to Dr. Keith Meister, his friendly neighborhood elbow surgeon. The internal brace surgery Meister performed was Strider’s second procedure to repair the ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow. He is only 25. So he will be back.
He was — and is — a man on a mission to do something special. But this sport now will have to do something it is getting way too much practice at these days … move forward without another one of the transcendent rotation rock stars of the era.
For 100 years, baseball revolved around its larger-than-life starting pitchers — from Lefty Grove to Randy Johnson, from Tom Seaver to Nolan Ryan, from Bob Gibson to Pedro Martinez. They were baseball’s version of Steph and LeBron … Jordan and Kobe … Baylor and West.
They held the baseball in their hands 100 times a game. Then they worked their magic. It was their show to choreograph. They were the reason the first question we asked about every baseball game was: Who’s pitching tonight?
So what should we ask now? Who SHOULD have been pitching tonight?
Gerrit Cole is one of many star pitchers on the injured list. (Daniel Shirey / MLB Photos via Getty Images)
• Of the six men who lead all active pitchers in career ERA, WHIP and wins above replacement, five of them are on the injured list at the moment. Perhaps their names will ring a bell: Justin Verlander, Clayton Kershaw, Max Scherzer, Jacob deGrom and Gerrit Cole.
• Of the 10 active pitchers who have won a Cy Young Award, eight are currently hurt. That would be those five above, plus Sandy Alcantara, Shane Bieber and Robbie Ray.
• Of the five active starters who have won multiple Cy Youngs, all of them are hurt, except for Blake Snell.
• Of the 12 active starters who have led their league in strikeout rate in any of the past seven seasons, seven aren’t physically able to throw a baseball these days. That would be a bunch of guys on those lists above, plus two dominators named Spencer Strider and Shohei Ohtani.
• Eight pitchers who got Cy Young votes as recently as last season have already been on the injured list this year. Ditto for two of the three pitchers who received Rookie of the Year votes last season (Kodai Senga and Eury Pérez).
Get the idea? That’s way too many must-see attractions on the absentee list. But if we’re just worrying about the impact their absence has on their teams, we’re thinking way too small. In truth, it’s inflicting seismic damage on the entertainment value of their sport.
You can pick your favorite baseball “crisis:” Ippei Mizuhara, sports books springing up near the ballpark gates, the unraveling of cable TV, tanking, the Dodgers’ billion-dollar spending spree, whatever. I’ll take this one: the endangered ace crisis.
If the people who run baseball can’t figure out a way to reverse this trend, keep those aces healthy and restore their prominence in the game, they’ll have more to stress about than who’s going to televise Rockies games. Trust me.
I don’t know why Strider’s elbow injury got me thinking 24/7 about this. But in this job, there are certain players and certain conversations that stick in your head. And this player and this chat left their mark on me.
There isn’t much I permit myself to root for in my job. But I root for greatness. And I admire the people who chase it, who set that bar higher than almost everyone else around them.
I know how driven Cole and Verlander, Scherzer and Kershaw are by their fire to be historically great. I know because I’ve talked about it with all of them. It wasn’t hard to tell that Strider shared that fire. I just wasn’t prepared to get a taste of how ferociously he shared it.
“Did you feel like you had a Cy Young season last year?” I asked him.
“No,” he replied. “Not even a little bit.”
He wouldn’t even let me fill him in on how rare seasons like his actually are. So let me share that with you.
In the Cy Young Award era (1956-present), only seven other pitchers have had that season — by which I mean: 20 wins or more, but five losses or fewer, while leading their league in strikeouts:
Pedro Martinez
1999 and 2002
Clayton Kershaw
2011
Justin Verlander
2011
Gerrit Cole
2019
Randy Johnson
2002
Dwight Gooden
1985
Sandy Koufax
1963
(Source: Baseball Reference / Stathead)
That’s a cool list. And you can now add one more name: Spencer Strider.
But here’s the list Strider doesn’t get to join: Pitchers who did all that while winning a Cy Young Award.
That would be practically all of them, of course, with only two exceptions: Cole in 2019 and Pedro in 2002. But those two both lost in races that were practically dead heats — Cole to Verlander, Pedro to Barry Zito. At least Cole got 13 first-place votes. Pedro got 11.
And Strider? As I mentioned, he got none. In fact, he didn’t even finish in the top three in the National League voting. He was fourth, behind Snell (28 first-place votes), Logan Webb (one) and Zac Gallen (one). There is no precedent for that in the history of voting. So that’s Spencer Strider, the ace Cy Young voters forgot.
At least Strider let me present the short version of that research — the part in which I informed him that nobody else who had his season had failed to come away with at least one first-place vote. I asked if he found that even remotely weird.
“No,” he said, without a millisecond’s hesitation. “I mean, no. I would have been a little — how do I phrase this — I would have been a little bit embarrassed by a first-place vote.”
Embarrassed. That was the word he used — after a season in which he piled up almost twice as many strikeouts (281) as hits allowed (146). He also had a better WHIP, FIP and strikeout rate than Snell. And pitched more innings. And beat him in strikeouts — by 47!
There was literally only one reason not to vote for Spencer Strider — that 3.86 ERA … which was more than a run and a half higher than Snell’s 2.25. But their FIP numbers (2.85 for Strider, 3.44 for Snell) tell a very different story of the results they (theoretically) should have gotten. So in retrospect, is ERA alone enough to tell us which of those two really pitched better?
Even Strider’s ever-pensive teammate, Charlie Morton, launched into nearly a 10-minute breakdown of voting trends when I asked him to reflect on this topic.
“What are you guys looking for?” Morton asked, referring to the baseball writers who pick the award winners, “because I don’t know. I know the metrics are there for Spencer, right? You know, strikeouts, whiff rates, all that stuff. So I think at some point, (if you’re him) you look at the season that you had and you think: ‘If I had just made a couple of better pitches in some situations, (that ERA would look a lot different).’ And that’s exactly what happened with Spence.
“You’d look up, and he’d be shoving. He’d have 15 strikeouts, no runs, one run. And then he walks somebody, base hit, bloop, swinging bunt … and then homer. And I mean, it happened like four or five times. And it was, like, man, that is bad luck because he’s not throwing pitches that are much different.”
Go back and look at Strider’s 2023 season, start by start, and that’s true. But when I offered that escape hatch to Strider himself … surprise, he had no interest in any what-if excuses.
“There’s something to be said for making pitches with runners on base,” he said, sternly.
So of course he’s still obsessed with the pitches he didn’t make. He ticked them off in infinitesimal detail: not finishing off Corbin Carroll with two strikes and allowing that to bleed into a four-run inning … not getting a checked-swing third-strike call on Mookie Betts and then serving up a wall-scraping three-run homer.
“I can play this game all day with you,” he said, halfway through a recap of another one of those games in Boston. “But that’s not an excuse.”
So everyone else can toss out the metrics to show that his ERA shouldn’t have been that high. Strider doesn’t care about what should have happened. He’s driven by what did happen.
“The lows were too low,” he said. “Yeah, the highs were high. But I think it’s just the consistency wasn’t there. So yeah, I completely understand where I landed in the Cy Young voting.”
Spencer Strider shows his fire after recording his 16th strikeout in a game against the Rockies in 2022. (Rich von Biberstein / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
But take a step back and think about how data-driven modern Cy Young voters have become. Is it really that hard to imagine an alternative reality where this guy would have won one of those trophies? Again, it isn’t for me. But to the man who had that season, it seemed preposterous.
“If I’d won it, I don’t know that they could get me to go to the award ceremony,” he said. “I’d say: Give it to somebody else. To me, it doesn’t matter — and I’m being serious.”
I’m going to give you a second to digest that. This guy went 20-5 and had the most overpowering season of any starter in the game … yet still was so unhappy with himself, he said he wouldn’t have gone to the award ceremony. Amazing.
“I certainly don’t want to take credit away from other people,” Strider went on. “But my job isn’t to be the best pitcher compared to other pitchers. It’s to be the best pitcher I can for my team, and to be what my teammates need me to be.
“Like I look at the NLDS last year,” he went on, still steamed about two close losses to the Phillies (in which his teammates scored a combined one run, by the way). “And I hold myself to that standard there. My team needed me to be better, and I wasn’t.”
Yeah, but what about all his highlight moments last year? Sure, he remembers those. But it was those other moments he couldn’t stop thinking about. He vowed that day to use them as fuel, as inspiration, as teachable experiences. Except now …
Well, he’ll have a lot more time to stew about them, won’t he? But all the brutally honest self-assessment that came spilling out of him when we spoke is what I’ll be thinking about — until the next time this man gets to stomp back to the top of a big-league hill.
That, my friends, is how aces think. And this sport needs all of them — on the mound — that it can round up. It’s sad to say he’s just one more reminder of what we’re missing. But that’s where we are.
One of these days, that dude who just underwent elbow surgery has a Cy Young ceremony waiting for him. And why do I suspect that when that moment arrives, he’ll show up?
“Yeah, they’ll make me go, I’m sure,” Strider said, laughing. “But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
https://theathletic.com/5414826/2024/04/15/mlb-pitching-injuries-spencer-strider-surgery/
Whitey Herzog, former Cardinals, Royals manager and Hall of Famer, dies at 92
Baseball: St. Louis Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog (24) on field during game vs Atlanta Braves at Busch Stadium.
St. Louis, MO 5/23/1983
CREDIT: John W. McDonough (Photo by John W. McDonough /Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)
(Set Number: X28527 )
By Rustin Dodd
In the summer of 1980, August A. Busch Jr., the chairman and president of the St. Louis Cardinals, summoned Whitey Herzog to Grant’s Farm, the family estate on the outskirts of the city. Herzog was 48 years old and had spent the previous five seasons managing the Kansas City Royals before taking over as Cardinals manager before 1980 season, but Gussie Busch, as he was known, had an idea. He needed a new general manager. He wanted Herzog. He offered a simple mission.
“Whitey,” Busch said, as the men talked over a couple beers. “Get me one more championship.”
Herzog accepted the challenge, and across the next two seasons he would remake the Cardinals in his own image, serving in a dual role as both manager and GM, building a skillful team of speed and defense and pitching and patience. In the span of 12 months starting in December 1980, he executed eight transactions that featured 31 players, sending out veterans and acquiring Hall of Famers, tailoring his roster to excel on the astroturf of the spacious Busch Stadium. The renovation set the foundation for a World Series championship, re-energized St. Louis as a baseball market and resulted in a brand of baseball that took the National League by storm.
It was known as “Whiteyball,” a style based on speed, defense and pitching. It was, as its architect once put it, just old-school baseball.
“What’s Whiteyball?” Herzog asked in 1987. “I don’t even know what it is. Whitebally. Billyball. What’s the difference? It’s all just baseball.”
Herzog, whose managerial prowess and executive handiwork helped the Cardinals win the World Series in 1982 (and appear in two others), and whose name became synonymous with 1980s baseball, died on Tuesday. He was 92.
Whitey Herzog at his Hall of Fame induction in 2010. (Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)
Herzog, who was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2010, also played eight seasons in the major leagues — debuting with the Washington Senators in 1956 — and managed the Royals to three straight appearances in the American League Championship Series from 1976 to 1978. He shepherded the early career of future Hall of Famer George Brett. He brought shortstop Ozzie Smith to the Cardinals and watched him become one of the best defensive players in baseball history. He was colorful, brash, blunt and occasionally off-color. Most of all, he was successful. As a manager, he won six division titles and finished with a career record of 1,281-1,125 — a mark that included a stint as the Rangers’ manager in 1973 and four games as an interim skipper for the Angels in 1974.
“He’s the best manager I ever played for as a field manager and a tactician,” former Cardinals first baseman Keith Hernandez told The New York Times in 2010, as Herzog prepared for his Hall induction. “He made me more cognizant of doing the little things to win a game: getting a runner over, which he always emphasized; if you didn’t score a runner from second, you got him to third. Defensively, he always had a new wrinkle.”
Born Dorrel Norman Elvert Herzog in New Athens, Ill., in 1931, Herzog was raised in the tiny community in southern Illinois, 30 miles southeast of St. Louis. As a boy, Herzog went by the name “Relly.” It was not until his professional baseball career began that he earned the moniker “Whitey,” which referenced his bleached blonde hair and his resemblance to former Yankees pitcher Bob “The White Rat” Kuzava, who had similar blonde hair.
Herzog once referred to himself as a “Lil Ol Country Boy,” the son of a father who worked at the Mound City Brewery and a mother who toiled in a shoe factory, the product of a hardscrabble community of bars and blue-collar work. The second of three boys, he spent his childhood delivering newspapers, digging graves for a local funeral parlor, modeling his swing after Stan Musial’s and occasionally skipping school to go watch the Cardinals, finding a lift to Belleville before taking a bus to Sportsman’s Park.
After a star turn on the baseball field in high school, Herzog signed his first professional contract — for $1,500 — with the New York Yankees and scout Lou Maguolo. It was while playing the Yankees system in McAlester, Okla., that he first heard the nickname “Whitey.”
Herzog was traded to the Washington Senators in 1956 — after a brief stint in the military during the Korean War — and debuted with the Senators that season. As a player, he was a left-handed hitting outfielder with little power, and his consistent struggles at the plate led to part-time stints with the Kansas City A’s, Baltimore Orioles and the Detroit Tigers, where his career ended in 1963. (To emphasize his abilities, Herzog once told the Los Angeles Times that Yankees manager Casey Stengel promised him he’d bring him back to New York if he ever had a good year. The punchline: He never did.)
When his playing career ended, Herzog returned with his wife Mary Lou to the Kansas City area, where he took a job as construction foreman. One day, Herzog later recalled, he was ordered to lay off 20 men based on seniority rather than performance. It was an experience that embittered him on the industry, so he quit, and he eventually accepted a job as a scout for the Kansas City A’s. The gig led to a coaching job, which led to a short stint in the Orioles’ organization and seven years in player development with the Mets.
Herzog’s first chance to manage came with the Rangers in 1973. In his opening press conference, he told reporters, according to the Los Angeles Times, “This is the worst excuse for a big-league club I ever saw.” He was right — and was fired in the middle of his first season.
Herzog’s breakthrough came when he was hired by Royals GM Joe Burke — his boss in Texas — to replace Jack McKeon as the club’s manager in late July 1975. The Royals, just seven seasons into their existence, were loaded with young talent and speed — the roster included Brett, Frank White, Amos Otis and Hal McRae — and they played their home games at what was then Royals Stadium, a spacious park with astroturf. It was the perfect environment for Herzog to test his theories about the game, to unleash Whiteyball before anyone had used the term.
“I tried to change the whole concept of how we played baseball,” Herzog said, according to the Kansas City Star. “We couldn’t hit a home run, and we could neutralize the other team’s power somewhat when we were at home.”
The Royals claimed three straight American League titles, winning a franchise-record 102 games in 1977, but they could not get over a Bronx-sized hump in the postseason, losing three straight times in the ALCS to the Yankees. In 1977, Royals owner Ewing Kauffman famously said that Herzog “can be my manager forever.” In this case, forever lasted two more years.
Friction between Kauffman and Herzog led to his firing after the 1979 season. Herzog would find a landing spot in St. Louis, first taking over the manager’s job, then the GM post, before eventually settling into both before the 1981 season. (He was the first to serve in both capacities simultaneously since Connie Mack 31 years earlier.) With Gussie Busch’s blessing, Herzog went to work on retooling the roster. In December of 1980, he acquired Bruce Sutter from the Cubs; signed catcher Darrell Porter to a free agent contract; and traded catcher Ted Simmons and pitchers Rollie Fingers and Pete Vuckovich to Milwaukee for David Green, Dave LaPoint, Sixto Lezcano and Lary Sorensen.
He was just getting started. The next offseason, he acquired Ozzie Smith, Lonnie Smith and Willie McGee in trades with the Padres, Phillies and Yankees, respectively. Lonnie Smith finished second in the MVP voting in 1982. Ozzie Smith made the All-Star Game. The Cardinals won 92 games, bested the Braves in the NLCS and edged the Brewers in a seven-game World Series, winning the final two games and claiming the organization’s first World Series title since 1967. In the moments after the victory, Herzog sat in his office, picking at a plate of ribs.
“I don’t feel that excited about it,” he told reporters. “After seeing our ballclub last night come out smoking, I really expected this.”
The Cardinals returned to the World Series in 1985, losing a heartbreaking seven-game series to the Royals after leading the series 3-1, and again in 1987, falling in seven games to the Minnesota Twins. Herzog managed parts of three more seasons in St. Louis before resigning in the summer of 1990. In customary Herzog fashion, he was ready with an honest quip: “I came here in last place and I leave here in last place,” he said, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “I left them right where I started.”
“If I ever managed, I’d try to do the things Whitey did,” Brett told Sports Illustrated in 1982. “He gave players confidence, but he wasn’t afraid to stand up to them. He’d play hearts with you. I remember once going to his house for a quail dinner. Next game I went four-for-four. Later in the season I was struggling a little and one day Whitey walks into the clubhouse with a couple of quail that Mary Lou had sent me.”
Herzog never managed again, though he did have a short stint as the Angels’ GM in the early ’90s. In his later years, he returned to his favorite fishing holes. He became an ambassador for baseball in St. Louis. His sharp sense of humor never waned. In his final years, when he became the second oldest living Hall of Famer behind Willie Mays, he joked that autography collectors kept sending him cards to sign. The value, Herzog figured, was about to spike.
At his core, though, Herzog was still the blue-collar kid from New Athens, the one who delivered papers and dug graves and who could return home and predict which townie would be on which barstool in every tavern in town. The kid also had a sense for baseball, and if you stripped away everything, Herzog said, it was not a complicated game.
“If you get good enough pitching and play defense day in and day out,” he said, “you can win on the moon.”
https://theathletic.com/5419937/2024/04/16/whitey-herzog-cardinals-royals-obituary-mlb/?source=nyt&access_token=11932965
He had health issues last year that prevented him from traveling on the road.
John Sterling retires. Effective immediately. That's a shock, even for us non Yankee fans. Hope he's okay. That'll be a tough voice in the booth to replace.
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And old photographs that Mamas bring,
Of Daddies with their young boys, playing ball.
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Well, beat the drum and hold the phone - the sun came out today!
We're born again, there's new grass on the field.
A-roundin' third, and headed for home, it's a brown-eyed handsome man;
Anyone can understand the way i feel.
Chorus:
Oh, put me in, coach - i'm ready to play today;
Put me in, coach - i'm ready to play today;
Look at me, i can be centerfield.
Well, i spent some time in the mudville nine, watchin' it from the bench;
You know i took some lumps when the mighty casey struck out.
So say hey willie, tell ty cobb and joe dimaggio;
Don't say "it ain't so", you know the time is now.
Chorus
Yeah! i got it, i got it!
Got a beat-up glove, a homemade bat, and brand-new pair of shoes;
You know i think it's time to give this game a ride.
Just to hit the ball and touch 'em all - a moment in the sun;
(pop) it's gone and you can tell that one goodbye!
John Fogerty
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raSJDLv-Wpg&feature=related
Field of Dreams (1989)
"The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It's been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time.
This field, this game, is a part of our past, Ray.
It reminds us of all that once was good, and that could be again.
Oh people will come, Ray. People will most definitely come."
--Terence Mann (James Earl Jones) to Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU3a1PDtTYk
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