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Reflections on The First Weeks of the 2023 Baseball Season

I've long believed that you cannot really analyze a baseball season until the Memorial Day weekend quarter-pole.  And obviously you cannot win a pennant in early spring, but you can sure dig a deep hole. 

 

As an Orioles fan for over a half-century, I have been thrilled by their early surge to more than ten games over .500.  Losing a series this weekend to the World Series-contending Braves in Atlanta was

disappointing, but they sure held their own in top-flight competition. 

 

I'm beginning to believe that if this young and spunky crew stays healthy, they could stay in the race all season.  Certainly into the summer when in a program note I'll be speaking about my new book 

BASEBALL'S ENDANGERED SPECIES on Tues afternoon July 18 at the Babe Ruth Museum.  A short walk from Camden Yards where that night the Orioles will host the LA Dodgers. 

 

If the Orioles keep on keepin' on, I will happily abandon my agonized Woeriole commentaries of past years and be glad to exclaim, "Wowrioles!"   

 

This past Saturday afternoon, I journeyed to the Brooklyn Cyclones' Maimonides Park to see the High-A Orioles Aberdeen Ironbirds win 7-2. They took charge in the first inning, scoring two runs without a hit against the Mets farm club. 

 

One of the big attractions for me was seeing Jackson Holliday, the 19-year-old shortstop and number one pick in last year's MLB amateur free agent draft.  I had seen Jackson, the son of All-Star outfielder Matt Holliday, show off his wares in late innings of a couple of Florida spring training games in March.   

 

On Saturday, he struck out his first two times but later contributed a sizzling opposite field double driving in a run through a drawn-in infield.  He also got another RBI on an infield hit.

 

He didn't have many difficult chances in the field but he handled a few easily.  I couldn't get a sense from one game how he was interacting with his teammates.  I do feel lucky I saw him on Saturday because he didn't play on Sunday in a 3-0 loss to the Cyclones that finished in two hours flat. 

 

I am pleased that games on all levels of pro baseball are shorter this year. However, I was not pleased that during the Aberdeen Saturday victory, they struck out 17 times! 

 

I had seen some of the same players at Low-A Delmarva in Salisbury, Maryland last summer. 

They showed a lack of knowledge of situational hitting last year, and, alas, they were no better on Saturday. 

 

On the positive side, I have my eye on Luis Valdez who played second base last year but now patrols right field and covers a lot of ground.  He may be hitting under .200, but it sure looks like his speed is a major tool, and repeat after me - "Speed never slumps." 

 

Hitting and hitting with power usually come last in normal player development, but a glaring example of how the bugaboos of "launch angle and exit velocity" have infected the game came late last month when the St. Louis Cardinals' ballyhooed rookie outfielder, Jordan Walker, just 21, was farmed out after a great start in early April.  His ailment?  Hitting the ball on the ground and not boosting his launch angle and exit velocity.  

 

Despite a significant payroll and playoff aspiritations, St. Louis has the worst record in the National League, 13 games under .500  They are evidently missing retired catcher Yadier Molina so much that they have at least temporarily removed free agent catcher Wilson Contreras from behind the plate.

 

They have sent him to outfield/DH purgatory. If there is a hot seat in baseball, it should be occupied by

"president of baseball operations" John Mozeliak.  His trades have not been successful.

 

He did get lefty Jordan Montgomery from the Yankees for Harrison Bader but he gifted Randy Arozarena to Tampa Bay for lefty Matthew Liberatore who has yet to contribute significantly in St. Louis.  He also fired manager Mike Schildt late in what was a very competitive 2021 season.

 

Meanwhile, neither the Yankees or the Mets have enjoyed good times recently, each hovering around .500.  The Yankees should get a big boost when Aaron Judge returns to the lineup this week from his stint on the injured list.

 

Judge hurt his hip sliding head first into third base, another sign that baseball fundamentals are being ignored by too many teams.  Judge's formidable partner in the Yankee lineup, Giancarlo Stanton, is likely out until the summer with a hamstring injury. This happened when he accelerated too quickly between first and second on a ball he was admiring because he thought it would be a home run. 

 

Whether the Mets can emerge as a contender is a good question.  They are not a young team and have invested enormously in future Hall of Fame pitchers Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander who are both pushing forty.

 

Because of injuries and Scherzer's 10-day suspension for using too much rosin on his throwing hand,  neither has been able yet to stabilize the rotation. I wonder if the rest of the lineup can ever become enough of an offensive force to make up for inconsistent pitching. 

 

Baseball's hottest team, the Tampa Bay Rays, spends a rare week in NYC starting on Thursday May 11, the first of four games at Yankee Stadium.  They just won two out of three closely contested games against the Yankees in Tampa. 

 

Their record of 28-7 is the best in MLB since the Tigers went 35-5 in their wire-to-wire 1984 World Series

winning season. (The numbers 28-7 remind me of one of my heroes, Robin Roberts' astonishing won-loss record in 1952 for a bad Phillies team.)  After finishing up in the Bronx, the Rays make a rare appearance in Queens for night games on TuW May 16-17 and a day game on Th May 18. 

 

On the college baseball front, my Columbia Lions need a lot of help from Yale if they want to host the first four-game Ivy League post-season tournament from May 19-22.  Penn and Harvard are tied for first with 13-5 records and Princeton just finished its season with a 13-8 mark and have made the tourney.

 

Columbia has fallen to 11-7 and needs one win against Penn this weekend or a Yale (9-9) loss at Harvard to get the fourth spot in a year the Lions were picked to finish first. 

 

Recent season-ending injuries to sophomore center fielder Skye Selinsky and junior third baseman Seth Dardar have hurt the team's record-setting offense and the pitching and defense have not been the team's strong suit in 2023. But the Lions have been consistent May winners in recent years so don't count them out yet. 

 

In other local college baseball news, Rutgers is closing the Big Ten season on a roll and has a chance

to make a push towards the College World Series.  The Big Ten tournament will be held this year from May 23-28 on the same field in Omaha where CWS will be played from Th June 16 thru M June 26, 

 

There is one more chance to see the Scarlet Knights at home.  It's this weekend against Illinois - Fri and Sat May 12-13 at 6p at Bainton Field in Piscataway and Su May 14 at noon in Lakewood NJ at ShoreTown Park, the home of the Jersey Shore High-A Phillies farm club. 

 

St. Johns and Seton Hall have not enjoyed outstanding years in the Big East, but they have often come big in May so keep your eyes open on their fortunes.   I'm not a big fan of aluminum bats but the competition is intense at this time of year and well worth watching. BTW if you must see wood bats,

the PSAL high school tourney starts shortly and more on that in the next blog. 

 

I close my first post in May in remembrance of Dick Groat, who passed away on April 27 at the age of 92 in his home town of Pittsburgh. In the latter stages of writing my Branch Rickey biography, I spent a very memorable afternoon at the golf course Groat built with Pirates teammate Jerry Lynch on the grounds of a former apple orchard near Ligonier, Pennsylvania, 60 miles east of Pittsburgh. 

 

He had warm memories of life lessons he had learned from the canny and philosophical Rickey. The 

Mahatma, or the ferocious gentleman as I dubbed him, talked Groat out of his pro basketball career, but he remembered the fun he had playing the sport where he became an All-American at Duke.

 

"Basketball was fun," he told me. By cotntrast, "Baseball does things to your coconut."  After a turnover in basketball, you can immediately make up for it with a steal or a good shot moments later.  In 

baseball you have to wait eight batters to get another chance on offense and you better not brood about it.

 

I thought about Groat's insight when I learned of the death from cancer of southpaw Vida Blue, 73, on May 6.  Blue rocketed to fame with Charley Finley's Oakland A's, but he let a contract dispute with the owner sap his love of the game.  

 

His full name was Vida Blue Jr. and he refused Finley's entreaties to legally change his name to Vida True Blue.  Vida never knew his father, Vida Blue Sr., but he was very proud of him and the family lineage in the northern Louisiana town of Mansfield. 

 

Blue's career record of 209-161 with a 3.27 ERA was certainly worthy of Hall of Fame consideration but his problems with cocaine that led to a prison sentence in the early 1980s did not help his candidacy. RIP both Vida Blue and Dick Groat.

 

Next time some more thoughts on baseball as we near the Memorial Day quarter-pole.  Also I'll provide some detail on one of the great cultural improvements in NYC, the renovated Geffen Hall in Lincoln Center. 

 

Since it is so hard to say goodbye, one last note:  I am glad to report that after a couple of months hiatus, Noir Alley with Eddie Muller has returned on TCM to its regular Sat midnight/repeated on Sunday 10am time slot. His new list all come from the heyday of Noir in the 1940s and 1950s. More details at tcm.com  

 

For now, always remember:  Take it easy but take it, and stay positive, test negative. 

 

 

 

  

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"Winter Has Come And I Do Wish Tampa Bay Had Hit A Little More" (corrected version) + Ups and Downs of Wisconsin Badger Football

The end of a baseball season, even one as short as this one, always brings melancholy. With Daylight Saving Time ending at Sun at 2AM, the days will grow short, too. For a half-filled-glass kinda guy, it will be suck-it-up, hope-for-better-days time.  

 

There is no doubt that the LA Dodgers deserved to win the Series. Smooth shortstop Corey Seager was a worthy MVP for his offensive production and fine defense.  

 

LA hit and pitched more consistently than the Rays whose lack of offense except for the rookie Randy Azorarena was disappointing if not appalling. Randy was also handled fairly easily with men on base.

 

For a season to end with shortstop Willy Adames taking the last two strikes in a three-pitch punchout from the nearly-flawless Julio Urias was tough to handle.  Highly touted prospect Wander Franco may be replacing Adames in 2021. I would have liked Willy to have gone down swinging. 

 

Or manager Kevin Cash use a pinch-hitter for him.  It was Cash's first World Series as a skipper and he didn't seem to manage with urgency. He could have pinch-hit more often for great defender/weak-hitting catcher Mike Zunino. 

 

I was glad Zunino got his first World Series hit in his last AB in the Series.  And gotta love a guy whose parents were both catchers - they met when father Greg, now a Cincinnati scout, was playing in Italy and his mother Paola was playing for the Italian national softball team.

 

Props to Mike for thanking his wife when interviewed after a big game earlier in the playoffs. But backup Michael Perez might have been used more.  I know during the regular season every time he came up against the Orioles he seemed to deliver a big hit.

 

The classic game was the fourth one, a back and forth affair that ended on a game-tying single by reserve Brett Phillips and two rare errors by Chris Taylor bobbling a single in center field and Will Smith muffing a relay throw not realizing that Arozarena had fallen down between third and home.

 

The real turning point int he Series came in game 5 when the Dodgers immediately scored two runs in the top of the first to wrest whatever momentum the Rays might have had from the previous night's victory.  

 

The old cliche came true again:  "Momentum in baseball is the next game's starting pitcher."

Tyler Glasnost simply did not rise to the occasion in game 5.  After Manuel Margot was caught stealing home to end the bottom of the 4th after the Rays scored two runs, it was up to Glasnow to pitch a shutdown top of 5th.

 

He couldn't do it. He gave up a solo home run to Max Muncy to give LA breathing room.

Props to the Dodgers for scoring so many runs with two outs. More than I've ever seen. 

 

Where Kevin Cash is really being roasted is for yanking Blake Snell in the final game after the 2018 Cy Young-winner had thrown only 73 pitches with nine strikeouts in 5 1/3 superb innings.

 

Snell deserved to face Mookie Betts for a third time despite the infuriating "advanced metric" that said it is a no-no. Even Betts said after the game he was glad Snell was gone.

 

Somewhere in this land and in baseball-loving nations around the world, here's a hope that young pitchers are growing up dreaming of pitching in big games and embracing the challenge of going through an order three times or even more.  It is called pitching.

 

Lord knows what kind of season and what kind of country we face in the weeks and months ahead.  As a Wisconsin Badger fan, I first suffered the loss of a basketball season where Greg Gard's unheralded squad won the last eight games of the season and a share of Big Ten title when the pandemic hit.

 

Football got off to a flying start last Friday with Grahem Mertz's nearly-perfect five touchdown game against Illinois.  And then he tested positive for covid-19 as did his backup QB and coach Paul Chryst and several other players and staff.  The game against Nebraska has been canceled with no makeup planned and Mertz will be out for at least two more games.

 

I haven't even mentioned that the Dodgers' leader and big run-producer Justin Turner tested positive, a result known in the 2nd inning of the last game.  But he wasn't removed until the 8th inning. He was then allowed, unmasked, to join the post-game celebration.

 

In a country where our POTUS is behaving similarly, I worry about the validity of polls showing his likely defeat.  We've been through that before. "We're all in this together" doesn't apply for at least 40% of the country and probably a majority of athletes. 

 

So let me return to my half-filled-glass state and hope for the best in our country and also for some kind of satisfying regular season in 2021.  With also fewer minor league teams axed. Alas, there is no indication that any reasonable solution is at hand.

 

Nevertheless, always remember:  Take it easy but take it!       

 

 

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