Baseball posts

What's the problem with Manager of the Year? 

We now have two baseball seasons, a marathon (the regular season) and a sprint (the increasingly elongated postseason), and the Manager of the Year is chosen for the marathon but awarded weeks after the sprint—when most of the marathon has been forgotten and seems almost pointless.

And yes, that timing is true of all baseball awards, but the others (MVP, ROY, Cy Young) tend to be about individual achievement. Cal Raleigh hit 60 homers, Aaron Judge hit .400 for half a season, Shohei did Shohei things. The stats are the stats. We remember those. But Manager of the Year is based upon team performance, on its rises and falls, so it's a little odd to announce that So-and-So has won it long after his team has lost.

This year's AL MOY, for example, is the same as last year's, Cleveland's Stephen Vogt, because the Guardians had that great run in September, caught the Tigers, won the division. That's when the vote was taken. Several days later, the Guardians lost to the Tigers in the Wild Card; they played their last game on October 2. The season literally continued for another month without the AL Manager of the Year's team.

How often does the Manager of the Year's team even win the pennant? Here's the AL over the last 20 years:

• 2020: Kevin Cash, Tampa Bay
• 2016: Terry Francona, Cleveland
• 2008: Joe Maddon, Tampa Bay
• 2006: Jim Leyland, Detroit

And here's the NL:

• ...

That's right, in the last 20 years, no team of the NL Manager of the Year has won a pennant. The last to do so was Jack McKeon with the then-Florida Marlins in 2003. Before that? Bobby Cox in '91. Just once in the Wild Card era. One in 30. Picking via dartboard would give you better odds.

It's actually fun looking over the list of past MOY winners. Bob Melvin of the A's won it in 2018? Mike Scioscia of the Angels in 2009? I particularly like 2004. That year means one thing now: The Red Sox coming back from a 3-0 deficit against the Yankees to win the ALCS and then win the World Series for the first time since 2018. And the AL MOY was? Buck Showalter of the Rangers, of course. Don't remember the Rangers in the post? Right, they weren't in the post. They finished third in the AL West. But it was one of those “most improved” awards. They went from 71-91 to 89-73. Great turnaround. Not the story. 

Oh, and yes, if Dan Wilson had won this year's award, as he should have, or even the Blue Jays manager, the Dukes of Hazzard guy, this post would be different.

Again, I don't know how to solve this problem. It's baked into the current system. And the current system is making it worse each season.

FURTHER READING:

• “The Music, the Mystery, and the Managers,” Joe Posnanski

The Dodgers mob Yamamoto, the first pitcher to win three games in a World Series since Randy Johnson in 2001.

At the start of this World Series, I had a hail mary of a wish: If at all possible, I wanted Toronto Blue Jays fans to feel some of the heartache that Seattle Mariners fans had felt after the Blue Jays came back from a 3-1 deficit in Game 7 to take the ALCS from us.

I guess I got my wish.

Seriously, I can't remember a moment where the universe said so profusely to me, “Here. Here's exactly what you want. In fact, here's more of what you want.” To the point where I was like, “Yeah, no, that's plenty. No, I'm good. No, please, stop.” I just couldn't have imagined a better Game 7. 

OK, I could have. Shohei Ohtani, as pitcher, looked shakey from the outset, and that's not something I want. Like almost everyone, I love Shohei. But it did set up the rest. You needed the Blue Jays ahead early to make the rest of it work.

As hitter, Shohei actually led off the game with a single but was stranded. Ditto George Springer in the bottom half. But in the second, the BJs sent six men to the plate and would've scored, but lead runner Bo Bichette was running on one leg, and he couldn't score from second on a two-out single by Ernie Clement—who has been Ernie Clemente this postseason. He actually set the record for most hits in the postseason with 30. Yeah, there are more games in the postseason now, but dude's been redhot for an entire month. In the ALDS against the Yankees he hit .643, against the Mariners in the ALCS, .321, and in these World Series .387. This for a career .260/.295(!!!)/.376 hitter. He got hotter than he's ever been at the exact right moment. 

Hell, the whole of the Blue Jays did. Six of their starting nine hit over .300 for the Series. The Dodgers? One. Shohei. Almost everyone on the Blue Jays hit better, and much, much better, than they had during the regular season.

You almost want to test their drinking water. You want to see if Springer brought over any trash-can lids from Houston.

And they still lost! That's the amazing thing. To this team, who hit way, way worse than they did during the regular season:

You could probably win some bar bets by asking fans to name the top three hitters by batting average on the Dodgers for this Series. Top two, people would get. But Teoscar? He was third best? The last two games he just seemed lost at the plate. Whatever the opposite of the eye of the Tiger is, he had it. He had as much confidence at the plate as me asking Margot Robbie out on a date.

In the third, BJs broke through in a big way. Another Springer single, sac bunt by Lukes leading to the inevitable IBB to Vladdy Jr.; and then the first pitch to Bo Bichette was launched. And Rogers Centre, already nuts, went certifiable. 

Top 4, defense saved the BJs: double, single, pop out by poor Mookie, walk to load the bases, and then Teoscar, poor Teoscar, finally came through with a line drive up the middle. Daulton Varsho, whose name sounds like a James Spader character in a 1980s John Hughes movie, or the name I'd come up with in a Creative Writing 101 class (also in the 1980s), made a Superman catch to prevent multiple runs, but Will Smith still tagged up from third. Then Tommy Edman ripped one to right, a potentially bases-clearing double/triple in the corner, but it never made it out of the infield. Vladdy did his own Superman bit. 3-1, Jays.

Oh right, in the bottom half, we nearly had that benches-clearing brawl. God, almost forgot that. With one out, Justin Wrobleski, who looks like Timothee Chalamet's less-handsome brother but throws 100 and totally saved the Dodgers' ass this World Series, hit No. 9 hitter Andres Giminez on a 2-2 pitch. And Giminez had words. And Wrobs had words back, which the slow-mo cam captured perfectly: Fuck you, motherfucker. Benches cleared but heads prevailed. Has their ever been a knock-down-drag-out in a Game 7? Curious.

Dodgers again got two on with less than two out in the 5th but couldn't score. But in the 6th: walk, single, fielder's choice, sac fly, 3-2. BJs immediately wagged their finger, “Uh uh,” as Ernie Clemente led off the bottom half with a single, stole second, and came home on Giminez's double. Two-run cushion again.

We had friends over, Jeff and Sullivan, and I was in the kitchen tidying up when Jeff shouted, “Muncy homer!” in the 8th. One-run cushion again. But the faithful at Rogers remained faithful. I'm sure there were people with my sensibilities, thinking “This is too fucking close,” but the fans the TV kept showing kept roaring their approval. They looked happy and pumped. BTW, did anyone else keep seeing the Bobby Ayala-looking dude sitting behind homeplate in a pink cap, no expression on his face? Once I saw him I couldn't unsee him. Everyone's long wondered where Bobby Ayala is. Well, there he is! On international TV!

BJs almost got that one back: Ernie Clement kept being Clemente and led off the 8th with a double but was stranded at the drive-in.

To the ninth! Muncy's homer, Jeff immediately calculated, meant Shohei would bat in the 9th. He was due up third. Jeff was rooting for the Jays, like a normal person, but not emphatically, and he wanted the drama of a Shohei at-bat. Meanwhile, I was foreseeing an end like the Mariners ALCS Game 7 end against the Jays: the 8-9-1 hitters, with 1, the franchise guy, Mr. Everything, Julio Rodriguez in our case, striking out to end the season. I didn't want that fate for Shohei, too. And Shohei didn't suffer that fate. Because by the time he came up and flied out it was 4-4. With all eyes on Shohei in the on-deck circle, including, maybe BJs closer Jeff Hoffman's, weak-hitting middle-infielder Miguel Rojas took a 3-2 hanging slider and hit it harder than he's ever hit a ball in the Majors, per Joe Posnanski, despositing it in the left-field bleachers and taking all the oxygen out of Rogers Centre. Even I was stunned. I literally gasped. And I'm someone who, during the ALCS, had texted my friend Dave B. RE: postseason heroics: “It's always who you least expect.” It's the Mark Lemkes of the world, the Ernie Clements, and now the Miguel Rojases. Why did I gasp? Because I've been watching World Serieses for 50+ years and ... had I ever seen anything like that? A homerun in the 9th inning of Game 7 to tie it up?

The stats people soon let me know: No, I'd never seen something like that.

Players to hit game-tying or -winning home runs in the 9th inning of the 7th game of the World Series:

• Bill Mazeroski, 1960
• Miguel Rojas, 2025

Beware the light-hitting middle infielder. 

Even so, the BJs had a great chance of wiping that away in the bottom half. Vladdy flied out to deep, deep center (you could tell from his body language, nah); but then Bo Bichette singled, and now they had to pinch-run for him. He represented the season. After a walk, Blake Snell, who was pitching on fumes, was relieved for Game 2 and Game 6 hero Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who was also pitching on fumes, and who promptly hit catcher and life-sized Weeble Alejandro Kirk to load the bases and bring the game- Series- and season-winning run 90 feet away with just one out. Varsho up, Dodgers playing in. Post-HBP, Roberts subbed in Andy Pages in center. Roberts has his issues, but that might've been a season-saving managerial move.

First, though, Daulton Varsho hit a grounder to—who else?—Miguel Rojas, who stabbed it off-balance, steadied himself, and threw a strike home to nab pinch-runner Isiah Kiner-Falefa by inches. Much has been said, some by Joey Poz, that IKF wasn't leading off far enough, but IKF has said that's how he was instructed to lead off, which makes sense. The BJs lost Game 6 on an inning-ending DP because Addison Barger got doubled-up at second and the BJs didn't want that again. Replays showed he was out ... or was he? Did Will Smith's  cleat leave homeplate early? Nearly? No. I don't think the BJs even challenged.

“That'd be an awful way for the Series to end, right?” I said. “With a replay challenge?”

Jeff agreed. We did a lot of that talk. The season should not end on a bases-loaded walk. The season should not end on an overturned replay challenge. And while we were talking, Ernie Roberto Clemente, who looks like the bastard child of 2003-era Aaron Boone, crushed one to left field. Kiké went back and back and back, and was arching his head almost like Willie Mays, when, stage right, Andy Pages entered, crashing into him and nonchalantly snagging the ball to end the inning. Holy shit.

And on to extras. Could it be anything else with this Series?

In the 10th the Dodgers loaded the bases with one out. 6-2 to nab Mookie at the plate, 3-1 to nab a sprawling Kiké at first. BJs went 1-2-3, with George Springer finally looking as tired as he ought to look. And then all eyes on Shohei again. And again it was a guy on the other side of him, this time Will Smith, now batting second instead of the slumping Mookie (another good Roberts move), who took a hanging Shane Bieber slider deep to left to put the Dodgers on top for the first time in the game.

Right, but who was leading off for the Jays? Vladdy Jr., of course. Except he looked out of sorts, not his confident self, and I thought he was done, too. Then he rifled a double into the left-field corner and did his hand-clapping exhortation from second base to pump up his team. He was doing David Ortiz-style work here; he would not go gentle into that good night. Then he was sac bunted to third. Smart? Not? It was a beautiful bunt by IKF, perfect, really, since it took a nice play from Yamamoto to nab him. And the tying run was now 90 feet away.

Then four straight balls to Addison Barger. Purposeful? Maybe. Dude was hitting .500 and it set up the DP. And the next batter, Kirk, was an ideal DP batter. He was also an ideal double-in-the-gap batter. Anything might happen. But anything didn't. 0-2 and he grounded the ball to Mookie who executed a beautifully graceful 6-3 double play, and the game, the season, and the Series, belonged to the Dodgers. They're the first non-Yankees back-to-back World Series winners since ... of course ... the Toronto Blue Jays: 1992-93. And they're the first in the NL since the Big Red Machine in 1975-76. The Dodgers just flipped the Reds' script. Reds had a World Series for the ages in '75 and then blew out the Yankees in '76. Dodgers blew out the Yankees in '24 and had a World Series for the ages in '25.

Mid-game, when all was well at Rogers Centre, I was thinking the Blue Jays fans who came down from Canada and took over Mariners Park for 3-4 games a season would be insufferable next year, and the year after, and the year after. They had their ring. They had their bragging rights. They would never go away. Now? After being two outs away? After being two inches away? After the collision in left field and the DP to end all DPs? After all that, I imagine they'll be just like the rest of us: sufferable.

Joey Poz has his usual fun breakdown of the World Series, this one Game 2, the Yoshinobu “Start Me Up” Yamamoto complete game, and it's good, and he mentions the usual stats—first WS CG since 2015, first back-to-back CGs in post since Schilling in 2001—but bypasses my favorite stat that I saw via Sarah Langs. Yamamoto retired the last 20 batters he faced; who was the last pitcher in the World Series to do that? Answer (which my father figured out in a second): Don Larsen, 1956. His perfect game. And before him? Grover Cleveland Alexander in 1926. And before him? Dutch Leonard in 1915. (No, not that Dutch Leonard, the other one.) In other words, it's only been done three previous times, and none during my lifetime, and I'm about to turn 63. Now that's a throwback. 

So that's fun ... but then it gets better. Because Poz slams MLB for its mini Jonas Bros. concert in the 5th inning during the “stand up to cancer” moment. I didn't watch the game so wasn't annoyed the way Poz was; but what I liked was how this rant veered into one about something Tim and I have been wondering over:

What's astonishing to me is not that MLB will sell its soul for money. That's been true since the dawn of time. No, the astonishing part is how CHEAP it is to buy MLB's soul. I mean, every single batting helmet has the word STRAUSS written across it (on both sides!). What is Strauss? It is, get this, a EUROPEAN WORKWEAR company. Yeah. They sell work pants and stuff.

This is what they have on their homepage.

“A celebration of the work that goes into America's pastime — and those who make it happen?” What the heck does that mean? What AI bot wrote that line? I don't have anything against Strauss — I'd never even heard of Strauss (which I guess was the point) — but, seriously, how much money did they spend to get their name on EVERY SINGLE MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL HELMET FOR FOUR YEARS?

And, whatever they spent, how was that enough money? ...

It breaks my heart to see MLB constantly rifling through couches in search of nickels. Come on, Rob, baseball is the national pastime. It says so right on the Strauss homepage.

Thus endeth the sermon.

No one will listen, of course, other than those of us in the choir, so might as well have fun with it. 

Greatest defensive infield of all time?

Two things I never understood about Davey Johnson.

I became aware of him as a light hitting, good fielding second basemen with the juggernaut 1969-71 Baltimore Orioles, one of the greatest teams ever; but after the '72 season he was traded to the Atlanta Braves, where he promptly hit 43 homeruns and became part of the first (and only non-Mile-High) trio of teammates to hit 40+ homers in a season: him, Darrell Evans, and some guy named Henry Aaron. Before this, Johnson's career high was 18, so how did he turn into Harmon Killebrew? My father said it was Fulton County Stadium, a bandbox, but if so it stopped being a bandbox in '74 when Johnson went back to being Davey Johnson: 15 HRs. It's such an odd blip of a year. He usually slugged in the .300s but in '73 it was .546. He'd never had an .800 OPS but that year it was .916. He credits Aaron, who was chasing Babe Ruth's mark amid death threats, but it still stands out as a helluvan outlier.

The other thing I never got about Davey Johnson was why he couldn't stick as a manager. Everywhere he went, he won. He managed three different minor-league teams to winning records, including a .708 mark for AAA Miami in 1979. In 1983, under George Bamberger and Frank Howard, the New York Mets went 68-93. Then they hired Johnson, called up Dwight Gooden, and over the next three seasons went 90-72, 98-64 and 108-54 and won the World Series. Despite player problems, coke and partying and the like, the team kept winning: 92 Ws in '87, 100 in '88, 87 in '89, but after starting slowly in '90, just 20-22, Johnson got canned. After 1990, the Mets wouldn't have a winning record again until 1997 and wouldn't go to the postseason again until '99.

Johnson, meanwhile, took on a losing Cincinnati Reds team, and in his first full season (the lockout year of '94) they went 66-48 and the next 85-59 and went to the NLCS. But Marge Schott fired him and her team didn't make it back to the postseason until 2010. Johnson immediately picked up with a losing Orioles team, took them to the ALCS two years in a row with 88- and 98-win teams; then he was fired, the team plummetted and they didn't make the postseason again until 2012. Onto the Dodgers: one losing season (77-85) followed by a winning season (86-76). Fired. Years in the wilderness. In 2011, he was picked up by a moribund Washington Nationals club, and in his first full season they went 98-64 and went to the postseason for the first time since 1981. The following year? 86-76 and he was gone. Never to return to any team.

That was his story. He kept taking over losing teams, turning them into winners and getting canned. He managed 14 full seasons in the Majors and in only won of them, the '98 Dodgers, did his team finish below .500. So what's the deal? Was he an asshole? 

Apparently he was an asshole. From the Times' obit:

In spite of his winning record, Johnson's independent streak and his intellectual swagger — many called it arrogance — tended to irk his bosses. ...  “Davey Johnson isn't the easiest guy to get along with,” Tony Kornheiser wrote in 1997 in The Washington Post. “You wouldn't want him living next door. He is abrasive and confrontational.” Johnson, he continued, “tends to manage from the position that he's smarter than you and everybody else in the room. His history is that he wears out his welcome rather quickly, and he's gone, and there's a certain relief.”

I'm curious if he irked his players, too, because it doesn't seem like he got in the way of them performing well. I'm assuming it was mostly the owners, rich SOBs who are used to thinking of themselves as the smartest people in the room. Which, if true, means these guys put their own little egos before winning. As did any team that didn't pick him up. Cf., the post-2004 Seattle Mariners. Back then, I kept wondering, “Hey, why not Davey Johnson? Don't we want to win?” Not if it might make an owner or GM feel bad, apparently. 

Johnson should be called baseball's renaissance man. From the Times again:

Known as one of the game's brainier and more self-assured characters, Johnson was an unusual figure in the world of baseball, with a wide range of off-the-field interests and achievements. A scratch golfer, a wealthy real estate investor, a licensed pilot, an accomplished fisherman and a scuba diving instructor, he graduated from Trinity University in Texas with a degree in mathematics, whose precepts he brought to the ballpark. He was among the first — if not the first — to recognize that computers could be utilized in marshaling baseball's statistics to have an impact on team building, lineup construction and game strategy.

Basically he became a SABRmetrician before SABRmetrics was even created.

From the obits, some great trivia.

• Johnson was the last player to get a hit off Sandy Koufax: Game 2 of the 1966 World Series, 6th inning
• He made the last out of the 1969 World Series: a fly ball to the warning track in right field
• He's the only player to hit two pinchhit grand slams in one season: Phillies in '78; his only two homers that season
• He's the only man on the field the first two times Babe Ruth's HR mark was passed: with the Braves for Aaron's 715th in '74 and with the Yomiuri Giants for Sadaharu Oh's 715th in 1976

I didn't know, or I'd forgotten, that he went to Japan for a few seasons. Plus the '69 Series thing is interesting. Apparently he thought it was gone—it certainly looked well-struck—but Cleon Jones caught it for the final out and the Mets' first World Series championship. Then the guy who made the last out managed the Mets to their second World Series championship. Helluva life.

FURTHER READING: 

• Joe Posnanski gives us an inside scoop. He knew Johnson, liked him, doesn't get why he was such a good manager, but understood that Johnson was never surprised about being fired; Peter Angelos (Orioles) even did it the day Johnson was named Manager of the Year.

The ChiSox Pat Seerey was the only guy to do it in the 1940s. Also ... 7x All-Star Lake Appling, Cleveland Plain Dealer?*

Last week Kyle Schwarber became just the 21st player in baseball history to hit four homers in a game. He's also the third guy to do it this year. Rookie Nick Kurtz did it a month ago with Oakland A's while Eugenio Suarez accomplished the feat for the D-Backs in April. More: The last time anyone did it before this season was in 2017, when two guys did it: Scooter Gennett (Reds) and J.D. Martinez (D-Backs again).

Is that common for this particular feat? The uncommon happening several times in the same year?

For this century, yes, but not previously. Let's break it down by decade:

• 1890s: 2: Bobby Lowe (Beaneaters/Braves, 1894), Ed Delahanty (Phillies, 1896) <— Probably insider-the-parkers
• 1900s: 0
• 1910s: 0
• 1920s: 0
• 1930s: 2: Lou Gehrig (Yankees, 1932), Chuck Klein (Phillies, 1936) <-- So Gehrig is the first legit 4-homer guy.
• 1940s: 1: Pat Seerey (White Sox, 1948) <-- Seerey hit 86 career over 7 seasons, while leading the league in strikeouts four times. 
• 1950s: 3: Gil Hodges (Dodgers, 1950), Joe Adcock (Braves, 1954), Rocky Colavito (Indians, 1959) <-- Three in a decade!
• 1960s: 1: Willie Mays (Giants, 1961) <-- When I became aware of baseball history as a kid in the early 1970s, Mays was the last guy to do it, and 1961 seemed forever ago.
• 1970s: 1: Mike Schmidt (Phillies, 1976) <-- But then Schmidt. I think I was disappointed. I liked Willie Mays being the last. 
• 1980s: 1: Bob Horner (Braves, 1986) <-- Horner was exciting when he came up, so I wasn't surprised when he did it.
• 1990s: 1: Mark Whiten (Cardinals, 1993) <-- After several big names, Whiten's was a surprise. Like Seerey's, Whiten's happened in one game of a doubleheader.
• 2000s: 3: Mike Camerson (Mariners, 2002), Shawn Green (Dodgers, 2002), Carlos Delgado (Blue Jays, 2003) <-- Three in two years? Crazy. Plus not Grffey but the guy who replaced Griffey?
• 2010s: 3: Josh Hamilton (Rangers, 2012), Scooter Gennett (Reds, 2017), J.D. Martinez (Diamondbacks, 2017) <-- Two in 2017.
• 2020s: 3: Eugenio Suarez (Diamondbacks, 2025), Nick Kurtz (A's, 2025), Kyle Schwarber (Phillies, 2025) < Three this season.

So as many 4-homer games have happened this season as in any previous decade.

The list is a little National League-heavy, isn't it: 14-7. Except the same number of teams in each league have done it (7), but the AL spreads the wealth. They're all one-and-doners: Yankees, White Sox, Indians, Mariners, Blue Jays, Rangers, A's. Not so the NL:

• Phillies: 4 !!!!
• Braves: 3 
• Dodgers: 2
• Diamondbacks: 2
• Giants, Cardinals, Reds: 1 each

The bad news for the Phillies, D-Backs and A's? The only guy to hit 4 homers and be in the World Series that year was Gehrig in '32, which the Yankees won vs. Chicago, the called-shot year. I guess that's just bad news for the Phillies. Don't think the D-Backs and A's are looking toward playing much October baseball.

* I get why this was played up in Cleveland: Seerey came up with Cleveland but was traded *that year*, June 2, to the White Sox for pitcher Bob Kennedy. And a month and a half later, he does this. That said, Cleveland wound up having a pretty good 1948 season. You can read more about it in “Our Team: The Epic Story of Four Men and the World Series that Changed Baseball,” by Luke (not Lake) Epplin, which is much recommended.

The top row in Immaculate Grid today was guys who went 30/30, and afterwards I checked out the list of such guys on Wikipedia. It's longer than I thought. I knew Mays, Aaron, Bonds (both of them), Tommy Harper, HoJo, plus all those guys from 1987—not to mention Julio recently—but the list is longer than I thought. Once you get into the '90s, it gets a little crowded and unmemorable. It used to be the rarest of feats and then it became everyday.

And then it went away ... only to return. 

30-30s by decade:

• 1900s: 
• 1910s:
• 1920s: 1: Ken Williams, St. Louis Browns (he didn't just squeak over: 39 HRs, leading the league in an off-Ruth year of the 1920s; and 37 SBs; also led the league in CS)
• 1930s: 
• 1940s:
• 1950s: 2: both Willie Mays, in back-to-back seasons: 1955-56
• 1960s: 2: Aaron in '63, Bobby Bonds in '69
• 1970s: 5: Tommy Harper in 1970, Bobby Bonds 4x
• 1980s: 7: the first 40-40 (Canseco, '88) and Howard Johnson of all people twice (he'd add a third next decade)
• 1990s: 20: Barry Bonds 5x, tying Dad, and two more 40-40s: Barry '96, A-Rod '98
• 2000s: 17: Alfonso Soriano 4x, including a 40-40 in 2006
• 2010s: 10: oddly bunched: 4 in 2011, 2 in 2012, and 2 each in 2018 and '19
• 2020s: 8, so far: Acuna Jr. went 40-40 in '23, while Ohtani upped everybody with his 50-50 last season

It was just a handful of guys. Only six players had ever done it (Williams, Mays, Aaron, Harper, Bonds and Dale Murphy), when four guys suddenly did it during the '87 season: Joe Carter, Eric Davis, Daryl Strawberry, Howard Johnson. And that's when it became everyday, or at least every year, because we had a 30-30 guy every year between '87 and 2009 save the '94 strike season. Every year. Often more than one.

So why did it go away in the middle of the 2010s? I imagine because stolen bases became less of a thing. Everyone took the wrong lessons from “Moneyball” and SABR-stats and thought they weren't worth it. It was all launch angles and bat speed and I'm already bored. Anyway, with the puffier bases, or with whippet-fast-strong guys like Mookie and Ronald Acuna Jr., it's a thing again. We got four in 2023 (Julio, Francisco, Bobby Jr. and Acuna Jr. with a 40-40), three in 2024 (including Ohtani's 50-50) and more likely this season. Pete Crow-Armstrong is already at 25-27, Jose Ramirez is at 18-29, and Elly de la Cruz at 18-25. Maybe Byron Buxton? He's never done it in his career, by which I mean he's never hit 30 homers and he's never stolen 30 stolen bases in any season. Right now he's at 22-17. Stay healthy, Double-B.

BTW, does Ken Williams deserve some HOF consideration? He took a while to get up to speed, and also lost time to WWI, but he's .319/.393/.530 lifetime. Nothing to sneeze at. Black ink is so-so (11 vs. 27 for an average HOFer) but gray ink ain't bad (121/144). Overall, he's slightly below most standards but he's also the first 30-30 guy so that should add something. But he never got even 1% of the vote from sportswriters (in '56 and '58) and the vet committee took a pass in 2003. Just worth a look is all I'm saying. 

I shouldn't care. They're just division rivals. But when I was the right baseball age, meaning 9 to 11, the Oakland A's broke big, becoming the second franchise to win three World Series in a row—and they did it in inimitable fashion: sporting long hair, moustaches, great nicknames, those beautiful gold-and-green unis, and all-time memorable players. So I do care. And it's why I don't like what their current owner, John Fisher, heir to the GAP fortune, is doing to them.

Summation: He moved them out of Oakland for Las Vegas, but Vegas isn't nearly ready, and may never be ready, and in the meantime he stuck the team in a minor-league ballpark in Sacramento; but then he refused to call them the Sacramento A's, pissing people off there. No Oakland, either, or Vegas. He just said they're the Athletics. One name. Like Cher. 

We knew all that going into this season. So how is it going now? Yesterday Joe Posnanski pointed me to a Guardian article by David Lengel, whose title, “Debacle in the Desert,” gives you an idea. The mucky-mucks, including COB Rob Manfred, had a groundbreaking ceremony in Vegas that was all show. Construction costs are already going up—particularly since so much construction in this country is done by immigrants, who are being deported, or who are so fearful of being deported they don't want to leave their homes. People don't know what Fisher's endgame is—whether he miscalculated or is just dumb. Lengel mentions that Oakland's final offer was $750 million in infrastructure and grants to build a new stadium but he walked away from it.

Why would Fisher leave nearly a billion dollars for a park on a 55-acre plot, in a top-10 television market in love with its ballclub, for nine acres and a minuscule market with fans who don't know their A's from their elbow? We still don't know, but there are plenty of new questions to try and answer about a process that doesn't add up to anyone despite Fisher, Manfred, and the Vegas officials who insist that everything is on time and on schedule.

Posnanski thinks Vegas ain't gonna happen. What was supposed to happen in Vegas won't stay in Vegas. So where? As a Seattle fan, I wouldn't mind a rival that's closer than Sacramento or San Diego, so I'd love Porland or Vancouver, B.C. But if MLB really wants to get innovative, why not continue the westward trajectory of this original-16 team? Yes, there's not much west of Oakland in the United States. But...

PHI –> KC –> OAK –> TOKYO

Probably too many legal and logistical hurdles to jump. Fun thinking about, though. 

Lonesome no more? 

A lot of dumb shit has already been written about Pete Rose's recent reinstatement for Hall of Fame consideration, so here's mine. 

It's annoying. It's annoying the way he was annoying—a mediocre athlete that willed his way into being one of the best ballplayers of his generation. Normally I like these guys, the Dustin Pedroias of the world, but Rose was built bigger, more bullying, and more hypocritical. And he became beloved by the big, bullying, hypocritical crowd, particularly as he lasted and records fell—including one of the greatest of all time, the all-time hits record held forever by Ty Cobb. Don't get me started on the Moe haircut.

His reinstatement is annoying because it's just so of the age we live in, the Age of Unaccountability, presided over by the 34-count felon sitting and grifting in the Oval Office. He's the one who got the whole Pete Rose ball moving again in the first place—who said in March or April that the HOF should just let Rose in. The felon loves unaccountability. For white men.

And it's annoying because we're back to the same old boring arguments:

• He's the Hit King!
• But he bet on baseball!
• Half the ads now are about betting on baseball!
• Not for players! Plus there's the statutory rape thing!
• She was of age in Ohio!
• 16? She was younger!

Etc.

Even with all that, the most annoying part of it, for me, was the statement put out by Commissioner Rob “Foot-in-Mouth” Manfred. He talked how, via MLB's Rule 21, certain misconducts will lead to permanent ineligibility from the national pastime, and maybe we need a new intrepretation of that. For the deceased. Here's the line that got me:

Obviously, a person no longer with us cannot represent a threat to the integrity of the game. 

Right, Rose can't bet anymore. He can't do anything anymore. He can't embarrass us. But rescinding eternal banishment means it's not quite the deterrent it once was. Plus a dead person is no longer a threat? Doesn't that ignore the greatest lesson in western civilization? It's as if, on Golgotha, one Roman soldier turned to another and said, “Well, I guess he's no longer a threat to us.” 

Even Joe Posnanski, my man, my forever man, was a little annoying after the news dropped. The reinstatment wasn't just for Rose, after all, but for all banished, deceased players (who cannot represent a threat to the integrity of the game), meaning, famously, Shoeless Joe Jackson and the other men of “Eight Men Out.” So it's led to the inevitable, very baseball-y question: Which would you choose for the Hall if you could only choose one? To which my man wrote: 

In the end, I think you have to twist yourself into a pretty twisted logic pretzel to choose Shoeless Joe...

Let me give it a go:

• Shoeless Joe has the third-highest batting average of all time. Fourth if you count the Negro Leagues.
• Jackson's slash line is .356/.423/.517 in the deadball era. Here's Rose: .303/.375./409. His lifetime slugging is nearly in the .300s.
• Rose's lifetime bWAR is higher, 79.9 to 62.2, but he played longer than anyone in MLB history: more games, more PAs, more ABs, more hits. So if you average it out? Per season? Pete Rose is a 3.6 bWAR player, while Joe Jackson is a 7.6 bWAR player. That has to be one of the higher bWARs per season of anyone.
• Jackson's swing was emulated by Babe Ruth, which changed the game more than anything not named Jackie Robinson.

I don't think that's a logic pretzel.

When the vet's committee meets next December to hash it all out, I hope Shoeless Joe gets in. I wouldn't mind Rose getting in, either. It means we can finally stop talking about him.

FURTHER READING

• The Athletic has a nice piece with reactions from 12 HOFers. I wasn't expecting much but we get some thoughtful, nuanced answers. I particularly like Jim Palmer's: Yes, great player, loved the game, but if he loved it so much why didn't he do what he needed to do to get reinstated? He didn't. Then Palmer adds this about general MLB hypocrisy: “Every time I do my broadcast and our opening is sponsored by Draft Kings, I go, 'And Pete's not in the Hall of Fame.'” Amen. Meanwhile, Tony La Russa lays out the case against Rose in the clearest fashion: 1) He gambled on baseball, 2) he lied about it, 3) he never seemed contrite. 

Joe: Seattle? Seattle's ... [trying to convince himself] ... good. I mean, I think Seattle's good. But man they've gotta find a way to score runs over there. 
Mike: That would help. Yeah. It would help if they had anyone who could hit on their team.

-- Joe Posnanski and Michael Schur on their annual 98.6%-accurate baseball preview episode of the Poscast. Always a delight and Mike's line made me laugh out loud. Even with that, though, even knowing what he knows, he let his underdog-love get away from him and went Mariners vs. Padres for the World Series with the M's winning it all. (I think that's the 1.4%.) Joe more smartly trotted out a rematch of '66, Dodgers vs. Orioles, which could be fun. The moneyed MVPs vs. the unmoneyed kids.

The episode was recorded at the end of March. It's a week later now, and how are the World Series-bound M's doing? Tied for 11th place in the league (out of 15), with the 13th-worst run differential. It's early, but ... it would help if we had anyone who could hit on the team.

If he's going to do it, he needs to do less of this.

Since we're a few weeks from pitchers and catchers reporting, let's look back at the season that was, and ask the usual questions. My usual questions. 

Did anyone hit. 350?

Not even. Bobby Witt Jr. led the Majors with a .332 mark, while Luis Arraez's .314 topped the NL. Meaning the only .350 or better hitters in a full season since 2010 are ... (sorry, IS)...

• 2023, Luis Arraez, MIA, .354

This dearth, again, is a historical anomaly. MLB has tried to pump up BAs by restricting the shift, etc., but too many franchises still buy into the three-outcome philosophy, BB, K, or HR, which makes for low averages and (to me) a dull ballgame. I still think there's room for some team, particularly a small-market team, to re-do what the 2014-15 KC Royals did, which I always felt was Moneyball 2.0. “Moneyball,” remember, was really about how to compete in an unfair game. And how do you do that? You figure out what is undervalued and buy it and what is overvalued and sell it. What's undervalued now, as it was 10 years ago, is defense and putting the ball in play. So buy that. Even if you don't get a winner, you'll at least get a more exciting baseball team.

Is anyone closer to becoming the first player since Johnny Mize to lead the league in doubles, triples and homers at some point in their career?

Yes! Not only that, but Jarren Duran actually led the league in doubles and triples in the same season. The last guy to do that, as longtime readers know, is my man Cesar Tovar with the Minnesota Twins way back in 1970.

So who is this Jarren Duran when he's at home? A 28-year-old centerfielder for the Boston Red Sox playing in his first full season. He took the great leap forward—going from 2.1 bWAR to 8.7. Holy crap! That was fifth-best in the Majors, after Judge, Witt, Ohtani, and Gunnar Henderson. So does Duran now have the best chance to become the first player since Johnny Mize to lead the league in doubles, triples and homers at some point in their career? Reply hazy, try again. If I had to bet, I'd bet Shohei. Here are the active players who have two of the three XBH titles and just need the third.

The guys who need DOUBLES:

• Shohei Ohtani: He's lead the league in homers twice and triples once, and his career high in doubles is 38 in 2024—6th in the NL. One could see some of his homers becoming doubles as he ages. The concern? Mantle and Mays also needed just doubles and never got there. As they aged, their homers became outs. But if recent history has taught us anything, it's never underestimage Shohei.

The guys who need TRIPLES:

• Bryce Harper: He led the league in homers in 2015 and doubles in 2021, and his career high in triples is 9. The trouble? That was back in 2012. He's middle-aged now and has hit a total of three triples over the last four seasons. Not going happen.
• Nolan Arendao: He hit 7 triples in 2017 and 0 last season in 152 games. He turns 34 in April. Nope.

The guys who need HOMERS:

• Whit Merrifield: His career high of 19 homers was way back in 2017. Last season, for two teams, he hit 4.
• Jarren Duran: 21 homers last season at Fenway, along with his league-leading 48 doubles. If he can convert some of those to long balls, and if Aaron Judge gets injured, well, you never know.  

For the newbies, here's the background on the doubles-triples-homers stat. 

Which team has the longest postseason drought?

Last season it was a tie between the Tigers and Angels. Then in October Tigers went and knocked off the Astros (thank you!) but lost to the Guardians. So now it's just the Angels, who last went in 2014. Poor Angels. Poor Easy Breezy.

Which team has the longest pennant drought? 

Drawing a blank ... Oh right, it's still my Seattle Mariners, pennantless since their birth in 1977. A close second is the Pittsburgh Pirates, who last saw the World Series in 1979.

Which teams haven't won a pennant this century?

Same nine as last year: M's (n/a), Pirates (1979), Brewers (1982), Orioles (1983), Reds (1990), Athletics (1990), Twins (1991), Blue Jays (1993) and the Padres (1998). Any chance for a pennant in 2025 for any of them? Sure. O's or Twins maybe, since the A.L. doesn't look formidable. But neither has done much in the off-season, while last year's pennant-winner, Yanks, retooled after the loss of Juan Soto.

Which team has the longest World Series championship drought?

Still the Cleveland Indians, who have not won it all since 1948. Then it's a big jump to the Padres and Brewers (b., 1969). Then You-Know-Who.

Which teams have never won the World Series?

Five: Padres and Brewers (1969), Mariners (1977), Rockies (1993) and Rays (1998). Could any of them win it all this year? Not seeing it. Not with the Dodgers and Mets stacked the way they are. But that's why we play. 

The journeyman who became Mr. Baseball

My father said his delivery reminded him of W.C. Fields—particularly in that great Miller Lite ad where he gets comps to a game and obliviously bothers everyone getting to his seat—only to be told, no, buddy, you're in the wrong seat. To which Bob Uecker says “Oh, I must be in the front roooow!” Dad could totally hear the W.C. Fields there. The final moments of the commercial are Uecker in the deepest section of the bleachers, far away from the action, enthusiasm undimmed.

Major League Baseball has had its share of clown princes, it's a tag you hear a lot, but I wouldn't tag Uecker with it. Neither clown nor prince seems right. He was just the funniest everyman to ever play the game.

I read his memoir, “Catcher in the Wry,” nearly 30 years ago now, and every so often I'll think of one of the cutlines in the photo section: Uecker, grimacing, as he slides into homeplate. “Here I am trying to score from second on a three-base hit; out on a close play.” He was master of self-effacement. He was famously a not-great player—six seasons, .200/.293/.287 in six seasons—and played for three teams in four cities: Braves (Milwaukee), Cardinals, Philllies, Braves (Atlanta). This is from his memoir:

When a player gets cut, well, the news is traumatic. He is face to face with that moment of final truth, that he will never put on a big league uniform again. Nor is it easy on the manager who has to break the news. ... I'll never forget how it happened to me. I went to spring training with Atlanta in 1968. The manager was Luman Harris. I opened the door to the clubhouse and Luman looked up and said calmly, “No visitors allowed.”

This story is via Joe Posnanski. Ueck was on the '64 Cardinals who came from 11 games back to win the pennant, but he didn't play in the World Series.

“I was on the disabled list,” he told Bob Costas and Joe Morgan in the booth during Game 6 of the 1995 World Series.

Costas: Fouled to the screen. Why were you on the disabled list?

Uecker: I got hepatitis.

Costas: Swing and a miss. How did you get hepatitis?

Uecker: The trainer injected me with it.

Pos says Uecker was everyone's favorite teammate: Dick Allen, Phil Niekro, Bob Gibson. He and Gibson were fined $100 each by the St. Louis Cardinals for necessitating a reshoot of the team photo. In the first version they were holding hands. In '65, Lou Brock set a then Cardinals record by stealing 60 bases and was given a plaque in a ceremony in the team clubhouse, during which Uecker turned to Tim McCarver and whispered: “If I had been in the lineup every day, that could be me out there.”

After his career he became a regular on “The Tonight Show,” beloved by Johnny, who gave him the nickname “Mr. Baseball.” He became the Milwaukee Brewers announcer in 1972 and never stopped. He did the Lite beer commercials and got his own sitcom in the '80s. He became one of the most famous fictional announcers of the game when he played Harry Doyle in the “Major League” movies: “Juuust a bit outside!” 

I like this from Bob Costas: “Baseball kept him alive. Even in his last year, when he was so ill, when he got to the ballpark and stepped on the elevator up to the press box, he would come to life. He was just happier and healthier at the ballpark.”

Touch 'em all, Ueck.

“I must be in the front roooow.” 

An unexpected surprise reading Terry Pluto's “The Curse of Rocky Colavito: A Loving Look at a Thirty-Year Slump” was getting the backstory of one-time Twins pitcher Jim “Mudcat” Grant, whose story reads like a compendium of baseball history. He was scouted for the Cleveland Indians by Fred Merkle of the infamous 1908 “boner” play, and during spring training the coaches were about to send him away but Hank Greenberg, the great Detroit Tigers slugger and current Cleveland GM, asked if he had anywhere else to go. When Grant said no,  Greenberg made sure he got to stay. Grant was then assigned to the minors by Yankees pitching great Red Ruffing, given a pair of spikes by Sam Mele and taken under the wing of Hall of Famer Larry Doby.

That's a lot of baseball history right there.

He sounds like a lovely person, too. Pluto begins the section with a personal childhood anecdote:

My father and I were walking out of the Stadium, and Mudcat was coming right toward us. He was wearing a nice dark suit. He carried a suitcase in one hand, a garment bag in the other, and had a third bag hanging from his shoulder. “That's Mudcat Grant,” my dad said. “Go ask him for an autograph.” I hesitated for a moment. I didn't know how to ask for an autograph. My father handed me the Indians scorecard—they were ten-cent scorecards back then, no five-dollar glossy programs. Then he gave me a pen. “Go ahead,” he said. “Go ask Mudcat to sign.” I was eight years old. As I took a couple of steps in his direction, Mudcat stopped, put down all of his bags, and said, “How you doing, little man?” I knew who Mudcat was, and I knew he was a good pitcher. I also was too scared to say a word. “Want me to sign that for you?” he asked, taking the scorecard out of my hand. “What's your name?” he asked. I told him, in a whisper. He signed the program “To Terry, best wishes, Mudcat Grant.” I whispered a thank you.

How wonderful is that? 

At the trade deadline in 1964, the Indians traded him to the Twins for George Banks and Lee Stange. “A year later he was 21-7,” Pluto writes, “and he was a World Series hero, winning two games and hitting a three-run homer.”

In 1991, after he set the all-time record for stolen bases. He would steal nearly 500 more.

In 2000 I was on the field at Mariners Park before the game to interview Edgar Martinez for The Grand Salami, an alternative program sold outside the stadium, when that year's leadoff hitter walked past me. On the field, you try to affect the demeanor that you belong, so I was downplaying a lot. I was pretending I was cooler than I was. But with that guy, I opted to feel the gravity of the moment. I reminded myself, like a father were talking to his son, “There goes one of the greatest players to ever play this game.” 

How great was Rickey Henderson? Here's how he ranks in various offensive categories:

• Games: 4th (3,081)
• Hits: 27th (3,055)
• Walks: 2nd (2,190)
• Times on Base: 4th (5,343)
• Runs: 1st (2,295)
• Stolen Bases: 1st (1,406)

He walked over 2,000 times and still got more than 3,000 hits. That's insane. As for his stolen base record? You give the No. 2 guy, Lou Brock, all of the stolen bases of the current active leader, Starling Marte, and you still wouldn't reach it. Brock has 938, more than 450 behind, and no active player has close to 450. I don't think I've ever seen such a disparity between Nos. 1 and 2 in any baseball category. There's usually somebody, somewhere in time, close to you. Not here. 

Here's another ranking worth looking at:

• bWAR: 19th (111.1)

bWAR is supposed to take everything into account, everything, and this ranking is for both pitchers and position players. And he's 19th. The bigger point is who's ahead of him. It's mostly black-and-white guys, i.e., players whose careers ended before WWII. The only untainted post-WWII guys ahead of him are the All-Timers: Mays, Aaron, Musial, Williams. The only players ahead of him who began their careers after him are the tainted trio: Bonds, Clemens, A-Rod. By this measure, untained version, Rickey Henderson is the best player of the past 50 years.

For all his great speed, not to mention power (he hit more leadoff homeruns than anyone in baseball history), he hit shockingly few triples (66, tied for 447th) and he has about 100 fewer doubles than Paul Molitor or Cal Ripken Jr. (510, 58th). He just got on, stole, scored. Again and again and again. Which is the point of the game. He got home safely more than anyone in baseball history.

He was a character, often talking about himself in the third person, and like another great baseball character, Yogi Berra, some of the stories about him are no doubt apocryphal. He didn't say everything he said, to put it in Yogi's terms. The one about John Olerud and the helmet is probably in this category. Joe Posnanski tells his favorite: about returning to the Oakland A's in 1989 and agreeing to abide by the manager's signs: hit and run, steal, etc. and if the coach swiped both arms the previous signs were taken off. But he wasn't abiding by these signs. He kept stealing. So manager Tony LaRussa angrily cornered him in the dugout, but this merely confused Rickey:

“You said if he swipes his arms, that means take off sign,'” Henderson said.

La Russa nodded.

“Well, he swiped his arms,” Rickey said. “And Rickey took off.”

But my new favorite Rickey story is the one Craig Calcaterra relays in his SubStack—via Mike Piazza's 2013 memoir. It's a good corrective for all we think we know about the man. Piazza writes:

Rickey was the most generous guy I ever played with, and whenever the discussion came around to what we should give one of the fringe people — whether it was a minor leaguer who came up for a few days or the parking lot attendant — Rickey would shout out “Full share!” We’d argue for a while and he’d say, “Fuck that! You can change somebody’s life!“

That's the most beautiful story with ”Fuck that!" in it that I've ever heard. 

• Joe Posnanski
• Craig Calcaterra
• New York Times
• Baseball Reference

Joe Posnanski's Rocky Colavito obit led me to a book he references, “The Curse of Rocky Colavito,” in which Cleveland sportswriter Terry Pluto details what went wrong with the late 1950s Cleveland Indians and why they sucked forever after. (The book was published in 1994, just before they became really, really good again, winning pennants in 1995 and 1997, albeit still without a title, and with a lot more heartache, Jose Mesa.) Here's what went wrong: GM Frank Lane. Known as “Trader Lane” or “Traitor Lane,” he's the guy who discarded the Indians' beloved right fielder.

Turns out it's worse than that. Trading Colavito wasn't the beginning, it was Lane's crescendo. This is the line in the book that stunned me:

In the spring of 1960, the only Tribe players left from the forty-man roster Lane had inherited two years earlier were [Herb] Score and Colavito.

How is that even possible? Forty guys in 2+ years?

The '57 squad wasn't great, admittedly. The year before they'd won 88 games and finished second (again) to the Yankees (again), and in '57 they finished under .500: 76-77, 6th of 8 teams. It didn't help that after the '56 season, manager Al Lopez, who was upset management had not supported his players from fan abuse, resigned, and was immediately hired by the Chicago White Sox, for whom he helped win a pennant in 1959. From 1949 to 1964, the NY Yankees won the pennant every single year—except for 1954 (Indians) and 1959 (White Sox). What do those two teams have in common? They were both managed by Al Lopez. So not necessarily the kind of guy you want to give up.

Lane was not the kind of guy you wanted to hire, but hired he was, for GM, in November 1957. He wasted no time in remaking the team in his image:

• Nov. 1957, traded Early Wynn, who won the AL Cy Young two years later
• June 1958, traded Roger Maris, who won the AL MVP in 1960 and '61, and broke Babe Ruth's homerun record in '61
• April 1960, traded Norm Cash, who led the Majors in 1961 with a .361 average, a .487 OBP and a 1.148 OPS

And yes, he got some not-bad guys for these guys, but not Cy Young Award winners, not MVPs. Cleveland didn't get a Cy Young Award winner until Gaylord Perry in 1972. They haven't had a league MVP since.

Though the Colavito trade was the crescendo, the one that made all the noise like cymbals clanging, a day later Lane also got rid of Herb Score to finish his handiwork. He became a punchline:

Comedian Bob Hope, a minor investor in the Indians for years, summed up the mood well: “I'm afraid to go to Cleveland,” said Hope. “Frank Lane might trade me.”

Here's another paragraph that spoke to me:

The Cleveland papers were savaging Lane. Ownership was very nervous because attendance dropped from 1.5 million in 1959 to 950,985 in 1960. The Plain Dealer quoted a fan as saying, “With all the trades, I don't even know this club well enough to get sore at it.”

That's me and the Mariners. In the last few years, it's felt like Jerry Dipoto was making deals to make deals, and I didn't even know the club anymore. If it works, great. But the Mariners have made the postseason once in the last 20-odd years, and we keep going through different levels of boring and hitlessness, just with different rosters of players, so there's no one to hold onto. You get both failure and unfamiliarity. If your guys fail, you care. If strangers fail, why bother? 

I'm curious what the title of a similar Mariners book would be: “The Curse of ...”? My immediate thought is “The Curse of Edgar Martinez.” The Indians are cursed because they traded away a beloved player. The Mariners are cursed because they kept a beloved player here and away from World Series glory. But that's merely first thought. It doesn't quite feel right.