Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. August is always a down period for me when it comes to baseball watching. July has everything now. There’s the All-Star Game, the draft, and the trade deadline. Our trade value series comes out sandwiched in between. From late June through July 31, it’s full tilt baseball, and the first few weeks of August are a letdown by comparison. This year, the Olympics fit into that gap perfectly, and I’ve been watching whatever random event catches my eye the same way I usually flip between baseball games. But fear not: There’s plenty of baseball still going on, and I can’t stay away for long. I’m back in the saddle, and this week has a ton of great plays to choose from. And thanks, as always, to ESPN’s Zach Lowe for the format I’m borrowing here.
1. Twists and Turns in Pittsburgh
What kind of lunatic would say that August is the baseball doldrums? Oh, me? Well, ignore me, because some of the games this week have had juice. The Pirates are clinging to the periphery of the Wild Card race, while the Padres are roaring toward October with an absolutely scalding month of baseball. When the two teams faced off for their series opener in Pittsburgh this week, the Pirates were a game above .500, and after dropping that first game, they came back strong on Wednesday.
Some early offense staked the Pirates to a 6-5 lead even after starter Marco Gonzales got roughed up. Their best relievers were available. It looked like they might wriggle through. But Aroldis Chapman was a bit wild, and the Padres put two runners in scoring position with Manny Machado at the plate. No problem – Chapman just pulled out maybe the best pitch I’ve ever seen:
Uh, yeah, that’ll do it. That’s 105 mph on the black. Machado wasn’t even mad, he was just impressed:
The next inning was smooth sailing with closer David Bednar in, right? Not quite:
Just like that, it was a new ballgame. But then the Pirates loaded the bases with one out in the bottom of the ninth. All Ji Hwan Bae had to do (after a lengthy pitch timer violation review, it was a weird game) was get the ball to the outfield. But he hit it into a drawn-in infield, and Xander Bogaerts made a nice play:
That was Pittsburgh’s last gasp. The Padres poured it on in the 10th, cashing in three runs against Colin Holderman. Ballgame, right? Wrong:
That’s Tanner Scott walking three straight Pirates to cut it to 9-7. (The strike zone was inconsistent in this game, to put it mildly.) Manager Mike Shildt pulled him from the game, and Adrian Morejon promptly threw a wild pitch to bring another runner in. Tying run on third, winning run on second, no one out: It was shaping up to be a wild comeback. Only… Isiah Kiner-Falefa tapped into a fielder’s choice, nearly a disastrous one thanks to some shoddy baserunning:
Then Connor Joe struck out, Yasmani Grandal grounded out, and the Padres pulled out a stunner. I didn’t even get into all the hijinks this game had – dropped tags, heroic relief appearances, runners thrown out at home, and a multi-homer game by Jackson Merrill, including that game-tying blast off Bednar. This is playoff chase baseball at its finest. It’s just a shame that someone had to lose. That the Pirates followed it up by blowing another ninth-inning lead yesterday to get swept is just cruel.
2. Preemptive Insurance
Framber Valdez was flirting with history Tuesday night. While the Astros offense scraped together a pair of runs to give him a lead, he was busy mowing the Rangers down. He was perfect through five innings before Jonah Heim reached on an error in the sixth. Valdez sprinkled in a walk in the seventh but otherwise had an unblemished record heading into the ninth. With a no-hitter in his sights, he labored toward the finish line. Walk, double play, walk… he was clearly tiring, but his groundball tendencies looked like they might just carry him to the end of the road. There was just Corey Seager to get. Or to get got by, as it turns out:
Ugh. A two-run homer after all that work. That’s why managers always look so stressed when their starters are closing out big games. One little slip-up, against one of the best hitters in baseball, and the work of the first eight innings can be undone.
Luckily, though, we still have a dramatic reveal: The Astros did a little work of their own earlier in the ninth. They came into top of the frame up 2-0, but left with a 4-0 lead thanks to another one of the best hitters in baseball. Yordan Alvarez could have reached either Dallas or Fort Worth from Arlington with this ridiculous blast:
If you’re keeping score at home, that was 436 feet, a home run in every imaginable ballpark, and it pushed the lead to four runs. It might not have felt important – the Rangers had managed only two baserunners period, up to that point – but you never know what will happen when a starter hits his career high in pitches as he chases a no-hitter.
Should the Rangers have put more effort into preventing Houston from scoring again? It’s not quite that simple. Dane Dunning did an overall solid job saving the bullpen, which had been heavily worked the day before and was likely to work hard again the next day with José Ureña starting. Tyler Mahle only went five innings in his first start off the IL, and the Rangers simply had to be smart. You can’t use high-leverage relievers for every out, and down two runs against a pitcher who seemed to have your number feels like a spot where discretion is the better part of valor. It just happened to work out Houston’s way this time. Alvarez isn’t just great at erasing deficits; he pushes leads and breaks ties too.
3. The Var-Show
Back in my day, we used to say that two-thirds of the earth was covered in water, and the rest by Kevin Kiermaier. With the recent rise in sea level, that proportion might be more like 70/30 now, but otherwise Kiermaier’s defensive replacement in Toronto is doing a spectacular job of picking up where the old outfield wizard left off. Daulton Varsho might never be a fearsome hitter, but he can do this:
Sometimes the eye test and the numbers don’t line up. Some outfielders make up for middling initial reactions with great plays at the point of the catch, and the camera angle can add or subtract difficulty. That’s not what’s happening here, though. Varsho is probably the best outfielder by the eye test. He’s also the best outfielder by every single statistical measure, and he’s been doing it for three straight years now.
He’s great at every individual facet of outfield defense. He’s fast, with 80th percentile sprint speed. He has an accurate throwing arm and makes good decisions. His first steps are the best in baseball. That used to be Kiermaier’s thing – he’s been at or near the top of Statcast’s outfield jump leaderboard since it started tracking routes. This year, Varsho’s on top (Kiermaier is a respectable third) thanks to incredible reactions and phenomenal acceleration. He’s getting to work early and making things look easy.
When he makes a play that looks hard, remember this: Most other outfielders wouldn’t even be attempting it. They’d be playing the bounce, because they wouldn’t have gotten on their horse fast enough. You can tell how unbelievable the plays are from watching his teammates. Check out George Springer’s celebratory arms in the clip above. Now watch Kiermaier’s reaction in these next two from earlier this year:
Nice, but this one might even be better:
This one from early July blows my mind. Varsho’s initial route left him enough time to get there and also enough time to adjust to the heavy topspin that made the ball dive like a Carlos Alcaraz forehand. He made a secure catch and kept his eye on the play all the way throughout, which let him get a bonus out:
I love Josh Rojas’s reaction at the very end there. C’mon, man! Who catches this nonsense? Daulton Varsho, that’s who.
4. Fond Farewells
This one’s from the vault. I wanted to write about this slick Yandy Díaz fielding play from just before the trade deadline:
I’m still struggling to understand how he made that throw. Try throwing a ball 80 feet while lying down. Forget about accuracy; it’s just impressive he was able to create that much force in that position. He also put it right on the money, and even fielding the ball in the first place was no walk in the park. The reverse angle is gorgeous:
You know who else was watching the game? Former Ray Randy Arozarena:
Arozarena had already been traded to the Mariners. The Rays are retooling, and he’s a playoff performer. But he’s also been a key part of this Rays team, and he wasn’t quite ready for the fun to end. He had a flight to catch, but not just yet. He ended up sticking around for another inning or two before departing, high-fiving fans all the way to the exit.
Pretty clearly, Arozarena craves a playoff atmosphere. He’s off to a stellar start in Seattle, doing his best to turn the woeful Mariners offense around. But he also felt such a bond with his old teammates that he went to a game as a spectator when he could have been getting ready to move across the country. I just thought this was neat.
5. All the Bloops
San Francisco’s offense has been in a strange place all year. Some of the players who were expected to be its best performers – Jorge Soler, Jung Hoo Lee, Thairo Estrada, and platoon powerhouse Wilmer Flores – have been injured and/or much worse than expected. Soler’s off the team and Lee and Flores are both out for the season. Estrada has been on and off the IL all year. Patrick Bailey is mired in a hellacious slump, with a 44 wRC+ since the start of July. The dominant Webb/Snell pitching duo has been working overtime to keep the Giants on the fringes of the playoff picture, but they need offense somewhere.
Some of that offense has come from young contributors. Heliot Ramos has been a revelation. Tyler Fitzgerald is suddenly Barry Bonds (.311/.370/.635 this year, and .333/.395/.833 since stepping into the lineup full-time in July). Some of it has come from steady hands: LaMonte Wade Jr. is hitting as well as ever, and Michael Conforto and Mike Yastrzemski are above average contributors in the outfield. Matt Chapman is having a resurgent season at the plate. Mark Canha has been good since arriving at the deadline. But some of this offense is just coming from good fortune.
Wednesday night, Jake Irvin looked sharp in the early going. He rolled through two scoreless innings and got the first two outs of the third. Then he induced a pop up by Wade:
“Skill game,” I can almost hear Wade yelling to the dugout as that one landed. All you have to do is hit them where the defense isn’t. Ramos immediately got in on it too:
As if Irvin weren’t already frustrated enough, Conforto followed with a perfectly placed line drive that juuuuust escaped Jacob Young in center:
Young is a spectacular defender, but that was too much even for him. At 90 miles an hour off the bat, that would have been an easy out. At 74, it was an RBI single.
Chapman wasn’t content with just three silly hits in a row. He chopped one directly into the ground and hit the jets:
Hey, better lucky than good. (Ignore the ump; the out call was overturned after a review.) That two-run burst off of four weak hits is the kind of offensive lucky charm that can make a team feel like it’s destined to succeed. When your weak contact is consistently finding holes in the defense, everything seems easy. That hasn’t really described the Giants this year – they’ve made a lot of things seem hard, in fact. They’re on the outside of the playoff race, and they’ve been treading water around .500 all year. If it’s going to happen for them, it’ll involve an offensive charge, and it sure seems like the offensive charge will need its fair share of couldn’t-roll-it-out-there-any-better production.
