Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) this week. This is a strange week for the column. The All-Star break cut into the number of games available to watch; mathematically speaking, fewer games means fewer chances for weird things to happen. I took a weekend trip and didn’t watch any MLB games on Friday or Saturday. I’m also hard at work on the upcoming trade value series, which comes out between the All-Star game and the deadline every year – check back Monday for that annual exercise’s kickoff. In any case, that means this is a hodgepodge list: some stuff from this week, sure, but also plays and series that got left out last week, and some low-level baseball to boot. Thanks, as always, to ESPN’s Zach Lowe for the format idea. And two quick programming notes: I won’t be doing my regular Monday chat or Five Things next week; instead, I’ll be doing a jumbo-sized chat Friday morning.
1. The New Derby Format
The modern swing-happy Home Run Derby has been a great success, at least as far as I’m concerned. It’s more fun to see sluggers launch as many home runs as they possibly can than it is to see them agonize over every single swing. The format wasn’t perfect, though. I’m not trying to be a grump about it – is it even possible to be a grump about the Home Run Derby? – but there was one downside to the timed-round format: not enough drama.
When the goal is to get as many good swings off as possible in a limited time window, every second counts, so the optimal strategy is to just keep launching without taking any time to admire your blasts. Quite frankly, that’s no fun. The way most timed Derby rounds work, the first player just swings their heart out the entire time. Then the second player either passes them with time remaining – boring! – or falls hopelessly behind. There’s a natural problem here: When the competition is most exciting, with a tight score and not much time left on the clock, the appropriate reaction is to speed up, not slow down.
This year’s format fixed that with a twist: After a shortened timed round, each batter got an untimed round limited only by the number of swings that didn’t result in home runs. Hitters could swing until they made three outs, or four if one of their bonus-round bombs traveled 425 feet. This addressed two problems at once: 1) Fatigue spikes at the end of the Derby, so removing the time pressure let players recuperate a bit between swings, and 2) by curtailing the timed segment, the new format also made it more likely that the untimed part mattered. The difference between zero and two homers in the extra session could easily determine the result of a round. As an added bonus, with no timing restriction, players watched their last few attempts, which built the drama even further.
I’m not saying that everything is perfect. The free-for-all style first round felt anticlimactic and dragged on more than you’d expect. Alec Bohm went first, then sat for an hour before facing a warmed-up Teoscar Hernández in the next round. The broadcast can’t seem to settle on the perfect camera angle, so some homers are hard to see.
Those are just nitpicks, though. I thoroughly enjoyed the Derby, and the final round was a great summation of what the format can be. After Hernández posted an impressive 14 home runs, Bobby Witt Jr. needed to crack three homers in his bonus round just to tie things up. He made two quick outs – disaster! But his next swing produced a gargantuan dinger, giving him an extra out, and then he hit another. It all came down to his last swing:
2. Ty France’s Tactical Impatience
Adam Mazur started a July 9 tilt against the Mariners shakily. In the top of the first inning, he walked a batter, hit another, and gave up a run. He was wild, obviously – the walk and the hit batter tell you everything you need to know there – and he had particularly shoddy fastball command. He threw only five fastballs, and not a single one hit the strike zone. (One was called a strike on a generous 3-0 situation.)
Mazur came out for the second with his fastball in mothballs. He started Jorge Polanco off with a lollipop curve for a strike, then eventually surrendered a single after a five-pitch battle. He didn’t throw a single fastball in that confrontation, mixing up curves, sliders, and changeups instead. Polanco was the fourth-straight batter Mazur started off with a breaking ball in the strike zone. In the on-deck circle, Ty France took note.
France isn’t having a great year; a league average batting line isn’t what you want from your first baseman. But he’s always been great at hitting breaking balls, and he’s an aggressive first-pitch swinger when he gets something to drive. Pitch identification is his best tool, and that’s particularly useful when you can eliminate some of your opponent’s offerings. He made up his mind that he was going to sit on something spinny and fat, and his eyes must have widened when he saw Mazur’s pitch. He started celebrating Bastille Day early with some fireworks:
It’s hard to swing at first-pitch breaking balls. That’s why pitchers throw them. Get caught with your hand in the cookie jar, though, and you’re going to pay for it. In this case, it hardly mattered; Mazur got absolutely torched, Logan Gilbert worked into the eighth inning, and the Mariners won comfortably. But little observations and adjustments can be the difference between an 0-1 count and a 105 mph rocket, and plenty of games hinge on just one hit like that. France is surely disappointed in his performance this year, but that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be proud of this piece of hitting.
3. The Tigers’ Gauntlet
The AL Central has been the worst division in baseball in recent years. The Twins and Guardians have traded spots at the top of the heap while the other three teams stockpile losses and draft picks. From a purely ordinal look at the standings, that’s true again this year. Cleveland is out in front and the Twins aren’t far behind. But the Royals and Tigers both look dangerous this year – the Royals are seven games over .500 and the Tigers are hanging around at 47-50. The White Sox – well, the less said about the White Sox the better.
When the non-Chicago members of the division face off this season, there’s consistently something on the line. The division race is close, and at least one of the runners up looks likely to get a wild card berth. There are fewer cupcake games – again, just the Sox – which means that picking up a win in a divisional matchup feels important in a way it simply didn’t when the Royals and Tigers were both pushing 100 losses.
The Tigers took three of four from the Guardians before the All-Star break in a wonderful series. They won 1-0 and 5-4, and also lost 9-8, with late-inning intrigue in all three of those games. Then they blew the doors off with a 10-1 win to close things out. The previous week, they’d gone to Minnesota in the midst of a cold streak and lost two of three, with the last game a 12-3 blowout. That seemed to leave the Tigers dead in the water – but they’ve won 8 of 10 since that series and found their way back into the race.
Want to know whether the Tigers will sell at the deadline? Well, they play the Guardians four times in Cleveland starting July 22, then return home for three against the Twins, then play two more against the Guardians in Detroit to end July. How they fare in that nine-game stretch will determine what their team looks like on August 1 – when they start a four-game set against the Royals.
That stretch of games gives Detroit a chance to play kingmaker. Win most of them, and it’ll be right in the thick of the playoff hunt. Lost most of them, and that’s a wrap on the season. Most intriguingly, a split could tilt the division one way or another. Going 5-1 against Cleveland and 1-3 against Minnesota – or 1-5 and 3-1 – would go a long way toward determining the eventual division winner.
It’s been a long time since the Tigers have played a string of games this important. They haven’t made the playoffs since 2014, and ’16 was their last winning season. Neither drought has to end this year – but at the very least, they’re mixing things up in late July and making the division more fun than it’s been in a while.
4. Wild Endings
Did you see that Yankees-Orioles ending last Sunday? Of course you did. The Yankees were on the verge of sweeping Baltimore to take control of the division after a huge ninth-inning homer from Ben Rice. Clay Holmes got two outs, but walked the bases loaded. Salvation was only a grounder away – but not this particular grounder:
The Yankees were still up a run. But then Cedric Mullins flared one to left, and Alex Verdugo took a Family Circus route to the ball:
That’s an absolutely spectacular win for the Orioles, and a gut-wrenching defeat for the Yankees. Not only did it cost them the division lead, it dropped them to 4-6 against Baltimore this year, with only three to play. If they don’t sweep their last series of the year – September 24-26 in the Bronx – Baltimore will take the head-to-head tiebreaker, something that feels extremely relevant this year given how close the two teams are in the standings.
Think that game was wild? The Giants and Twins had something just as exciting only hours later. The Twins came into the ninth inning with one hit and no runs on the night. Giants closer Camilo Doval, who’s been shaky all year, came in to protect a two-run lead. He simply didn’t have it. He walked Diego Castillo when Castillo wisely decided to keep the bat on his shoulders for six straight pitches. Trevor Larnach took the first pitch he saw for a strike – and then smashed the next pitch he saw for a laser beam double. An out later, Manuel Margot got a middle-middle slider and didn’t miss:
Ryan Walker came in to finish the inning, but the damage was done. The Giants went from watching Blake Snell flirt with a perfect game to scrambling for their lives in about five minutes. Minnesota brought in Jhoan Duran to face Mike Yastrzemski to kick off the bottom half of the inning. On a 2-1 count, Yastrzemski lofted the ball to right center. Then chaos broke out:
That was a tough play for Margot, who laid out in vain. If he’d played it safe, Yastrzemski would’ve had a guaranteed double. Instead, he went for the out-or-triple approach, and came up short. Yastrzemski cruised into third, setting up some high leverage at-bats where Duran was going to have to be perfect to keep the game going. Or so we all thought, until Brooks Lee lost his mind:
That’s… that’s not where that throw is supposed to go. Retiring Yastrzemski wasn’t realistically in play by that point; Lee could have eaten the ball and walked it into the infield. You can actually see Willi Castro putting his hands up in the universal “easy there, rook” gesture as Lee fields the throw from Max Kepler. Yastrzemski is decelerating, Castillo is playing off the base, and the play is clearly over. But then Lee’s throw kicked into the dugout, and it was a true walk-off:
I wouldn’t want every game to be decided this way, with errors and bad routes. But every once in a while, it’s fun, and two in a day, just before regular season baseball stopped for a week, was a delight.
5. Getting Back to Basics
As you can probably tell, I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel for “Things” this week. There was almost no baseball! The All-Star Game has already been extensively covered. I’ve spent most of the week ranking players over and over in preparation for our annual Trade Value series. But last weekend, I wasn’t doing any of that. I was in wine country, and I had big plans: going to a Sonoma Stompers game to see the place I’d read so much about in The Only Rule Is It Has To Work.
The field was as advertised – pinched in the corners and comically deep (438 feet) to dead center. The Stompers are in a college wood bat league these days, and on this particular night, they lost to the visiting Walnut Creek Crawdads, 6-4. I’ll level with you, though: Most of the people in the stands didn’t seem to care who won, and I didn’t either. I was there for the vibes, and let me tell you: They were immaculate.
The smack of the ball into a glove and the crack of the bat as it connects with a well-struck ball feel different when you’re 15 feet away with no roaring crowd to distract you. The physicality required to play catcher, even at this low level, is evident when you can see the foul tips and scrambling blocks up close. Those joys aren’t unique to Sonoma, but they’re easy to miss when you consume most of your baseball via major league broadcasts.
Off the field, things were downright amazing. A gaggle of children in attendance raced Rawhide, the Stompers mascot, around the bases. Another group of kids raced both a Stomper and a Crawdad at another inning break. They pushed emcee Trey Dunia around the field in an inflatable ball, and he somehow narrated the harrowing experience live.
Out in left field, my wife and I grabbed a hot dog and chips. We stopped to chat with the husband and wife who sell wine at the game and donate the proceeds to help fund Stompers players for the summer. We laughed at the between-innings promotions and spent half an hour chuckling at a pitcher who clearly had command issues: He went to the brim of his hat before every pitch, licked his fingers to enhance whatever he had hidden up there, and still couldn’t find the strike zone. When we walked out of the gates and headed toward Steiners, the local institution mere blocks away, everyone was jovial despite the loss.
Every time I watch low-level baseball, I’m reminded of how amazing major leaguers are. The players in the California Collegiate League are really good – and miles away from the big leaguers we cover in this column on a weekly basis. I’m also reminded of how fun baseball is. In the biggest city in the world, in an 11,000-person town in agricultural country, in a high school park, it doesn’t matter. Baseball’s a blast wherever you go.
