Boyhood allegiances typically go away after a player is drafted and signs with a team other than the one he (or she) grew up following. Drew Gilbert isn’t necessarily an exception to that rule, but the 24-year-old St. Paul native does retain a soft spot for the Minnesota Twins.
“I think that happens a little more so as you get older, not necessarily exactly when you sign,” said Gilbert, whom the Houston Astros drafted 24th overall in 2022 out of the University of Tennessee. “You move around a lot. I went from Minnesota to Tennessee, and then once you get drafted you go around the country with different affiliates. I don’t want to say you lose the fandom, but it naturally goes away a little bit. That being said, when [the Twins] were in the playoffs last year it was still super fun to watch. Of course, any time you get playoff baseball, no matter who you’re rooting for, it’s a cool thing to watch.”
The 2023 Twins aren’t the only team he’s had reason to root for in the postseason. The Astros won the World Series in his 2022 draft year, and his new organization’s parent club has a chance to do so this year. The New York Mets acquired Gilbert as part of last summer’s Justin Verlander trade deadline deal.
“The Astros have been the best team in Major League Baseball for the last five or 10 years,” Gilbert said of his since-coming-to-pro-ball allegiances. “Any chance I was able to get to watch them, I did. With all the great players they have on that roster, I would be a fool not to tune in. And now… I mean, any time you’re in an organization that’s going deep in the playoffs it’s a pretty cool thing. Again, it’s super fun to watch.”
Which brings us back to his boyhood fandom, and on to his hopes of forging a long and successful career in a Mets uniform.
“I was a big Joe Mauer, Michael Cuddyer, Justin Morneau fan,” said Gilbert, who reached Triple-A this year but played in just 62 games due to injuries. “Those were three of my favorite players to watch. I’m not necessarily similar to any of them — they all had 10-plus years in the big leagues — so while I’m improving, I haven’t done what they have. I’m not saying I won’t.”
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Jeff McNeil was asked for his thoughts on Jett Williams when the former made a brief rehab stint in the Arizona Fall League before joining the Mets’ NLCS roster. Following up on another reporter’s question, I asked the now-32-year-old if he ever reflects back on when he was the highly-regarded infield prospect’s age.
“When I was 20, I was still in college,” replied McNeil, who had been on the shelf since early September with a wrist injury. “He seems to be flying through the system. He’s in Double-A. These kids have bright futures. I feel like the game is getting younger and younger.”
Drafted 14th overall in 2022 out of Texas’s Heath-Rockwell High School, Williams suffered a wrist injury of his own and was out from mid-April until mid-August after undergoing surgery. He entered the season No. 3 on our 2024 Mets Top Prospects list, one spot behind Gilbert.
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RANDOM HITTER-PITCHER MATCHUPS
Jason Kipnis went 9 for 16 against Jordan Zimmermann.
Ron Cey went 13 or 25 against Neil Allen.
Dexter Fowler went 20 for 51 against Clayton Kershaw.
Brook Jacoby went 21 for 55 against Frank Tanana.
Julio Franco went 22 for 52 against Frank Viola.
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An A.J. Hinch quote caught my eye earlier this month, and while the Tigers have since been eliminated, what he said applies to any team competing in October. Jeff Seidel shared the words of wisdom at The Detroit Free Press.
“Being stubborn in your ways is most damaging in the playoffs,” Hinch said. “I think you see that the teams that win, they’ve had to veer off of their norm. I think that is the art of managing in the postseason.”
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Is John Smoltz a good broadcast analyst? I asked that question in a Twitter poll during Friday’s NLCS Game 5, and the results weren’t all that surprising. Broadcasters tend to get more criticism than praise on social media, and the erstwhile hurler has been polarizing, due in part to his old school opinions (one-knee-down catching being a recent example.) My opinion on Smoltz is mixed. I certainly respect his pitching knowledge, but some of the other stuff… not so much.
As for the poll, 73.2% voted “No.” Again, not all that surprising.
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A quiz:
Who was the first player in Mets history to lead the National League in home runs? (A hint: He also won a home run title playing for another NL team.)
The answer can be found below.
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NEWS NOTES
The Detroit Tigers are reportedly hiring Shane Farrell as their farm director. The 35-year-old son of former big-league pitcher and manager John Farrell has spent the last five years as the Toronto Blue Jays amateur scouting director.
The Boston Red Sox are promoting Kyle Boddy to the role of director of baseball science (per The Boston Globe’s Alex Speier). The Driveline founder and former Cincinnati Reds pitching coordinator was a special assistant to Craig Breslow this past season.
Gaylen Pitts, an infielder who appeared in 28 games for the Oakland Athletics across the 1974-1975 seasons, died on October 9 at age 78. A University of Arkansas product, Pitts coached and managed for three decades, primarily in the St. Louis Cardinals organization, following his playing career.
Bud Daley, who pitched for three teams — the Cleveland Indians, Kansas City Athletics, and New York Yankees — from 1955-1964, died earlier this week at age 92. The southpaw had back-to-back All-Star seasons with the A’s and won two World Series with the Yankees.
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The answer to the quiz is Dave Kingman, who hit an NL-best 37 home runs with the Mets in 1982. Three years earlier, “King Kong” led the circuit with 48 home runs as a Chicago Cub.
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A random obscure former player snapshot:
Charlie Spikes had a strong start to his career, following up a 14-game cameo with the New York Yankees in 1972 with a pair of team-leading home run seasons with the Cleveland Indians. In 1973, Spikes went deep 23 times at age 22, and in 1974 he did so 22 times at age 23. His career went downhill from here. The Bogalusa, Louisiana native batted .233 with just 17 home runs in three subsequent Cleveland seasons, then was traded to the Detroit Tigers for Tom Veryzer. Spikes would later finish his career with the Atlanta Braves, having totaled 502 hits, including 65 dingers, over parts of nine MLB seasons.
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José Caballero became the second Rays player to lead the American League in stolen bases this year — Carl Crawford topped the circuit four times — swiping 44 bases in 60 attempts (his 16 caught-stealings also led the league). Asked about the imminent accomplishment on the final weekend of the campaign, the 28-year-old infielder told a small group of reporters that he’d hoped to pilfer even more bags than he did.
“The goal I put to myself at the beginning of the season was that I wanted to reach 50,” said Caballero, who swiped 28 bases in his 2023 rookie season with Seattle (the Rays acquired him in January in exchange for Luke Raley). “I was kind of short on that. If I’m the American League leader in stolen bases, it would be a gift. But I’d be a little sad about myself because I couldn’t reach 50.”
Reaching base more often would have helped him reach that goal. The Panamanian speedster had a .283 OBP over 483 appearances.
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FOREIGN AFFAIRS
The Kia Tigers and Samsung Lions will meet in the KBO’s championship series beginning tomorrow. The Tigers were the top seed going into the postseason, the Lions the second seed. If you want to know more, Jee-ho Yoo wrote about the forthcoming Korean Series at Yonhap New Agency.
The Tokyo Yomiuri Giants beat the Yokohama DeNA BayStars 1-0 earlier today and will play again tomorrow with the winner advancing to NPB’s championship series to face the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks. Fukuoka advanced by beating the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters.
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Uncle Charlie hasn’t disappeared, but he has certainly been seen less often. As my colleague Michael Baumann wrote toward the end of August, “This season, just 8.12% of total pitches thrown have been curveballs, which is the lowest mark of the pitch tracking era.”
A few days after Michael’s piece ran, I asked John Schneider why benders are increasingly out of vogue.
“The curveball was such a big pitch, even two, three years ago, with fastballs at the top of the zone,” the Toronto Blue Jays manager replied. “I think hitters have adjusted to it a little bit. I think we’re kind of at that turning point of what pitchers are doing and what hitters’ swings are geared to hit. Hitters are kind of used to covering the top and the bottom, fastball and curveball. I think we’re going to see more splitters develop over the next couple of years.”
I’d asked the former catcher a forward-focused question a day or two earlier — a little over a month later I can’t recall what it was — because he punctuated his response with, “I feel like I’m reading into the future with you the last couple of days. I’m doing my best.”
I responded in kind, saying that good managers — ditto executives —do their best to read into the future.
“Exactly,” replied Schneider. “If we could see the future we’d probably be doing something else, but it is a good trait to have.”
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FARM NOTES
Kemp Alderman leads all AFL hitters with six home runs, the most recent of them a 443-foot blast that had an eyebrow-raising exit velocity of 119.5 mph. Hampered by a broken hamate bone in the early portion of the minor league season, the 22-year-old outfielder in the Miami Marlins organization went deep just eight times over the course of the campaign.
Robert Hassell III is 11-for-28 with five doubles, a triple, and a home run for the AFL’s Salt River Rafters. The 23-year-old outfielder in the Washington Nationals organization had an 87 wRC+ over 362 plate appearances across three levels — he topped out at Triple-A— in an injury-hampered season.
Colt Emerson is 16-for-39 with eight doubles for the AFL’s Peoria Javelinas. The 19-year-old shortstop in the Seattle Mariners system had a 119 wRC+ over 336 plate appearances between Low-A Modesto and High-A Everett.
Eriq Swan has allowed three hits and one run, with 10 strikeouts, over six innings for the AFL’s Glendale Desert Dogs. The 22-year-old right-hander in the Los Angeles Dodgers organization had a 5.16 ERA this season between the Arizona Complex League and the California League.
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Denzel Clarke is looking to follow in the footsteps of a former teammate who broke out with a monster second half of the season with the Oakland Athletics. Similarities exist. While Lawrence Butler swings from the left side and Clarke from the right, each is an athletically-gifted outfielder who celebrated his 24th birthday this summer. Moreover, their minor league numbers aren’t dissimilar.
Clarke is currently playing with the Mesa Solar Sox — the two were teammates with the AFL club in 2022 — and I asked him about the possibility of his joining Butler in the A’s lineup in the not-too-distant future.
“He’s a very special ballplayer,” replied Clarke, who is two months older and has also played with Butler at High-A and Double-A levels. “He’s got a lot of talent and I’m super happy to see him go out there and just dominate, truly, at the big-league level at the back half of the season. I know the skillset he has, and I know the skillset I have. We’ve both been gifted to play this game and we’re going to just keep playing hard each and every day.”
That he is serving a second stint in the dessert on the heels of a Double-A season in which he slashed .269/.339/.445 with 13 home runs, 36 stolen bases, and a 120 wRC+ isn’t necessarily how he was hoping to finish out his year. Not that the Toronto, Ontario native is about to turn down an opportunity to further fine-tune his talents.
“It’s not in my control,” Clarke said of his AFL assignment. “I do what I’m asked and play hard every day that I’m out there. I’m always going to play my hardest.”
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LINKS YOU’LL LIKE
SI’s Jack Sommers caught up to Diamondbacks prospect Kristian Robinson, who is playing in the Arizona Fall League four years after a mental health crisis landed him in legal trouble.
MLB Pipeline’s Sam Dykstra wrote about San Francisco Giants outfield prospect Bo Davidson, a 2023 non-drafted signee who might have the most interesting backstory of anyone playing in the AFL.
Over at Draft Nation, John Perrotto talked to Cleveland President of Baseball Operations Chris Antonetti about the Guardians’ simple formula for success.
Tsuyoshi Shinjo’s high-stakes gamble paid off for the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters in NPB’s Climax Series. Jason Coskrey had the story at The Japan Times.
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RANDOM FACTS AND STATS
The average time of a nine-inning game in MLB this season was 2:36, down from 2:39 a year ago, and the shortest since 1984 when the average time was 2:35. In 2022, the last season before the pitch clock was instituted, time of game was 3.03.
Vic Wertz was the victim of Willie Mays’s famous over-the-shoulder catch in deep center field at the Polo Grounds in the 1954 World Series. The Cleveland Indians slugger finished that year’s Fall Classic 8-for-16 with two doubles, a triple, and a home run.
Ryan Merritt had just 11 big-league innings under his belt when he started and threw four-and-a-third scoreless innings in Cleveland’s 2016 ALCS-clinching win over the Toronto Blue Jays . The southpaw went on finish his brief MLB career 3-0 with a 1.71 ERA in nine appearances comprising 31-and-two-thirds inning.
New York Yankees reliever Jake Cousins made his MLB debut with the Milwaukee Brewers on June 21, 2021. The first batter he faced was current Cleveland manager Stephen Vogt. He struck him out swinging.
In 1988, the Boston Red Sox topped the American League East with 89 wins. The second- through fifth-place teams logged 88, 87, 87, and 85 wins respectively.
On today’s date in 1990. the Cincinnati Reds completed a four-game sweep of the Oakland Athletics to win the franchise’s fifth (and most recent) World Series title. Hal Morris’s eighth-inning sacrifice fly plated the deciding run in the 2-1 final.
On today’s date in 1991, Kevin Tapani went eight strong innings and Scott Leius homered in the penultimate frame to lift the Minnesota Twins to a 3-2 win over the Atlanta Braves in Game 2 of the Fall Classic. Five days later, Jack Morris went the distance in Game 7 as the Twins took home the title.
The St. Louis Cardinals captured a World Series title on today’s date in 1982, rallying from 3-1 down to beat the Milwaukee Brewers 6-3 in Game 7. Keith Hernandez tied the game with a sixth-inning two-run single, and George Hendrick followed with a single of his own to drive in what proved to be the decisive run. Bruce Sutter retired all six batters he faced for the save.
Players born on today’s date include Dave Collins, a speedy outfielder who swiped 395 bases while playing for eight teams from 1975-1990. Seven of the Rapid City, South Dakota native’s seasons came with the Cincinnati Reds, although his most notable campaign came north of the border with the Toronto Blue Jays. In 1984, Collins batted .308 with a 122 wRC+ and legged out an AL-best 15 triples.
Also drawing his first breaths on today’s date was Skel Roach, who went the distance for the win in his lone big-league game, that with the National League’s Chicago Orphans in 1989. Born Rudolph Charles Weichbrodt in Danzig, Germany — his family emigrated to the United States when he was nine years old — the right-hander began his professional career with the Des Moines Prohibitionists and ended it with the Seattle Siwashes.
