Letting the mind/imagination wander as the baseball season approaches the halfway point — believed to be in the fastest elapsed time this century:
It didn’t take long for MLB to issue results of a finding that indicated data at hand shows no indication of any relation between injuries to pitchers and the newly installed time clock. Neither is there any data showing wear and tear on pitchers throwing more than 100 pitches in a game — mainly because there isn’t enough to be conclusive.
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If you had to pick one game to demonstrate how insanely unpredictable baseball can be, both good and bad, you’d be hard pressed to find a better example than the one between the Dodgers and Angels in Anaheim on June 21.
Given the way he has dominated on both sides of the ball and bat, it’s hardly a shocker that Shohei Ohtani would be in the middle of the conversation. But this one didn’t turn out how the oddsmakers predicted, as the Dodgers used seven pitchers to beat the Angels while Ohtani and Mike Trout went 0-for-6 in a 2-0 loss. Yet another example why baseball is not the best short-term investment for the gaming crowd.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts had announced ahead of time that his team was going with a “bullpen game” against Ohtani, the Angels’ ace, who usually dominates games he pitches with both arm and bat. Not this time, as only the arm came into play.
Roberts’ collection of rubber arms, some with earned run averages over 5.00, threw only 127 pitches while Ohtani and two relievers combined to throw one more. Both numbers, by the way, equate to less than 15 pitches per inning, considered the magic number in determining how long starters remain in the game. The first five pitchers Roberts used each pitched in two innings (it’s like a mathematical Rubik’s cube), negating Ohtani’s 12 strikeouts in seven innings.
“[A bullpen game] is like a relay race, just keep passing the baton,” Roberts said after the game, no doubt still trying to figure out how it worked. Passing the baton is the name of the pitching game these days, but even the best analytics would say there is practically zero percent that seven pitchers would hang up nine zeros in any given game.
But, hey, they got it done in two hours and 30 minutes, which is all that seems to matter these days — but still makes me wonder what took so long.
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Talk all you want about the relative strength of the AL and NL East and West divisions, but the best races in MLB this year are in the respective Central divisions. It sounds strange to say “first-place Arizona Diamondbacks” or “third-place Dodgers” or “third-place Yankees” or “fourth-place Mets,” but it’s in the Central divisions where the changing of guard seems to happen every day and is drawing considerable attention.
“Last-place Cardinals” sounds like another misnomer, but they have something in common with the other teams playing in the divisions that represent, for the most part, the middle of the country. All 10 teams are closer to leading the division than they are to a wild-card spot in the postseason.
All of a sudden the Cincinnati Reds, of all teams, have become the talk of baseball. There is a lot of very good young talent on display during the three-game series between the Reds and Orioles, which concludes on June 28.
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Pregame note sheets around MLB now routinely show team leaders in “barrels” and “hard hits,” which seem to be kissing cousins at least. For the uninitiated (which include me until recently) anything over 95 mph is considered hard hit (that I did know), but it all depends on launch angle and trajectory for “barrels,” which basically means a 100 mph ground ball probably won’t qualify.
In other words not all 95 mph hits are the same — they range from home runs to the dreaded GIDP.
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One popular MLB stat that needs a serious adjustment is strikeout ratio. Why do they rate pitchers on strikeouts per nine innings, when nobody goes that long anymore?
Comparing relief pitchers like Félix Bautista to starters like Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer or, heaven forbid, Sandy Koufax is just a little misleading. A ratio of K per IP makes a lot more sense, but then again …
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Those who questioned the use of Ryan McKenna as a defensive replacement for Anthony Santander in the late innings, and we’ve been in that corner occasionally, finally saw the opportunity where the move would backfire on Orioles manager Brandon Hyde in the 10th inning June 24. Then McKenna screwed it up with a walk-off home run.
With four games left before the season’s halfway point, the Orioles were 19 games over .500 for the first time in nine years. Following closely on social media last week I would’ve sworn it was the other way around.
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I think it’s fairly safe to say that Jordan Westburg, like Adley Rutschman and Gunnar Henderson before him, is here to stay. From here on out, the Orioles’ roster decisions will get only tougher.
Jim Henneman can be reached at JimH@pressboxonline.com
Photo Credit: Colin Murphy/PressBox