I love how you can see Max come into the league as a two-pitch pitcher (fastball/changeup) and then start working that slider more and more into his arsenal as it becomes his put-away pitch. Also, the four-seamer is always up where its tougher to deal with, but then down it’s the slider and changeup that brings the whiffs.
It’s easy to kind of forget just how good Mike Trout is, what with him playing on the left coast after half the country has fallen asleep and with an Angels team that’s not had a lot of success.
TL;DR - Trout is really freakin’ good in just about every aspect of the game. And shows no signs of slowing his roll after 1000 career games.
Trout is the best player of his generation, and it’s not super close. Problem is, he plays in a city nobody cares about (seriously, have you been to Anaheim? It’s like a bad '90s teen drama about California livin’ vomited out a city which was then colonized by #brands. Kill me) and he’s got all the personality of a robot programmed to hit Blerms.
Dude sure does hit a whole lot of Blerms, though.
Also, with baseball’s regional television model, you hardly ever see teams outside your division. If you do, it’s usually Yankees vs Red Sox. When would I even watch Trout?
Fortunately, given his Wonder-Bread-like personality, he doesn’t seem to mind laboring in obscurity.
Trout’s an interesting dude, too. As charmtrap mentions, Trout is happy in his obscurity.
and also…
That looks like it was an awesome ride.
So Yu Darvish made a rehab start for the South Bend Cubs, down in Indiana against my hometown West Michigan Whitecaps. It went pretty well, but the story is what he did after the game.
Full spread from Ruths Chris steakhouse for both teams, not just his own. Best meal a lot of those minor leaguers have ever had.
Huh. I kinda thought he was already retired.
Yesterday, Oliver Perez had only the second appearance by a pitcher in MLB history to throw zero pitches and record no outs. Click the link for the details of how that happened, but I think it’s much more interesting to look back at the first one.
That’s weird to me. Anyone else, that there are no other players in the top ten of HR and doubles all time?
But yeah, it’s true!
I would’ve figured someone like Aaron (who played forever) or Bonds (who could run like the wind for the first 10 years of his career) would’ve been up there. But no. And looking at the other guys on the list…how the heck did Big Papi make it???
I’d have guessed Hank Aaron was on both lists, but he’s only number 12 in doubles. Too many medium power guys get a lot or doubles for the high power guys to climb that ladder.
Yeah, a lot of names on the list on doubles make sense when you think about your perception of the players involved. Rose? Of course. Speaker? Yep. Taz and Musial? Definitely.
But I guess I just never realized what a doubles-hitting machine David Ortiz was. Wow! Even in that final season, where he played magnificently but was clearly in constant foot pain…he led the league in doubles with 48!
Happy Bobby Bonilla day!
My local sports talk station was talking about it this morning. They wondered if Bobby has a little pop-up and ka-ching sound on his phone that goes off every July 1st.
Ha!
If Bobby was a really shrewd negotiator, he would’ve agreed to take the deferred payments ONLY if every July 1st, a guy dressed in a Mr. Mets costume delivered the payment in person along with a giant novelty check.
The Athletic (to which I subscribe and highly recommend) had a story this past week about a similarly deferred and bad contract given by the Braves years ago to Bruce Sutter. The story said there are likely to be many of these deals still being paid off… but for some reason (probably because its the Mets and NYC) only the Bonilla one gets annual attention.
I remember that deal, too. Sutter went on TBS (we’d just gotten cable) with Ted Turner and they did some back-slapping. 16 year old me was inconsolable. Little did I know what Whitey Herzog would be able to do the next year with a bullpen of Jeff Lahti, Ken Dayley, Bill Campbell and Todd Worrell.
Maybe the other reason the Sutter deal gets less play is because though it seemed like an absurd amount of money in 85…by 2000s standards it’s just “Oh, nice” money?
The Reds, who are in last place partly because their offense was terrible early in the season, have hit 3 grand slams in the past week. By Anthony DeSclafani, Michael Lorenzen and Jose Peraza.
All 3 of those guys are pitchers.
I believe Lorenzen has homered in his last three at bats.