The San Francisco Giants have 23 wins on the season. One week ago today they won for the 20th time, with the decision going to Caleb Baragar. It was the rookie left-hander’s second W in two days, and his fifth on the year to go with one loss. This isn’t 1972 Steve Carlton we’re talking about either. Baragar is a reliever who has pitched all of 17-and-two-thirds big-league innings.

Has a pitcher ever recorded six decisions — moreover five wins — in so few innings to begin a career? I wasn’t able to find an answer in time for this column — a call to the Elias Sports Bureau went for naught — but there is a pretty decent chance that Baragar holds a unique distinction.

The 27-year-old Jenison, Michigan native is taking his newfound habit of gobbling up Ws with a grain of salt.

“It’s a stat — ‘winning pitcher’ — that doesn’t always tell the whole story,” said Baragar, who has received some good-natured ribbing from Giants starters. “It’s not something where I’m walking around saying, ‘Hey, I have five wins in the big leagues.’ For me, they’re important because the team won, and this is a shortened season where every game matters. It’s by no means a personal stat that I’m holding my hat on.”

The first of his wins came in his big-league debut on August 25. Notably, it came against the best team in baseball. Having no fans in the stands worked to his advantage. Read the rest of this entry »

Joe Block knows the Central. Not only do the Pittsburgh Pirates, the team he serves as a play-by-play announcer for, compete in the National League Central, their inter-league schedule this year is solely comprised of the American League Central. As a result, Block has been getting regular looks at two of the game’s most evenly-matched divisions. Neither had a clear-cut favorite coming into the season, and by and large there haven’t been many surprises.

How would Block rank the teams and players he’s seen this season? That was the crux of a conversation I had with the TV (and sometimes radio) voice of the Pirates prior to Sunday’s game.

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David Laurila: Which is the best team you’ve seen this year?

Joe Block: “I think it’s a tossup between the three AL Central teams we’ve seen: the White Sox, the Twins, and Cleveland. Cleveland wasn’t hitting when we saw them, although when you look at that lineup they should hit. I don’t know that I can put them lower than anyone else because of their elite pitching. It seems like their bullpen is complete. Their rotation is obviously very good, even with the trade of Mike Clevinger, which happened since we saw them. I’m of the belief that pitching wins in the postseason. You can argue whether it’s relief pitching, or starting pitching like we saw with Washington last year, but I think they have what it takes to go deep in the postseason.

“Minnesota is coming off a great year. They’ve added to their rotation, and they also have a good bullpen, especially the back end. Romo–Rogers is a really nice one-two. They obviously hit, and they’re not a team that’s all-or-nothing. They have some good hitters, just plain ‘hitters’ as opposed to softball-style home run, swing-and-miss-type cats. So they’re very much a big part of the picture in the AL Central. If you look at their numbers, they haven’t hit to the degree they have in the past, but they’re dangerous.

“Then there are the White Sox, who we’ve seen for two games. Lucas Giolito threw a no-hitter, and we also saw Dallas Keuchel. They’ve clearly added to their team. It’s always an en vogue selection when you have a bunch of young players coming up at the same time, and go out and get a few key free agents, and in this case it’s warranted. The only possible flaw is that they’ve got a very right-handed lineup, but other than that they don’t have a lot of weaknesses. They’ve got a lot of good young players who — I’m going to use a cliché here — don’t know how to lose. I kind of buy into that a little bit. They’re new, they’re exciting, they’re good — and the veterans they got make sense for that team. They’re very balanced. Read the rest of this entry »

Tom Grieve had a relatively nondescript playing career. From 1970-1979, the now-72-year-old former outfielder logged 474 hits, 65 of which left the yard, and a 100 wRC+. Those numbers came primarily with the Texas Rangers, who had drafted Grieve out of the University of Michigan while the franchise was still located in Washington DC.

Grieve is a product of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and while he grew up rooting for the New York Yankees, one of his biggest thrills came in his home state’s most-famous sports venue. The date was May 5, 1974, and the event itself was proceeded by a certain amount of trepidation.

“Billy Martin was the manager at the time,” explained Grieve, who is now a TV analyst for the Rangers. “Jim Fregosi and I had been playing against left-handed pitchers, and Mike Hargrove and Jim Spencer had been playing against right-handed pitchers. Anyway, the people of Pittsfield had called the Red Sox and were somehow able to set up ‘Tom Grieve Day’ at Fenway Park between games of a Sunday doubleheader. Usually when there’s a day for someone at a ballpark, it’s for a Hall of Fame player, so I can remember going to Boston knowing that it was going to happen, and being a little bit embarrassed.”

Not to mention wary of what his manager might think. Not only was Grieve a 26-year-old platoon player, Martin had donned pinstripes for much of his own playing career. Moreover, Martin was notoriously as combative as they come. Read the rest of this entry »

Two decades before Matt Foster was born, Dr. John had a hit single with “Right Place, Wrong Time.” Later covered by the Dave Matthews Band, as well as B.B. King and Bonnie Raitt, the song is true to its title. Funk-fused in sound, “Right Place, Wrong Time” is essentially an ode to misfortune.

Foster has had the opposite experience since debuting with the Chicago White Sox on August 1. Seventeen innings into his big-league career, the 25-year-right-hander has a won-lost record of 4-0. By and large, Foster has been in the right place at the right time.

Which isn’t to say he hasn’t pitched well. The Valley, Alabama native has allowed just eight hits and three runs in his 17 frames, and he’s fanned 21 batters along the way. Making those numbers even more impressive is the fact that Foster is a former 20th-round draft pick who came into the 2020 campaign with limited expectations. Despite a solid 2019 season in Triple-A, he garnered a mere honorable mention on our 2020 White Sox Top Prospects list.

Foster’s first big-league appearance came against the Kansas City Royals, and his initial emotions might be best described as falsely placid.

“When I got on the mound, I was like, ‘I’m really not that nervous,’ said Foster. “Then [Jorge] Soler got the first hit off me, and I was still kind of, ‘Well, OK.’ But then I threw an 0-0 slider to Salvador Perez and he almost took it yard. Then I was like, ‘OK, I’m nervous. This is real.’” Read the rest of this entry »

Dave Raymond knows the West. The team he does play-by-play for, the Texas Rangers, not only competes in the American League West, their inter-league schedule this year comprises solely the National League equivalent. As a result, Raymond has been getting regular looks at two of the game’s most talent-rich divisions. In terms of powerhouse clubs and marquee players, the West is arguably baseball’s best.

How would Raymond rank the teams and players he’s seen this season? That was the crux of a conversation I had with the TV voice of the Rangers prior to last night’s game.

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David Laurila: Which is the best team you’ve seen this year?

Dave Raymond: “I’ve been really impressed with the Padres. They looked really good against us [in mid-August]. We may have gotten them right on the way to their peak — and that might have been us headed right to the trough — but they were really impressive. They have so much great young talent. There are guys like Jake Cronenworth who are hardly even noticed in the shadow of Fernando Tatis Jr. I mean, Cronenworth has to be the top rookie-of-the-year candidate right now, and he doesn’t even stand out on that team.

“Even Manny Machado. It looked like the energy of some of the young players is lifting him a little bit. He made some plays against the Rangers that were were pretty neat. You got a glimpse again of that young Manny Machado who won a Gold Glove and was more of the all-round player.

“But here’s my thought about the Padres: if you look at that lineup, find me the homegrown guy. He’s not there. It’s made up of all these pieces that were plucked from different organizations in trades and free agent signings. In kind of a perverse way, it’s really remarkable. I don’t think anybody sets out to build a championship team almost exclusively from other teams, but that’s kind of what they’ve done. And we just saw them, at the trade deadline, going out and aggressively bringing in even more guys from other organizations. Read the rest of this entry »

Andrew Miller made his MLB debut on today’s date 14 years ago.Two months after bing drafted sixth-overall out of the University of North Carolina by the Detroit Tigers, the lanky left-hander pitched a scoreless eighth inning in a 2-0 loss to the New York Yankees. Five hundred-plus appearances later, he remembers it like it was yesterday.

“I faced some big names in old Yankee Stadium, which is hard to beat,” recalled Miller, who retired Melky Cabrera, Johnny Damon, and Derek Jeter. “It was part of a doubleheader, as we’d gotten rained out the day I was called up, and afterward, [pitching coach] Chuck Hernandez came over and put his hand on my chest. He asked if I was going to have a heart attack.”

A top-step-of-the-dugout exchange with Marcus Thames is also fresh in Miller’s memory. On cloud nine following his one-inning stint, Miller learned that his teammate had four years earlier taken Randy Johnson deep in his first big-league at bat. Ever the pragmatist, Miller acknowledges that Thames’s debut had his own “beat by a mile.” The previous day’s rain-delay poker game in the clubhouse was another story: Miller walked away a winner.

He wasn’t about to get a big head. Not only was Miller joining a championship-caliber club — the Tigers went on to lose to the Cardinals in the World Series — there was little chance he’d have been allowed to. While his veteran teammates treated him well, they also treated him for what he was — a 21-year-old rookie with all of five minor-league innings under his belt.

“It was a shocking experience all around,” Miller admitted. “In hindsight, it’s scary how little I knew, and how naive I was, when I got called up. Thank goodness Jamie Walker called my room and told me to meet him in the lobby to go over some ground rules and expectations. He saved me from a lot of mistakes. Of course, after that Jamie was maybe the hardest veteran on me. It was all good natured, but I couldn’t slip up around him.” Read the rest of this entry »

This is Part Two of an interview — the primary focus being his year-plus with the Detroit Tigers— with former All-Star outfielder Fred Lynn. Part One can be found here.

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David Laurila: In 1989 — your one full season in Detroit — the team lost over 100 games. What happened?

Fred Lynn: “It was an older team. They’d also traded Luis Salazar and Tommy Brookens, our two third basemen, and got Chris Brown from the Giants. That didn’t work out so well. Chris got hurt, plus Brookie and Luis had been really popular in the clubhouse. Sometimes you lose something in the clubhouse more than you lose on the field, and I think that was the case with those guys. As professionals you have to move on, but sometimes there’s a hole.

“Tram got hurt that year, too. He had a banged up knee and was kind of hobbling around. That hurt us a lot. Darrell [Evans] was gone, too. So there was a little bit of a changing of the guard, and with a pitch here and a pitch there… a lot of little things can happen that will turn around a season.

“And we didn’t play as well as we should have, to be honest. The pitching was… they had a tough year, and when that happens the offense feels like it has to score more runs. That puts a lot of pressure on the position players. The same thing is happening with the Red Sox right now. The offense feels like they have to score a million, and you can’t do that day in and day out. When the load is like that, it’s a tough one to bear.”

Laurila: Earlier we touched on how underrated Evans was. Chet Lemon is another guy who was better than a lot of people probably realize. Read the rest of this entry »

Most fans are familiar with Fred Lynn’s career. A superstar in six-plus seasons with the Red Sox — good for a 142 wRC+ and 30.7 WAR — Lynn subsequently fell short of those lofty standards after being dealt to the Angels following the 1980 season. Even so, he continued to be a solid player despite myriad injuries. Three of Lynn’s nine All-Star nods came with the Halos, and by the time he hung up his spikes at age 38, he’d accumulated 1,960 hits and 306 home runs. A four-time Gold Glove winner as a center fielder — and an AL MVP to boot — Lynn finished with 49.2 WAR.

The later of Lynn’s seasons aren’t nearly as well-chronicled as his earlier ones. Especially overlooked is his time in Detroit. Acquired by the Tigers at the 1988 trade deadline, Lynn joined a team in a pennant race, then returned the following year for what was to be his penultimate big-league season. What was Lynn’s Motown experience like? That’s the focus of this two-part interview, which was conducted over the phone earlier this month.

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David Laurila: You went from the Orioles to the Tigers in a trade-deadline deal. What are your memories of that?

Fred Lynn: “It wasn’t unexpected. We’d gone through that 0-21 start to the 1988 season, and during the All-Star break the A’s wanted to get me. The deal just wasn’t good enough for [the Orioles] to make the move. My wife and I both liked Baltimore. The fans were great, and while we weren’t playing well, it was a good bunch of guys, so I enjoyed playing there. And it was baseball-only. The Colts had exited, so baseball was the only game in town.

“So the Oakland thing hadn’t panned out during the break, and now the trade deadline comes around. We’re playing the Angels, I’m at my hotel room, and my agent calls and says the Tigers are interested in making a deal. This is probably around 4:00 o’clock, and I’m going to the park at 5:00. I have no-trade clause, and it doesn’t work out. I call my wife and tell her, ‘The deal is off, don’t worry about it.’

“I hang up the phone, and my agent calls back. The Tigers have sweetened the pot. I said, ‘Okay, deal.’ Then I had to call the ballpark. I called my manager and said, ‘Hey, Frank [Robinson], am I in the lineup tonight?’ He goes, ‘Yeah, you’re hitting third.’ ‘I said, ‘Well, you might want to change that lineup, because I’ve just been traded to Detroit.’” Read the rest of this entry »

Five of the first 12 picks in the 2016 draft were high school pitchers. In order, those selections were: Ian Anderson to the Braves (third overall), Riley Pint to the Rockies (fourth), Braxton Garrett to the Marlins (seventh), Matt Manning to the Tigers (ninth), and Jay Groome to the Red Sox (12th). Not surprisingly, their respective development paths have varied, injuries hindering the progress of fully half.

Chris Mears — at the time a pitching crosschecker for the Red Sox — was especially enamored with Manning.

“I liked his athleticism, his looseness, his fastball quality,” said Mears, who is now one of Boston’s two pitching coordinators, along with Shawn Haviland. “I thought he would be a longer-term development type guy — the Tigers have done a really good job; he’s made adjustments faster than I would have anticipated — but I remember him being a guy I really wanted.”

Asked why he’d viewed him as a longer-term project, Mears cited Manning’s basketball background, and “less pitching experience than many high-school draftees have at that point in their careers.” Moreover, Manning is 6’ 6” and “usually those long-lever guys take a little bit longer to get the feel of repeating their delivery.” Mears also saw a breaking ball that while having good shape and spin, wasn’t always consistent.

Which doesn’t mean he wasn’t enthralled with his potential. Mears first saw Manning at the Arizona Fall Classic, and based on that look he and Josh Labandeira, Boston’s Northern California area scout, went to see him early the following spring. Read the rest of this entry »

Cleveland has received a lot of plaudits for this year’s draft class, with multiple publications giving it plus-plus grades. Top-to-bottom quality is the primary reason for the praise. On the first day of a truncated five-round draft, the club selected high school shortstop Carson Tucker 23rd overall, then tabbed Auburn University right-hander Tanner Burns with a Competitive Balance pick. The following day’s selections were Florida International left-hander Logan Allen (second round), prep outfielder Petey Halpin (third), prep shortstop Milan Tolentino (fourth), and Vanderbilt right-hander Mason Hickman (fifth).

Orchestrating those selections was Scott Barnsby, who serves as Cleveland’s director of amateur scouting. Barnsby shared his perspective on this year’s unique draft, including the players he brought on board (and one he didn’t), as well as the challenges of scouting in a pandemic.

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David Laurila: How unique was this year’s draft?

Scott Barnsby: “First, we do everything we can to extend the timeline, to get to know these players as well as we possibly can. That starts as soon as the previous year’s draft is over. But the springs are really important, because we continue to develop relationships with the players and see how they’ve progressed from the fall and winter. We didn’t have that opportunity this year. It was unique in that sense.

“We obviously didn’t have a choice, because we were dealing with the pandemic and had to make adjustments, but it was pretty incredible to see how the staff came together. The one thing they kept saying was, ‘Hey, how can I help? What can I do to to get us to where we need to be in June?’ That’s the collaborative effort we always talk about. But it was still challenging. The majority of our work was done remotely, and we felt like there were gaps in the information we had, [both] on and off the field. We tried to do our best to to close those gaps.

“We held weekly meetings. There was daily work being done to prepare, but there were weekly check-ins starting a couple months prior to the draft to make sure that we were squared away on draft day. So while there were some challenges, it felt like it came together. And obviously, with five rounds we were really able to prioritize our time. Would we have liked more? We did the most with what we had.” Read the rest of this entry »