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Like the majority of the people reading this, I spent my weekend doing little other than watching baseball. The possibilities for real chaos were endless, and while none of the various bingo balls fell our way for a meaningful game on Monday, the season still ended with plenty of drama and interesting tidbits.

Clayton Kershaw Walks Off The Mound

In the midst of the exciting games with all sorts of playoff implications, it was a jarring moment when Kershaw came out of Friday night’s start against Milwaukee with what is being described as forearm discomfort. Based on both his and Dave Roberts’ post-game comments, whatever is going on with one of the best left arms in the history of the game is not good, and his 2021 season is likely over. As far as his Dodgers career, that’s still to be determined; his contract expires after the final out of the World Series.

The No. 7 pick in the 2006 draft out of a high school in the northern suburbs of Dallas, Kershaw came onto my radar that summer, when a veteran scout told me that he was the best pitcher at the complex level he’d ever seen over decades of experience. My first in-person look came the following spring during his full-season debut with Low-A Great Lakes. He reached Double-A that year as a teenager, and even though he walked nearly five batters per nine innings, much of that was the fault of minor league umpires who had no idea how to call a pure 12-to-6 curveball with more downward action than they had likely ever seen.

The first time I watched Kershaw for professional purposes came in March 2014 in a spring training game against the Padres. He was horrible, allowing nine base runners in his three innings of work; it was early, and he hadn’t ramped up. I still remember my report: “Fringy command of fringy weapons. Likely Cy Young candidate.” He’d go on to win his third in four years that season.

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The end of the season is rapidly approaching, so approach it in style with another episode ofChin Music. This week, I am joined by our very own Ben Clemens to chat for a couple of hours about baseball (and other things). We begin with a look at the wild Wild Card races, including tangents on Cody Bellinger’s future in Los Angeles, Devin Williams‘ wall punching incident and the Rays’ plans (or ruse) to spend their summers north of the border.

We’re then joined by special guest and life-long Mariners fan Meg Rowley of FanGraphs and Effectively Wild to discuss the team with September’s greatest fun differential. Then it’s your emails on Tyler O’Neill’s performance versus good and bad pitchers, the direction of baseball’s popularity, and The Beach Boys. We finish by catching up with Ben, and discussing board games and multiple personality disorder.

As always, we hope you enjoy, and thank you for listening.

Music by Bad Bad Hats.

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As we enter the final few days of the regular season, our collective attention is fixed on the push for the few remaining playoffs spots, including the race for the American League Wild Card. Three East division clubs — the Yankees, Red Sox and Blue Jays — are competing for a shot at playing in the coin flip game, with the Mariners still clinging to a puncher’s chance that seems to grow by the day. All of the focus is on those teams’ games and the standings, as it should be, but as the Yankees take the field, something is quietly happening in the record books as well.

Enter Joey Gallo, one of the more inimitable talents in the game. There is no question that Gallo is a valuable player. Even with his struggles since being traded to New York at the end of July, his on-base skills and tremendous strength have him on the brink of a four-win season. But his is a profile of extremes. In the world of video games, particularly RPGs or any game in which you build a character with skill or attribute points, there is the concept of min-maxing a character. To min-max is to put all of one’s skill points in a small number of categories while ignoring the others. Gallo is the ultimate min-max character in that all of his offensive skill points have been put into two categories: power and patience. Read the rest of this entry »

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With the last full week of the regular season around the corner, it’s another episode ofChin Music. This week, the wonderful Chris Crawford of NBC Sports Edge joins me from the Pacific Northwest as we discuss all things baseball and plenty of other things, too. We begin with a look at the Wild Card races, including the surging Cardinals and the constantly shifting American League East standings, with a quick tangent on city-specific pizzas. Then we get into CardGate, before discussing the future of the San Diego Padres now that their season looks like it will soon be history.

We’re then joined by special guest Jesse Sanchez of MLB.com for an enlightening discussion on the past, present and future of international scouting. Then it’s your emails on R&D departments, umpire grading, DFA mechanics and guilty musical pleasures. We finish by catching up with Chris and offering a couple of film recommendations that fall on the intense side of things.

As always, we hope you enjoy, and thank you for listening.

Music by Guerilla Ghost.

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On a hot afternoon in St. Louis on August 8, in a game that felt meaningless at the time, the Cardinals rallied for three runs in the eighth inning to tie their game with the Royals at 5–5. In the next half inning, a Paul Goldschmidt throwing error and a go-ahead single by Nicky Lopez dropped St. Louis to 55–56, mired in third place in the National League Central. The team was 10.5 games behind Milwaukee for the division lead, 8.5 games behind the Padres for the second wild card spot, and, per our Playoff Odds, had a 1.4% chance of reaching the postseason.

But following that ugly loss, back-to-back sweeps of road series in Pittsburgh and Kansas City put the Cardinals back over the .500 mark for good, and a 10-game winning streak entering Wednesday’s game in Milwaukee has them with a commanding lead for that second Wild Card spot, and the overwhelming favorites to stay that way. Since that loss to the Royals, St. Louis has gone 26–13, but those hot streaks show just how, well, streaky the team has been; those 16 wins wrap around a 10–13 run.

Still, whether the wins come in bunches or not, the Cardinals have been one of the stories of September, and that story feels largely ignored, mostly due to the five-team dogfight that is the AL Wild Card and the back-and-forth NL West battle between the Dodgers and Giants. On last week’s episode of Chin Music, Joe Sheehan and I wondered why everyone was talking about the Blue Jays and not the Cardinals in the battle of surging birds. Our take: the team is boring. The Blue Jays have swag, infectious energy and cool jackets for when somebody hits home runs. The Cardinals, meanwhile, are relative automatons, getting overshadowed by a Toronto club that is just more fun to watch.

That’s not to take anything away from St. Louis. Entertainment value be damned, this is suddenly looking like a postseason team planning to line up a surprising ace for the coin-flip game. Here are five key factors as to how the Cardinals went from under .500 six weeks ago to being in the driver’s seat for that final playoff slot.

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Friday is Chin Music day, so here we are. My co-host this week is the always entertaining Joe Sheehan, who takes a break from the tables to join us from Las Vegas, Nevada of all places. We begin with the Wild Card races and a discussion of why the Blue Jays seem to be getting far more buzz than the similarly surging Cardinals, complete with a tangent about a playoff structure that would be better than the current system. Then it’s time to talk about front office movement, indulge a rant about getting worked up over awards voting in September, and admit to some begrudging respect for the Rays and their 300 or so good pitchers.

We’re then joined by special guest Jorge Castillo of The Los Angeles Times to discuss the 2021 Dodgers. We consider the team both on and off the field, as well as its path to remaining a dominant franchise. From there, it’s some wedding talk, plus your emails on rebuilding, an international draft, and medical situations, then catching up with Joe, and a plug for some books and podcasts to help you get through the day.

As always, we hope you enjoy, and thank you for listening.

Music by Circus Trees.

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From the offseason trade of Yu Darvish to the flurry of deals made at the deadline, the Cubs have focused on youth when it comes to prospect acquisition targets, at times to an extreme. That means fans at Wrigley Field will have to wait multiple years to see if the returns come to fruition, but in the meantime, the team is using what’s left of the season to evaluate not young players, but some older, unproven talents to see if any of them have a role to play in 2022 and beyond. To that end, the results have been mixed, but Chicago rode those players to an 11–7 record in the last 18 games.

Nobody expects the Cubs to make much of a push this winter, with 2022 looking like a clear rebuilding year, but some of these players may deserve a legitimate roster spot as opposed to being roster fodder. Here are four players, none of them originally signed by the Cubs and all well into their professional careers, who are making a case for more at-bats next year.

Michael Hermosillo, OF

Where He Came From: Hermosillo, who grew up a Cubs fan about a two-hour drive from Wrigley Field, was exceptionally raw coming from a rural Illinois school with poor competition, and most teams thought he would continue to refine his game at the college level. Instead, the Angels made him a 28th-round pick in the 2013 draft and gave him a $100,000 bonus to steer him away from a two-sport commitment to the University of Illinois. A late bloomer, he didn’t begin to garner prospect attention until a breakout campaign in 2016. Scouts saw him mostly as a player with a ceiling of a fourth outfielder; a trio of big league stints with the Angels from 2018 to ’20 led to few results and a removal from the 40-man roster, with the Cubs signing him last winter as a Triple-A depth piece.

What He’s Doing: Nothing right now, and both player and team are likely frustrated by the forearm strain that ended his latest big league audition after just 38 plate appearances. But while he didn’t do much during that brief stint, his showing in Triple-A Iowa inspired some confidence, as Chicago’s player development group simplified his swing and improved his bat path. The result was a .306/.446/.592 line in 43 games with unprecedented patience and power.

2022 Outlook: Still only 26 years old, Hermosillo’s speed and solid arm allow him to play anywhere in the outfield, and his combination of wheels and new-found pop should guarantee him a roster spot in 2022. In the end, the fourth outfielder projection that scouts put on him half a decade ago once again feels like the most likely outcome.

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