Things could be going better for Brayan Bello. I guess that’s true of most Red Sox players these days, but the right-hander is having an especially rough go of things. On Sunday, Bello took the decision in an 8-1 loss to the Braves, allowing seven earned runs in five innings pitched.

That kind of line doesn’t necessarily signal a terrible outing; sometimes a starter trudges along in quality-start territory before running into trouble late. A couple quick walks, then the bullpen lets a couple inherited runners score… three runs allowed over four innings can turn into seven runs in five innings in a flash.

That wasn’t the case here. Seven of the first 10 Braves hitters reached base; five of them scored. Manager Chad Tracy let Bello wear it until he’d reached five innings and 98 pitches. And it was Bello’s 27th birthday on Sunday, too. Usually you only hear “wear it” on a guy’s birthday in the context of a party hat or a new shirt. Read the rest of this entry »

Trivia question for you: Which active pitcher has the lowest career ERA, with a minimum of 50 innings pitched? Paul Skenes is third, Jhoan Duran is ninth, Jacob deGrom is all the way down in 20th.

The answer is Erik Sabrowski, and by a pretty big margin. Sabrowski’s 1.47 career ERA is 0.41 runs lower than that of second-place Emmanuel Clase, who I guess is still technically an active player. He has Skenes beat by half a run. Read the rest of this entry »

Geraldo Perdomo makes me happy. He’s a really good player with an interesting skill set, and he seems like a pleasant person. Last year, he hit .290 with 20 home runs, 27 stolen bases, and more walks than strikeouts. Combined with even adequate shortstop defense, you’d think that would make him one of the most valuable players in the league, and you’d be right.

In a world without Shohei Ohtani, we could’ve had a fun multidirectional NL MVP discussion involving Perdomo, Juan Soto, Kyle Schwarber, Trea Turner, Corbin Carroll, and maybe even Paul Skenes. As it stands, Ohtani won in a walk and Perdomo finished fourth. But it’s an honor to even be in the discussion.

What do I want? More Perdomo. We kind of got that last year with Maikel Garcia’s breakout season, but I wasn’t satisfied. Last November, I went on a search for the next Perdomo. I identified young players with elite contact skills, elite plate discipline, rock-bottom bat speed, and the athleticism to play up the middle. Read the rest of this entry »

In a world defined and cheapened by soulless and repetitive optimization, the Cleveland Guardians are intractably themselves. Make no mistake, the Guardians’ quirks and foibles are the result of those same nihilistic capitalist forces; they’re trying to compete against teams with less-tightfisted owners in more fashionable locales. Those restrictions have shaped the Guardians into something gnarled and odd and occasionally unsightly, like a knotted tree sprouting from a rockface, or a squid that’s evolved to live in darkness 10,000 feet below the ocean surface.

It’s not always traditionally pretty, but it’s unique.

Here we are, in the middle of May, with Cleveland once again in sole possession of first place in the AL Central. (Don’t look at anyone’s record within the division, I’m making a point.) Not everything has gone smoothly for the Guardians so far this year, but they’re getting contributions where it counts. Especially from Parker Messick. Read the rest of this entry »

On April 29, 2021, Matt Olson hit himself in the face with a baseball in the batting cage at Tropicana Field. A freak bounce off the L-screen left him with the kind of shiner an athlete can usually only acquire by going 12 rounds with Marvin Hagler, but fortunately no lasting damage. By May 2, Olson was well enough to return to the lineup, and he hasn’t missed a game since.

Olson’s consecutive games streak now stands at 820; not only is this the longest active run in baseball, he recently passed Nellie Fox for the 11th-longest streak in MLB history. Assuming he avoids any further batting practice mishaps, Olson will end the season with the eighth-longest streak ever. Only seven players in MLB history — and 10 in all of North American top-level sports — have ever played in 1,000 straight games. Olson is due to become the 11th before the All-Star break next year. Read the rest of this entry »

In my free time, I write a newsletter about professional cycling, because my idea of a hobby is “my day job, but on wheels.” (It’s called Wheelysports, you can find it on Medium or sign up here to get it by email. It’s free, it comes out once a week. The last edition was about a guy who had to drop out of a race because of a perineal cyst. It’s fun.)

In the cycling world, there’s a little Slovenian guy named Tadej Pogačar who’s laying waste to all and sundry. The headline figure is that he’s won the Tour de France four times and is going for a record-tying fifth title this summer at age 28, but that undersells how dominant he’s been over the past few years. I don’t think there’s an argument anymore, he’s the best to ever do it.

And it’s not just that Pogačar is the best bike racer in the world; he’s the best at every component of the sport, which is incredibly rare. That level of versatility is basically unheard of since the days of Eddy Merckx, who is the Babe Ruth of cycling.

Pogačar’s feats are awe-inspiring, and every week it seems like he sets a new record or does something historic, but after years of writing about him, I’m starting to run out of things to say. There are no more superlatives left to lavish upon so great an athlete.

Sound like anyone you know? Read the rest of this entry »

You’ve probably heard of Davis Martin, or someone like him. Martin is a 6-foot-2 right-handed pitcher out of Texas Tech. But he’s not Tyler Davis, a 6-foot-2 right-hander who played at Sam Houston State. Davis is Martin’s teammate. Neither is he Corbin Martin, a 6-foot-2 right-hander out of Texas A&M. Corbin Martin plays for the other Chicago team.

Davis Martin is also not Caleb Kilian, his college teammate, who stands 6-foot-4 and plays for the Giants. Kilian played at Texas Tech with 6-foot-2 right-hander Clayton Beeter, now of the Nationals, and 6-foot-1 right-hander Caleb Freeman. Freeman and Davis Martin both pitched for the White Sox last year, but they’re not the same guy. Chris Martin is easier to remember: Texan and right-handed, but too tall and too old. Austin Davis is a lefty. Austin Martin is a position player. OK, I think we’re out of the woods now. Read the rest of this entry »

A year ago Sunday, Anthony Volpe went down in a heap after diving for a grounder in the 5-6 hole. The Yankee shortstop felt a pop in his non-throwing shoulder, but he stayed in the game, and imaging didn’t turn up anything untoward.

At least not in the moment. The shoulder nagged Volpe for the rest of the season, and after the Yankees’ ALDS loss to Toronto, he went in for surgery to repair a partially torn labrum. Shoulder surgery has a long timeline for rehab — even when performed on the non-throwing shoulder of a position player — so Volpe missed all of spring training. He reported to Double-A for a rehab assignment on April 14, and when his 20 days were up, the Yankees activated him… and optioned him straight to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. Read the rest of this entry »

The Mets lost 12 games in a row earlier this month. You might’ve heard something about this. You also might be aware that the Mets were without their best player, Juan Soto, for that entire 12-game skid. Soto, who’d be the best player on most teams, was on the shelf with a strained calf.

Soto came back on April 22, and as if by literary contrivance, the Mets’ skid stopped immediately. One 3-2 win at home against the Twins, and the Mets were all set to try to dig themselves out of that hole.

Or so you’d think. Read the rest of this entry »

A major league debut is always an exciting occasion; it represents hope for the team and its fans, and the culmination of a lifetime of hard work for the player. I’m a cynical old crank, but I never tire of watching proud parents gush about their beloved son in a mid-inning interview with a sideline reporter.

It’s not remarkable that, in the fourth inning of the Guardians’ 1-0 loss against the Rays, that Gary Bazzana flushed red and got choked up when telling Andre Knott about his son. What’s remarkable is that he talked about his son in an Australian accent.

See, Tuesday marked the long-awaited debut of the no. 1 pick in the 2024 draft, second baseman Travis Bazzana. Read the rest of this entry »