Diamondbacks righthander Zac Gallen is one of those guys who’s always trying to improve. That’s true of almost all pro athletes, these hypercompetitive oddballs constantly in search of new ways to get one over on an opponent. But Gallen, famous for his methodical catch play and insatiable appetite for information, embodies the stereotype more than most.

One skill the 27-year-old Gallen has honed for 2023: managing ticket requests from family. On Wednesday afternoon, Gallen makes his third career start at Citizens Bank Park, less than six miles from his high school baseball field in Pennsauken, New Jersey. So whenever he comes to Philadelphia, there are obligations to meet.

“I think it’s on the tamer side for the most part, but my mom’s side of the family is huge so it’s still a good chunk of tickets for sure,” he says. “Every year when we come back and I’m pitching, I’m trying to get better at managing all the extra stuff that comes with playing in your hometown.” Read the rest of this entry »

Only 62 men and 20 women have scored a goal in a FIFA World Cup Final. It’s a rare achievement that holds a sacred place in sports history. Being the starting pitcher in a World Baseball Classic final is a bit less prestigious — at least for now, check back with me in 60 years to know for sure — but only 10 people can say they’ve done it.

Among them, Diamondbacks right-hander Merrill Kelly. “I’ve said it a million times before, but I’m super grateful I was able to be a part of it. Just the clubhouse in general, the quality of players on that team — by far the best team I’ve ever been on and it isn’t close,” he says. “Obviously, we would’ve liked it to go a different way in the last game.”

The circumstances that led to Kelly starting that game are interesting. When Team USA was setting up its rotation for the group stage, Kelly lobbied manager Mark DeRosa for the toughest assignment of pool play: Mexico. That start went to Padres right-hander Nick Martinez, who got crushed in an 11-5 loss. (This result led to Kelly being on the receiving end of some good-natured trash talk when he and Team Mexico center fielder Alek Thomas returned to Diamondbacks camp.)

When Kelly picked up a crucial win in the pool finale against Colombia three day days later, there was a silver lining to not getting his preferred rotation spot.

“One of the things DeRosa told me to console me was if I pitched against Colombia at home, that would line me up for the championship as well,” he says. Read the rest of this entry »

Alexis Díaz is having a great season. He’s struck out 30 of the 61 batters he’s faced and held opponents to a .113 batting average. In most cases, that would make him the best pitcher in his own nuclear family. Unfortunately, he has an older brother. Last season, Edwin Díaz led all relievers in strikeout rate. This season, Alexis has the best strikeout rate among relievers. Edwin led the league in reliever WAR last season, and Alexis is currently tied for second. If Yennier Cano ever gives up a run, which does not look likely to happen anytime soon, Alexis could take over the league lead in that category as well.

The Díazes are the Sultans of Swing-and-Miss. I bet you thought I was going to go for “Brothers in Arms,” which is the reference that’s been busted out for every family of pitchers since humanity first discovered Mark Knopfler back in the 1970s. But no, Dire Straits has a wide and venerable catalog of songs appropriate for this situation. You might say that because Edwin’s return from knee surgery is So Far Away, the Mets are paying him Money for Nothing this season. Read the rest of this entry »

Anyone feel up for a rousing game of “Guess the Player from the Anonymized Stat Line?” I usually don’t like this game; it was a fun way to kill time on Twitter 10 years ago, but it feels kind of hacky anymore. But this one’s a real doozy, a fun enough set of anonymized stat lines that I’m willing to set aside my distaste and dive right in.

Here are three players from the NL West. They are all in the top five in the majors in walk rate among qualified hitters. They play for different teams, and for the most part they play different positions. Nevertheless, all three are within a couple tenths of a run of each other in terms of baserunning and defensive value — the bat is the important thing:

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What’s got four thumbs and is set up for a real doozy of a pitchers’ duel in Arlington this evening? That’s right, Nathan Eovaldi and Spencer Strider. These two are second and third in baseball in pitcher WAR, and have many things in common besides: They’re both right-handed starters with big fastball velocity who are pitching well now after struggling to stay healthy at times… Okay, that’s about all they have in common.

It’s a bit early in the season for any individual game to be a must-watch, particularly an interleague matchup between two teams with basically no history apart from the Mark Teixeira trade. But if you’ve got time to kill and no strong preference about which game to scroll down to on MLB.TV, this is set to be the best pitching matchup of the night, and one of the best of the entire season so far.

Strider has become one of the most internet-popular pitchers out there for three reasons. First and most important, he’s good. Second, Strider has the vibe of a cool nerd from the early 2010s. He and a friend, inspired by their frustration with Pitchfork’s album grades, maintain a detailed Google Sheet where they rank indie rock records. Baseball Twitter is full of lapsed emo kids with too much liberal arts education for their own good (including me), and these folks love nothing so much as a ballplayer who gives the impression of having read a book once. Read the rest of this entry »

The Chicago White Sox really ought to be praying to whatever deity is currently tormenting them with plagues of locusts and pestilence, and thanking her that even more conspicuous travesties against baseball are occurring in St. Louis and Oakland.

A couple weeks ago, Jay Jaffe wrote about the terrible goings-on over in Chicago in general terms. I would’ve titled that piece “And I Looked, and Behold a Pale Hose: and His Name that Sat on Him Was Death, and Hell Followed With Him.” Jay opted for the more direct “The White Sox Are Utterly Terrible,” which they were then and are now.

Their failures this season have been so complete that it’d be unfair to blame any one player or coach, and at any rate that’s not the purpose of this post. That purpose: to examine a player once viewed as a unique talent, for whom things have gone badly off the rails. Michael Kopech is in the rotation full-time — a rarity in his Bright Eyes concept album of a career — but things are not going well. Read the rest of this entry »

If you have any sense at all, you probably deactivated your Facebook account years ago, and thus liberated yourself from knowing intimate details about your distant relatives, schoolmates, and old co-workers. In this situation, it’s nevertheless helpful if your partner, or a close friend, remains plugged in. All the more so if they’re an inveterate gossip. Because even if you don’t want the fire hose of information, a little splash of water every now and then is refreshing.

Your second cousin once removed? Getting divorced for the third time, and getting really into NFTs about a year too late. The girl you asked (unsuccessfully) to junior prom? Just won a local Emmy for her work as a TV meteorologist. Booger from the sales department at your first job out of college? Newly ordained as a deacon at his church. Good for you, Booger.

As we go through life, we accumulate people according to time and context. A very small percentage of those stick and become lifelong friends; most drift away when circumstances change. Even people who are vitally important at one time — even roommates, romantic partners, confidants — float away sooner or later, to be replaced by some other person more suitable to the new social context. Read the rest of this entry »

When the Red Sox signed Orix Buffaloes star Masataka Yoshida over the winter, suffice it to say I was intrigued. In his walk year, in the second-best league in the world, he hit .336/.449/.559 with 21 home runs and 82 walks against just 42 strikeouts. In the 20 months leading up to his competitive debut in MLB, he had made two NPB All-Star teams and won a batting title, a Japan Series, an Olympic gold medal, and a WBC title. In the latter event, he went 9-for-22 with two home runs and struck out just once.

I don’t pretend to know much about what goes on in NPB, but everything I’d heard about Yoshida was exciting: Here was this ultra-high contact hitter who idolized Bryce Harper and posted basically peak Juan Soto numbers against the toughest pitching you’ll find outside MLB. Moreover, no baseball player’s name is more fun to say in an Australian accent, if you care about that sort of thing.

Whenever a star player comes over from Japan, there’s a natural excitement. North American baseball is so saturated with information that it’s a refreshing change when a fully formed top-level pro appears from another league — all the more so because every newcomer presents the opportunity to learn. American baseball pedagogy is as open-minded now as it’s ever been, but it still imposes an orthodoxy. Athletes are molded to fit an ideal; if not intentionally, then they mold themselves. Read the rest of this entry »

An increase in stolen bases wasn’t the primary aim of MLB’s offseason rule changes, but it was expected to be a happy side effect of new timing rules and bigger bases. Baseball fans will argue about just about anything, but stolen bases enjoy near-universal popularity. They’re exciting to watch, and they reward athleticism and initiative. The only drawback: They’re risky. And the new rules would mitigate that risk.

Over the first weekend of the season, the Orioles brought forth a new golden age of basestealing in the span of two days. In 10 attempts, they stole 10 bases off the Red Sox, and they did so without coming particularly close to getting thrown out.

“We just knew we needed to do a better job with the run game after that series,” Red Sox catcher Connor Wong says. “You can’t let guys run all over you and get into scoring position all the time.” Read the rest of this entry »

On July 16, 2013, Tom Seaver threw out the first pitch at the All-Star Game at Citi Field in New York. It was an unforgettable moment in isolation, but the context thickened the atmosphere to mugginess with implication.

Warming up in the bullpen was Matt Harvey, a 24-year-old from Connecticut who’d been chosen to start the game for the National League. Ten days shy of a year in the majors, Harvey had become one of the most effective, and most-discussed, pitchers in the sport. From the day of his debut until the day of his All-Star start, he was fifth among qualified starters in WAR, third in K%, and sixth in ERA-.

But he wasn’t just effective; he was electric. He overpowered hitters with his upper-90s velocity and cruel breaking pitches. And he was doing it in a Mets ecosystem that, after several years of being squished by division rivals, cried out desperately for… actually, it just cried out desperately in general. Harvey wasn’t just branded a future Cy Young winner, but the next great New York baseball star. Seaver was genuinely handing the ball to his heir presumptive. Read the rest of this entry »