Language is rich with words and terms that recognize the contributions of historical figures. This can be a good thing, but also a bad one, depending on what’s being commemorated. You’d rather go down in history as the namesake of a popular sweater (like James Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan) or a certain type of legal protection (Ernesto Miranda) than for those traits by which Nicholas Chauvin or Ned Ludd are best remembered. In baseball, former utility infielder Mario Mendoza belongs to the latter category. Thanks to some creative but cruel teammates on the 1979 Mariners, Mendoza’s name has become synonymous with hitting futility. To fall below the Mendoza Line is to record a batting average below .200.

For a hitter both to qualify and to finish below the Mendoza Line actually represents a notable feat of ineptitude. One must not only fight the influence of the Regression Gods attempting to pull the hitter into the respectable company of the .200s, but also to play sufficiently well otherwise not to lose his job. It’s something Mario Mendoza himself never actually even achieved, coming closest in the black-magical 1979 season, but falling short due to manager Darrell Johnson’s mercy: Mendoza was frequently pinch-hit for in his third time up, was pinch-hit-for five times in his second plate appearance, and lost significant playing time to Larry Milbourne late in the season.

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As was the case for the fans an hour north in Baltimore — where franchise cornerstone Manny Machado entered the last year of his own contract — the 2018 campaign has, for Washington supporters, loomed in the distance like a poorly understood Mayan prophecy. It was, of course, Bryce Harper’s final season before entering free agency.

Unlike the Orioles, though, the Nationals were at least likely to provide some solace by remaining the class of the NL East until Harper left to grab his $300 million contract. Unfortunately for residents of the area, that merry scenario has not unfolded as expected. While the the Braves and Phillies seemed unlikely to have completed their rebuilds by the start of the 2018 season, both teams appear to have done exactly that, leaving the Nationals in third place a week from the deadline, six games back and a game below .500.

More surprising than the accelerated schedule of Atlanta and Philadelphia is Harper’s role in the poor season. Even hitting .216, Harper has been far from worthless, recording a .365 on-base and .470 slugging percentage for a 119 wRC+. With some poor defensive numbers added in, the result is a 1.4 WAR in nearly two-thirds of a season. A league-average player is a real contributor, of course, but a league-average Bryce Harper feels a little like Beethoven composing the radio jingle for a local pizza place.

(Historical note: Beethoven’s Der glorreiche Augenblick, Op. 136 isn’t really that far off from being this, but that’s a story for another day on another site — or, more likely, just a Google search.)

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Because they feature such a high concentration of pitching talent and because everyone’s stuff plays up in short stints, Futures Games are often fast-moving, low-scoring affairs. Since the game’s inception in 1999, for example, a team has scored three or fewer runs on 18 occasions. That was not the case on Sunday, however, as baseball’s top prospects combined for eight home runs. In the end, Team USA defeated Team World by a score of 10 to 6.

The end result of a prospect showcase like the Futures Game is essentially meaningless. Batting practice and infield/outfield drills, which occur before the cameras even turn on, are more informative. But, to me, the scouting-related feats of strength and athleticism seen throughout Sunday’s festivities (which I promise to address further down) were secondary to another development — namely, the number of and the performances by the game’s African-American players.

Only 7% of big leaguers are African-American, which is way down from about 27% during much of the 1970s. Articles about the declining number of black athletes in baseball have been written so frequently over the last half-decade that I assume readers are at least somewhat familiar with the issue, but if you’d like background, USA Today conducts the annual census. Like any shift of this magnitude, a confluence of variables is probably at the heart of what has caused this decline. Some of those are probably cultural, and this aspect of the decline is one about which people are quick to speculate , but, as a 29-year-old white guy, I’m not exactly qualified to discuss the African-American experience and how it does or does not intersect with baseball.

But I know the scouting process and, like many systems and processes in the United States, it has grown increasingly less suited for economically disadvantaged people — and people of color in this country are disproportionately poor. Showcases and travel ball are becoming a more significant aspect of scouting and player development in youth baseball. These cost money for the participants — to say nothing of flights to and from places like Florida and Arizona for several tournaments a year, mandated hotels in these locations, and the cost of breakable wood bats and other equipment. To take one example, each of the 328 teams participating in this week’s 2021 Class/Under 15 World Wood Bat Association Championship in Atlanta had a $2,500 entry fee, and it costs spectators $55 for a tournament pass and $5 to park. Baseball is a skill-based game and those skills are best refined against high levels of competition, but it’s expensive for an individual kid to play the kind of high-level baseball that helps develop those skills.

When I broach this subject with people in baseball, I’m met with some resistance from individuals who think the game is incentivized to mine as much talent as possible and that, poor or not, talent will be discovered. And while I agree with this premise, I think there are young athletes in this country who have the physical capability to play professional baseball but whom the scouting industry will never discover because that talent is never cultivated.

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When you do this as a full-time job, you spend a lot of time looking at the numbers. And when you spend a lot of time looking at the numbers, you start to notice certain outliers. Then you start to root for certain outliers. It’s hard to be a fan of a team, when you’re supposed to write about everyone objectively. So you settle on other interests. The Twins just called up an interest.

The Twins selected the contract of catcher/infielder Willians Astudillo from Triple-A Rochester. Astudillo appeared in 49 games for the Red Wings this season, hitting .290 (51-for-176) with 12 doubles, seven home runs and 25 RBI.

Astudillo is now on the roster at the expense of Felix Jorge. Or, if you want to look at it differently, he’s on the roster at the expense of Taylor Motter. Jorge was designated for assignment, and Motter was placed on the disabled list. And I don’t think the Twins want to be here; they’d rather be higher in the standings. They’d rather have a healthy Jason Castro. They’d rather have a productive Miguel Sano. The Twins would like to have a lot more things going right. But there’s the story of the team, and there are the stories of the team’s individual players. Circumstances have permitted Astudillo to reach the majors for the first-ever time. I’m sure he doesn’t care about the explanation. Astudillo has been a career-long outlier, and now he’ll receive his first major-league paycheck.

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I don’t know how exactly I came to occupy this particular beat, but it sure seems to be at least a little mine. One piece dedicated to wondering not if but why Adam Lind maybe visibly farted might be dismissed as a fluke, but this entry is likely sufficient to constitute a pattern. So here I am, the person who scrutinizes baseball players’ various public excretions. Today? Pooping!

On the June 26 episode of the Yahoo Sports MLB Podcast, Archie Bradley recounted a funny – if gross – story to Tim Brown. Per Mike Oz’s transcript:

“I was warming up to go in a game. I knew I had the next hitter. I knew he was on deck. The at-bat was kinda taking a little bit. As a bullpen guy in these big situations, I call ’em nervous pees, where like I don’t have to pee a lot, but I know I have to pee before I go in the game. I can’t believe I’m telling you this,” Bradley said to Yahoo Sports.

So it’s a 2-2 count, and I’m like, ‘Man, I have to pee. I have to go pee.’ So I run in our bathroom real quick, I’m ready to go. I’m trying to pee and I actually [expletive] my pants. Like right before I’m about to go in the game, I pooped my pants. I’m like ‘Oh my gosh.’ I know I’m a pitch away from going in the game, so I’m scrambling to clean myself up. I get it cleaned up the best I can, button my pants up, and our bullpen coach Mike Fetters says, ‘Hey, you’re in the game.’ So I’m jogging into the game to pitch with poop in my pants essentially.

It was the most uncomfortable I’ve ever been on the mound. And I actually had a good inning. I had a clean inning, and I walked in the dugout and I was like, ‘Guys, I just [expletive] myself.’ They didn’t believe me, then the bullpen came in and they’re like ‘Oh my God, you had to see this.’”

Bradley’s story contains a great many details — too many, it could be argued. But after listening to the podcast and reading the abundant coverage that followed (baseball writers: we love pooping!), I was struck by what was missing. For all his detail, Bradley never specifically told us when this incident occurred. Sure, he gave us clues. A bunch of clues, even. But he left the “when” of it as a little mystery, and I love mysteries. And yes, I’ll acknowledge I could have just tried to ask him. I’m a professional baseball writer. I could have contacted the Diamondbacks and said, “Hey, get Archie on the phone, will you?” But I didn’t. Despite his candor, it somehow felt overly familiar to ask a stranger when it was exactly that he suffered this (now) public indignity. So I began an investigation of my own; I set out to solve an icky mystery.

First, let’s review what we know. We know this occurred during a home game. We know the hitter up to bat immediately before Bradley entered the game was in a 2-2 count when the nervous pees struck, which suggests another pitcher or pitchers appeared in the inning prior to his outing. The podcast confirms he was wearing white pants. We know that, despite his plight, he threw a “clean inning.” We know all that — and also that he had some amount of poop in his pants. We assume he is a reliable narrator. What choice do we have?

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Buck Showalter has been around the game for a long time. He’s been at the helm in Baltimore since 2010. Before that, he skippered the Yankees, Diamondbacks, and Rangers. After five years of managing in the minors, he got his first big-league job in 1992. It’s safe to say that Showalter has seen baseball evolve, and it’s equally safe to say that he’s evolved along with it.

At his core, though, Showalter has remained much the same. He’s smart, and to his credit — although sometimes to his detriment — he’s rarely shy about expressing an opinion. At 62 years old, with four decades in the game, he’s earned the right to do so. Buck being Buck, that’s usually a good thing.

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Buck Showalter: “One thing about analytics is that we all question what we don’t understand. You need to learn, so during the spring we do Analytics for Dummies. That’s what we call it. We take our most veteran baseball people, our on-the-field lifers, and bring them upstairs to go over every analytic there is and find the [equivalent of a] .300 batting average in every one of them. We take the black cloud of unknown away from it.

“What we’ve found is that most of our veteran people go, ‘Oh, really? That’s all it is?’ They’re not demeaning it, they’re just saying, ‘Now I understand.’ Know where the .300 batting average of WAR is, and what it tells you. Just as important, what doesn’t it tell you that you have to be aware of.

“There’s also the environment you create. You need an environment where you’ll respect what they bring and where thy’ll respect what the field personnel can bring. The best organizations are the ones that branch those together to make evaluations.

“A problem you run into now is that the players feel almost robotically evaluated. The sixth tool is not… it’s only evaluated by the people that are with them every day. The makeup, the want-to, the crunch-time guys: everybody on the field knows who they are.

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There is considerable teeth-gnashing going on around the game due to a lack of action on the field. Those criticisms are not unfounded. All things being equal, the game is better with more and not less action. A walk might be nearly as good as a hit when it comes to scoring runs, but it is considerably less exciting. A strikeout does have some excitement of its own, but on a large field that ranges out to 400 feet in most parks, concentrating much of the action to the first 60 feet has some drawbacks when it comes to demanding and retaining the attention of fans.

In any given confrontation, both the pitcher and batter exert considerable influence over the outcome of an at-bat. Because of that, it might seem reasonable to place equal blame on the hitters and pitchers for the increase in strikeouts. In an era defined by greater velocity and more frequent shifts, one argument goes, batters are failing to adjust. If they would just take the ball the other way, they might strike out less, get more hits, etc.

That might be true. It is also possible, however, that changing their approaches might lead hitters to produce less valuable outcomes or, worse, abandon the very strengths that allowed them to become major leaguers in the first place. That isn’t fair to hitters. What I’d like to posit here is a much simpler explanation for the rise in strikeouts — namely, that pitchers are too good.

Fastball velocity has increased at a steady rate, some of that due to the rise of relief innings around the league and some of it probably to dramatic improvements in training and development. That’s not really the point of this post, though. The point of this post is to discuss one particular cause of the increase in strikeouts that likely has little to do with launch angle or players trying to hit home runs, but rather the talent level of the pitchers and a change in philosophy.

Below is a scatter plot of MLB strikeout percentage and average fastball velocity.

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The Angels have struggled recently, losing seven out of 10 games to the Twins, Astros, and Rays and falling from a tie atop the AL West to 3.5 games back. Over the weekend, though, Mike Trout did something special. While going 3-for-8 with a double, a pair of homers, and four walks in 12 plate appearances against Tampa Bay, he pushed his seasonal WAR (Baseball-Reference flavor) to 4.0 and his career WAR to 58.2. With that, he reached the JAWS standard for center fielders, the average of each Hall of Fame center fielder’s career WAR and his seven-year peak WAR.

Mike Trout is two-and-a-half months shy of his 27th birthday.

Mike Trout has played six full seasons and parts of two others — roughly a quarter apiece — in the majors.

Mike Trout has not played long enough to be eligible for the Hall of Fame.

Mike Trout is very, very, very good at baseball.

You probably knew most of the above, qualitatively if not down to the first decimal place, and after six-plus years of reading about his feats at the plate, on the bases and in the field, you might be somewhat jaded as to his exploits. Right now, he might not even the most popular Los Angeles Angel thanks to the virtually unprecedented two-way prowess of Shohei Ohtani, the Most Interesting Man in the World. Trout, aside from his baseball excellence and his earnest fascination with meteorology, is not that interesting, much to the chagrin of those who fret about Major League Baseball’s lack of a Lebron James-level Face of the Game.

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Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and Alex Rodriguez: at some point soon, Albert Pujols will join this exclusive company, the list of players who have attained both the 3,000-hit and 600-home-run milestones. With a home run and a double off Dylan Bundy on Wednesday night, the 38-year-old slugger is at 2,998 hits after collecting just four in his previous seven games. His mid-April hot streak, such as it was, is a memory.

Baseball’s major milestones and records are supposed to be opportunities to celebrate careers, the totality of a player’s accomplishments, the road he took along the way, and the connection to history. But as they tip their caps, too often they remind us that the man we’re cheering is far from the player he once was. In Pujols’ case, the difference is particularly striking, as it’s almost impossible to fathom the gap between “the best player of this young millennium” and “the worst regular in the majors,” or how a single player might hold both titles at the same time. Any honest reckoning with his career, however, will take us to this uncomfortable place.

The Pujols who earned the first of those titles is the one we’ll be celebrating when hit number 3,000 drops. That guy — a powerful but bad-bodied 13th-round 1999 pick out of Maple Woods Community College who rocketed three levels in his lone minor league season and was in the majors by 2001 — is the stuff of legend. Pujols’ All-Star and unanimous NL Rookie of the Year-winning debut (.329/.403/.610, 37 HR, 130 RBI) began an amazing 11-year run during which he hit a combined .328/.420/.617 while averaging 40 homers, 121 RBIs and 7.4 WAR, made nine All-Star teams, won three MVP awards and a batting title, with 19 top-three slash-stat finishes. In 2006, -08 and, -09, he led the league in slugging percentage, wRC+,and WAR. His 81.4 WAR for that span was 27.1 more than the next-highest total, Bonds’ 54.3, and his 167 wRC+ trailed only Bonds’ 208, over more than double the plate appearances. On a rate-stat or prorated basis, Bonds did have more value during the period the two players overlapped, but beyond the video-game stats he put up from 2001 to -04, he didn’t have much value outside the batter’s box, producing just 7.1 WAR from 2005 to -07, his age-40 to -42 seasons.

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Between West 124th and 125th Streets on St. Nicholas Ave. in Harlem rests a street-level commercial space situated between a Dollar Tree and a Chuck E. Cheese’s, and it is where Adam Ottavino might have saved his career last winter.

The space was a solution to a problem. He lived in the city in the offseason with his wife and two-year-old daughter. In previous offseasons, he had traveled out to Long Island to work and throw at a facility, but the commute and practice time away was beginning to strain his family.

Moreover, Ottavino’s previous throwing partner, Steven Matz, had left the city and moved Nashville, Tenn., after becoming engaged. Finding a throwing partner and facility in Manhattan, the most prized real estate in the country, wasn’t easy. He knew Matt Harvey was one of a few major-league pitchers living in the city in the offseason, so he asked Harvey if he was interested in finding a place to throw, but Harvey declined.

“At that point, I was kind of screwed,” Ottavino said. “I didn’t know what to do.”

Ottavino, a Brooklyn native, required a productive offseason. He was left off the Rockies’ Wild Card roster weeks earlier after an awful 2017 season when he walked nearly seven batters per nine innings, leading to a 16% walk rate. He was in the final year of his contract. He had spent some time at Driveline Baseball after the season ended. He thought he had now had some solutions. He had bought tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment with which to try and make himself a better pitcher. But he needed a place to experiment.

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