Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week, April 28

Welcome to another edition of five things that I liked (or didn’t like) in baseball this week. I got the idea for this column from Zach Lowe, who writes my favorite basketball column with the same conceit. This week’s edition is highlighted by superstars being superstars, pitchers trying everything they can to keep evolving, and, of course, my two favorite topics: bunts and errors. Let’s get to it.

1. Jacob deGrom’s Cold Fury
Order has been restored – Jacob deGrom is back from injury and is once again the best pitcher in baseball. After an Opening Day hiccup, he looks a lot like he did the last time he was terrifying opposing hitters: upper-90s fastball, wipeout slider, and pinpoint command that makes the whole thing feel vaguely unfair. In his past three outings, one of which was shortened thanks to a mini injury scare, he has 25 strikeouts and one walk. Even if you don’t want to separate it that way, he has 43 strikeouts and three walks on the year. It’s outrageous.

Also outrageous: his competitive fire. Sunday afternoon, he served up a meatball to Shea Langeliers, who promptly launched it into the seats to cut Texas’ lead to 4-2. It was only the fifth inning – was deGrom tiring? Was there more than met the eye with that injury scare? As it turns out, there wasn’t, and deGrom made perfectly sure that we knew it. He blew away the next batter, Taylor Ward Tyler Wade, with a pinpoint fastball:

He undressed Esteury Ruiz with a bushelful of sliders:

Next inning, he gave Ryan Noda a brutal 1-2-3 punch of fastball/slider/changeup:

Jesús Aguilar went down on three straight pitches that hit three distinct corners:

Poor Jace Peterson only lasted four pitches, and honestly, what in the world are you supposed to do with these?

Every pitcher gives up home runs from time to time, whether on a fat pitch or to a batter who just beats them. It doesn’t seem to anger other pitchers like it does deGrom, though. He stalked the mound, looking quietly furious from the time he gave up the homer until he left the game. When he’s healthy, there’s simply no one else like deGrom, and this weekend was a good reminder of that.

2. Mookie Betts, Shortstop
We aren’t talking about this enough. Mookie Betts is one of the best right fielders of his generation, a likely Hall of Famer still in his prime. He’s won six Gold Gloves out there, including one last year. He’s logged more than 9,000 major league innings in the outfield, making first Fenway Park and then Dodger Stadium a terrible place for opposing hitters to hit fly balls to right. Then one day, he became a shortstop.

Betts last played shortstop for 106 innings in 2012, for the Low-A Lowell Spinners. He was an infield prospect, but mostly at second base, and it sure seemed like the outfield was a better fit, what with all those Gold Gloves. But the Dodgers lost Gavin Lux and Miguel Rojas to injury, and it turns out that the best shortstop on their roster is also the best right fielder – and presumably the best at almost every position given that he can handle those two.

A 30-year-old playing shortstop for the first time in 10 years shouldn’t be this smooth:

I don’t have any defensive metrics worth sharing with you, but I don’t care. Shortstop is the hardest defensive position outside of catcher. Prospects spend years honing their actions and reflexes before they look natural out there. Most shortstops have been shortstops their entire lives; it’s where you put the best athlete on the team starting in tee ball, and the ones who go on to reach the majors mostly continue being the best athlete on the field as they grow up.

Betts just spent a decade playing right field. He should look awkward out there. He should have to think about the angles for an extra split second. He should react late, or take bad routes to in-between hops. His footwork should be shoddy. He should look, well, not like this:

I already believed that Betts was one of the most coordinated human beings on the planet. He seems to have exact control of himself at all times, an underrated superpower but one that you need if you’re going to hit for power and average with his frame. Now he’s casually learning to play shortstop on the fly. In the major leagues. At 30. What an absolute legend. Treasure the chances you get to watch him play, because there aren’t many like him.

3. A Much-Needed Adjustment by Miles Mikolas
If you don’t count the contract extension he signed before the season, Miles Mikolas has had a forgettable 2023. His 7.46 ERA entering Thursday’s action says a lot about how the year was going, but if you’re more of a process statistics type, how about a 5.53 FIP? Opponents have been absolutely teeing off on him this season, launching hard-hit balls with reckless abandon.

The biggest culprit was his fastball. Mikolas is a finesse pitcher, and his fastball location simply wasn’t fine enough to make up for its otherwise hittable profile. He throws a mix of sinkers and four-seamers, but neither was up to the task in his first four starts, which is how you end up with an 8.10 ERA.

Last Saturday, Mikolas came up with a new plan: hit ‘em with the curveball. He hadn’t prioritized the pitch early in the year; he used both fastballs and his slider more frequently. Against the dangerous Mariners, he came out spinning:

In addition to those early-count curves, he wasn’t afraid to throw the pitch with two strikes; he threw 12 of them in two-strike counts, getting three strikeouts and three weakly struck outs for his trouble without allowing a hit. Some of it was wipeout curves:

But some, too, was turning Eugenio Suárez into a statue with a perfectly located rainbow:

Between his slider and curve, more than half of Mikolas’ offerings in the game were breaking balls. They were effective breaking balls, too: the Mariners didn’t manage a single hit off of them, and none resulted in a walk, either. It’s the kind of equalizer he needs to keep batters from sitting on his fastball, particularly when he’s capable of throwing a curveball for a strike.

So, how’d the start go? Poorly! Those darn Mariners had a plan – wait out the breaking pitches and feast on juicy fastballs. Jarred Kelenic and Teoscar Hernández deposited two in the outfield seats, and Mikolas’ tough season rolled on. “Back to the drawing board,” he (perhaps) yelled into his glove:

Note: Mikolas got his ERA down below 6.00 with a strong start against the Giants yesterday. He threw 50% breaking balls and used his four-seamer less than any other pitch.

4. LaMonte Wade Jr. Doubles Down
This column is a noted proponent of bunting content, and there was a doozy this week. You’ve surely heard about bunt doubles, perhaps thanks to Davy Andrews’ recent article about them. They’re cool and rare. Have you heard of a double bunt, though?

Saturday against the Mets, LaMonte Wade Jr. found a decent spot for a bunt. Heliot Ramos led off the bottom of the second with a double, and the Giants already led 4-0. That’s a great spot to try to bunt for a hit. The sacrifice is at its most valuable, moving a runner to third with less than two outs, and taking a single run over the chance of many more is a better deal when you’re already up by a decent amount. The Giants don’t need an excuse to bunt, anyway: they lead baseball in bunt hits.

Between their propensity to bunt and the fact that it was a decent place for a sacrifice, Wade made up his mind. I’m not saying that he would be happy with a sacrifice, but the balance of risks is more attractive here than in most spots. Given that, he decided to go for it. For a moment, it looked like Wade bunted poorly and got rewarded:

That’s not a great bunt, but David Peterson turned it from a sacrifice to a bonanza by tossing the ball in the general direction of Alameda instead of to Pete Alonso. Or so it appeared, until home plate umpire Chad Whitson sent everyone back to their previous stations and wiped the play out of existence. Why? Wade had gotten a bit too bunt-happy:

Wade wasn’t happy with a single bunt; he had to go back to the well for another. I’ve heard of players trying two bunts in a row, but uh, not like this.

In case you need a quick refresher on arbitrary fair/foul rules, a ball can be fair if it makes contact with home plate but ends up in fair territory. That’s what probably would have happened if the ball hadn’t rebounded into Wade’s bat. But per Rule 5.09(a)(7)-(8), a ball that touches the batter or his bat while they are still in the batter’s box and not intentionally interfering with the course of the ball is considered foul. Side note: the person in charge of numbering the rules didn’t exactly knock it out of the park.

Look, not every one of my five things is particularly deep. I just like seeing someone bunt the ball twice on a single pitch. Here it is again in slow motion:

Wade struck out. The Giants cashed in two runs in the inning anyway and won 7-4. The game wasn’t particularly memorable. But for me, at least, the double bunt was.

5. Thairo Estrada’s Mad Dash
Speaking of the Giants, I went to the Tuesday night clash between them and the Cardinals and was treated to a real gem. If you’ve heard about this game, it’s probably because Blake Sabol chonked one to center for a walk-off home run, a great story for a Rule 5 pick. That might have been the headline, but I can’t stop thinking about a play that happened in the early innings, opening the scoring and providing the eventual winning margin.

It didn’t look like much. Thairo Estrada was on first base with one out in the second inning when he decided to steal second. He’s a good baserunner who hadn’t been caught in his first five attempts of the year, and truth be told, he had the base stolen on Jake Woodford right from the start:

That snap from-the-knees throw that Willson Contreras attempted is a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency option. He knew he didn’t have time to rise and fire, so it was that or concede the stolen base. Even in that shortened clip, though, you can tell that the throw wasn’t on line. Considering what happened next, maybe he should have just held the ball:

It feels like rubbernecking to watch this play from too many angles, but hey, who doesn’t like a good slowly unfolding, low stakes disaster? First, Contreras rushed the throw so much that he missed second base by a mile. Tommy Edman abandoned the base to try to save the throw, but he didn’t have much of a shot; it just missed by too much:

You’ve seen that part of the play a thousand times before. Every time a throw overshoots second base, the runner locates the ball and then trots to third base if it’s far enough away. I really do mean trot, too: that’s always a half-paced jog, because the base is essentially free. Estrada did just that:

But Dylan Carlson was dreaming about the garlic fries he was going to get after the game, or maybe imagining a beautiful sunset seen from the Golden Gate Bridge. He overran the ball on what was supposed to be cleanup duty, the kind of thing you do in your sleep, or in this case, a nightmare:

Estrada and third base coach Mark Hallberg both realized at the same time:

You’re not supposed to score from first on a steal, but well, big leaguers aren’t supposed to overrun that ball in the outfield. It’s kind of amazing how thin the margins are in the majors. Estrada jogged to third, as all players do, because there’s no real chance of scoring from second base there. Carlson overran the ball by a matter of feet; it’s not like it rolled to the wall or anything. And yet, that was enough to turn a standard play into one I haven’t seen in recent memory. Everyone is great in the major leagues, and the balance is precise; a few hiccups, and you’ve got runners scoring from first base without a ball in play.

I hope you enjoyed this look through some of my favorite parts of the week. Until next time, enjoy baseball not just for the big stories but for the little ones as well.