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

Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. I took a two month hiatus from writing this column because we had a heavy summer of evaluating baseball, and as it turns out, it’s tough to both analyze baseball and watch it entirely out of a sense of whimsy. But now the tables have turned. There are no more studies to do on prospect valuation. The trade values have been tabulated. The deadline has passed. The playoffs are still a month away. There’s not much to do other than watch baseball and enjoy, whether it’s playoff races, dominant performances, exciting debuts, or just the beauty of a well-played game on a warm summer evening. So kick back, relax, and join me in thanking Zach Lowe of The Ringer for the article format that I’ve been riffing on for the past four years.

1. Rangy Infielders
During the peak of the infield shift, 5-3 double plays had a brief heyday. With three defenders on the right side of the infield against most lefty batters, the third baseman played a de facto shortstop for large portions of most games. When those lefties grounded out to short with runners on, third basemen somewhat frequently fielded the ball, stepped on second, and threw to first to complete the play. But with two infielders now required to be on each side of second base, it wouldn’t make any sense for a third baseman to get the ball and then sprint past the shortstop to tag the base and make the relay throw.

Or would it?

David Hamilton lined up normally on this play, flanking to the right of Joey Ortiz in the shift, with Ortiz retreating to double play depth. When Matt Olson put the ball on the ground, Hamilton did what you learn as a kid: He charged the point where his path would intersect with the ball. Ortiz likewise displayed good fundamentals, getting himself in position to scoop the ball and make a quick feed to Brice Turang at second:

But while many third basemen would have shoveled the ball to Turang to start the double play, Hamilton either didn’t think he could make a quick enough transfer or couldn’t secure the ball cleanly enough to attempt it. Instead, he just barreled on through, taking four huge strides to the bag. Then he unleashed a throw that you won’t see in any instructional videos:

There’s a reason you don’t see major leaguers attempt this type of throw more often: It’s way too hard to get right. The momentum from Hamilton’s sprint to the base was carrying him into right field. He had to throw off of the wrong plant foot because of where the base was. Try running to your left, planting on your right foot, and then throwing right-handed in a straight line against your momentum, and you can see how difficult this is. Just don’t do it in a room with any breakable objects.

Turang’s last-minute jump and instinctual, protective crouch mirror my feelings on this play. Wait, he’s doing what?!? He’s coming from where?! Pitcher Shane Drohan took a while to process what had happened. And even Hamilton had a wry smile and head shake about what he’d just done:

As a side note, this play occurred during the Little League Classic played in Williamsport, as you can see from the charming houses just beyond the outfield fence. I don’t love every gimmick game, but this one delivers every time. The Little Leaguers are excited to see the players. The players are excited to see the kids. ESPN conducted a ton of player interviews during this game, and they let the Little Leaguers ask the final question of nearly every one. I’m happy to criticize a broadcast for missing the mark, so in the interest of even-handedness, I just wanted to note that I loved this one. More, please.

2. Inspiration
Nate Furman’s big league career didn’t exactly start swimmingly. In his first six games of spot duty for the Giants, he went 0-8 with three strikeouts. In his first at-bat of Tuesday’s game, he went down meekly:

It’s one thing to strike out on three straight swings, and another to strike out on three straight swings that look like that. Brady Singer kept fleeing the strike zone, and Furman just kept following him. That is arguably the worst swing Singer has drawn all year; only one pitch he located farther from the zone has enticed a batter to offer. And this isn’t Jacob Misiorowski pumping high-90s sliders or anything; Singer is a pitch-to-contact guy having the worst season of his career.

Between innings, Furman looked dejected. The major leagues sure are hard. But then two things happened. First, Furman made a nice defensive play:

Doing something successfully just feels good, whether it’s catching a sinking liner for a double play or brewing a nice cup of coffee (trust me on this one, I accomplished the second of these earlier this morning and it felt spectacular). When you’re up there windmilling through Brady Singer sliders, it’s easy to forget that you, Nate Furman, are a good enough baseball player that you’re in the majors. Making a nice defensive play is a good reminder of your own talent.

Second, as the Giants broadcast noted, during an earlier injury delay, Rafael Devers went over and gave Furman a pep talk:

Thus emboldened, Furman stepped back to the plate in the bottom of the third and got himself a milestone:

His reaction rounding first base says it all. It’s hard to feel worse than Furman did in the first inning, and hard to feel better than he did in the third. Baseball is a heck of a game.

That’s a fun enough story, but I can add some delightful context. “Hey kid, relax, it happens to everybody” was announcer Mike Krukow’s paraphrase of what he thought Devers told Furman. But I like to think that he was saying something else: “Hey kid, relax, it happens to literally me, Rafael Devers.” Because you know how that first-inning strikeout was the second-worst pitch Singer got a swing on this year? Here’s the worst:

I don’t know how the rest of Furman’s big league career will go. But I do know that this first hit was a bounce back from one of the worst at-bats I’ve seen all season, and the intervening sources of inspiration, whether they helped him or not, felt like they came out of a script.

3. Challenge Strategy
I’m not saying that having a wise approach to challenges is the only mark of good coaching, but I do think it’s a mark of good coaching. Challenges are hard, and talking to players about them is difficult too. No one’s ever certain, and the rules of when to challenge vary heavily based on who’s challenging, when they’re challenging, and how past challenges have gone. Doing a good job at this goes far beyond “just tap your head if the call is wrong,” because no one ever really knows if the call is wrong.

For example, challenging this pitch in the fourth inning probably wouldn’t make that much sense:

When Patrick Bailey challenged here, though, it was the ninth inning. The Guardians had two challenges left, and you don’t get to take them home with you. Most pitches aren’t challengeable, or at least, aren’t close enough to the edge of the zone for a challenge to make sense. Whether Bailey thought that was a strike or not, it was a good spot for a challenge, so he used one – and from his body language, it appears he didn’t think the pitch was a strike. Batter Travis d’Arnaud and Bailey exchanged some friendly banter, complete with a sheepish grin from Bailey, while they awaited the results. The call was confirmed:

Still, from my perspective, that’s a great challenge. No player knows in the moment whether a pitch is a strike or not; they can only assume. Maybe Bailey thought that was 70% likely to be a ball, or 85% likely to be a ball, or even 90% likely to be a ball. But human perception is imperfect, and in this spot, there was no cost to being wrong. Use ‘em if you got ‘em.

After d’Arnaud struck out on the next pitch, the Guardians had one more batter to retire to close out the game. And when Bailey caught another borderline pitch in a two-strike count, he played the odds and challenged again:

It seemed clear from his body language that he didn’t think that was a strike, but hey, it’s hard to judge the three-dimensional flight of a curveball. Even if he was nearly certain he was wrong, it’s obviously possible to misjudge the final location of a curveball. Hitters and umpires do it every day. In the end, that pitch was two inches off the plate, and the Guardians were out of challenges. The game ended uneventfully two pitches later. In one sense, all Bailey did was tap his head pointlessly twice.

But on the other hand, coaching players to do this is really important. Imagine if, just to choose a random example, Oswald Peraza also took a spend-first approach to his team’s remaining challenge two pitches earlier:

Like the Guardians, the Angels aren’t allowed to take their challenges home with them. Peraza was batting with two outs in the ninth, and he was unsure enough about that pitch that he talked to the ump about it afterwards. Just tap your head!

It probably didn’t matter. These small edges mostly don’t. But the juxtaposition between a team playing the numbers and one letting these newly-available advantages pass them by was striking. Bailey essentially made the strike zone bigger – he challenged every borderline pitch that was called a ball until he was out of challenges. Peraza should have done the inverse. Challenges do two things: They help correct very bad calls, and they help get important calls right. The Guardians seem to understand the second part of that assignment very well.

4. Maximum Effort
Ceddanne Rafaela made one of the best defensive plays I’ve seen this year on Wednesday night. Here’s Rafaela in the second inning, diving for an Owen Caissie liner in the gap:

Wait, no, not that one. Sure, that ball carried a 5% catch probability per Statcast, which makes it one of the best plays any defender has made all year. But honestly, I expect Rafaela to make a lot of those, because I’ve watched him turn them effortlessly into outs for quite a while now. One batter later, he made a play that impressed me even more. It just didn’t lead to an out, or even prevent a batter from advancing:

There’s a lot going on here, so let’s break it down. First, Otto Lopez attempted to steal, which drew a throw from Connor Wong. The ball short-hopped second base, with Rafaeala charging in from center as backup in case Andruw Monasterio couldn’t field the ball cleanly:

And Monasterio didn’t field the ball cleanly. Even worse, instead of just continuing on its path through to the outfield, it ricocheted off of Lopez’s helmet and caromed into left center:

Lopez quickly realized that he could score. The carom had played the ball into a completely empty stretch of the outfield, and he was looking directly at it. He scampered to his feet and took off, planning on heading home the entire time. Rafaela’s hustle to back up second had put him in the baseball equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle, both too close to home plate and in the wrong direction after the sharp carom. In this blurry freeze frame, it’s clear how far into no-man’s land that ball is. No ordinary effort was going to reach it, and Lopez knew it:

Just getting to that ball was some feat. Look at the impressive combination of acceleration and coordination it took to run the ball down and slide to grab it. And then look at the ridiculous throw Rafaela unleashed from that impossible position, with his momentum pointing about as much the wrong way as it could:

Normal humans try to hit a cutoff man there, or don’t even attempt a throw. Rafaela hit Wong’s glove on the fly with a laser beam. Lopez is very fast, and a great baserunner to boot. He had a perfect read. He was still only safe because of an excellent slide. No other center fielder in baseball other than maybe Pete Crow-Armstrong would dream of attempting that play. It won’t show up in any statistics, but it’s one of the most impressive plays I’ve seen anyone make all year. If you don’t watch Red Sox games, do yourself a favor and check out Rafaela sometime. He never disappoints.

5. Youthful Exuberance
Calling up young phenoms in August and September is a time-honored baseball tradition. Combine that with this year’s morass of mediocrity, and you get something greater than the sum of its parts: wide-eyed rookies playing big roles for playoff hopefuls, because pretty much every team has a case for being a playoff hopeful. There are plenty of young prospects to keep your eye on this summer. George Lombard Jr. and Spencer Jones are up for the Yankees, though they don’t quite fit the spirit of the exercise. Angel Genao is making noise in Cleveland. Kaelen Culpepper is mashing in Minnesota. Joshua Báez started off with a bang for St. Louis. I could go on and on. But this week, I’ve been particularly delighted by Max Clark.

Clark, Detroit’s top prospect, is a five-tool center fielder and our no. 5 overall prospect. He also has a sixth tool, undervalued (perhaps correctly) by traditional scouting: golden retriever-like exuberance about pretty much everything. Clark hasn’t had the fastest start to his big league career, but Tuesday, he cracked his second home run, and his first at home:

I liked every little thing about this. First, he was so excited that he carried the bat down to first base with him, so that he’d be able to make a bat toss if this was actually a homer:

Then he was so jacked up that he nearly overtook Javier Báez on his home run trot:

Back in the dugout, after the normal celebration line, Clark couldn’t wait to continue the party with anyone in the vicinity:

So far, the Max Clark experience has been full of moments like these. He’s 21 and living the dream, hitting home runs in front of major league crowds and exulting in the feeling of it all. He plays with his hair on fire. Earlier in the game, he made the exact kind of play you’d expect given his demeanor, overrunning a liner in the gap to turn a single into a double. It was a completely understandable play; the ball took a funny hop and kicked up just out of his grasp.

When he was asked about it after the game, he was delightfully honest, even calling for an error to be assessed on him for his misread. “It’s almost embarrassing, to be completely honest,” he said, in between perfectly diagnosing his initial positioning, the runners on base, and his intent in playing the ball before that flukish hop got the best of him. “[Jackson] Jobe probably should have been five shutty. I cost him two ups and a run. Hopefully that [scoring decision] gets reversed.”

First, I’m using “x shutty” to describe good pitching appearances from now on. Second, watch that clip: It’s a great encapsulation of how much stuff there is to think about for a big league outfielder, a job that you’d assume mostly entails running in a straight line and trying to catch a ball. And third, just to reiterate, Max Clark is a delight.

Added bonus: You get to see the effect that working with youths has on regular grown-up baseball players. I can’t tell you exactly what these two were saying, but here’s my best guess:

Justin Verlander: “He’s carrying his bat. To first base. Look.”
Riley Greene: “WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! WOOOOOO!!!! YEAH!!! UP TOP!!!!!!”