Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week, August 8

Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. Between a vacation, the All-Star break, the Trade Value Series, and the trade deadline, Five Things has been on a bit of a summer hiatus. Baseball itself doesn’t stop, of course; weird and delightful things happen whether I’m documenting them or not. But I still couldn’t shake the feeling that this week had an extra helping of whimsy. Balls took funny hops. Good pitchers got shelled in unexpected ways. Balks took center stage. Leads changed hands late, defenders kicked things into high gear – there was so much delightful baseball this week that I struggled to narrow it down to five things. Seven things just doesn’t have the same ring to it, though, so let’s quickly nod to Zach Lowe of The Ringer for the column inspiration and get going.

1. The True King of Contact
Writing about Luis Arraez can be a bummer sometimes. Not because he’s bad – he’s emphatically not – but because merely mentioning his name reinvigorates the age-old argument between those who say there are too many strikeouts and those who insist that slug is in the air. Should everyone be doing what Arraez is doing? Is he an anachronism? Is he underrated? Overrated? He’s so good at what he does – and what he does is so different from what most good baseball players do – that these questions are frustratingly omnipresent in any discussion about Arraez.

That said, I think I found an Arraez play that won’t divide the audience. The key is for it not to involve a ball in play, a walk, or a strikeout. Take a look at this beauty:

Just a regular play, right? Matthew Liberatore lost his grip on a curveball and sailed it high, Arraez ducked out of the way, and all was right with the world. But watch more closely, and you’ll notice that something is amiss. The ball bounces away wildly. No one seems to know where it is. The umpire is raising his hands instead of remaining motionless. That’s because Arraez made contact with the ball:

That is truly amazing. No look, falling away, one-handed; the man just gets his bat on the ball. Sure, this was probably pure luck, but I’m choosing to believe that there’s something greater at play. If any player in all of baseball was going to make contact with a ball behind their back and above their head, who else would it be? Even Arraez thought it was pretty funny, jokingly whacking his bat and laughing it up with catcher Yohel Pozo:

Let me put it this way. You don’t see a lot of guys make contact with a pitch that looks like this on a zone chart:

2. Quick Bats
This is the fastest pitch ever to be hit for a home run:

First, goodness gracious, Lourdes Gurriel Jr. That’s an impressive feat of hitting. Second, let’s just marvel at this one for a second. The fastest pitch ever hit for a homer, and he pulled it! When you hear coaches talk about getting the bat head out in front of a fastball, they probably aren’t referring to one of the hardest pitches Mason Miller has ever thrown. They’re talking about cleaning up the trash, depositing shapeless 93 mph heaters in the pull-side bleachers. How in the world was Gurriel early for this pitch?

To understand, you have to see the entire at-bat. In a 1-1 count, Miller brought the heat, and Gurriel fought it off:

Notice that he was quite late on that 102 mph fastball. Of course he was. Then Miller came back with 104 away, and again Gurriel managed to get his bat on it late:

On the next pitch, Miller hung a juicy slider right down the middle. But he was protected by his fastball armor – Gurriel was so geared up for the cheese that he was way out in front of the slider, pulling it harmlessly foul:

After that bad slider, Miller wasn’t messing around; it was all fastballs all the time again. Miller reached back for 104, but Gurriel had never stopped sitting fastball, and this time he fouled it straight back:

I already showed you the next pitch. It was thrown at 103.9 mph. It ended up in the seats.

Gurriel’s home run is an outlier. The next-fastest Miller fastball hit for a homer? It was 103.2 mph, and that was poked down the opposite field line, an excuse-me swing juiced into a home run by Miller’s raw velo. The next-fastest Miller pitch pulled for a home run? It came in at 101.5 mph, a less absurd reading on the radar gun. But major league hitters can time anything if you give them enough chances. Every successive Gurriel swing came closer to being on time, until Miller put his hand in the cookie jar once too often. That was an impressive feat of hitting – and of incremental improvement. Oh, and by the way, if you hit a home run on a pitch that hard, I’d be disappointed if you didn’t follow it up with a sweet bat toss. Corbin Carroll agrees:

3. Intentional Balks
The intentional balk has a long and rich history, most of which took place far outside the major leagues. Bob Wickman intentionally balked once in 2005, but my real introduction to the tactic was when Kenley Jansen tried it in 2019. He’d always disliked working with a runner on second, and he finally did something about it by awkwardly tapping his foot on and off the rubber and pointing to third base. Jason Heyward trotted 90 feet for free, Jansen picked up the save, and a strategy was reborn.

Over the next few years, I associated the move with Jansen and Craig Kimbrel. Few other pitchers made a habit of it, though. And the issue isn’t a lack of effectiveness. Intentional balks work! They get a runner off of second base and safely out of sign-stealing position. The drawback is largely aesthetic — assuming that particular run scoring or not isn’t important, of course. Intentionally balking looks goofy, undignified even. Jansen and Kimbrel, both standouts in the field of awkward twitchiness on the mound, had no issue with it. When you’re a Hall of Fame closer, you’re permitted a certain amount of idiosyncrasy. But a setup guy capturing the odd save? A rookie long man mopping up? They would never.

There’s been a great development in intentional balking, though. Thanks to the pitch clock and the disengagement rule, it’s easier than ever to balk. You don’t even have to look silly! Step off the mound three times, as seriously as you’d like, and the umpire will still call you for a balk.

Jansen intentionally balked earlier this year, stepping on and off while gesturing Shohei Ohtani over to third base. But that was just a warmup. In early July, the Guardians got in on the act. Cade Smith stepped off three times against the Astros without even bothering to lob the ball over to second, sending Mauricio Dubón over to third without once having to look like an absolute goofball.

The Guardians are up to two now after Nic Enright intentionally balked Jeff McNeil over to third in the bottom of the 10th inning on Monday. Again, it wasn’t one of those intentional balks that makes you dig out the rulebook and confirm what a balk is. Enright just calmly stepped off the mound a few times and had the umpire escort McNeil over to third.

And that’s not even the biggest intentional balk of the year. That would be Héctor Neris against the Red Sox, and in his, the balk was a sideshow for some general chirping and a mill-around session. Before 50 grown men all said “hold me back!” to each other at once, though, Neris had hit on the new hot tactic of the moment to keep Trevor Story from relaying signs.

I think the intentional balk is here to stay. Why wouldn’t it be? It’s always made sense. The only thing holding pitchers back — other than the prospect of a runner on third — was decorum and precedent. But now it doesn’t look silly, so everyone is doing it. Look for more intentional balks, coming soon to a stadium near you!

4. An Even Weirder Balk
Now that you can intentionally balk by stepping off the mound, the record for the least eventful balk is going to be a many-way tie between a bunch of guys who take a few measured steps to move a runner up a base for free. But there’s no limit to how eventful a balk can be, and Tyler Anderson just submitted a strong contender for the most convoluted balk of the year.

It starts with the disengagement rule and a fast runner. With Chandler Simpson on first base, Anderson tried two pickoff throws to keep baseball’s fastest runner stationary. Simpson was emboldened by those two throws and went on first movement the next pitch, but Anderson, a wily veteran, pulled off the classic lefty redirect and turned his motion into an easy throw to first. Simpson was dead to rights:

Oops! Anderson is crafty and deceptive across the board, not just in his pitching but in his defense too. That move turned Simpson inside out. All the Angels had to do was execute a rundown and Simpson would be out. It’s Baseball 101. But generally speaking, you don’t practice rundowns against one of the greatest basestealers on the planet:

The key to that sequence was the moment Nolan Schanuel went to apply a tag on a flat-footed Simpson. Schanuel thought he’d timed it well, but Simpson was able to take advantage of his planted feet and redirect his legs just out of the way of the tag:

From there, it was just a matter of getting back to the base. And then, of course, slowly walking from first to second. That was the third disengagement, after all:

That’s one of the weirdest balks you’ll see all year, a 1-3-4-3-1 disengagement violation. Isn’t baseball great?

5. Next-Level Thinking
If you’re like me, one of the reasons you watch baseball is the satisfaction of seeing elite athletes doing the little things well. Honestly, that’s half of what this column is. I love smoothly turned double plays, deft footwork, clever baserunning reads, all of it. Runners intentionally using the basepath to their advantage? I’ve written about it before, and I’m still into it. This is great work by Jahmai Jones:

A quick peek over his shoulder told Jones that there would be a play at the plate, so he veered from his initial position in foul territory to block off the easiest throwing lane home. It’s not only legal, it’s clearly the right decision. The best way to get home safely on a ball hit like that is to make it really difficult for the third baseman to find a clean path to the catcher. There was just one problem with Jones’ move: Edmundo Sosa can think on his feet too:

Blink, and you’ll miss it. Sosa anticipated Jones turning into the basepath, so he instead threw to the foul side of it, the area Jones had just vacated. His throw cleared Jones’ shoulders and hit J.T. Realmuto squarely in the glove with enough time to make a tag:

That’s great stuff, excellent defense beating excellent baserunning. In fact, Sosa was counting on the excellent baserunning. His throw was to the foul side, as I mentioned, but he made that decision without full certainty of what Jones would do. Take a look at Jones’ feet with the ball already out of Sosa’s hand:

Jones had already started the turn that would send him all the way into fair territory, but he hadn’t completed it. If Jones had just kept running down the line right where he was, the throw probably would have hit him. Here’s my best guess for where the ball was when it crossed his path on its flight home:

That just makes Sosa’s play even better. He was so certain that his opponent would do the right thing that he pegged the ball directly at where the runner was currently standing. Sub in an inattentive baserunner, and Sosa’s throw would be disastrous. But he read Jones’ intention and saved a run. That’s heads-up defense from a spectacular defender, but I can’t even be mad at Jones. What are you supposed to do, not make the right play? He just got beaten by an even better one.