Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week, June 20

Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. I won’t try to slow-play it; there was nothing I didn’t like this week. Baseball is freaking great right now. There are huge blockbuster trades that ignite passionate fanbases, for better or worse. The playoff chase is starting to heat up as we approach the All Star break. Crowds are picking up now that school is out. The weather is beautiful in seemingly every stadium. We’ve entered San Francisco Summer, which means it’s a lovely 57 and foggy most days here, ideal baseball weather for me (and you, too, if you live here long enough to acclimate). So I have no bones to pick this week, nothing that irked or piqued me. It’s just pure appreciation for this beautiful game – and, as always, for Zach Lowe of The Ringer, whose column idea I adapted from basketball to baseball.

1. The Streaking… Rockies?!
The hottest team in baseball right now? That’d be the Red Sox or Dodgers, probably – maybe the Rays or Astros depending on what time horizon you’re looking at. But if you adjust for difficulty level, it has to be the Rockies, who were one James Wood superhuman effort (two two-run homers in a 4-3 victory) away from a four-game sweep of the Nationals. Add that to their Sunday victory over the Braves, and they’re 4-1 in their last five. That could have been a five-game winning streak!

Sure, baseball is a game of randomness. Every team gets hot for little micro-patches of the season. But, well, this feels like the biggest test of the “anyone can do anything for 10 games” theory in quite some time. These Rockies are terrible. Their everyday lineup features six players with a combined -1.4 WAR this year. Those the starters – the bench is worse than that. Their rotation has an aggregate 6.23 ERA. They’ve been outscored by 196 runs this year; the next-closest team is the Athletics at -128.

It helped to catch the Nationals at their own weakest point. They snapped an 11-game losing streak with their win Thursday, a swoon that put manager Davey Martinez on the hot seat and torpedoed any long-shot playoff hopes they might have been harboring. But anyone can lose 11 games in a row. That’s garden-variety bad. The Rockies had won only 13 games all year, through 70 games played, before they reeled off this mini-streak.

It seems inconceivable that the Rockies will end up with 51 wins, their current projection in our playoff odds. But then again, that projection has barely budged from a month ago, when they were 8-39, an unbelievable .170 winning percentage. Since that date, they’ve been the worst team in the NL – and their win percentage has nearly doubled, to .333. It’s really hard to be as bad as the Rockies were to start the season for long. Even a team that goes 8-39 is capable of going 4-0. Don’t you just love baseball?

2. Steven Kwan, Gunslinger
Steven Kwan is a spectacular defender. He’s won the Gold Glove every year of his major league career. He’s also won two Fielding Bible awards for being the top defensive left fielder in the majors, not just in the AL. He takes great routes to the ball and has sure hands, key skills for a plus outfielder. He even fakes runners out. And, oh yeah, dude has one of the best arms in baseball.

Tuesday night against the Giants, Kwan’s arm was the difference in the game. The Guardians took the lead in the sixth inning, but their normally excellent bullpen was anything but solid. In the eighth inning, Hunter Gaddis gave up line drive singles to the first few batters he faced. He gave up a line drive to the third guy he faced, too, but that’s just what Kwan was waiting for:

It takes two to tango, of course, and Casey Schmitt didn’t cover himself in glory there. But he still nearly got back to the base. The problem was Kwan doesn’t miss these opportunities. Note how his momentum was carrying him toward the infield rather than toward the foul line when he made the catch. That’s because he anticipated having a chance to make a throw. Rather than taking a straight-line route, which would’ve left him heading toward foul territory, he curled the route so that he would be running parallel to the foul line when he caught the ball. Then he unleashed a frozen rope:

That’s both a strong throw and an accurate one; with the force play on, he didn’t need to consider putting the ball in a good spot for a tag, just getting it there at glove height. I don’t know how many left fielders in baseball would’ve made that play, but I can’t think of any I’d trust to make it more than Kwan.

The Giants weren’t done. They loaded the bases with only one out against Emmanuel Clase in the ninth. But Kwan wasn’t done either – or at least, his presence was still required. Dominic Smith sent an 0-2 cutter looping to medium left field. Surely it would be plenty deep enough to score Jung Hoo Lee, one of the fastest runners on the Giants:

Lee didn’t even try, and I think that was a good decision. The ball traveled 256 feet, right in the fuzzy go/no-go zone for sacrifice flies, but that zone is a strict “stay put” against elite outfield arms. Again, Kwan was accurate, short-hopping Austin Hedges perfectly. He got the ball there in a hurry, in just under three seconds by my stopwatch. I was watching this one at a bar celebrating my wife’s birthday, and one of the Giants fans around us just whistled wistfully when he saw that throw.

Kwan has seven outfield assists this year, tied for the most in the majors. He has those assists despite a reputation so formidable that great baserunners won’t test him in the spot where they’re most incentivized to go – down a run, with one out in the ninth and literally Emmanuel Clase on the mound. It should be no surprise, then, that he leads the majors in Defensive Runs Saved with his arm. He’s stopping other teams from trying to take the next base on him, and leading the league in assists anyway. You can’t get any better than that.

3. Heated Rivalries
Monday night, Shohei Ohtani returned to a major league mound for the first time since 2023. Aside from the Rafael Devers trade, Ohtani’s Dodgers pitching debut was the biggest story in baseball – for all of about 10 minutes, before one of the best rivalries in the game right now really got going. The Dodgers are the big kids on the block, not just in SoCal or the NL West but in the major leagues overall. The Padres aren’t just going to roll over, though; that’s just not what they do.

The rivalry is only getting hotter. The Dodgers beat the Padres in the playoffs last year en route to their second World Series of the 2020s. They beat the Padres in the 2020 postseason, too, before winning their first trophy since 1988. The Padres have their own playoff series victory over the Dodgers, in 2022, and they won the regular season series last year for the first time since 2010. Their ballparks are only about 120 miles apart. Their fans live in the same neighborhoods. Their paths to the pennant run through each other during the six-month season and when they meet in the playoffs. It’s the perfect breeding ground for contempt.

That makes these games fraught with tension, and this week’s series took things up a notch. Andy Pages took exception to getting hit by a 98-mph Dylan Cease fastball, though it looked for all the world like Cease just missed location; he was struggling to quell a rally at the time, and hitting Pages put runners on first and second with no one out. From there, the series got even more heated.

(A bonus thing I liked this week: Davy Andrews’ funny blog on the two bullpens not doing much of anything after that hit-by-pitch, despite the flaring tempers on the infield and in the dugouts.)

The next night, Lou Trivino hit Fernando Tatis Jr. high in the back – probably unintentional, again, as it also put runners on first and second with no one out in a tight game. Randy Vásquez came out for the next inning and hit Ohtani in the leg, and hey, wait, hands off the merchandise! Nobody hits Ohtani and gets away with it. Manager Dave Roberts charged out of the dugout, incensed that a potentially retaliatory HBP wasn’t met by an ejection. In the end, Roberts got what he wanted: an ejection. Too bad it was his own.

Despite another hit batsman that night (Jose Iglesias), the ejection marked the start of a détente of sorts, which carried into Wednesday, when Pages got hit again – a clear accident, so much so that his reaction was less one of anger than acceptance:

Stephen Kolek apologized, Pages laughed it off, and the game continued, blissfully without any more scuffles.

Yet there was still one more game in the series, the seventh game between the teams in 10 days. Cooler heads prevailed until the ninth inning Thursday night. Then, animosities erupted. Ironically, it started with a newcomer. Jack Little, who was called up from Triple-A on Thursday, made his major league debut that night in mop-up duty, with the Dodgers in pull-starters-and-save-relievers mode. It certainly was a memorable first night in the show. With one out in the top of the ninth and the Dodgers down 5-0, Little hit Tatis on the hand with a 93-mph heater. Intentional? I doubt it, but I had to think about it, and that made three times Tatis has been hit by the Dodgers in the last 10 games (out of four total HBPs all season).

Padres manager Mike Shildt came out to check on Tatis and appeared to direct some harsh words at the L.A. dugout. That brought out Roberts, who had something of his own to say. Roberts appeared to bump Shildt while the two exchanged words, and the temperature turned up from there, even as Tatis stood with a trainer. Both benches cleared, though the players seemed more intent on standing near their managers than engaging in the melee, and the scuffle calmed down. Both managers were ejected, and the game continued, seemingly toward a quiet conclusion. Except, of course, this is Padres-Dodgers.

Although they pulled many of their starters, the Dodgers started a rally in the bottom of the frame, which brought in closer Robert Suarez. With two outs and a man on third in a 5-2 game, Ohtani stepped in. Suarez fell behind 3-0, hit Ohtani with a high 99.8-mph fastball, and promptly got himself ejected, along with bench coach Brian Esposito. The hostilities felt primed to boil over into something more serious than a look-ominous-near-each-other scrum, but Ohtani vigorously gestured his team back to the dugout and proceeded to first base without so much as a glance at Suarez. (The SportsNet LA broadcast captured Clayton Kershaw mid-hurdle over the dugout railing when he saw Ohtani’s signal and retreated.) Yuki Matsui came in to close things out, and while he warmed up, Ohtani hung out in foul territory near the Padres dugout, chopping it up and laughing with Iglesias.

The Padres barely pulled this one out, 5-3, though the Dodgers scored their final run and brought the tying run into scoring position on a wild pitch that got stuck in catcher Martin Maldonado’s gear, a little comic relief to end a serious night. After this week, after that game, these two teams need a little time apart.

The rivalry isn’t just about hit batters, and I’m glad it isn’t; beanball wars are tired, and benches-clearing-mill-about sessions don’t get my pulse rising. I just love how much these teams want to beat each other. I love that the Padres match the Dodgers’ imperious, count-our-rings-and-MVPs pomp with swagger of their own. I love that the fanbases show out for these matchups, even on the road. The Dodgers and Padres play again on August 15-17, and again the week after that. I’ll be watching, and you should be, too.

4. Playing the Uno Reverse Card
“Baseball team scores a lot of runs to erase deficit” isn’t normally the kind of thing I write about here, but I’m willing to make an exception for this game. Wednesday night, the Orioles put on a second-inning offensive clinic. They sent 11 batters to the plate, chased starter Taj Bradley, and scored eight runs to take an 8-0 lead. Ballgame, right?

Well, not so fast. The Rays are chaos kings, and they weren’t ready to quit. Trevor Rogers didn’t have it that day; Tampa Bay got to him for eight baserunners in 2 1/3 innings, and eventually knocked him out with three hits and a walk in a five-batter span, cutting the lead to 8-3. That brought the Baltimore bullpen into play, and more specifically, it brought the whole bullpen into play, not just the elite parts of it. Scott Blewett, on his third team of the season, staunched the bleeding for a few innings, surrendering only a run after replacing Rogers. But he tired, and then the Rays teed off on Yennier Cano. First a triple (shout out to Gunnar Henderson’s ridiculous pop-up pointing):

Then the game-tying homer, a titanic blast with a bat flip to match:

And even though I know, through years of experience, that baseball isn’t deterministic and ruled by momentum, it sure felt like the Rays were fated to win at that point.

I’ll be honest with you: I wasn’t watching this game when all that happened. I saw the scorebug – 8-0 Orioles, 8-3 Orioles, 8-5 Orioles, 8-8 (?!) – and got interested, though. And from there on out, it really did feel like the Rays were fated to win. The O’s couldn’t catch a break – Jackson Holliday rifled a would-be RBI line drive directly to Jake Mangum, killing a golden opportunity to climb back on top. Baltimore started marching out higher-leverage relievers, all of them except closer Félix Bautista. But covering seven innings is a tall ask for any bullpen, and the Rays were relentless. It didn’t help that every close play went Tampa Bay’s way:

The Orioles offense, on the other hand, couldn’t figure out Tampa Bay’s bullpen, even as the Rays went six relievers deep, straining their own unit to the limit. After that would-be Holliday single, Baltimore didn’t so much as reach base. “Ugly” undersells it. In the last three innings, the O’s hit two balls to the outfield, with two infield popouts and two strikeouts to match.

I like to think I’m a logical person. I’m not superstitious. I don’t really buy into team momentum. I like to play the odds rather than my hunches. I think when a game is tied 8-8, both teams will go on to win around 50% of the time. But this was the kind of game that makes me go, “Well, OK, maybe.” Of course the scrappy, never-say-die Rays started scoring and didn’t stop. Of course the snakebitten Orioles put up an eight-spot in the second inning and lost. How could it be otherwise? Look at their records, their reputations! It doesn’t have to be this way – but on the other hand, when it is, it sure feels predestined.

5. Trent Grisham’s First Step
The Yankees are sputtering on offense, 23rd in the majors in wRC+ in June. Hell, even Aaron Judge is slumping, at least for him; he has a piddling 141 mark and a measly five home runs in 16 games this month. Yes, Judge is so good that even his slumps are good. But the point is, runs are tough to come by in the Bronx right now, and wins have been, too. Luckily for me, though, there’s something else I love to tune in for when I’m watching the Yankees: Trent Grisham’s exquisite outfield instincts.

The visiting Angels comprehensively beat the Yankees this week, taking the first three games of the four-game set, but in the midst of all that, I got just the kind of play I love from Grisham. Zach Neto smashed a line drive to the right field power alley, 101 off the bat and tailing slightly. But, oh look, just a casual-jogging outfielder, right there:

That play looks easy, right? Watch Grisham’s stride. He never seems to hit a full sprint, never stomps on the gas pedal or lurches to change direction. He could be shagging flies in batting practice. To watch that play, you wouldn’t know that it had only a 60% catch probability, or that he had to cover 60 feet to make the play. His loping stride messes with your mind, as does his superhumanly fast first step.

Here’s Cedric Mullins, a good defender who is faster than Grisham, making an easier play – an extra quarter-second of hangtime and only five more feet to travel:

Here’s fielding god Pete Crow-Armstrong covering the same distance in the same amount of time:

Those plays are all very similar, and all three outfielders got there, but Grisham’s looked the smoothest and, to me, is the most satisfying to watch. Statcast measures something called “reaction,” which is how many feet a defender moves in the first 1.5 seconds after contact. Grisham’s reaction is otherworldly. His career Baseball Savant page is all red, denoting a best-in-league reaction time year after year. It’s not just that he covers an extra two or so feet in that time; it’s that he gets up to full speed faster than other outfielders as a result. He’s moving faster than they are after 1.5 seconds, and that’s a huge advantage. Outfield defense is rarely about top speed; it’s more important how quickly you can get from stationary to a sprint. That’s how he’s 37 outs above average in the field for his career without elite speed.

Oh, you’re not convinced? You need a demonstration? Don’t worry, Neto and Grisham have your back:

Again! Grisham had a little less time and a little less ground to cover on this one, but it was a similar play (65% catch probability), and he made it look casual all the same. You can’t teach that quickness, that ability to translate what your eyes see into where your feet step with minimal lag time. It’s most fun to watch in person, when it seems like Grisham is the only person on the field not moving in slow motion, but even on TV, his nonchalant quickness stands out.