Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week, September 12

Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. That title is quite a mouthful. Every time I submit it, our helpful back end interface informs me that it is “far too long.” You’re not wrong, WordPress. But I lifted the title and the inspiration for this column from Zach Lowe’s basketball feature of the same name, and every time I consider removing the parenthetical part of it, I remember that the frustrations and failures of the game are part of what makes baseball so compelling. If you never disliked anything about sports, they wouldn’t be so fun to follow. So while every item this week involves something I liked, they also all contain an element of something I didn’t care for. Missed plays, bobbled balls, artificially abbreviated outings, below-average defensive units, lengthy injury recoveries – there are things to dislike in each of these. They all brought me extreme joy anyway, though. Let’s get going.

1. Relatable Frustration
Mike Yastrzemski has been everything the Royals could have hoped for since he joined the team at the trade deadline. He leads off against righties, gets platooned against lefties, and plays his habitual right field. He’s been the team’s second-best hitter behind Bobby Witt Jr., a huge boon as they chase slim playoff odds. Also, when he goofs something up, his reactions are very relatable:

You can see what happened there right away. Yaz’s first step was in, but the ball was actually over his head, and tailing towards the foul line so strongly that he couldn’t reach it. Sure, it was only his second start of the year in left field. Sure, he hasn’t played left for more than a handful of games since 2019. And sure, the ball had plenty of slice on it. But he’d probably tell you the same thing you’re thinking: Major league outfielders, particularly solid ones like Yastrzemski, should make that play.

Misreads and errors happen all the time; less common is Yastrzemski’s combination of amazing body language and ability to recover. Watching his face go from “Here it comes!” to “There it went” (complete with a reflexive glove stab at a ball four feet out of his grasp) made me chuckle:

That’s the face I make when I realize that I forgot to refill the ice tray, or when the laundry I’m meticulously stacking tilts and falls over. Unforced errors sting. But even while he was down on himself for that route, Yaz was busy being a professional athlete. He played the ball off the wall, decelerating to keep it in front of him while still somehow conveying his annoyance:

His throw hit the relay man perfectly; he was never going to get Brayan Rocchio at second, but the accurate throw stopped the bleeding at a double. Most delightfully to me, though, Yaz was frustrated enough to sulk but also professional enough to wait until he was done with his job. Check out this replay of the cutoff throw. By the time it was arcing down towards Maikel Garcia, Yaz had already turned away to stare wistfully at the left field fence and stroll away:

Baseball is hard. Everyone makes mistakes. It’s how you respond to them that matters, and Yastrzemski’s response was both extremely human and managed to get the job done. That frustrated face and post-throw stroll really spoke to me.

2. Gunnar Henderson’s Full-Body Defense
Gunnar Henderson looks like a middle linebacker playing shortstop. He’s listed at 6-foot-3 and 220 pounds, and neither seems like an underestimate. Despite that huge frame, he’s a solid defender. It’s not always balletic like Francisco Lindor. Henderson doesn’t have the uncanny knack for off-platform throws that Masyn Winn displays. He isn’t lanky and explosive like Elly De La Cruz, or in perfect control of his every extremity at all times like Ezequiel Tovar. But in addition to having solid range and a big arm, Henderson takes advantage of his size in subtle ways that help him limit errors and turn as many balls in his range as possible into outs.

Hard-hit ball? Henderson gets his entire body behind it, then catches it with his center of mass, creating a huge backstop:

You have to put your body on the line to play like that. That ball was 106 mph off the bat, absolutely rifled. It won’t always end up in your glove. Putting as much meat between it and the outfield just gives you more margin for error. Take this 109 mph grounder from later the same night:

With the ball hit that hard, two things are true: It’s hard to field it cleanly, but there’s time to recover even if it bounces. The only disaster scenario would be a weird hop that kicks away. His body positioning minimized that risk, though; when the ball kicked up more than expected, he simply smothered it, gathered it, and threw on time for the out.

This skill doesn’t jump off the page. Most of the time, Henderson’s body doesn’t even come into play. After all, he’s a competent major league shortstop; they’re pretty good at fielding balls cleanly in their gloves. But major league defense is about avoiding the unlikely; “most of the time” isn’t all the time, and good fielders hedge against uncertainty. Earlier this week, with the infield in, Henderson made a nice pick where a backhand stab was the natural play:

Still, his torso and leg got in on the action as last-gasp blockers. In that situation, even if Henderson bobbled the ball, keeping it on the infield would give him a chance at a redo. He made the play, but his contingency plan for if he couldn’t was quite good too. He’s often good at body alignment in just that way. Watch a random video of Henderson fielding a well-struck grounder, and if he has time, he’s getting his shoulders and chest in good position to slow down a carom. Sometimes it’s subtle, and sometimes he fields the ball so cleanly that you barely notice, but it’s consistently there.

And it’s not like Henderson doesn’t make other types of good plays. He can use his long levers to load up for huge throws:

He has the balance and coordination to make tough plays up the middle:

But his body positioning and his ability to smother the baseball both stand out to me. Errors might not be the best way to measure defense, but avoiding errors is a key part of playing the infield, where everyone handles a huge chunk of routine-ish plays throughout the year. Henderson had committed 19 fielding errors (not throwing) in his career before this season, one every 106 innings. In 2024, he made 15 fielding errors, one every 92 innings. In 2025, he’s down to a mere four in 1,110 innings, or one every 275 innings. Those extra outs add up, and I think that a lot of it comes down to him using his torso as an emergency extension of his glove.

For the record, though, even Henderson has limits. When Oneil Cruz ripped one directly at him Wednesday night, Henderson took a look at the hardest swinger in baseball, took a look at (or, more probably, heard) a ball hit so hard it knuckled in the air, and said “Okay, let’s just use the glove on this one and hope I catch it.” Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor:

3. Sheer Dominance
I can’t leave that Baltimore-Pittsburgh clash, one of my favorite games of the month, without a little more recognition. Paul Skenes faced off against the Orioles for the first time, and he came out of the gate fired up. Sorry, Jackson Holliday. Thanks for playing, Gunnar:

Look at the pitch sequence listed on the left hand side as he blew this fastball past Colton Cowser for another strikeout:

Curveball, splitter, sweeper, splitter, splitter – with those splitters topping out at 94 mph, by the way – and then he introduces a perfectly placed fastball afterwards? It’s diabolical. This sequence turned Dylan Carlson into a pretzel twice over:

Skenes had the ball on a string, to say the least. He threw a series of sweepers, starting middle-middle and then trailing increasingly down and away, to get Ryan Mountcastle on three straight pitches:

The Orioles didn’t have any answers. Carlson was so befuddled after taking a middle-middle curveball to start his next at-bat that he tried to bunt his way on, failing miserably en route to a strikeout. Skenes struck out half of the batters he faced, didn’t walk anyone, and held the Orioles scoreless over five innings.

Wait, five innings? Yeah, the Pirates are pulling him from games early to manage his workload, now that they’re well and truly out of the race and building for 2026. But what a five innings it was: 64 pitches, 12 swinging strikes, at least a half dozen Orioles looking baffled and dismayed as they tried to figure out how a baseball could move like that. In classic Skenes fashion, Baltimore won 2-1 in 10 innings, but he looked like the best pitcher on the planet out there.

On the excellent Orioles Statcast broadcast (more of these, please!), Brian Roberts said it best as Carmen Mlodzinski came out of the Pittsburgh bullpen to replace Skenes for the sixth inning. “I hope the Orioles win, but I was glad I got to see it.” Me too, Brian. Me too.

4. Gorgeous Defense
Look at this glorious play:

I loved every little bit of that. First, J.P. Crawford used his full extension and the very end of his glove to keep the ball in the infield:

From that location and with a ball hit that slowly, Crawford needed to get to his feet to throw instead of trying something creative from the ground. No problem, though; watch his footwork on that video above. He simply turned his dive into a crawl, contorted his left leg up past his hip to gain purchase, then scrambled to his feet while simultaneously transferring the ball and stepping into a throw.

The throw sailed, naturally, since Crawford’s momentum was still so strongly headed into center field. Crawford doesn’t have a strong arm, either; to get enough on it from such a weird starting position, he had to put some air on it, making for a tougher play on the receiving end. Josh Naylor plays a pretty first base, though. He caught the ball, got out of José Fermín’s way, and looked stylish while doing it:

Next batter, Eugenio Suárez got in on the act:

That could have looked smoother, of course, but his recovery was great. The next batter after that, Crawford made a beautiful sliding stop on a ball hit too softly to convert into an out:

Suárez wasn’t done either. With the game deep into extra innings, he turned a would-be RBI single into just another groundout, with a little help from Naylor on the back end:

Saving that run proved crucial. The Mariners tied the game in the bottom half of the inning, but they couldn’t push a third run across. They eventually pulled it out in 13 innings to maintain their narrow lead for the last AL Wild Card slot (and keep the pressure on Houston in a tight AL West race while they were at it). Seattle plays a ton of tight, low-scoring games thanks to the team’s roster construction and home ballpark; turning a few groundball singles into outs can make all the difference.

By the way, the Mariners’ infield defense is one of the worst in baseball. Statcast thinks they’re third worst on the year, and in the bottom third of the league since the All-Star break. DRS isn’t much more optimistic. Crawford, Suárez, and Naylor rate as below average by both OAA and DRS. Major league defenders are just ridiculous. This is what the so-so infields do!

5. He’s Baaaaaack
I get it. You thought the Astros were overdue for a bad year. Alex Bregman is gone. Kyle Tucker is gone. Justin Verlander is gone again. Jose Altuve is in the middle of just his second down season in a decade. Isaac Paredes, their big offseason acquisition, hasn’t played since July 19. Josh Hader is out for the rest of the regular season. Yordan Alvarez slumped to start the season, got hurt on May 2, and didn’t play for more than three months. That general pattern – some stars leave, the ones who remain age or get hurt – suggests an ignominious ending.

That suggestion has been lost on the Astros. They’ve been atop the division for much of the year. Their starting rotation, anchored by Hunter Brown and Framber Valdez, has been one of the best in the league. The bullpen is deep enough that it’s still formidable even with Hader on the shelf. Most importantly, though, Alvarez is back.

Since his debut in 2019, Alvarez has been one of the best few hitters in baseball. But that season-opening slump was truly hellacious – the lowest barrel rate of his career led to few extra base hits, and he didn’t make up for it anywhere else. He’s always carried injury concerns, and this year’s mysterious injury (first diagnosed as muscular, then later revealed to be a broken bone in his hand) kept lingering. What was he going to do, come back from a long IL stint, for a power-sapping injury like a broken hand, and act like his awful slump never happened?

As it turns out, yes. Alvarez returned to the majors in late August and promptly turned back into the Yordan of old. In 60 plate appearances since he came off the IL, he’s hitting .449/.533/.694, good for a 234 wRC+. He’s already produced his hardest-hit ball of the year. He’s barreling the ball up right around his career rate, hitting it hard as frequently as ever, and walking more than he strikes out. A 10% strikeout rate! A 7.4% swinging strike rate! The peripherals look phenomenal. He’s doing it against great pitchers. Sorry Jake, but this was the wrong time of year to face the Astros:

When someone scuffles or misses time, it’s easy to forget how they looked at their best. Sometimes, one injury changes the trajectory of a guy’s career. Heck, it’s only been two weeks since Alvarez’s return; his .463 BABIP won’t persist forever, and his seasonal line is still uninspiring because he slumped for so long. But I think he’s the best player on the Astros. I think he’s the second-best hitter in the American League after Aaron Judge. The Astros were leading the AL West without him. It might be another long, orange October now that Yordan Alvarez is back and clicking.