Hello. While on paternity leave, I kept a journal about baseball and my daughter, who is not named Derek Jr., but who will henceforth be referred to as Derek Jr. You can read all of the entries here.
May 7
In my brief glimpses of baseball today, I watched Oneil Cruz work a walk off Paul Sewald in Arizona, as well as the final three outs of the Mets’ loss to the Rockies. Cruz really worked the walk, which was fun to see. It was an eight-pitch plate appearance. Sewald missed well inside with the first pitch. Ahead in the count, Cruz was sitting fastball, so when Sewald located a sweeper in the bottom part of the zone, he took it for a strike without batting an eye. Then Sewald made a huge mistake, leaving a sweeper in the dead center of the zone. But Cruz was again looking for a fastball, and this time, he thought he saw it. He unleashed a mighty cut, so far in front of the ball that he didn’t even bother trying to slow his swing down in order to salvage some kind of contact.
The count was 1-2 and the rest seemed academic. Cruz came into the game with a 34% strikeout rate. So did Sewald. Put it all together, and – forgive me if my math is a little fuzzy here – this situation seemed like it would end in a strikeout approximately 240% of the time. But Cruz managed to lay off a backdoor sweeper that missed the corner by an inch or so. It was the one really great take of the plate appearance. Two-two. Sewald got him to chase a fastball way upstairs (and way upstairs on Oneil Cruz means up near the press box), but Cruz just barely got a piece. Sewald missed wide with another slider to make the count full, and then Cruz got another little piece of another high fastball, this one located perfectly at the top of the zone. It was the best swing of the plate appearance, and when Sewald missed well wide on the third 3-2 pitch, Cruz had really earned his way to first. He doesn’t have the greatest eye in the world – three of these balls were very easy takes, and one of his swings was on a ball nearly a foot above the zone – but what more can you ask than a patient approach early on, one good take, one good foul, and an aggressive swing when he thinks he sees his pitch?
In Colorado, Antonio Senzatela did his best to make a 6-2 game interesting, walking the leadoff batter and allowing a bloop single to the second hitter. Then he settled down, striking out Francisco Alvarez on four pitches and MJ Melendez on three, before inducing a weak popout from Vidal Bruján. Melendez is now down to a 79 wRC+ on the season and Bruján has a career wRC+ of 54. These cannot be the hitters the Mets want coming to the plate in big situations, but that’s not my main focus as I watch the inning unfold. My main focus is on the girl in the pink puffer jacket behind the right-handed batter’s box, and her focus is on trying to figure out how to wipe her hands with a napkin:
Baseball really does have something for everyone. Truthfully, though, I’m vamping here. None of this is what I need to talk to you about. I mean, sure, I enjoy watching Oneil Cruz do just about anything, and it’s always fun to watch somebody learn about the magic of napkins, but we need to talk about something more important.
It’s two in the morning and I’m feeding my daughter. I’m typing this on my phone with one hand because I just noticed that her pajamas feature squat, heavy-set little mice playing musical instruments in some sort of mouse marching band. I think they’re wearing berets, because, I think, they’re French mice. They’re lined up in twos and threes playing a tuba or a trumpet or a drum or a tambourine. One even seems to be playing a lute, and now that I’m looking closely, I see a triangle, maracas, an accordion, and one mouse who just seems to be doing gymnastics. These mice are definitely French. But what gets me is that there’s one mouse playing a saxophone. That, my friends, is a bridge too far:
If you want me to believe there’s a mouse playing a tiny trumpet, making a tiny embouchure with its tiny little mouse snout, and tootling out a trebly “When the Saints Go Marching In,” then sure, what the hell, I can hang in there with you. I can even swallow the idea of a mouse playing the lute with its weird mouse paws. But I refuse to believe that mice are playing reed instruments. Do you know how hard it is to play the saxophone? And who is making these microscopic reeds? You want me to believe that the mouse is carefully wetting the reed just the right amount before clamping it back into place and launching into the solo from “Born to Run?” I’m out! You have officially lost me. This world you’ve created is structurally unsound, and it will collapse under its own obscene weight:
At the beginning of each procession is a mouse holding what is almost certainly a banner, but there’s a 10% chance that it is not a banner and is, in fact, a giant, crooked scythe. I like that possibility better. This isn’t a marching band after all. This is Death coming to bear his next victim to the mouse netherworld. And in the Mouse World, Death is dressed like a mime and accompanied by his friend Gary, who is going through a messy divorce right now and really having a time of it. One night, a gruff mouse driving a beat-up van unceremoniously dumped a huge pile of bric-a-brac from what was formerly a joint storage unit in Gary’s driveway, and as he picked through the wreckage of his freshly-shuttered past life, Gary uncovered the alto sax he used to play in high school. Gary couldn’t afford a convertible or a hair transplant, so he threw himself into his rusty old sax with everything he had, then convinced his buddy Death that maybe the journey to the afterlife deserved the class and dignity of some smooth jazz. It is not going well.
Derek Jr. is very much asleep now, so please excuse me while I deposit her and her mouse army in the crib and try for a bit more sleep. Thank you for reading FanGraphs.
Jay Jaffe
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