Sunday Notes: Manny Margot is Playing Happy in San Diego

Four years ago, Manny Margot was 18 years old and playing against older competition in short-season ball. He was more than holding his own. Equal parts precocious and promising, he was one of the highest-ceiling prospects in the Red Sox system. Intrigued by the parallels, I wrote an article titled Manuel Margot: Boston’s Next Bogaerts?

That never came to fruition. Following the 2015 season, Margot was sent to the Padres as part of the package that delivered Craig Kimbrel to the AL East. The change of scenery has been to his liking. One year removed from a stellar season in Triple-A, the native of San Cristobal, Dominican Republic is now San Diego’s starting centerfielder.

While some things have changed, others remain the same. In 2013, Margot told me the game is “all enthusiasm” for him, and that he “never wants to leave this dream.” He echoed those thoughts when I caught up to him earlier this week.

“You always have to play happy,” Margot told me with the help of Padres translator (and Baseball Operations assistant) David Longley. “That doesn’t change as you go through baseball. You’re going to go through some bad streaks, but you put on a good face and those bad times are going to get better. Always play happy.”

As you’d expect, Margot is experiencing both ups and downs as a 22-year-old rookie. He missed a month with a calf strain, and his .263/.309/.395 slash line has been punctuated with peaks and valleys. He has 10 steals, but he’s also been caught six times.

And then there are the five home runs. Margot doesn’t profile as a power hitter, but as his muscular build suggests, he has the ability to impact a baseball. Asked if he could see himself becoming more like the player he’s long idolized, he largely demurred.

“As far as (Manny Ramirez)… I don’t know,” said Margot. “I still admire him, but we have different games. He was a big home run hitter, and that’s not so much my game. I put a focus on what I need to do.”

Not that he wouldn’t embrace more dingers. As he put it, “If the power side of my game ends up showing up, I’d gladly accept it. It’s a great asset to have. It’s also an asset that earns you a lot of money.”

The fun-loving attitude responsible for that observation was in further evidence when I closed the interview with my standard last question: Is there anything we haven’t covered that you feel is important, and would like to share?

“No,” answered Margot. “I hadn’t really thought about it, because this was kind of impromptu — I didn’t know we were going to have an interview. I figured if you asked me something, it’s because it was a question you wanted to know the answer to. And if you weren’t asking a question, that was probably something you didn’t want to know.”

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According to a published report, an unidentified “Yankees insider” recently questioned Greg Bird’s desire to return from an ankle injury. That qualifies as an eyebrow-raiser. It seems far-fetched to believe that the 24-year-old first baseman would be dragging his heels in that manner. Based on a conversation I had with him in late April, Bird loves to hit, and he hates to sit.

Bird sat out all of last season after undergoing labrum surgery, and as he put it “rehab isn’t down time.” Getting back into the swing of things was a process, and “not something that was going to happen overnight.” Bird wasn’t too concerned with throwing — “not being a pitcher, that isn’t as detailed for me” — but fine-tuning his stroke was a different matter.

“For me, hitting is a feel thing,” explained Bird. “That’s what I worked back towards, and finding the little ins and outs of my swing took time. I have a feel where that’s where I need to be, and it’s what I’m constantly trying to get to. If I have it, I’m trying to maintain it. If I don’t, I’m trying to get back to that feeling.”

Given his ability to propel baseballs when healthy, the Yankees understandably want him back in the lineup as soon as possible. Bird almost certainly wants the same thing.

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Fans who arrive at the ballpark early enough are able to see batting practice (the home team is finished by the time the gates open, but the visitors are on the field until roughly an hour before the game starts). What they won’t see is the behind-the-scenes hitting. Before going outside, players from both squads will head to indoor batting cages to work on their swings. It’s a nearly-every-day routine, and in the opinion of some, not always beneficial. Much as pitchers don’t want to waste too many bullets throwing side sessions, hitters shouldn’t hack themselves silly.

Count Minnesota Twins hitting coach James Rowson among those who favors quality over quantity.

“Have a goal when you go into the cage, try to accomplish that goal, and then get out,” Rowsom told me recently. “I don’t believe in hitting just because it’s your time to hit. It’s a long season, so you can hit too much. If you take too may swings, later on in the year it’s going to affect you. You’ll get a little tired, and all of a sudden you’ll get sloppy with your mechanics.”

According to Rowson, none of the hitting the Twins do before games is mandatory. He’s fine with hitters skipping cage work, and even batting practice, if they feel they need a day off. That includes less-established, eager-to-impress players who might need a little back-off urging.

“Younger guys want to make sure (taking days off) isn’t held against them,” said Rowsom. “So I’ve talked to them about it. I’ve tried to make sure they’re comfortable enough with me that they know I mean it when I say they don’t have to hit on certain days. They hit when they feel they need to, and if they feel they’re good — they’re ready for the game — they don’t have to.”

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Teams regularly have hitters’ meetings prior to the first game of each series. Before taking the field for batting practice, the position players and coaches will sit down, as a group, to go over the opposing squad’s pitchers. It’s a one-day thing. For the rest of the series, that pre-BP time slot is essentially leisure time.

Unless you’re the Padres. When I visited the San Diego clubhouse earlier this week, I learned that it’s an everyday occurrence for Andy Green’s team. I asked the forward-thinking skipper when, and why, the practice was put in place.

“I’ve been in a lot of different organizations where it’s commonplace to have a meeting every day, and nobody thinks anything of it,” claimed Green. “As far as instituting it, we did it from the first day of the year, and we’ve had it virtually every single day of the season. It’s just to prep guys as to how their pitcher is going to attack us, and to get our guys kind of thinking through how we’re going to attack them. It’s definitely not rocket science.”

I countered that while some hitters like a lot information, others have more of a see-ball-hit-ball approach.

“That’s 100% true,” responded Green. “There are guys where information clouds their judgment, and you have to be cognizant of that in a big meeting setting, to where you’re not giving too many particulars. You’re not saying, ‘hey, he’s going to throw a curveball 65% of the time on a 2-1 count,’ to where their wheels turn too fast. It’s the simplicity of just walking through the guy’s repertoire, how he likes to attack, and which side of the plate he predominantly uses. Outside of that, the individual conversations carry the bulk of how you’re going to attack him.”

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The Seattle Mariners are among the most data-driven of any organization in the game. From GM Jerry Dipoto, to manager Scott Servais, to a coaching staff that includes Manny Acta and Tim Bogar, the team is every bit as cutting-edge as the city it calls home.

Scott Brosius isn’t as progressive as the people listed above, but he isn’t a dinosaur, either. The former Athletics and Yankees third baseman is old-school in many respects, but he wouldn’t have been invited to join Servais’s staff this season if he wasn’t willing to embrace new ideas. I asked him about that when Seattle visited Fenway Park a few weeks ago.

“Part of a coach’s job is to understand what to do with all of the information that’s out there,” Brosius told me. “There’s a lot of it, and you need to interpret it. Quite frankly, not all of it is useful. We all love information — we want to know as much as we can — but there’s a fine line between what’s useful and what becomes a cloud in your mind. At its basic form, baseball is a simple game.

“You learn new ways to look at things, but in the end, it boils back to the same game we’ve always played. It’s changed — the game has evolved — but at the same time, it retains a simplistic form. Pitchers who throw strikes, hitters who hit strikes, fielders who catch the ball. Teams that do those things well are the ones that win.”

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JULY TIDBITS

Dallas Keuchel (67.4%), Luis Perdomo (67.1%), Alex Wood (63.5%), and Lance McCullers (63.0%) and have the highest ground ball rates among pitchers who have thrown at least 75 innings. The worm-killing foursome has a combined W-L record of 30-6.

Masahiro Tanaka (37.8%) has the highest O-Swing% among qualified pitchers. Antonio Senzatela (21.8%) has the lowest O-Swing% among qualified pitchers.

Manny Machado turned 25 on Thursday. At the time, his 158 doubles and 287 extra-bases hits are the most in Baltimore Orioles history for a player prior to his 25th birthday. His 121 home runs rank second, behind Boog Powell’s 127.

Per Ryan M. Spaeder, as of Friday Manny Machado led MLB with 41 outs on batted balls of at least 100 mph.

On Thursday, Ichiro Suzuki (Japan) recorded his 3.054th hit, passing Rod Carew (Panama) to become the all-time leader among foreign-born players. Counting his time in NPB, Ichiro has 4,332 hits, which is 351 fewer than Pete Rose had between MLB and the minor leagues.

Dennis Sarfate, a 36-year-old righthander who pitched for the Brewers, Astros, and Orioles from 2006-2009, has 27 saves and a 0.79 ERA for the NPB’s Fukuoka Softbank Hawks. Sarfate has 212 saves since going to Japan in 2011.

Zack Granite, who was profiled here a few weeks ago, made his MLB debut with the Minnesota Twins yesterday, and flew out as a pinch-hitter in an 11-pitch at bat. . The 24-year-old outfielder was hitting .360/.412/.492 with Triple-A Rochester.

Victor Martinez recorded his 2,000th hit on Friday. He’s the eighth Venezuelan-born player to reach that number.

Josh Bell’s 16 home runs are the most by a Pittsburgh Pirates rookie prior to the All-Star break. Ralph Kiner had 15 at the break in 1946.

The Seattle Mariners have used 31 pitchers this season. Thirteen different pitchers have made at least one start.

The Chicago Cubs and Cleveland Indians have gone a combined 5-17 in inter-league games so far this season.

The controversial three hour, five-minute rain delay at the start of Thursday’s Atlanta-Washington game (it barely drizzled) was the Braves’ 11th rain delay this season. That’s the most in the majors.

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The SABR Book of Umpires and Umpiring was published earlier this year. Edited by Larry R. Gerlach and Bill Nowlin, it comprises nearly 500 pages of information, interviews, and esoterica. Among the latter is a short chapter titled The Umpire Band. In it, you learn that Mike Everitt plays the trumpet, Tripp Gibson the banjo, Dan Iassogna the bagpipes, Brian Knight the guitar, and Quinn Wolcott the euphonium. Paul Nauert and “Country Joe” West both sing.

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Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim have a pair of accomplished musicians on their coaching staff. Bullpen coach Scott Radinsky fronts the hardcore band Pulley during the offseason, while hitting coach Dave Hansen is a talented guitar player. Hansen’s father began teaching him how to play the instrument “as soon as (he) had more than a five-minute attention span and wasn’t going to break the dang thing.”

During a 15-year, big-league playing career, Hansen “played emotions out through that guitar, left and right, through good and bad.” Rock, blues, and punk are his mainstays, but he also dabbles in jazz and country. He claims to be “a jack of all, and master of none,” but by all accounts, he’s pretty talented.

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Indians manager Terry Francona underwent a heart procedure on Thursday — he’s reportedly recovering well — at the Cleveland Clinic. A day earlier, Chris Antonetti, who’d been with him at the hospital that morning, was asked what Francona is like as a patient.

“It depends,” answered Antonetti. “He’s humorous. He keeps everybody entertained.”

Asked if the issue could be stress-related, the Indians’ team president injected some humor of his own.

“I don’t think it’s fair to get into… what might be contributing to it,” said Antonetti. “It would just be me speculating, and I’m not qualified — nor did I stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night.”

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The July 5 game I attended in Cleveland featured one of the more curious official scoring decisions I’ve seen. San Diego’s Hunter Renfroe hit a line drive — StatCast had it at 109 MPH — that ticked off the glove of Francisco Lindor, and the play was ruled an E-6. Take a look at the video. (Note that the broadcasters, without hesitation, call it a base bit.) I have to assume the Padres have asked MLB to review this.

Irrespective of this play, should exit velocity be a factor in official scoring decisions?

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LINKS YOU’LL LIKE

At Cincinnati.com, Zach Buchanan wrote about how Reds lefty Brandon Finnegan — already on the 60-day disabled list — underwent labrum-repair surgery on his non-throwing shoulder after injuring himself jumping off a boat.

Over at The Chicago Tribune, Phil Thompson wrote about how Cubs shortstop Billy Jurges was shot in his hotel room by a spurned lover, in 1932.

Writing for The Sporting News, Jessica Quiroli addressed baseball’s toxic masculinity.

At The New York Times, Billy Witz weighed in on how more teams are hosting gay pride events, but the Yankees remain a holdout.

David O’Brien of The Atlanta Journal Constitution wrote about how the Braves front office has been astute and creative in deals.

Gene Conley, who won three NBA titles with the Boston Celtics, and a World Series with the Milwaukee Braves, died earlier this week. Daniel Slotnik penned his obituary for The New York Times.

RANDOM FACTS AND STATS

Hinkey Haines played for the 1923 World Series champion New York Yankees, and for the 1927 NFL champion New York Giants. A native of Red Lion, Pennsylvania, Haines was an outfielder and a tailback.

In 1968, Jimmy Wynn led the Houston Astros with 26 home runs. No one else on the team had more than six.

Aaron Judge is 25 years and 74 days old and has 33 career home runs. Nomar Mazara is 22 years and 74 days old and has 32 career home runs.

On this date in 2005, Adam Greenberg of the Chicago Cubs was beaned by the first pitch he saw in his first big-league plate appearance. Seven years later, as a member of the Miami Marlins, he struck out in his only other big-league plate appearance.

On this date in 1953, Philadelphia’s Robin Roberts saw his streak of 28 consecutive complete games end when he lasted just seven-and-one-third innings in a 6-5 Phillies win over the Brooklyn Dodgers.

On July 10, 1932, Cleveland Indians shortstop Johnny Burnett had nine hits in an 18-inning, 18-17 loss to the Philadelphia Athletics. Jimmie Foxx had three home runs for the victors. The winning pitcher was Eddie Rommel, who allowed 29 hits, nine walks, and 14 runs in 17 innings of relief. Time of game was 4:05.