Top of the Order: The Other Mike Baumann Continues His World Tour

Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Tuesday and Friday I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.

While esteemed FanGraphs writer Michael Baumann has spent this season anchored to South Jersey, the same can’t be said about the right-handed pitcher of the same name. Since that linked interview from July 2023, pitcher Mike Baumann (hereafter referred to as “Baumann”) has thrown 60 innings with a 5.10 ERA, with his 49 strikeouts, 26 walks, and 11 home runs producing a similar 5.39 FIP. Nothing special, and certainly nothing either Baumann is too happy about.

What is special, however, is all the traveling Baumann has done this year. And I don’t mean the typical cross-country trekking that is the life of a ballplayer during the 162-game grind. No, Baumann’s season is notable because of all the places he’s called home since the end of March, when he made the Orioles’ Opening Day roster. Although he pitched to a 3.44 ERA over 18 1/3 innings with Baltimore, he was designated for assignment on May 18. (That good ERA was belied by a FIP that was more than a run higher.) He then moved onto the Mariners in a trade, pitching considerably worse there (5.51 ERA/6.05 FIP) across 16 1/3 innings before being designated once again. One bad game with the Giants (two runs, two outs) turned into 10 bad games with the Angels (6.75 ERA/6.06 FIP), and now he’s on the move again, this time to the new-look Marlins. Upon making his Marlins debut, the out-of-options Baumann will tie Oliver Drake’s 2018 record for most teams played for in a season, with five.

Assuming Baumann stays on the Marlins’ roster for the rest of the season — a pretty safe bet since they’re not playing for anything — he’ll amazingly still accrue a full year of service time despite bouncing around the league because players still get days of service while in DFA limbo. That, plus the $748,900 he’s earning this season, makes all the moving an easier pill to swallow, though it’s certainly a lot to put on the plate of a guy who’s also set to be a first-time father sometime next month. Hey, at least the baby can wear five different team onesies.

Danny Jansen, Double Agent

We love esoteric, inane baseball ridiculousness here at Top of the Order, and I’m not sure anything will ever top what Danny Jansen accomplished on Monday, when he became the first player in MLB history to play for both teams in the same game.

When Jansen was with the Blue Jays on June 26, he fouled off a pitch from Red Sox right-hander Kutter Crawford to make the count 0-1. That would be the last pitch that night, as the game was suspended due to rain with one out and a runner on first in the top of the second inning. On Monday, two months to the day it started, the game resumed with Jansen no longer at the plate for Toronto but behind it for Boston, meaning he kinda-sorta caught his own plate appearance! As he replaced the since-designated Reese McGuire, Daulton Varsho took Jansen’s trip to the plate and struck out swinging. Jansen actually got the first hit for the Red Sox in the game, when he singled with one out in the fifth, and made the final out against former teammate Chad Green, so his impact was all over this game.

Suspended games can often lead to bizarre stats, like when Juan Soto went back in time and hit a home run before his major league debut, but Jansen’s first-time feats take the cake, in my opinion. It’s right up there with Joel Youngblood’s accomplishment of getting hits for two teams in one day.

As for the next frontier in suspended-game accomplishments? How about a pitcher getting both ends of a decision? Or a player getting hits for both teams, which Jansen couldn’t do since the game interrupted his first plate appearance? Or pitching for one team and hitting for the other (late-career Shohei Ohtani, hello)? There are more options than we can imagine, and they just start with Jansen.

Garrett Stubbs’ Near-Cycle

Garrett Stubbs might be better known for his role as Phillies clubhouse DJ than his actual job as a major league catcher because, as J.T. Realmuto’s backup, he is hardly ever in the lineup. This year, though, Realmuto missed 32 games after undergoing knee meniscus surgery, so Stubbs has had to don the tools of ignorance in 2024 for more innings (357) than he has in any other big league season. And all things considered, the Phillies’ glue guy has performed well when called upon.

His overall numbers this season aren’t all that impressive (.216/.310/.281, 72 wRC+, 0.4 WAR), but they aren’t bad for a backup catcher who, for the most part, is not expected to play. And now that he’s back in his part-time role, Stubbs has caught fire. In his nine games (eight starts) since Realmuto returned on July 20, Stubbs is hitting .357/.471/.500, including his 4-for-4 showing with a double and a triple on Sunday. Needing the home run for the cycle, Stubbs faced off against… position player Garrett Hampson. But rather than clobbering an inside cookie to complete the cycle, some unfortunate Garrett-on-Garrett crime occurred instead. Hampson hit Stubbs with the pitch. His Phillies teammates weren’t happy about it, but Stubbs was thrilled. He’d reached base five times for the first time in his career.

“Garrett Hampson is a good guy,” Stubbs said, per the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Alex Coffey. “I’ve gotten to play against him for a long time now, all through the minors and the big leagues now. He was probably trying to maybe even feed me in to [hit a homer]. He kind of fed me in a little bit too much.

“Everybody was giving me crap about not getting out of the way, but I tried to get out of the way. I was like, this is the only team where you can go 4-for-4 with a hit by pitch and they’re giving you crap when you come in the dugout.”

For what it’s worth, a cycle wouldn’t even have given Stubbs something to brag about to Realmuto; the Phillies’ starting catcher cycled on June 12 of last season, the first catcher to do so since George Kottaras in 2011.