WPBL Week Two: Such Great Heights

Welcome to your Week Two recap of all things WPBL. As a reminder, these weekly roundups are designed to cover each week’s action by highlighting the most notable players, moments, and anything else I deem worthy of further commentary. For each edition of the recap, I re-license the naming rights to this list of highlights to whichever team I feel has won the week. And how does a team win the week? Well, unlike actual wins and losses in baseball, this type of win is purely subjective and will operate under the time-honored tradition of making it up as we go along.

Along with the list of highlights, the Unforced Errors list discusses the more confounding aspects of the prior week because good faith criticism is a necessary component of continuing progress. Rounding things out are the Historic Firsts of Lesser Renown. The league’s momentous firsts will obviously get their shine, but there’s something to be said for the more strange and mundane firsts, the smaller day-to-day occurrences that make a new league feel familiar and complete. Think of these firsts as the knickknacks on a shelf that make a new house feel like a home. Baseball fans won’t really feel settled into their new league until the first time a player on their favorite team commits a TOOTBLAN.

If you need a refresher on the league’s structure and mechanics, check out the Week One recap.

But enough preamble, let’s get to the Week Two winner: The New York Heights. The Heights went 2-1 in the second week of WPBL action, including a victory in the league’s first extra-inning game on Sunday. Though the Los Angeles Queens own the league’s best record and run differential through two weeks of play, they did suffer a 12-3 loss to the Firebells, while the Heights have yet to lose a game by more than three runs. Add in what Denae Benites and Natsuki Yonetani have been getting up to (more on them below), and giving the dub to New York feels pretty obvious.

On the topic of wins and losses, I’ve decided to include an updated look at each team’s record, run differential, and Pythagorean winning percentage as a quick snapshot of where each club stands. Here’s how things look following Week Two:

The Queens sit atop the standings, the Heights and the Firebells both look solid, and the Hunters already find themselves sitting in the basement. So how did we get here? Let’s take a look at who and what is waving down at us from the Such Great Heights highlight reel this week.

Such Great Heights

A Concussion Protocol

When Queens second baseman Amira Hondra took a pitch to the head during the bottom of third inning of Wednesday’s game against the Hunters, manager Eric Young Sr. jogged out to check on her, and the two continued to chat as she walked down to first. After she took her base, a trainer finally materialized to check her out, but the conversation was short. Hondras then went first to third on a single from third baseman Ashton Lansdell. A few pitches later, Hunters pitcher Gigi Schiano attempted to pick Hondras off third base. The broadcast doesn’t follow Schiano’s throw, so viewers weren’t able to see whether she dove back or merely executed a quick pivot on her feet, but either way, she was forced to jerk her body back to the bag. When the Queens took the field on defense in the top of the fourth, Samaria Benítez had entered the game at second in place of Hondras. As the incident played out, it did not appear that any precautions were in place to protect players from their own desire to stay in the game or from a manager who might not recognize the signs or symptoms of a possible concussion. Turns out, there is a protocol in effect and the league has been following it.

Following the league’s second hit-by-pitch to the head (Firebells shortstop Joely Leguizamon on Thursday night), reporters submitted a question to the league about the existence of a concussion protocol. The league said there was a protocol in place and provided a summary of it, which involves immediate testing (though no specifics on what that testing entails) and rules for returning to play. If a player leaves a game after exhibiting or experiencing concussion-like symptoms, she must be symptom-free for two days before getting back on the field. Hondras has not suited up for the Queens since leaving Wednesday’s game. Leguizamon, though, did not leave Thursday’s game and was in the lineup for the Firebells all weekend.

In praising the league for simply having and following a concussion protocol, perhaps we’re setting the bar so low it’s practically subterranean. However, I still remember when former Orioles manager Buck Showalter left second baseman Alexi Casilla in a game to finish the inning after a collision with right fielder Nick Markakis left him with no memory of either the play itself or how he got to the clubhouse after coming off the field. Professional sports do not have a track record of responsible behavior with respect to concussions and only began taking them seriously in recent years. A functioning concussion protocol is the type of thing that could easily fall through the cracks for a new league, so the WPBL does deserve credit for handling this particular component of player safety.

A Debut With a Capital D

Making her first start for the Heights on Sunday, Katherine Murphy had herself a day out in left field. In the bottom of the third, she laid out to snag a fly ball off the bat of Hunters second baseman Edith De Leija.

One batter later, Murphy crashed into the wall while reeling in a deep drive from Hunters left fielder Ticara Geldenhuis.

Then in the fourth, the wind got ahold of a fly ball (another hit by De Leija) and forced Murphy to twist around at the last second and make a backhanded grab.

Murphy’s day in the field was marred ever so slightly in the sixth inning, one batter after she charged in to grab a shallow fly from Hunters right fielder Molly Paddison. After settling under another deep fly from Geldenhuis, Murphy closed her glove a split second too early, sending the ball ricocheting off toward center field. Nevertheless, she used her first look as a starter to plant herself firmly in the good graces of New York’s pitching staff.

Defensive Déjà Vu

Last week, I wrote about a defensive gem in which Boston third baseman Denver Bryant managed to knock down a groundball on a nasty hop, then recover and fire a throw to first, where Sabrina Robinson hit a full split as she stretched to pluck the ball out of the air. Well, during the Hunters’ 9-6 win over the Heights on Saturday, the duo did it again!

Over the first two weeks of the season, it’s become clear that Bryant is good for one or two snazzy defensive plays per game, but her acrobatic moves at third are not limited to defense.

Bryant should have been ruled safe under the Rule of Cool… alas.

Actual Starting Pitching

Given that the league’s training camp was less than a week long, it’s no surprise that the starting pitchers weren’t exactly stretched out to go deep into a game during opening weekend. And it was starting to look like the WPBL would feature a different rhythm for cycling through pitchers, especially because there are more two-way players in the women’s game than in MLB. But just when it was looking like three-inning starts might become the norm, the Heights’ Jaida Lee and the Queens’ Michelle Roche and Ayami Sato set a new standard for starting pitching, each throwing five strong innings and leaving only the final two frames for the bullpen to cover. Roche started for the Queens in their 12-4 win over the Hunters on Wednesday, allowing three hits and two runs (one earned), with one strikeout. In New York’s 13-8 win over San Francisco on Thursday, Lee limited the Firebells to four hits and two walks with three strikeouts, while allowing three runs (all unearned). Then, in a 12-3 Los Angeles win over San Francisco on Friday, Sato’s five innings included just four hits, no walks, one (unearned) run, and four strikeouts.

Rakyung Kim continued the trend by pitching 5 1/3 innings on Saturday for the Heights, but got into trouble as her outing wore on. She finished with six runs allowed (four earned) on three hits, a walk, and two strikeouts.

Though it may take a few years and expanded rosters for starting pitching matchups to take on the narrative prominence they hold on the men’s side, it’s comforting to know that there are starters in the league right now who are capable of carrying the day for their squads.

Rapid Evolution

Any new league is bound to experience growing pains. Not everything is going to be perfect right from the jump, and the league didn’t exactly set itself up for success with coaching staffs cobbled together at the last minute, an extremely short training camp, a media rights deal that came together at the 11th hour, and so on and so forth. But there’s nothing to be done about any of that now. It’s all in the rearview mirror. The only option available to the league at this point is to move swiftly to address whatever bumps in the road arise.

And to the league’s credit, everyone from the commissioner, to the coaches, to the players has acted nimbly in response to the circumstances in front of them. Though some managers prefer to stick to one or two set lineups, WPBL skippers are still getting to know their players’ strengths, weaknesses, and overall ability. Thus, the lineups are evolving as they gather more information. For example, Caitlin Eynon has gradually worked her way up the Queens’ batting order, with Young responding to her performance rather than stubbornly insisting she continue to hit sixth. During the postgame press conference following New York’s win over the Hunters on Sunday, Heights manager Rocky Henley spoke about how learning the right usage patterns to fit the cadence of the WPBL schedule is still a puzzle she’s trying to solve. (She specifically cited her decision to have Lee forgo her scheduled bullpen session and throw an inning in-game instead.) And defense is improving as players learn the tendencies of their teammates and how to communicate on the field.

A willingness to react quickly when something isn’t going to plan is a key survival instinct. And a strong example of that came when the league decided to move on from Hunters manager Keith Foulke a mere three games into the season. For those of us calibrated to MLB’s 162-game season, a coaching change after three games feels hasty, but in the WPBL, three games represents 20% of the season. Comparatively, the Red Sox fired Alex Cora after 27 games, which represents around 17% of the season. Cora’s early-season firing was certainly surprising, but not indefensible. The reasoning behind Foulke’s dismissal is a bit unclear based on current reporting. The league was initially tight-lipped about the decision, but following Sunday’s game, WPBL co-founder and commissioner Justine Siegal told reporters it was a baseball decision. The league felt Foulke didn’t have the right chemistry with the team, and ultimately the Hunters needed someone who specialized in connecting with younger players.

Of the four managers, Foulke had the least professional coaching experience and no managerial experience at all. According to the Boston Globe, Foulke, who interviewed for the position with WPBL CEO Keith Stein, felt that he was hired because he was a recognizable name with strong connections to baseball in Boston. Foulke also said that he and Stein had agreed that he would not have to spend the entire season in Springfield. Rather, he could continue residing with his family in Arizona and commute to Illinois for games. But Foulke suspects his arrangement with Stein was not communicated to Siegal and the other members of Boston’s coaching staff prior to the start of the season, catching them off guard and souring those relationships from the start.

Foulke did seem invested in the league and its success; however, that’s not guaranteed to translate to productive contributions as a coach. Hunters team captain Alli Schroder told the Globe, “As far as I’m concerned, as a player, it’s important that we just have somebody that works — I mean not literally works for us, but like mentally, emotionally, all of the above, supports the players, especially in a startup league,” and Siegal suggested that Foulke’s coaching style had the team playing too tight. “They need to feel that making mistakes is part of the game, and that they can grow from them,” Siegal said. As a result, the league pivoted to Queens assistant coach Jemile Weeks, who runs a youth baseball academy, making him well-positioned to work with the Hunters’ young roster. Siegal told reporters the plan is to find a replacement for Weeks on the Queens’ staff by the start of this week’s games.

The decision to dismiss Foulke was shocking, but if it was already clear that he lacked the necessary leadership experience and was unlikely to grow in the role due to his limited availability, it makes sense to move on sooner rather than later.

The Jill Albayati Game

If you’ve seen Albayati on screen at any point during a WPBL broadcast, then you’ve probably heard that the Firebells’ pitcher and third baseman has a history of transitioning smoothly from one role to another. In college, Albayati became the first D-II student-athlete to play in both a softball and baseball game on the same day. On Saturday, Albayati faced the more conventional dual-role task of turning in a strong performance both as a starting pitcher and as the team’s three-hole hitter. In the Firebells’ 10-3 victory over the Queens, Albayati pitched four innings, allowing five hits, one walk, and two runs (both unearned), with four strike outs. She also went 2-for-2 at the plate with a walk, two RBI, and a run scored. Though she’s not the first starting pitcher in the league to bat for herself in the lineup, she is the first to make such productive contributions on both sides of the ball in the same game.

Inclusivity That Doesn’t Stop at Gender

Obviously, the WPBL’s main raison d’être is to provide women with an opportunity to play baseball professionally after decades of exclusion. But a league in the business of creating opportunities where none previously existed needn’t limit itself to simply being gender inclusive. And though I doubt the league explicitly set out to blaze trails for the differently abled, it has certainly opened the door for Queens center fielder Brittany Apgar to carve a path for herself in pro ball. Born with a limb difference, Apgar has a small right forearm, half of a palm, and no fingers on her right hand. She hits with a custom prosthetic she crowd-sourced on social media prior to the season’s start. Like many players in the WPBL, Apgar also pitches. She rests her glove on the nub of her right arm while she completes her throwing motion with her left arm, then quickly slides her glove onto her left hand to field the ball as needed. She learned the technique (which she also applies in the outfield) by studying former major league pitcher Jim Abbott, who was similarly born without a right hand.

Over the weekend, Apgar notched her first hit, showcased the glove swap in center, and logged her first appearance on the mound.

The Second Banana

When your teammate is somehow already the runaway favorite to win MVP, it’s tough to get folks to take notice, but Heights right fielder Natsuki Yonetani is worthy of your attention. Over the three games that the Heights played during Week Two, Yonetani went 9-for-12 with a walk, two doubles, three RBI, and a stolen base. On the season, she’s slashing .688/.722/.875. She owns the league’s second-highest batting average, second-highest on-base percentage, and second-highest slugging percentage among qualified hitters. All while playing stellar defense in right field. On any other team she wouldn’t be playing second banana, but instead she shares a roster with…

The First Banana

It’s absurd to consider anyone a heavy MVP favorite just a quarter of the way into the season, but given what Heights catcher Denae Benites has accomplished in her first four games, it is safe to say the award is hers to lose. Starting with the obvious, Benites has already blasted five home runs. She puts a slightly different twist on her home run celebration each time she dances through the tunnel of her teammates just beyond home plate, so here’s hoping the creative juices keep flowing or she’s going to have to start repeating cellies.

(And for those wondering, Max Kelton — the play-by-play guy heard in the video — was calling his first game that day, so TBD on whether he’s planning a Sterling-esque call for every player.)

Overall, Benites has posted a .824/.778/1.706 slash line and leads the league by a wide margin in all three categories (with a few sac flies accounting for why her on-base percentage is lower than her average). Benites also bucks the slow-catcher stereotype by leading the league with six stolen bases. Second place on the list is Queens third baseman Ashton Lansdell, who has just three. And speaking of catching, Benites is the only backstop to start all four games behind the dish for her team, and watching the way she receives the ball (along with Queens catcher Maggie Foxx) has me contemplating whether I want to try and wrangle the necessary data to put together a framing metric. When it comes to controlling the running game, Benites has already thrown out three baserunners (which I’m fairly certain leads all catchers, but the league doesn’t provide aggregated caught stealing data either for catchers or runners).

The broadcast is still learning to track throws to the bases, so clips of Benites nabbing baserunners are a bit tough to come by. (When she caught Hunters pinch-hitter Lexi Hastings in a rundown in the bottom of the seventh of the Heights’ 7-6 win on Sunday, the broadcast was showing a close-up shot of the next batter almost the entire time). Even so, Benites was the catcher to throw out Bryant in the clip above, and here she is throwing out Hunters center fielder Gabrielle Haas in the bottom of the third inning of Sunday’s game.

Unforced Errors

Robin Roberts Stadium Doesn’t Have a Warning Track

You may have noticed in some of the previous clips that the outfield at Robin Roberts Stadium doesn’t have a warning track. That’s not unheard of at the lower levels of pro and amateur ball, but it’s certainly not optimal and it does pose a safety issue. In the bottom of the sixth inning of San Francisco’s 12-3 loss to Los Angeles, Firebells captain Kelsie Whitmore ran directly into the wall while tracking a home run off the bat of Queens left fielder Tháima Maximiliana.

Obviously, it would be a bit much to ask the proprietors of Robin Roberts Stadium to install a warning track when the league only intends to play 30 games there before moving to its teams’ home markets next season, but with no particular connection to Springfield, Illinois, nothing was stopping the league from choosing a venue better designed to protect player safety.

Umpire Safety

Player safety was not the only safety concern to arise during Week Two of the WPBL season. During the matinée game of Saturday’s doubleheader, home plate umpire Steve Berardino fainted on the field in the bottom of the sixth inning as a result of heat exhaustion on a 95-degree day. Writer KD Casey, who was at the game, said several fans (presumably healthcare professionals) were allowed on the field to help revive the umpire, who was later removed from the game to receive medical care. It’s unclear what sort of hydration options were provided to the officials, but Casey indicated the stadium was not providing any misting or cooling stations for fans, and the only water available had to be purchased.

The other member of the officiating crew replaced Berardino behind the plate, and Queens assistant coach Emma Charlesworth-Seiler took over in the field. (The Queens were not one of the teams playing in the game, but Charlesworth-Seiler was at the ballpark because the her team was playing in the night cap). Charlesworth-Seiler does have experience umpiring in the minors, but she hasn’t taken the field in that capacity in several years, making her a less-than-ideal replacement. Perhaps Berardino was more inclined to push past his body’s limits knowing the league didn’t have many backup options. Granted, even MLB doesn’t provide on-site substitute umpires, but having four-man MLB crews makes it easier to continue operating while down one official. WPBL games are officiated by two-person crews, making the loss of one official a real problem. Following the incident, Siegal told The IX Sports that they plan to have an alternate crew ready moving forward in case of any further incidents, but this is the sort of easily foreseeable contingency that should have been planned for in advance of the season.

Historic Firsts of Lesser Renown

• The league announced its first partnership with a beer company.
• In the bottom of the first inning of the game between the Queens and the Firebells on Saturday night, Whitmore was ruled safe on her attempt to score from first on a single by Albayati. Replays strongly suggested that the umpire failed to see Foxx (catcher for the Queens) apply the tag, marking the first crucial blown call in the WPBL.
• The third inning of that same game marked the first invocation of the infield fly rule.
• The Saturday night game ended with Firebells pitcher Niki Eckert notching the league’s first three-inning save.
• Sunday featured the WPBL’s first extra-inning game, requiring just one additional frame for the Heights to lock up a 7-6 victory over the Hunters. The game also revealed that the league will be employing the same zombie-runner rule employed by MLB.