Will Major-League Clubs Call Colon, Franco, and The Panda Back Into Action?
ALSO: SOME PITCHERS ABSOLUTELY "OWN" THEIR OPPONENTS
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HERE’S THE PITCH WISHES READERS A HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY WEEKEND !!!
Pregame Pepper
Did you know…
Entering play Wednesday, the Braves led the majors with a team slugging percentage of .440 . . .
Atlanta’s Matt Olson is on pace to record 88 extra-base hits, just four below Hank Aaron’s club-record 92 in 1959 . . .
Yankees catcher Jose Trevino pitched two perfect games in high school . . .
Three of the eight no-hitters thrown against the Yankees in the Bronx ended in 1-0 scores . . .
The return of long-injured starter Lance McCullers, Jr. bolsters a strong Houston rotation that also features Justin Verlander, Framber Valdez, and Christian Javier . . .
Through last Sunday, Minnesota’s Luis Arraez had a career on-base percentage of .385 — 30 points better than Ichiro’s and just three points less than Tony Gwynn’s. Also in the mix is Rod Carew’s .393.
Leading Off
Three Former Big-League Stars Are Keeping Sharp On Foreign Shores
By Dan Schlossberg
Douglas MacArthur once said, “Old soldiers never die. They just fade away.”
So it is in baseball, where some old-timers never quit. They just fade away to places like Korea, Japan, or Mexico.
Three prime examples are Julio Franco, Bartolo Colon, and Pablo Sandoval — all deemed too old, too fat, or too over-the-hill to compete in today’s major leagues.
Now that the designated hitter has become universal (as it was during the pandemic-shortened season of 2020), both Franco and Sandoval hope hitting-hungry teams will give them a look.
Franco, who admits to being 61, still maintains a frame that is perfectly chiseled. And he was an active player just a few years ago as a player-manager in Japan’s Baseball Challenge League, semi-pro circuit. At 56, he was in better shape that almost all of his colleagues in that loop.
“I don’t see myself out of baseball,” he told The Associated Press [AP] at the time. “I can go fishing, play golf, or go to Starbucks but at the end of the day, I love baseball and that is what I want to do.”
Franco broke into the big leagues with the Phillies in 1982, made the All-Star team three times with the Texas Rangers, and lasted in the majors until 2007, when he played for the Atlanta Braves at age 48.
He says he wants to stick around until age 66, so he has five years to find a taker.
Then there’s Bartolo, last seen throwing his considerable weight around for Acereros de Monclova in the Mexican League. He had a 4.55 ERA for the same team last year.
The portly right-hander, who weighs some 100 pounds more than he did during his prime in the majors, went 44-34 with a 3.90 ERA during a three-year stint with the Mets that ended in 2016. His lifetime earned run average is 4.12.
Colon, who admits to age 48, was a bust with the Atlanta Braves, who snatched him from the Mets with a lucrative but foolhardly free-agent contract. But he was a fan favorite in New York, where he also pitched briefly for the Yankees, and even hit his one and only home run six years ago while wearing a Mets uniform in San Diego.
Sports talk show host Boomer Esiason has been boosting a reunion. “I’m serious,” he said. “He was the first guy I thought of yesterday.”
Esiason was reacting to the wave of injuries that have hit the starting rotation in Flushing. Every starter the Mets have tried, including aces Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer, has been hampered by injuries of varying severity.
As for Sandoval, he’s a 35-year-old slugger in a gargantuan body that makes him look like the position player version of Colon. But his bat still has life.
He’s hitting .281 with a .365 on-base percentage, .444 slugging average, and .810 OPS for Olmecas de Tabasco of the Mexican League after starting the season at Monclova. He had four doubles, seven home runs, 19 walks, and 29 runs batted in at last look. He’s hit .367 with four homers in 15 games since switching teams.
The 2012 World Series MVP for San Francisco, Sandoval was a third baseman then. Now he’s mostly a DH but occasionally a fill-in at first base (face it, guys, he has no range).
Unlike Franco and Colon, Sandoval was in the majors as recently as 2021. After delivering four pinch-homers for Atlanta in early-season action, he suddenly stopped hitting. He had a .178 average in 69 games when swapped to Cleveland for Eddie Rosario, who went on to be Most Valuable Player in the NL Championship Series.
There’s already one Sandoval in the majors — a starting pitcher for the Los Angeles Angels — but there’s plenty of room for two. He wouldn’t be a costly signing either.
Baseball history is filled with stories of long-retired and forgotten players (see Jim Bouton) who return after long retirements. Wouldn’t it be fun to see any of these grumpy old men in action again?
As a grumpy old man myself, I’d love it to happen.
Former AP sportswriter Dan Schlossberg of Fair Lawn, NJ is looking forward to covering the All-Star Game and Hall of Fame Inductions for forbes.com and to signing books in Cooperstown July 6 and 23 and Los Angeles July 17. E.mail him at ballauthor@gmail.com.
Cleaning Up
Some Pitchers “Own” Opposing Teams
By Bob Ibach
[The following guest column was written exclusively for Here’s The Pitch by invitation of weekend editor Dan Schlossberg.]
Years ago, when growing up in the Bronx and as a Yankees fan, I was often mystified by how sometimes a specific pitcher or hitter could "own" an opposing team. For instance, Detroit Tigers pitcher Frank Lary "owned" the Yankees -- he had the tag “Yankee killer” because he beat the pinstripers so often. And Tigers’ hitter Charlie Maxwell "owned" the Yankees when it came to hitting against them on Sundays.
When I moved to the Washington, DC area, there was a Cleveland Indians pitcher named Jim "Mudcat" Grant who owned the Washington Senators. When he was later traded to the Minnesota Twins, Grant continued his mastery over the Nats. It seemed that all Mudcat had to do was take the hill against the DC gang and it was game over.
The Senators, I recall, tried just about everything to put a jinx on Grant. They had a witch doctor come out and parade around the mound before a game, they wore beads around their necks when batting against him. They even burned some incense and an assortment of herbs near the mound. Nothing worked. Perhaps had they burned a few bats.
I was reminded of these players when watching the Cubs’ Kyle Hendricks continue his mastery over the Cardinals on Friday, as he permitted just 5 hits in 7.1 innings of shutout pitching in an eventual 3-0 win over St. Louis. This is a guy who is just 3-6 on the season and was facing a team that had won 12 of the past 17 contests against the Cubs.
But including last night's win, the right-handed Hendricks improved to 13-3 in 25 starts against the Redbirds lifetime, the most victories he has posted against ANY MLB team. Hendricks, a man of few words, doesn't believe in jinxes. He said afterwards, "I've just got to keep getting lucky against them. Use what I did today and build on it."
Cubs manager David Ross countered that it may have something to do with really knowing the Cardinals hitters. "Some teams have your number, and some that you feel like you pitch pretty good against,” he said. “In game, in season, in division, maybe that has a lot to do with it. Just facing the team a lot, you kind of know how you want to work them, how you have worked them (in the past) and you know where their holes are."
With the trading deadline approaching in a month or so, and with the Cubs staring at a 95-or-more-loss season and going nowhere in 2022, it will be Camp Tryout in August and September at the Expensive Confines.
Two tradeable pieces on the team are catcher Willson Contreras and Hendricks.
So, who are potential suitors for these men?
If the Yankees have a need for ANY player, it's probably at the catching position. Why not "loan" the NYC team Contreras so he can either get another WS ring and sign with another team in the off-season as a free agent, or even stay in NYC along with former mate Anthony Rizzo.
As for Hendricks, I suggest any NL team that has the possibility of facing the Cardinals in October, Hendricks would be a GREAT guy to have in your rotation. NL West teams like the Dodgers, Padres or Giants would seem to be a good match, as would the Braves or NY Mets in the NL East. Or maybe Kyle goes over the border to Milwaukee.
Personally, I'd love to see Kyle go to the Tampa Bay Rays as they have been hit hard with injuries to key starting pitching. And with another Kyle down in that dugout--pitching coach Kyle Snyder -- it would be an ideal match-up. Snyder has done wonders with less talent then Hendricks with the Rays staff in recent years, taking some guys off a parking-lot dump and tweaking a few things and all of a sudden a career is on the upswing.
Anyway, food for thought. Remember you heard it here first.
Bob Ibach is the former publications and publicity director for the Chicago Cubs. He now has his own sports PR firm from his Chicago-area home. E.mail him at bobdunk@aol.com.
Timeless Trivia
“He can’t do anything until he’s pain-free and feeling good. He’s not there yet.”
— Nationals GM Mike Rizzo on injured star pitcher Stephen Strasburg
NL Championship Series MVP Eddie Rosario, who needed early-season eye surgery, is rehabbing at Triple-A Gwinnett and almost ready to bring his left-handed power back to the Braves . . .
The Phillies rank fourth in payroll this season, according to Sportico, but are among the league leaders in devastating injuries, with Jean Segura out for a few months (fractured finger) and Bryce Harper (broken thumb) possibly out for the season . . .
Struggling Yankees slugger Joey Gallo could be changing his address for the second straight trade deadline . . .
The Mets expect injured starters Max Scherzer (oblique) and Jacob deGrom (stress reaction in his scapula), along with sidelined reliever Trevor May, to return before the July 19 All-Star game.
Know Your Editors
HERE’S THE PITCH is published daily except Sundays and holidays. Brian Harl [bchrom831@gmail.com] handles Monday and Tuesday editions, Elizabeth Muratore [nymfan97@gmail.com] does Wednesday and Thursday, and Dan Schlossberg [ballauthor@gmail.com] edits the weekend editions on Friday and Saturday. Readers are encouraged to contribute comments, articles, and letters to the editor. HTP reserves the right to edit for brevity, clarity, and good taste.
The second MLB game I ever attended was on "Beat Mudcat Day" at Griffith Stadium. Grant won that one, but his mastery over the Senators was over by August 9, 1967: He came in in relief with the Twins up 7-2 and didn't retire the three batters he faced. They all scored. Frank Howard's three-run homer after Grant left erased what had been a 7-0 Twins lead. The Nats won in 20 innings.