Pregame Pepper
For baseball games, South Korea’s domed stadium, located in Gocheok-dong, first opened on Sept. 15, 2015, when it replaced the Dongdaemun Baseball Stadium . . .
The nine-year-old Seoul ballpark that hosted the two-game opening series between the Dodgers and Padres has a capacity of 25,000 for concerts but just 16,744 for baseball — more than 30,000 less than Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles . . .
The Dodgers have to be concerned about Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who got a 12-year, $325 million contract with no deferred money but followed an awful spring training with a worse regular-season debut (nine batters, five runs allowed) . . .
The first time Mookie Betts saw now-teammate Shohei Ohtani, he hit a home run against him . . .
Betts was then with the Red Sox and Ohtani with the Angels . . .
Cincinnati’s fine young infielder Matt McLain may need shoulder surgery . . .
New Mets starter Luis Severino has opened the season in a big-league rotation only once since 2018 . . .
He’ll need to pick up the slack for Kodai Senga, expected out at least a month.
Leading Off
A little bit of Seoul
A little dumb Dodgers luck, and other observations
By Jeff Kallman
Rest assured, neither the Dodgers nor the Padres intended to cross the Pacific to open their regular seasons with the idea that a freak occurrence would turn a slim but late Padres lead into a Dodger overthrow. Entering the top of the eighth (the Padres were declared the home team for the game) the Dodgers had one run on four hits to the Padres’ two on three.
Then, Max Muncy opened with a walk when ball four followed a pitch clock violation. Teoscar Hernández (the best corner outfield bat on the free agency market until the Dodgers signed him for one year and $23.5 million) singled Muncy to second, and Jams Outman drew a four-pitch walk to load the pads for prodigal Dodger Enrique Hernández to send Muncy home with a game-tying sacrifice fly.
Up stepped Gavin Lux, whose difficulties prompted the Dodgers to slide him over to second base and hand the shortstop job “permanently, for now” to Mookie Betts, long distinguished in right field and better than serviceable after moving to second base last year. Facing Padres reliever Adrian Morejon in relief of Jhony Brito, Lux swatted the first pitch up the first base side and right into the glove of Padres first baseman Jake Cronenworth.
“That was a double play ball,” said Padres manager Mike Schildt postgame. Until it wasn’t. Inexplicably, the ball tore through the glove webbing. “That’s a tough error for Cro,” said Dodgers manager Dave Roberts.
Assigning errors is problematic enough without an unexpected equipment malfunction dropping one onto a first baseman’s resume. Read the box score alone and it’ll say nothing but “E-3.” It won’t tell you Cronenworth reached for the ball unaware the web became a doggie door.
A batted ball is supposed to find holes through the infield, not through a glove, right? Say whatever else you will about the Dodgers as the profligate beasts of the National League West, but they’re still baseball players, and they’re well grounded against looking the proverbial gift horse in the proverbial mouth. Teoscar Hernández shot home with the tiebreaking run, all hands were safe at first and second otherwise, and the Mookie Monster was about to take the batter’s box.
Down 0-2, Betts singled Outman home. Up stepped Shohei Ohtani, the Dodgers’ ten-year, $700 million man, looking for his second base hit of the evening. He’d thrilled the Seoul crowd earlier when he hit the roof with a hard, fast, long foul. This time, they’d just have to settle for Ohtani dumping an RBI quail into moderate left center field, sending Lux home and leaving first and second once again.
Thus the 5-2 score that would stick when Freddie Freeman ended the Dodger eighth flying into an unlikely Area Code 9-3-6, the Padres managed an un-cashed leadoff single off Dodger reliever Joe Kelly in the bottom of the eighth, the Dodgers left the bases loaded in the top of the ninth, and the Padres went down in order in the bottom of the ninth.
Neither a reported bomb threat at Gocheok Sky Dome nor Ohtani forgetting to re-touch the pad at second on the Freeman fly to cause the eighth inning-ending double play compromised the fun. The bomb threat proved empty when police found nothing incendiary after they received a tip that Ohtani himself was the threat’s target.
The opener of the two-game Seoul Series, the first time American MLB has played games that count in South Korea, wouldn’t cause hand-wringing over constant power. The Dodgers were gifted nine walks and a hit batsman from San Diego pitching; none of the game’s eleven hits went for extra bases.
Speaking of pitch clock violations, the clock now reduced by two seconds more with men on base, the Padres were called for four of them—two on Willy Peralta including on the Muncy walk, one on San Diego starter Yu Darvish, and one on reliever Yuki Matsui. Swell. (For whom?)
Meanwhile, I was left to pray just a moment that, somehow, the game might provoke another takeaway: umpire accountability. Nobody working the first of the Seoul Series committed any truly egregious wrong call, but I couldn’t help remembering what I learned of the Korean Baseball Organization and how it deals with errant umpires.
Back in 2020, I learned an inconsistent strike zone in a game between the SK Wyverns and the Hanwha Eagles prompted the KBO to demote the entire umpiring crew to the country’s Futures League for re-training. Wyverns and Eagles players alike complained about the umps. The league actually listened and acted.
I also noted Yahoo! Sports writer Mark Townsend observing, “Try to picture this scenario. MLB officials approach Joe West. MLB officials then inform Joe West that his entire crew is headed back to rookie ball for retraining. And you thought the stare West gave Madison Bumgarner was frightening?”
Well, West is retired and the Show’s errant umps continue apace. What would have happened if the Seoul Series umpiring crew of Lance Barksdale, Carlos Torres, Jansen Visconti, and Jeremie Rehak, had blown calls or—in Barksdale’s case, being behind the plate for the first game—shown a floating strike zone? I’d imagine any Korean baseball officials in attendance might have had something to say about American umpiring that would have been many things — flattering not being among them.
Frankly, I’d love to see MLB government approaching a crew chief (Laz Diaz comes to mind at once) to say the entire crew’s going back to Triple-A for re-training until they get the strike zones and other things right. The KBO doesn’t suffer fools gladly, even if they happen to be umpires. The American Show’s government still seems to think they enhance the entertainment factor.
Those who fear the advent of Robby the Umpbot—and forget how the accountability issue provoked the self-immolation (no, it was not a strike) of the original Major League Umpires Association—might want to ponder that one.
Jeff Kallman is an IBWAA Life Member who writes Throneberry Fields Forever. He has written for the Society for American Baseball Research, The Hardball Times, Sports-Central, and other publications. He has lived in Las Vegas since 2007, where he plays the guitar and writes music when not writing baseball. He remains a Met fan since the day they were born.
Cleaning Up
Snell’s Holdout Reduces Payoff, Hurts Future
By Dan Schlossberg
Blake Snell’s deal with the Giants is not a good one.
Goaded by penny-counting agent Scott Boras, he held out so long that he has now jeopardized his entire season, not to mention his career.
The 31-year-old lefty, last seen in San Diego livery, suddenly has a new catcher, a new pitching coach, new teammates, and new weather conditions — jumping from the benign sunny days of Southern California to the swirling winds of the bayfront ballpark not far from Fishermen’s Wharf.
At least he has a familiar manager, since Bob Melvin also made the same move — only months earlier in the peculiar off-season that’s nearing a merciful end.
Fortunately for the pitcher, he has a history of pitching better later in the season. That should certainly be the case this year because he’s weeks behind everybody else on Melvin’s staff. For a pitcher who often has trouble throwing strikes, that’s not good.
The desperate Giants, far from their 107-win form of three years ago, improved their defense dramatically by signing third baseman Matt Chapman and center-fielder Jung Hoo Lee, plucked from the Korean majors, plus former World Series MVP Jorge Soler, who once had a 48-homer season.
But they still need better showings from Michael Conforto, Michael Yastremski, and LaMonte Wade, Jr. to boost an offense that banked too heavily on journeymen Wilmer Flores and Thairo Estrada last season.
Melvin will live or die with a pitching staff forced to wait for Robbie Ray, recovering from Tommy John surgery, and fellow lefty Snell, who might need a month to get ready despite training in a Boras gulag. That leaves Logan Webb, Alex Cobb, and rookie southpaw Kyle Harrison as the only certain starters to start the season.
A bullpen led by Camilo Doval, whose 39 saves led the NL last season, will be taxed.
Snell, who began his career (and won his first Cy Young) with Tampa Bay, could be a freak of nature who jumps into action without missing a beat — the way previous Boras clients Kyle Lohse and Dallas Keuchel did. If he starts slowly, however, his new teammates are certain to consider him overpampered as well as overpaid (two years, $62 million, with an opt-out after the first season).
If Snell tests free agency again, a strong probability, he’ll find considerable competition from Max Fried, Corbin Burnes, and a half-dozen others who will be plying their wares and their personalities on the open market.
Snell may be the defending NL Cy Young Award winner but his chances of repeating after waiting so long to sign are slim and none. That will only decrease his value to prospective suitors.
In the meantime, he faces the monumental task of trying to help his new team erase a 21-game deficit in a division dominated by the second-best team in baseball (assuming the defensively-challenged Dodgers remain inferior to the Braves). Since L.A. is better this year with their Japanese imports, the best the Giants can hope for is a wild-card ticket to the playoffs.
Then, anything goes, as last year’s unexpected results clearly showed.
Former AP sportswriter Dan Schlossberg of Fair Lawn, NJ has written 41 baseball books and penned articles for Memories & Dreams, USA TODAY Sports Weekly, Sports Collectors Digest, forbes.com, Here’s The Pitch, and many others. His email is ballauthor@gmail.com.
Timeless Trivia
“He took us as far as we could possibly go and we won. Just his performance in the wild-card series alone set the tone for the entire playoff push. The way he pitched against Houston — a team we’re always going to have to be battling against — was great.”
— Marcus Semien of the World Champion Texas Rangers on Jordan Montgomery
Montgomery, still unsigned, pitched seven scoreless innings in the wild-card series against the Rays and two gems against the Astros in the Championship Series . . .
The Cubs, Cardinals, Red Sox, and Yankees courted the left-handed Montgomery . . .
Max Scherzer, Jacob deGrom, and Tyler Mahle will all start 2024 on the injured list . . .
Texas manager Bruce Bochy, a certain future Hall of Famer, is seeking his fifth world championship this season.
Know Your Editors
HERE’S THE PITCH is published daily except Sundays and holidays. Benjamin Chase [gopherben@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.