Texas Took Terrific Hit in Month of August
PLUS: FORMER CATCHER THRILLED TO DISCOVER JEWISH IDENTITY
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Reader Reacts
Sid Bream was out; and would have been called out on replay.
— Charles R. Conway, Esq., Murrysville, PA
Pregame Pepper
Did you know…
From Mark Bowman, Braves beat writer for MLB.com: “I’m going to predict Eddie Rosario hits the Braves’ 308th homer. This would be the one that breaks the MLB record Rosario and his Twins set in 2019.”
Don’t give up on aging third baseman Josh Donaldson just yet, as the former MVP has inked a minor-league deal with the Milwaukee Brewers and can be promoted the minute to finds his hibernating batting stroke . . .
Former Orioles first baseman Chris Davis, the beneficiary of a contract with money deferred, is long retired but will be paid through 2037 . . .
Until Ronald Acuña, Jr. did it this season, Hank Aaron was the only Brave who homered and stole a base for the Braves eight times in the same season (1963) . . .
With anemic offense a much bigger culprit than pitching in the fall of the Cleveland Guardians, why did the team claim pitchers Matt Moore, Reynaldo Lopez, and Lucas Giolito off waivers from the Los Angeles Angels?
Leading Off
Rangers Came Crashing Down to Earth in August
By Ben Dieter
It has been a surprisingly good season to be a Texas Rangers fan. Fans have watched their team lead the American League West for the first 129 games of the season.
The offense has been on a record pace and the starting rotation has been one of the best in the American League. However, that excitement came to a screeching halt in August.
Even though the Texas Rangers have led the West for the majority of the month, their numbers have been less than epic. The bullpen, which has been up and down to say the least, has had little ups and major downs.
Will Smith, demoted as closer, posted an earned run average of 8.71 in the month of August. Josh Sborz ERA was at 6.48 for the month, while Brock Burke sat at 5.23.
Their year-to-date ERA’s go as follows: Burke 3.21, Sborz 4.69 and Smith 4.01. To say the bullpen has been a problem is a major understatement.
While starting pitching has been pretty good, the offense has been as bad as it was good to start the season.
At the end of July, the Rangers led all of MLB with 5.75 runs per game. In the month of August, they averaged 4.7 runs per game.
Part of the offensive collapse has been their inability to hit with runners in scoring position. They have been one of the worst teams with RISP in the month of August and have left the bases loaded on multiple occasions.
The team fell out of first place for the first time this season and currently sit in third behind the Seattle Mariners (1st) and the Houston Astros (2nd).
The crazy thing is they are still only one game out of first place with a less-than-stellar month of August. They have three more games against the Astros and seven more games against the Mariners in their last 29.
The Texas Rangers fate is in their hands, as it were. Take care of business in September and they will be playing in October.
The question that most Rangers fans are asking at the moment is what will October look like with a bullpen that has no trusted arms?
I believe that August gave us that answer. The Rangers led late in the game in seven of their 12 losses in the month.
The good news for the Texas Rangers and their fans is that August is over, and September is a new month. Can the Rangers put their dreadful August behind them and get back to winning?
Most MLB teams do not get the opportunity to recover after a month-long collapse, but the Texas Rangers have that exact chance. As mentioned, their fate is in their hands.
A sweep of the Astros and two series wins against the Mariners and their chance to win the AL West are great. They have post-season experience on the roster with players like Corey Seager, Aroldis Chapman, Nathan Eovaldi and others.
However, if September looks anything like August, Rangers fans will once again be watching teams not named the Rangers in the postseason. It is time for this club to prove if the first four months of the season were a fluke or if they are a legitimate threat.
Ben Dieter has been writing and podcasting about the Texas Rangers since 2009. You can find his work at therangerreport.com and dalsportsnation.com. His email is bdieter75@gmail.com.
Cleaning Up
Ryan Lavarnway Hits Home Run with Baseball Book for Jewish Kids
By Dan Schlossberg
During his 10-year career in the major leagues, Ryan Lavarnway was never more than a backup catcher, hitting .217 with nine home runs for eight different teams.
Though out of the majors since 2021, he’s been an integral part of Team Israel, which he joined for the World Baseball Classic in 2017. He says that affiliation changed his life.
A Californian drafted off the Yale campus by the Boston Red Sox in 2008, he found new life with Team Israel — for whom he chose uniform No. 36 because that number signifies “double life” in Jewish tradition.
“When I played for the WBC team in 2017, that was a really life-changing experience for me,” Lavarnway, 36, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “I didn’t feel a huge connection to my Judaism, to any religion, or to the community at all. Playing for Team Israel, I felt that for the first time.”
Now he’s trying to change the lives of others through a new children’s book entitled Baseball and Belonging, illustrated by Chris Brown, in which the journeyman catcher talks about life, his career in pro sports, and how a call from Israel helped him rekindle his Judaism.
Lavarnway, whose mother is Jewish but father is Catholic, was pushed in neither direction. His parents let him choose.
But thinking he was half-and-half made him feel like he was neither. Now, with a Jewish wife and a whole new family from Team Israel, Lavarnway has chosen.
The World Baseball Classic allows players to represent countries where they are eligible for citizenship. That means Jewish ballplayers can play for Team Israel even if they were citizens of another country, such as the United States.
That worked well for Lavarnway, who was named MVP of Team Israel’s division in the first round after it won its first four games — all against higher-ranked countries. Only a loss to Japan in the second round knocked the tenacious underdog out.
Lavarnway had never been to Israel before going there to play baseball. His book features illustrations of sites he has seen, including the Dead Sea, Western Wall, and Yad Vashem Holocaust museum.
It also includes his excitement about Israeli kids treating the players of Team Israel like superstars and the euphoria of entertaining Jewish fans.
The book contains pages of information about Israel, its most significant sites, and its baseball program — which once featured a six-team Israel Baseball League with retired Jewish major-leaguers Ron Blomberg, Art Shamsky, and Ken Holtzman as managers.
Lavarnway got the idea for the book after question-and-answer sessions following the release of the 2018 documentary Heading Home: The Tale of Team Israel. The film depicted the team’s surprising success in the previous year’s World Baseball Classic.
After audiences urged the former big-leaguer to share his stories of meeting Israelis, leaning about the country, and discovering his own Judaism, he began a college speaking tour.
“I think that was a great audience to hear [my story] because college students are deciding who they want to be and deciding who they want to develop in their community,” Lavarnway said. “It’s a transformational time in their lives. And [for me] that was a really transformational experience.”
The college tour prompted an idea from Rabbi Joe Black, who heads Lavarnway’s congregation in Denver, to craft a children’s book. For someone who had never authored a book before, the concept came out of left field.
After striking out in his first few attempts, all rejected by publishers, he finally found the formula — after reading children’s books to his own daughter.
The key for the catcher was keeping it simple.
“I think the concept of religion is over most children’s heads, especially the younger audience,” Lavarnway told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “But what they can relate to, and what is universal, is doing what you love and feeling loved. If I really had to boil down the message, that’s what it is: doing what you love, and finding somewhere where you can feel loved.”
Peter Kurz, general manager of Team Israel, first recruited Lavarnway in 2017 and calls him “a tremendous inspiration to Israeli players for the last seven years.”
Kurz calls Lavarnway “a true team leader” and “true friend,” and adds that he named the catcher Team Israel’s first official captain two months ago. When his playing days are over, the veteran would be welcome to coach for Team Israel, the GM adds.
Although his days in the U.S. majors are over, Lavarnway will play for Team Israel in the European Championships next month. He’s hoping things go better than they did in the 2023 WBC, in which Team Israel won just one game before elimination.
In addition to the World Baseball Classic, Lavarnway appeared with Team Israel in the 2020 Olympics, which required him to obtain Israeli citizenship [he now holds dual U.S. and Israeli citizenship].
Playing for Team Israel, according to Lavarnway, has been “an experience that changed my life.”
Earlier this year, he told JTA, “I don’t have a future in playing the game, but I’m so excited to be a member of this team, and what we’ve done with the program and with the whole sport in the country.”
Lavarnway still has a connection to the U.S. majors: he’s does pre and post-game analysis for the Colorado Rockies. In his spare time, he continues speaking at schools and colleges.
That leaves little time for writing but Lavarnway doesn’t rule it out. “I don’t know that I’ll make a habit out of making children’s books,” he says. “But this felt like something I needed to do.”
Former AP sportswriter Dan Schlossberg of Fair Lawn, NJ is the author of 40 baseball books and writer for forbes.com, Memories & Dreams, USA TODAY Sports Weekly, Sports Collectors Digest, and other outlets. Email him via ballauthor@gmail.com.
Timeless Trivia
“Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way.”
— Sign on the desk of former Braves owner Ted Turner
Hall of Famers who made the last out in a World Series: Honus Wagner, Babe Ruth, Billy Herman, Earl Averill, Gil Hodges, Pee Wee Reese, Red Schoendienst, Luis Aparicio, Willie McCovey, Carl Yastrzemski, Tony Gwynn, Mike Piazza . . .
Hall of Famers who played basketball for the Harlem Globetrotters: Ernie Banks, Lou Brock, Bob Gibson, Ferguson Jenkins, Satchel Paige . . .
Hall of Fame pitcher Carl Hubbell was the first unanimous choice in the voting for Most Valuable Player in the National League (1936) . . .
Joe DiMaggio won the 1947 AL MVP award by one vote over Ted Williams . . .
Roger Maris beat Mickey Mantle by three votes in 1960 and by four a year later.
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.