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Pregame Pepper
Did you know…
All signs of Wander Franco, once the boy wonder of the Tampa Bay Rays, were erased from Tropicana Field after the All-Star shortstop was placed on the restricted list last month . . .
After flirting with .400 during the first half, Miami’s Luis Arraez has slumped so seriously that he could even lose his grip on the National League batting title — after winning the crown in the American League while playing for Minnesota last year . . .
Entering play last night, the Braves need to hit 58 home runs over their remaining 30 games to top the 2019 team home run record held by the Minnesota Twins — an average of 1.94 per game . . .
Working extra rest days into Spencer Strider’s schedule could deprive Atlanta’s hard-throwing right-hander of both a 20-victory season and the NL’s Cy Young Award . . .
Matt Olson’s bid to erase the Braves franchise record for home runs (51 by Andruw Jones in 2005) seems to be on hold while he struggles through a power drought . . .
The Mets will give infielder Ronny Mauricio a full audition this month but still need to find a position where he’s passable defensively.
Leading Off
The Week of the (Wounded) Pitcher
Shohei Ohtani down; Stephen Strasburg out
By Jeff Kallman
Ouch! The guy who pitches like a co-ace / No. 2 starter and hits like he’s dialing the Delta Quadrant has a torn ulnar collateral ligament, possibly facing Tommy John surgery and acceptance of a smaller-than-expected free-agency payday.
Double ouch! The first No. 1 major-league draft pick to go on and win a World Series Most Valuable Player award has thoracic outlet syndrome and related surgery, keeping him to only one pitching appearance in the past two seasons but is paid to his career long enough before he finally made it official.
Shoh-time is over, at least on the mound. (If the Angels suddenly find something other than coconut milk for brains among their brain trust, they’ll close the Shoh at the plate, too, until his physical health is restored completely.) But it’s no más for Stras. Baseball’s No. 1 marquee attraction is down. Washington’s 2019 World Series MVP is out.
Thus was the last full week of August was one of the most depressing August weeks baseball’s ever known.
Shohei Ohtani has at least a fighting chance to return if he undergoes Tommy John surgery. Stephen Strasburg tried to fight his way back from TOS surgery long enough, hard enough, and futilely enough. Ohtani can still remain must-see television in due course. Strasburg’s must-see television now becomes whatever he and his family call it at home.
Ohtani may still command a small island economy’s equivalent after maybe signing a Shoh-me single-year deal up the street. May. Strasburg now wishes to command life as a husband, father, and actor in whichever second act he chooses to make of his still-young life.
Don’t say nobody tried to warn anyone.
Some of us actually hollered “not so fast” when Ohtani emerged as baseball’s potential all-time unicorn. We thought it was playing with nuclear fire letting him pitch as a rotation regular and swing as a designated hitter the rest of the time.
“Why would you stop him,” the New York Post’s Joel Sherman once demanded of MLB Network’s Brian Kenny. “[Because] one could damage the other,” Kenny shot back. One didn’t necessarily damage the other, since Ohtani swings left-handed with his pitching arm the lead arm. But it may not have done him any favors, either.
Especially since he’s already been through a Tommy John surgery. But the Angels did him no favors, either, by not pushing to resolve the matter when Ohtani complained a few times, prior to last week, about a tired arm and a few hand and finger cramps. Now it’s a tear in the UCL that was already replaced once.
Oh, sure, Angels general manager Perry Minasian said Ohtani balked when the team prodded him to get an MRI. If you believe that, I’ve just knocked another fifty grand off the price of my Antarctican beach club. For all we’ve learned about athletic injuries over the past few decades, athletes still remain reluctant to speak up more firmly when ailing. If you don’t know why, I’ve taken another fifty grand off that price.
The Angels’ brass plays more CYA than the government plays CIA. Now, the Angels shake, rattle, and roll their way out of the post-season picture while their two greatest players (Hall of Famer-in-waiting center fielder Mike Trout is also on the injured list again) can only watch. They’d be better off with a private screening of any new film telling of the Andrea Doria sinking.
Strasburg was a different case. The Nationals took no chances when his first elbow blowout turned into his first Tommy John surgery. Controversially, they shut him down early in 2012 out of well-stated, well-quoted regard for his and their future. That paid off when Strasburg—who’s been good, great, off the charts, and back, several times over—stood proudly hoisting the Willie Mays trophy as the 2019 Series MVP.
They didn’t ignore or neglect his injuries in between. Neither did they balk when he opted out of his old contract after the ’19 Series but then clicked his spiked heels three times chanting, “There’s no place like home! There’s no place like home!” They signed him right back up big. Neither he nor they quite expected what happened soon enough to happen soon enough.
But maybe they should have.
Strasburg’s wounding mechanical flaw was the inverted-W cock-and-release, with his elbows up above his shoulders and thus his throwing arm coming around flat before releasing the ball out of sync to his landing foot. Timing off, elbow and shoulder stressed.
Maybe the miracle was that Strasburg pitched as long as he did in the first place, never mind as well as he did. He pitched one season fewer (13) than Hall of Famer Don Drysdale (14)—who also had the inverted-W cock-and-release pitching style. And, whose career ended with a shredded rotator cuff in 1969, long enough before surgery existed to repair it.
The hype around Strasburg’s draft may have driven him into enough of a personal shell that it took over a decade before he could let himself show the pleasures he took in competing and triumphing. Even as he proved repeatedly that the hype was a little understated. (He was deadly in the postseason lifetime: 1.46 ERA; 2.07 fielding-independent pitching; 0.94 WHIP; 11.5 strikeouts per nine.)
They used to talk about learning to say hello when it was time to say goodbye? Strasburg let himself learn to dance on the threshold of the last dance being called. His too-badly-compromised shoulder leaving him unable to lift his young daughters for fatherly affection told him there had to be another dance away from the mound.
It’s too late for Strasburg, but not too late for Ohtani. Maybe baseball’s government, from the commissioner to the owners to the front offices to the brain trusts, finally decides and demands there must be an entire overhaul and remaking of the game’s medical systems.
Pitching coaches need to learn more physiology. The game’s lords need to know it will no longer do not to send the “suck it up and go for the glory” mindset to the grave in which it belongs. Where’s the glory if you sacrifice careers to save or win seasons? The cheers and champagne shampoos and parades last only as long as the next pennant race.
The next time someone tries to warn you that a two-way unicorn may run into big bad physical trouble for his unicorning, heed. The next time someone tries to warn you a particular pitching style can be dangerous to a pitcher’s long-term health, heed.
Before that, wish Shohei Ohtani a sound recovery. (And, perhaps, eventual escape from the Angels’ unsound house.) Wish Stephen Strasburg a happy husband-hood, fatherhood, and whatever other hood he chooses for his life’s second act.
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
Jimmy Carter Was a True Baseball Fan
By Dan Schlossberg
Jimmy Carter, the 39th President of the United States, loved baseball almost as much as he loved his country.
A photogenic politician who vaulted from Governor of Georgia to the White House in 1976, Carter not only attended games in Atlanta as an ardent fan of the Braves but also played soft-pitch softball in his native Plains.
He pitched for a team of Secret Service agents, while brother Billy pitched for a team of White House reporters.
During the Summer of ‘76, those softball games seemed to attract bigger crowds than the Braves games in downtown Atlanta, Carter once joked.
“One of the biggest events in our town’s history was when the entire Braves team came down to visit us,” Carter wrote in the book Turner Field: Rarest of Diamonds. "Mama particularly enjoyed having a long discussion with Bobby Cox about baseball strategy and tactics.”
By then, Miss Lillian had become an avid fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers, according to her famous son. That happened after Earl and Lillian, who vacationed in a different major-league city every summer, saw Jackie Robinson play in his rookie year of 1947.
“During her final years,” Carter recalled, “she watched or listened to West Coast games on special TV and radio systems and often called Tommy Lasorda personally to criticize his management decisions.”
Sorting her belongings after she died, Carter actually found a complete Dodgers uniform in her closet.
Carter’s three most memorable moments of Braves baseball occurred several years apart.
On April 8, 1974, he witnessed the Hank Aaron home run that broke Babe Ruth’s lifetime home run record, then presented him with a new Georgia license plate that read HR 715.
In 1992, Carter was present when third-string catcher Francisco Cabrera clouted a two-run, ninth-inning single that won a 3-2 game and gave the Braves the NL pennant over the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Four years later, he threw out the first pitch on Opening Day for the Braves as they began their defense of the 1995 World Championship — fulfilling a pledge made by Ted Turner nearly two decades earlier. Despite a winter of practicing the pitch, it was timed at only 48 miles an hour, even slower than a Phil Niekro knuckleball, although it was a perfect strike.
Carter’s favorite was the Cabrera game. Pittsburgh was cruising behind Doug Drabek, who nursed a 2-0 lead into the bottom of the ninth in Game 7. But the Braves pushed across three runs, the last crossing in the form of gimpy Sid Bream, the slowest runner in the National League.
“To me,” Carter said, “the heart-stopping winning play was typical of the spirit, courage, and ability of the Braves’ teams over the years.”
He was right: the Braves of that era won 14 consecutive division titles, a record that remains unchallenged in baseball history.
Though beset with economic challenges during his single term in office, the one-time peanut farmer deserves credit for the Camp David Accords, ending years of hostility in the Middle East, and for his subsequent Habit for Humanity home-building project. His smile could light up any room.
Jimmy Carter will be missed both by the baseball world and by the world in general.
Former AP sportswriter Dan Schlossberg of Fair Lawn, NJ met Jimmy Carter when he was covering Hank Aaron’s home run title chase. Dan now writes for forbes.com, Sports Collectors Digest, USA TODAY Sports Weekly, and Memories & Dreams. His email is ballauthor@gmail.com.
Timeless Trivia
“For the first 13 years of my major-league career, Eddie Mathews was ahead of me in home runs. A lot of people thought if anyone was going to break Babe Ruth’s record, it was going to be him.”
— Hank Aaron
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.