Shohei Ohtani had a big night last night, clubbing two home runs, each of which comfortably traveled more than 400 feet. On Thursday in Boston, he pitched seven scoreless innings, striking out eleven and not walking a single man. He does not lead the league in fWAR, but he’s in the top ten, and that’s with a 15-point gap between his wOBA and his xwOBA in the direction which implies he’s been getting unlucky at the plate (don’t worry about what wOBA and xwOBA mean, just worry about the gap here—he’s been hitting the ball better than his results indicate). Last year, he amassed 8.1 fWAR in total, FanGraphs’s Depth Charts have him projected to reach 7.4 this year, and if you want the list of guys who’ve managed consecutive full-season totals that high in the last decade, it’s…
- Jacob deGrom
- Mike Trout
- Clayton Kershaw
- Andrew McCutchen
- Yadier Molina
…which is a bit of a weird list*, but a telling one. If Ohtani performs to median expectations, he’ll be in league with some of the most dominant players of the last ten years (*bWAR doesn’t have Molina’s totals as high, but pitch-framing is hugely important, and I’d be willing to speculate it may have been even more important back then as more of a developing focus league-wide).
Shohei Ohtani’s also only 27.
Most players who come from Japan or Korea to the Major Leagues come later in their careers than Ohtani did. Ichiro debuted at 27. Hideo Nomo was 26. Hideki Matsui was 29. Ohtani was 23. Ohtani is not just looking, at this moment, like one of his generation’s defining players. He’s looking like he’s going to be this good for a few more years now. The most accurate aging curves don’t show too much of a decline from 27 to 30. That’s this year, plus three more, and then who knows what comes after for a player with the most diverse skillset in MLB history?
Aging is one of baseball’s biggest and quietest problems. A sport with more than four levels of minor leagues, and one in which players don’t become free agents until they’ve spent six years in the Majors is, clearly, one designed to have stars in their 30’s. And yet as the steroid era fades and youth development grows frantically, the best players are not the established veterans. They’re the young guys. The last time a player older than 30 years old won an MVP over a full, 162-game season was 2007, when—speaking of PED’s—A-Rod did it. The best players are young, the biggest names are old, that’s a hard thing to market.
Which is part of what makes Ohtani so valuable to baseball, as a sport. Ohtani is still in that next-big-thing territory of the discourse, yet he’s also been a household name among those who follow baseball even rather passively since he came to America in 2018. We are both used to Shohei Ohtani and continuing to be amazed at what he does. We are in the Shohei Ohtani sweet spot, and knock on a lot of wood, we should be on the front end of it.
Baseball may one day soon have its Tom Brady, or its LeBron James, or its Wayne Gretzky, a player whose longevity and prominence keeps them in the highest level of focus for nigh on twenty years. Players may learn to age more gracefully, the developmental advantages of youth sports may reach a point of diminishing returns, the developmental advantage of youth sports may become so great we have 19-year-olds routinely playing at the MLB level…things may change. But right now, baseball has its Shohei Ohtani, and our best indication is that baseball’s going to have him at or near his current state for this year and another three. Even then, he projects to have a big peak from which to comfortably slide, with that diverse skillset a diverse portfolio of talent assets upon which to roll the dice.
All Kinds of Vibes With the Cubs
A few hours after the Cubs did what seemed to be a bone-headed abandonment of Frank Schwindel (more on this in a minute), they played their best game in weeks. Kyle Hendricks was his vintage self, making his best start since 2020. Nico Hoerner smoked the ball four times, didn’t get a single hit from the effort, and still put the game away on the basepaths. Ian Happ came through twice with men on. Willson Contreras got himself on every time he touched the bat. It was a great game by and for the Cubs.
There are a few buts, but first: Hendricks and Hoerner are two players we’ve been down on in these notes, especially Hendricks recently and Hoerner historically. Hoerner is making us believers. Hendricks got our hand off the panic button. There have been plenty of consistency questions with Hendricks over this last season and a month, but if his Jekyll can be as good as it was last night, we might be able to live with the Hyde.
Now, the buts:
Seiya Suzuki’s ankle’s sore. Hopefully nothing major, but did leave the game and you always hold your breath with a guy holding most of the weight of expectations for the future of your favorite franchise on his shoulders.
The Frank Schwindel situation is a mess.
To recap what happened: Schwindel was optioned to AAA on Sunday to go try to reset, since he’s off to a rougher than rough start at the plate. Then, yesterday, the Cubs got on the phone and told him he was going to San Diego (on a middle seat, adding to the indignity). The cause may have been just—the Cubs weren’t sure how severe a Covid outbreak they might be dealing with, having put Marcus Stroman on the IL on Sunday and putting David Robertson on it yesterday—but it was a sad moment, because what it demonstrated was the expendability of Frank Schwindel, who was such a bright spot over last season’s final two months and has been a fun guy to follow.
It’s ok if the Cubs don’t view Schwindel as a key piece of their future. Viewing him that way would be a little foolish—he’s 29 and has two great months and little else to show for it. It’s also ok if they’re doing everything they can to win right now. But there have been enough indicators they aren’t doing the latter (e.g., leaving one of the best bullpens in the league waiting last week on Wednesday while their starter, who clearly wasn’t his best, tried to tightrope his way through a start against the crosstown rival) that yanking a player right back up after clearly telling him you have no confidence in him seems rather cruel, and also pointless. Schwindel struck out every time he came to the plate last night, and while it’s unfair to judge the results of a baseball decision off of one game, that’s also not that out of bounds of an expectation for how the decision was going to go. The guy’s reaching base less than a quarter of the time right now.
I understand the Cubs bringing Schwindel to San Diego, given the circumstances and the convenience in terms of options and 40-man roster spots and all of that. I wish they’d brought up another pitcher—any pitcher—or given a different position player a cup of coffee while the Covid thing sorts out, but I understand that it was a frantic situation and Schwindel’s a guy we all know can at least play Major League Baseball. I don’t understand putting him in the lineup right after all of that, and I hope that in any other situation he’d have been sent to Des Moines to do the work they told him they wanted him to do. For his sake and that of the Cubs.
There’s also a piece of me that wonders about the offseason approach to Schwindel and Patrick Wisdom—the two shining stars of an abysmal end to 2021 who were both shocking and are both on the wrong side of 28. Could the Cubs have traded them to contenders, or those aspiring to contend? Neither would have brought back a haul, but each was affordable, provided upside, and any return is better than no return. There was no way of knowing Schwindel would have as tough of a start to 2022 as he’s had, but unless the circumstances are exceptional—and perhaps they were—you don’t pull a rope-a-dope like yesterday’s with a guy you think has any place of significance in your franchise’s future. I know at some level you need players to play the positions on the field, but there’s an inconsistency here that may just be the product of cautious optimism now going unrewarded but may also be the product of a decision to prioritize marketability of a mediocre team over adding those fractions of possible wins in 2024 and beyond. Hopefully it was the former, not the latter. Especially given Schwindel’s so damn likeable.
To pivot in a wantonly positive direction, Wade Miley makes his Cubs debut tonight, and while he isn’t fully stretched-out yet, he’s a professional starter, and the Cubs should be able to trust him to eat four or five innings and compete within those. As Contreras and Happ reminded us again last night, there’s still some talent hanging around from the good times, and as Hoerner and Suzuki are demonstrating, we may be seeing the first swell of the next wave. The bullpen misses Robertson but has weapons. Mike Clevinger’s making just his second start since 2020. Maybe the Cubs can steal another and grab a series win.
Last update: Justin Steele’s thumb evidently felt a lot better yesterday. For joy.
This Bucks/Celtics Series Is Great
I recently wrote about how disenchanted I am with the NBA Playoffs, and as a consequence with the NBA as a whole, but to the NBA’s credit, this second round has some good stuff going on, especially in the Eastern Conference. That Celtics/Bucks game was something last night, and the 76ers/Heat series is one where no outcome would, at this point, surprise. The West is a little more annoying—lot of Rorschach tests going on for fans in each series there—but I will concede that the NBA Playoffs have become exciting, and that I am growing invested (and not just because I put a couple non-Best Bets futures down on Boston last week).
The Avalanche: Inevitable?
Gelo remains skeptical of the Colorado Avalanche, the only team that has looked consistently good in these playoffs, but it does now view them as the best team in the NHL, which checks a box on the negative side of the “did we accidentally make a batshit model” evaluation form. I will say: The Predators were a below-average NHL team. I will also say: The rest of the West isn’t bad? It’s very possible I’m the idiot in the room here, but the Wild won just three fewer games than the Avalanche and are facing a much better team than what Colorado just whisked through like a steak knife. When they’re on, the Oilers can score at a pace some might call profane. Gelo is very skeptical of the Flames, but if Gelo is telling us something useful, it’s saying that the longshot nature of the Flames in a hypothetical matchup with the Avalanche is distracting the market from the larger threat in the room, which is the Wild/Blues winner.
Antoine Davis, GlowBalls…Hold Up, What?
I’m not going to talk about the NCAA’s “guidance” on NIL (at least not today), other than to say that it’s a great way to fill space if you write about college sports and is probably (and hopefully) meaningless. I’m also not going to talk about any exciting transfers, because we have no exciting transfers in recent days (Jamarion Sharp is staying at WKU, though, if that gets your blood flowing). I’m also not going to talk about the life and tragic death of Adreian Payne, because there are much better people you can get coverage from on that (our condolences to his family, friends, and fans, of course—what an awful, unnecessary, just plain sad thing).
I will talk about Antoine Davis staying at Detroit, because this is wacky:
I did not put these tweets in chronological order, but I did put them in the order I read them, which was my chronological order. My chronological responses? Hopefully the same as yours.
There’s the initial confusion—you’d think BYU could really pound the NIL pavement, and that Detroit Mercy could really not. An eyebrow-raise. The first head-tilt of a dog. “Maybe,” one says to oneself, “BYU doesn’t do NIL, somehow?”
Then…
GlowBalls????
I do not know what a GlowBall is. I don’t know if they even already exist or not. I hope they turn out to be the coolest thing ever, and that Davis makes a sick YouTube page of him shooting glow-in-the-dark basketballs at a glow-in-the-dark basket, or at least generates enough clips of that to be used for eternity in slow motion in the background of insurance commercials. I also don’t know why an unnamed Chinese basketball manufacturer would be interested in Davis staying at Detroit as part of this deal (not only is BYU a bigger brand, but BYU fans seem like they enjoy Dude Perfect and Dude Perfect seems like it would lose its mind over GlowBalls) unless, and this is 100% speculation, working with this manufacturer wouldn’t have flown with BYU? Maybe because of the active genocide going on in China and the necessary complicity of virtually every Chinese business because China is not a free country? 100% speculation, but I would hazard a guess that we are not even seeing the tip of the iceberg on this story. We’re seeing the tip of the iceberg through thirty feet of murky water.
The iceberg does glow a little, though.
***
Viewing schedule today, primary screen in bold, second screen rotation in italics:
- 1:10 PM EDT: Tigers vs. A’s Game 1, Skubal vs. Montas (ESPN+/Regional TV)
- 4:40 PM EDT: A’s @ Tigers Game 2, Martinez vs. Faedo (Regional TV)
- 6:40 PM EDT: Brewers @ Reds, Peralta vs. Greene (Regional TV)
- 7:00 PM EDT: Bruins @ Hurricanes, Game 5 (ESPN)
- 7:05 PM EDT: Blue Jays @ Yankees, Kikuchi vs. Severino (Regional TV)
- 7:30 PM EDT: Lightning @ Maple Leafs, Game 5 (ESPN2)
- 7:30 PM EDT: 76ers @ Heat, Game 5 (TNT)
- 7:40 PM EDT: Astros @ Twins, Verlander vs. Ryan (Regional TV)
- 8:10 PM EDT: Guardians @ White Sox, Quantrill vs. Giolito (Regional TV)
- 9:30 PM EDT: Blues @ Wild, Game 5 (ESPN)
- 9:38 PM EDT: Rays @ Angels, Kluber vs. Detmers (Regional TV)
- 9:40 PM EDT: Cubs @ Padres, Miley vs. Clevinger (Regional TV)
- 9:40 PM EDT: Phillies @ Mariners, Nola vs. Ray (Regional TV)
- 10:00 PM EDT: Kings @ Oilers, Game 5 (ESPN2)
Tons of good baseball matchups tonight to go with the playoff happenings. Something fun about each hockey game as well.
