Once upon a time, before Trevor Bauer was publicly known to be how he’s publicly known now, Trevor Bauer was a pioneer in the field of spin rate. He understood its importance, he understood how it could be manipulated by applying foreign substances to the baseball, he noticed that new Astros pitchers were seeing a suspicious amount of spin rate increase upon joining Houston. This eventually led to Bauer demonstrably using foreign substances in 2020 to steal the Cy Young Award from Yu Darvish, seemingly with Major League Baseball’s blessing. It also probably led to baseball cracking down on “sticky stuff” in 2021.
Justin Verlander was on those Astros teams, a waiver-wire trade deadline pickup by Houston in 2017, back when the waiver-wire deadline still existed. His spin rate did not noticeably increase when he joined the Astros, and a loose examination by our own Joe Stunardi didn’t point towards him as one of the “veterans” Gerrit Cole was talking about when he blamed veterans for teaching him to use Spider Tack and things of that ilk. Still, Verlander was on the most notorious cheating team in baseball history, and people forget that the Astros weren’t just banging trash cans. They were also arguably the most aggressive franchise when it came to abusing MLB’s refusal to enforce its own foreign substance rules.
Verlander was traded to the Astros again today, one of the biggest names dealt at this year’s trade deadline. He rejoins the team he helped lead to a World Series just last October, and for any Tigers fans still hoping he’ll go to Cooperstown with a D on his hat, it’s not great news. Justin Verlander spent nearly thirteen seasons in Detroit. He’ll have spent at least six in Houston when this year is over, winning more Cy Young Awards there and winning both his World Series titles there.
A question which comes up, then, when thinking about Verlander’s legacy like this, is whether he’ll be remembered as a villain. After all: He’s an Astro, through and through, and the Astros of his era are not exactly white knights.
Working in Verlander’s favor are three things: First, he’s a pitcher, and the Astros’ more notorious sin was committed on the batting side of the ball. Second, he does have all those years in Detroit, which at least color the picture a little bit. (Those Tigers teams feel remarkably neutral in memory—not lovable, not hateable, just the Tigers.) Third, for as good as he’s been and as famous as he is, we don’t know him very well. We, baseball fans, don’t know his personality. Think about Justin Verlander and you likely think that he’s a great pitcher who married one of the most famous supermodels of his generation. He hasn’t done much personally to make us hate him. It’d have to be hate by association.
Working against Verlander, though, is that last piece: We don’t know his personality. He’s a blank slate this way, and blank slates tend to take on some of the characteristics of their surroundings. I have few personal memories of Marwin Gonzalez, but I remember that he absolutely raked for a cheating Astros team in 2017.
Verlander’s biggest risk, then, is that his nondescript persona (without being so nondescript that it *is* a persona) leads him to be lumped in by time as Carlos Correa and Alex Bregman’s teammate, and/or that his nepo brother gets even more annoying with age and it reflects back on the pitcher.
Our biggest risk? Verlander pitches so well over these next three months that he not only cements himself as a villain in our eyes, but that he helps the Astros win a third title, pushing their identity towards being the Yankees of this era. That would be a bad outcome. Which I think means we’re rooting for Verlander to not be remembered as a villain.
NL Central Hate Rankings
The Brewers acquired old Cubs friend Andrew Chafin today, and I’ve realized the NL Central has my brain and heart all twisted up. It was noteworthy last year to realize I hated the Brewers more than the Cardinals, at least temporarily. Then, this year, I’ve developed a distaste for the Reds. Yes, it seems how much I dislike teams is tied to how much a threat they are, but let’s overcomplicate this.
The emotion I feel about the Brewers is spite. I don’t like Craig Counsell. I don’t like Christian Yelich. I don’t like Ryan Braun. I don’t like that they used to be so likable (cool uniforms, from Wisconsin, named the Brewers, played in Miller Park) and now aren’t.
The emotion I feel about the Reds is fear. How are they doing this? Why won’t they stop? Will they do this forever?
The emotion I feel about the Cardinals is a mixture of humor and…camaraderie? The Cardinal Way still feels present, definitely among the fans, but also: These are the guys the Cubs should be battling with. Not the freaking Reds and Brewers! Sources indicate that Cardinals fans agree Craig Counsell is a weasel, too.
The emotion I feel about the Pirates is disgust. Clint Hurdle’s gone, they’re bad again, I don’t have any bad blood towards the Pirates and they were so fun for those few weeks when they were good, but they’re one of the few franchises in sports conspicuously not trying at all to win. Their owners, I mean. The players play hard, and I’m sure the front office is doing its best.
Where does that leave us?
Needing the Cubs to take this division and reestablish order. Go get ‘em, Justin Steele.
The W Doesn’t Stand for Win
It would be sexist not to criticize the U.S. Women’s National Team, who nearly got themselves eliminated last night from the World Cup but managed to have the goalpost in the right place and send Portugal packing instead. You’re allowed to lay one egg, they laid three, they made it out of group stage but they’ve drawn themselves a hell of a knockout stage path, potentially having to play the team they faced in the 2019 final (Sweden), the team they faced in the 2011 and 2015 finals (Japan), and then their two co-favorites (Spain and England).
The bright side of this is that there are going to be some dramatic knockout stage games if all goes according to plan. The dark side is that the USWNT has their work cut out for them if they want to cross the International Date Line again having done anything but brought great shame upon their country. They earned these expectations. They now have to meet them. (Maybe this is why the USMNT always makes clear that they’re very bad and should not have expectations placed upon them.)
Sean Payton Isn’t a Good Enough Coach to Be This Much of a Dick
Sean Payton is a little bit like Urban Meyer, in that he seems like he’s a jackass. He’s also a little like Urban Meyer in that he’s not that good a coach? Urban Meyer was really successful at winning college football games, but his professional failure was close to the worst of all time. On the aggregate, does that average out to Mike McCarthy? Because Sean Payton and Mike McCarthy have those eerily similar résumés we heard about this offseason.
The thing about Nathaniel Hackett in Denver was that he was bad at the job, but the other thing about Nathaniel Hackett in Denver is that I don’t remember him being a bad guy? Just overmatched, really. So, strange decision by Payton to go after him. Lion and sheep and whatnot. Payton? A lamb with a real loud bleat. Thankfully, Sean Payton hasn’t won multiple playoff games in a year since right after Obama’s inauguration, and he’s now tasked with doing it with a washed-up quarterback whose best asset before washing up was that he was a gamer. He’s got the old man version of Dustin Pedroia under center. Sean Payton is fucked, and I am excited to laugh at him.
Parents vs. Children
Nickelodeon will broadcast an alternate telecast of the Super Bowl, and I would love a broad survey on how this ends up going. Not what the broadcast looks like—we know how Nickelodeon does its NFL playoff games, which is an odd sentence but a fun one. I want to know how different households and parties navigate which broadcast to show on TV. I also want a headcount of how many dads sit simmering the entire game because their wife made them watch the Nickelodeon broadcast because little Charlie likes SpongeBob and they should do more things as a family. Hopefully this doesn’t happen, but what if Nickelodeon and the NFL accidentally cause the divorce rate to tick back up?
NASCAR’s Got a Jacuzzi
There is no news to report here, but I learned today that NASCAR has an employee named Eric Jacuzzi.
To answer your first question, sometimes he looks like his name is Eric Jacuzzi and sometimes he doesn’t. To answer your second, he’s the VP of Vehicle Performance, which means he works on stuff like figuring out what restrictions to place on the cars to optimize the racing product. Probably other things, too. Like how bubbly the water should be at the parties in the RV hot tubs.
