Watching baseball die by its own hands, a TV-side vigil:
It’s a slow, steady death by institutional neglect. Game-changing failures of fundamental forethought have become routine at the highest-paid level of The Game, now in desperate disrepair.
Between Wednesday’s local teams’ games of easily preventable failures, perhaps the most ridiculous scene came when time was called, although it went unspoken by SNY’s Gary Cohen, Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez.
With the Nats up 3-2, bases loaded, the Mets’ on-mound strategy conference included third baseman Jose Bautista — as if Bautista wanted in on the winning plan.
For at 3-1 in the seventh, assuming the modern approach of trying to hit a home run or strike out trying, Bautista struck out swinging at a pitch very high and inside, one that nicked the catcher’s glove before rolling to the backstop.
In a display of rank offensive indifference, Bautista walked toward the dugout, making it extra convenient for the catcher to tag him out rather than make a long, difficult throw to first.
“That is awful” Cohen said, “just awful!”
Darling: “Well, when you allow your players to not run when the ball gets past the catcher, which is what the Mets have done all season long, that’s what happens. That becomes the norm.”
Darling, of late reliably frank in decrying the disappearance of practical play, wasn’t done:
“When I watch the game, now, it looks like travel ball to me. If it’s not important for your own numbers, why do it? … That’s why you’re sitting here with only one run in the seventh inning against [Mets’ discard] Tommy Milone, who has nine punch-outs.”
Back to the eighth. When that Mets’ pitcher’s mound skull session ended, a grounder was hit to Wilmer Flores at first. He charged the ball, the play right in front of him: Throw home for the force out.
He instead stopped, turned and threw to second. Wildly. And so it was 4-2, one out, bases still loaded, en route to a 5-3, 11-strikeout, fundamentally bereft loss for a team that had lost, 25-4, the day before — adding to a season in which it batted out of order, discovered 2013 No. 1 draft pick Dominic Smith had never before bunted, and lost contact with $110 million man Yoenis Cespedes.
On YES, at roughly the same time, the Yanks’ shortage of Little League-level foresight was handing a 7-5 win to the 32-75 Orioles.
In the second inning, on a two-on, none-out bunt, second baseman Gleyber Torres realized it might be a good idea to cover first, but, as noted by YES replays and Michael Kay and Ken Singleton, it dawned on him too late.
In the third, the Orioles scored with two out as shortstop Didi Gregorius, after fielding a grounder to his right was about to throw to second for the force — until he saw that Torres wasn’t there, not even close.
Both Baltimore batters were credited with hits, when defensive indifference — inexcusable neglect — was the call. Handed a 7-1 lead after three, the O’s won. The box score showed the Yanks committed zero errors. The boxscore lied. And there was no Gary Sanchez to blame for this one.
The notion that the absence of basic Day 1 baseball is a lament only heard from the pre-deceased — old school grumps as targeted by ESPN’s Dan Le Batard, among other panderers — is blind nonsense. Matt Chapman, a 37-year-old reader, notes the self-evident: Giancarlo Stanton, as a situational batter, sees only one situation: Hit a home run.
Chapman was left dyspeptic by Stanton’s standard at-bat, Saturday night. The Yanks were up, 5-4, in the eighth, two out, runners at second and third, when Stanton took three mighty swings. He missed the first, foul-tipped the second, missed the third.
Two months to go, Stanton has struck out 140 times.
“Situational baseball,” observed young Chapman, “is gone.”
It’s epidemic. The Braves, in a four-game series against the Dodgers that concluded Sunday, totaled 24 hits and 37 strikeouts. Last Friday’s Reds’ 6-4 win over the Phils totaled 14 hits and 23 strikeouts against seven pitchers. Sunday’s D’Backs 5, Padres 4, totaled 20 strikeouts by eight pitchers.
Wednesday, the Cards beat the Rockies, 6-3. A total of 11 pitchers, in an 8 ½-inning, four-hour game, totaled 19 strikeouts.
Nurse? No, hearse. If MLB were a hospital, it would be converted by the Board of Health to a morgue.
Jalen Rose shouldn’t race to judgment
This week on ESPN, “Get Up” co-host Jalen Rose suggested the ovation Brewers fans recently gave pitcher Josh Hader was a referendum on race, thus those who applauded should be suspected racists or as racially insensitive.
Hader, now 24, was making his first appearance in Milwaukee since he’d been revealed to have sent racist, sexist, homophobic, vulgar slurs via “social” media when he was 17.
Perhaps Rose is right, but I doubt it. Fans forgive home-team players.
Jose Reyes, upon his return to the Mets following a suspension for domestic abuse, was applauded. Was that a referendum on spousal abuse? Dwight Gooden returned from drug rehab to applause. The respondents were in favor of drugs and drug abuse?
In Rose’s case, his judgment seemed severe given his own history and chosen words, not as a teen, but as an adult. When Rose was in the NBA, he stole a suitcase from an airport, one that contained a TV/VCR belonging to Patrick Ewing.
In his mirthful recall of that theft, Rose, born and raised in Detroit, excused himself as having allowed “the Detroit in me” to dictate his conduct — as if the residents of Detroit, predominantly black, can’t help but steal.
Sure sounded racist, but he wasn’t fired or suspended by ESPN. He was promoted.
Certain stats need to be dropped, stat
Stats? You like stats? So Yanks’ closer Aroldis Chapman enters in the top the ninth with a 7-3 lead over the Mets on July 21. Before he’s yanked, Chapman doesn’t record an out, walking three, hitting a batter and allowing a hit.
Yet, because he entered with a four-run lead instead of a three-run lead, he was not eligible for a blown save, which I guess is why they’re listed as “BS.”
Then there was this about newly acquired Braves’ pitcher Kevin Gausman, as it appeared on the website theScore and passed along by reader Neil Sperling for decoding:
“Gausman, 27, has authored a 4.43 ERA and 4.58 FIP over 124 innings pitched this year. The right-hander is under team control through 2020, with a pair of arbitration-eligible seasons remaining.”