Baseball and suffering

When I was younger, baseball made me suffer. I believed what Bart Giamatti said about the game: “It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart.” When the Orioles lost a big game I was stuck in a foul cloud for hours or days afterwards. When Tanya first encountered me in this state she literally could not believe it had to do with baseball, and really probed to figure out what had really happened. But it was baseball. That’s what happened. Baseball.

I’m different now. I can watch the Orioles lose while wishing they would win and not feel the same kind of angry, bitter suffering I used to. I don’t know what made it change. It might just be the psychic arc of middle age. It’s not that I care less. When they win — whether it’s the good 2014 Orioles getting the ALCS or the awful contemporary version of the team having a rare good night — I thrill to it, just like I have since I was a kid. When they lose, I move on.

It would be good to bring this change to all areas of life. Not to stop caring, but to stop sinking into anger and suffering when things don’t go the way I want. I don’t know how I did it for baseball, so I don’t know how to do it for anything else. Maybe I should just pretend everything is baseball.

It didn’t have to be this way

This is not a post about COVID-19, or Afghanistan, or the slow-then-fast dissolution of the journalism industry, or somebody’s tweet that made me mad. It’s about the Baltimore Orioles. If you don’t care about the Baltimore Orioles — and honestly, if you are not, like me, a lifetime fan, why, why, why would you? — feel free not to read. But I’m gonna write.

The Orioles are rebuilding. Or so we are told. Rebuilding takes time. You lose a lot as the pieces of the next good team comes into place. Or so we are told. You trade away everybody who can place a fastball or hit a curveball for prospects and some of them pan out. You lose so much you get high draft picks and those draft picks pan out. Fan patience will be rewarded. Or so we are told. But some of us don’t live in Baltimore anymore. I, for instance, live in Wisconsin, and have taken on as a secondary rooting interest the Milwaukee Brewers. And that’s how I know it didn’t have to be this way.

If you spend your life in the American League East, you can say to yourself, well, there’s the big-market teams, the Yankees and Red Sox and Blue Jays, who never have to resist the temptation of the big-ticket free agent, and there’s the Rays, who have some kind of Magic Savvy, and then there is us.

But look at the Brewers. They’re not rich; payroll is 19th out of the 30 teams, right between the Rockies and the Rangers. There’s nothing really special about them, to be honest. There are no books about the genius of the Brewers. Right now they’re really good. But they’re not always good. They’re sometimes bad. But not as bad as the Orioles are right now. The Brewers have had a winning percentage under .400 exactly once in the team’s entire history, twice if you count their first year as the 1969 Seattle Pilots when it was .395. Milwaukee had some really good teams about a decade ago and then they weren’t so good and now they’re contenders again.

They’re normal. This is what following a normal team is like.

The Orioles have had a winning percentage under .400 in three of the last four years (barring a miraculous renaissance in the closing weeks of 2021.) And in the short season of 2020, they just cleared it, playing .417 ball.

How did the Brewers do it? Well, they did put together the best farm system in baseball by the middle of 2016. But they didn’t do it by putting a AAA team on the field. They still had Ryan Braun, Scooter Gennett, Jonathan Lucroy, Wily Peralta, Jimmy Nelson, well-liked players who’d been on the Brewers for a while. (Lucroy was traded for a couple of prospects in mid-season, and my beloved Carlos Gomez had departed the year before in a trade that brought them Josh Hader — it’s not like they didn’t do any tearing down.) They had a free agent pitcher, Matt Garza, who’s signed a big contract with them after the 2013 season when the Brewers finished 23 games out of first, and they traded a young shortstop, Jean Segura, who turned out to be pretty good, for Chase Anderson, so they had a couple of major league starters, and some of the guys they already had pitched OK too. They signed Chris Carter as a free agent. They went 73-89. The next year they won 86 games and didn’t make the playoffs, and then they added Christian Yelich and Lorenzo Cain, and then they were very, very good.

The Brewers did everything the Orioles said you have to resist doing in order to improve; and they improved. They took the Dodgers to game 7 in the NLCS in 2018. and they’re running away with the NL Central right now.

I’m not saying the current Orioles disaster isn’t a way to get better. Yeah, yeah, the Astros did it, I get it. I’m saying it’s the worst way to get better. It stinks to watch. The Orioles just lost their 14th game in a row. It’s their second 14-game losing streak this season. They are 38-81. I feel sorry for the players who have to be on the field for this. Especially because it didn’t have to be this way.

This is it, right? This is as dogshit as the Orioles get?

That’s it. That’s the post.

[Dean Kremer allows six runs in 1/3 of an inning including a grand slam. Yesterday we lost 13-0. The day before that we lost 10-2 in a game where we were getting no-hit into the 8th. Two days before that we took a 7-4 lead into the ninth and lost 10-7.]

Pandemic blog 37: the short season

We are heading for a World Series and while the rest of the world has been turned awry, one thing is as usual: the Baltimore Orioles are not in it.

But!

I have been high on the Orioles in the past. I thought the team had much more talent than their awful record in 2018 suggested, and indeed they were not quite as bad in 2019. But last year, I think their still-terrible 54-108 record was roughly in line with who was on that team. Now you take that team, which already traded Andrew Cashner at the deadline, and you also trade Dylan Bundy, Miguel Castro, Richard Bleier, and Mychal Givens, so you’re now down two starters and three of the guys who threw the most bullpen innings, and oh yeah, the best hitter on the 2019 Orioles, Trey Mancini, is getting cancer treatment and is gone for the year, and Jonathan Villar, probably the best all-around position player, is traded away too, and oh yeah, Anthony Santander gets injured halfway through the season, what are you looking at?

People were saying this team could be worse than the awful 2018 team. They were saying this team could lose 50 out of 60.

They didn’t! Instead, they took another step up towards respectability, going 25-35, with a Pythagorean record of 28-32. They didn’t even finish last in the AL East this year (sorry, Red Sox.)

How did it happen?

Well, first of all, everybody hit. Pedro Severino hit. Renato Nuñez hit. Rio Ruiz hit. Anthony Santander hit until he got hurt. Ryan Mountcastle, whose star as a prospect seemed to have dimmed, finally came to the majors and did nothing but hit. A joy to watch. Players who in previous years seemed to have clearly established that not even a lick could they hit, like Cedric Mullins and Chance Sisco, hit. They hit in weird ways. DJ Stewart hit .193 but walked and homered a ton and ended up with a solid .809 OPS, the best ever by a player hitting below the Mendoza line in 100 or more PAs. (He edged out old 2001 Mark McGwire at .808.) On the other side, Jose Iglesias had one of the strangest batting seasons ever, hitting .373 (36 PAs short of qualifying for the batting title, which no Oriole has won since Frank Robinson’s tricoronation in 1966) but walking and homering just 3 times each. It’s hard to walk and homer that rarely and still be a good hitter! But this guy doubles off the wall like mid-2000s Brian Roberts. His .956 OPS was by far the best ever for hitters with 100 PA, at most 3 homers and at most 3 walks. Jerald Clark of the Twins in 1995, a player I have no memory of at all, comes closest, and it’s not that close.

What remained of the bullpen was pretty good, too, making up for an expectedly spotty starting rotation.

What’s the future? The hitters, let’s be honest, are probably not as good as they looked this short season. On the other hand, by 2021 the first of the prospects should start to show up. Dean Kremer, who came in the Machado trade, is already here and showed signs of real promise. Yusniel Diaz should be up. Mountcastle is here to stay. And maybe, just maybe, it’s Adley Rutschman time.

I don’t think the 2021 Orioles are a .500 team but I think there’s reason to think the absolute wretchedness is past — if ownership wants it to be.

Pandemic blog 30: opening day

I have been generally feeling: it is OK to start relaxing restrictions on in-person contact, because there seems some decent chance that barring the most infectiogenic scenarios might be enough to keep outbreaks small and manageable. And that still might be true, in some contexts; in Dane County, we had a big spike of cases when the bars re-opened, and when the bars shut down again, the case spike went away, and hasn’t come back, though people are certainly out and about. But statewide, cases are growing and growing, and the situation is much worse in the South. I would fight back if you said this was a predictable consequence; nothing about this disease is predictable with any confidence. It could have worked. But I wouldn’t fight you if you said it was an expectable consequence, the consequence you thought most likely.

Similarly, if you rigorously jettison everyone with a demonstrated ability to play baseball from your team, and sign a collection of promising young players but keep them off the roster in order to avoid starting their service time, and then put that team on the field against major league competition, you might find that the nobodies and never-weres and used-to-bes find it within themselves to go on a scrappy “Why not?” run of success; or you might, as an expectable consequence, give up eight doubles and get beat 13-2.

The real diehard

Yesterday a guy saw my Orioles hat and said, “Wow, you’re a real diehard.”

He was wearing a Hartford Whalers hat.

Orioles optimism update

My Orioles optimism from the end of April hasn’t held up too well. When I wrote that, the team was 10-18. Since then, they’ve won 16 more games, and lost — it kind of hurts to type this — 43.

Why so bad? The team ERA has dropped almost half a run since I wrote that post, from 6.15 to 5.75. Their RS and RA for June were about the same as they were for May, but they went 6-20 instead of 8-19.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but — maybe the Orioles aren’t really that bad? Their Pythagorean record is 28-59, which is terrible, but not even worst in MLB right now. (That honor belongs to the Tigers.) John Means continues to be great and Andrew Cashner and Dylan Bundy have now been pretty consistently turning in utterly acceptable starts.

The thing about baseball is, things happen suddenly. On Tuesday, September 5, 2017, less than two years ago, Manny Machado hit a 2-run homer in the bottom of the 9th to give the Orioles a 7-6 win against the Yankees. The Orioles were 71-68.

The next game after that, they lost 9-1. And then went 4-18 the rest of the way. They haven’t had a full month since then with a record better than .360. The Orioles became terrible in an instant. I don’t see why it can’t go the other way.

Why not?

I’ve said all along it was wrong to imagine the Orioles being as bad as they were last year. And so far my optimism has been borne out. Don’t get me wrong; they’re bad. But they’re not excruciatingly, world-historically bad. The Orioles, on April 24, are 10-16; last year it took them until May 10 to win their 10th game, at which point they were 10-27. Chris Davis, after starting 0-for-everything, has hit .360 and slugged .720 since the middle of April. Nothing makes me happier than to see this poor guy hit after his long winter, even if it’s only for awhile. And Trey Mancini, who’s just about the right age to have a sudden career renaissance if he’s going to have one, is maybe… having one?

The pitching is terrible. 6.15 ERA in the early going, a half-run worse than anyone else in the league; flashes of goodness from Hess, Cashner, and Means, all of whom could be OK, but there’s no real reason for confidence any of them will be. And of course the team could make the choice, as they did last year, to flip Mancini, Means, and anybody else who’s producing for prospects at midsummer and lose their last 70 games; who knows? But for now; why not?

Brewers 6, Marlins 5 / Bucks 104, Celtics 102 / Orioles 6, Tigers 0

I’ve lived in Madison for 13 years and this is the first time I’ve noticed anybody caring about the Milwaukee Bucks.  It’s definitely the first time I’ve cared about the Milwaukee Bucks.  But now the Bucks have a legitimate superstar in Giannis Antetokoumnpo  and a likeable cast of supporting characters like 19-year-old former refugee and skinny blockmaster Thon Maker.  The kids had a rare unscheduled day on Sunday and the Bucks were in the playoffs against the Celtics and there were nosebleed tickets on Stubhub for $40 apiece so why not?

You may know that I kind of hate driving so if I’m gonna drive all the way to Milwaukee it’s got to be for more than a Bucks game.  When I thought about what the kids would really want to do it was pretty clear — see the Brewers, stay over, then see the Bucks.  So that’s what we did!

Notes on the Brewers:

• I got lost in the impossible off-ramp spaghetti surrounding Miller Park and we ended up not getting into the ballpark until the second inning.  The Brewers were already down 4-0.  4-0!  To the sad Miami Marlins, the team Derek Jeter is using as a tax dodge, the team so bad Marlins Man cancelled his season tickets!
• But as soon as we sat down, Travis Shaw muscled a huge home run to left center.  Didn’t even look like he got all of it, he kind of sliced it.  But Travis Shaw is a big strong man.
• Brewers just keep creeping back.  Crowd stays in the game, at no point do you really feel the Brewers are out of it.  Three straight Brewers hit what look like go-ahead home runs but each dies at the wall.  (Ryan Braun at least gets a sacrifice fly out of it.)   In the 8th, Derek Dietrich loses an Eric Sogard fly ball in the, I dunno, the lights?  The roof?  He plays for the Marlins and he just doesn’t care?  Anyway the ball plunked down right next to him, Shaw hustles in from second to tie it, Eric Thames, who starts the play on first, tries to get in behind with the go-ahead run but is tagged out at or rather substantially before the plate because Eric Thames made a bad decision.
• Josh Hader looks like he should be playing bass in Styx.
• Then comes the bottom of the 9th and the play you might have read about.  Still tied 5-5.  Jesus Aguilar, who’s already warmed up twice in the on-deck circle, finally gets his chance to pinch-hit against Junichi Tazawa.  Gets behind 0-2.  And then just starts fouling, fouling, fouling.  Takes a few pitches here and there.  Full count.  Foul, foul, foul.  And on the 13th pitch, Aguilar launches it to center field.  I thought it was gonna be one more death on the warning track.  But nope; ball gets out, game over, fireworks.  I felt like my kids got to see true baseball.

On to Milwaukee.  Bucks play the Celtics at noon, in what, if they lose, could be the last ever game played at Bradley Center.  (This is a bit of a sore point for UW folks, who absorbed as a budget cut the $250m state contribution to the arena’s cost.)  We have breakfast at the hotel and chat with a nice older couple in Packers/Celtics gear — what?  — who turn out to be Boston forward Al Horford’s aunt and uncle from Green Bay.

This is only the third NBA game I’ve been to, CJ’s second, AB’s first.  We wander around inside the arena for a bit.  Two separate groups of Bucks cheerleaders come up to AB and applaud her curly hair.  I think people are especially struck by it when they see us together, because I don’t have curly hair, except here’s a little-known fact:  I do have curly hair!  I just keep it short so it doesn’t curl.  In 1995 or so it looked like this:

Anyway.  The atmosphere, as I have promised AB, is more intense than baseball.  Bucks build up a 19-point lead and seem poised to coast but the Celtics come back, and back, and back, and finally go ahead with 52 seconds left.  Jaylen Brown plainly capable of taking over a game.  Aron Baynes has a very dumb-looking haircut.  Milwaukee’s Thon Maker is ridiculously skinny and has very long arms.  He’s just 21, a former refugee from South Sudan.  We saw his first game as a Buck, an exhibition against the Mavericks at Kohl Center.  Those long skinny arms can block a shot.

Game tied at 102, 5 seconds left, Malcom Brogdon (called “The President” — why?) misses a layup, and there, rising like a Greek column above the scene, is the Greek arm of Giannis Antetokounmpo — the tip-in is good, Celtics miss the desperation last shot, Bucks win 104-102, crowd goes berserk.

 

I was going to blog about this last week but got busy so let’s throw in more sports.  Bucks eventually lose this series in 7, home team winning every game a la Twins-Braves 1991.  The next Friday, I’m giving a talk at Maryland, and the Orioles are playing that night.  It’s been five years since I’ve seen OPACY.  I brought CJ along this time, too.  The Orioles are not in a good way; they’ve won 6 and lost 19, though 3 of those 6 were against New York at least.  Attendance at the game, on a beautiful Friday night, was just over 14,000.  The last baseball game I went to that felt this empty and mellow was the AAA Tucson Toros, several months before they moved to El Paso and became the Chihuahuas.  Chris Tillman, tonight’s starter, was the Orioles’ ace five years ago.  Now he’s coming off a 1-7 season and has an ERA over 9.

So who would have thought he’d toss seven shutout innings and take a no-hitter into the fifth?  Never looked overpowering but kept missing bats.  His first win in almost a year.  Manny Machado, surely now in his last year as an Oriole, strokes a home run to dead center to get things started.  It’s a beautiful thing.  It doesn’t even look like he’s working hard.  It’s like he’s just saying “Out there. Out there is where this ball should be.”  Pedro Alvarez homers twice, in exactly the opposite manner, smashing the ball with eye-popping force.  Jace Peterson, who the Orioles picked up off the Yankees’ scrap heap, steals third on the shift when the Tigers third baseman forgets to pay attention to him.  He did the same thing against the Rays the night before.  I am already starting to love him the way I love Carlos Gomez.  Maybe now the Orioles are going to go back to being a bad team that makes good use of players nobody else wants, like Melvin Mora and Rodrigo López.

Besides me and CJ, this guy was at the game:

Never get tired of that flag.

 

Orioles postmortem 2016

What is there to say?  Should Showalter have used Britton?  Probably.  When?  Probably when O’Day came in, when the Orioles desperately needed a double play to keep the game tied.  (But O’Day got the double play ball anyway.)  Barring that, you bring Britton in to start the 11th, I think, because Britton doesn’t give up home runs and you’ve got the home run guys coming up.  But what difference does it make?  The Orioles weren’t hitting, not off Liriano, not off anybody.  Jimenez would have been come in to pitch the 12th or 13th anyway.  The real mistake was pinch hitting Reimold for Kim.  Why?  Kim is the only guy on the team who gets on base.  Maybe he walks and Machado comes up and you have an actual chance.  Reimold is a bad defender, too; his misplay in the 11th, letting Devon Travis get to third, could have been decisive if Encarnacion had hit a single instead of a home run.

I said on Twitter it reminded me of the last game of the 1997 ALCS, but when I think it over, this one was a lot less heartbreaking.  In that game, Mike Mussina delivered one of the best Orioles playoff starts of my lifetime, and we wasted it.  Ten hits and five walks and we couldn’t push one run across.

And here’s the thing.  That 1997 team was the best Orioles squad in 15 years, and you had the real sense it was a one-shot deal.  The next year we were back to losing.  The 2016 team is probably the third-best in the last five years, and the main contributors will all be back next year.  It’s been a big adjustment, rooting for a team that’s consistently good, but my ability to absorb this loss makes me think it’s finally starting to sink in.