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| I found Alejandro Kirk's four hits on the day quite enjoyable |
If you grab your hardcover first edition of The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract off the shelf (apparently you paid a preposterous $68.50 for it when it came out in the fall of 2001, which now seems like an awful lot [did it seem that way then? it must have, right?]), and turn to page 320 (let me say: this book's index is insanely on-point), you will find the following: "[B]aseball needs to adopt a rule limiting the number of times a pitcher can throw to a base [. . . ]. [I]t is a clear situation in which the interest of the game itself are at odds with the interests of one participant. A major league pitcher has a selfish interest in preventing stolen bases against him. Throwing to first base, even throwing to first base repeatedly, is one way to accomplish this. Incidentally, if you're curious about this, it does work. STATS Inc. keeps records, including records of every time a pitcher throws to first base. A few years ago, they did a study comparing the stolen base percentages when pitchers threw to first, and the stolen base percentages when they didn't. The conclusion was clear: throwing to first base does reduce the number and the success rate of stolen bases. Throwing repeatedly is more effective than throwing over just once." Disappointing, isn't it? That it turns out to actually be a sound strategy to just keep on lobbing it over there? Wouldn't this have been a great spot for a counterintuitive finding? But alas, no. Noting that there is already a limit "to the number of times that a pitcher can throw home without getting something accomplished," James suspects that the only reason there hadn't been a rule against excessive throws over to first is that, quite simply, when the broad lines of baseball came into focus in the 1880s and 1890s, nobody had conceived of it as a tactic. "The idea of baseball as a perfect machine," he goes on, "never in need of a little fine tuning, is objectively ridiculous—yet it blinds baseball men to the fact that those long, tedious interludes when pitchers flip the ball repeatedly to first base can be very easily eliminated by a rule that would fit into the game so seamlessly that few people would ever realize that such a rule existed, if it did exist. That rule would say, very simply, that a team is allowed two unsuccessful throws to the bases in each inning. Two; that's all. If they make a third unsuccessful throw to the bases in any inning, it is counted as a ball. That is all it would take—just a tiny, lightweight penalty for wasting time. In reality, the rule would virtually never be applied, because pitchers would virtually never throw three times in any inning."
Pretty interesting take from 2001, isn't it? (As an aside: in the same section of the book, James also proposes eliminating the batter's time out once they've stepped into the box, which hasn't quite happened, but we're down to one time out per plate appearance, which, along with the pitch clock, has improved the pace of play tremendously while costing us none of the pleasures of the game at all, as far as I can tell [if there are anti-pitch-clockists out there, they gather silently]). What James proposes as far as throwing over is in a sense stricter than the rule changes MLB opted for ahead of the 2023 season (only two throws to the bases per inning in James' proposal, rather than the two throws/disengagements per plate appearance [resetting if the runner advances] that we have now) and in another more lenient (the penalty James proposes is just a ball, rather than "everybody moves up one" like a full-on balk, the much harsher penalty that is in place currently). But fundamentally, his 2001 suggestions anticipate an important suite of successful rule changes MLB has brought in in recent years, and he was certainly correct that rules restricting the number of times a pitcher can throw over to a base (even more than the fairly invisible [in the sense that it is rarely violated] pitch clock [easily the single best rule change of my lifetime]) "would fit into the game so seamlessly that few people would ever realize that such a rule existed."
Anybody at Wrigley Field who hadn't heard about it before sure found out it existed yesterday, though, when, in the first inning, Cubs pitcher David Peterson threw over to first base three times during Nathan Lukes' at bat, a strange enough decision given that it was just Old Man George Springer leading off over there (bro, he is not going), but one rendered stranger still by the fact that Kazuma Okamoto had been chilling over at third the whole time. The result of this "disengagement violation" is that Springer was given second, and Okamoto came in to score. Wild, right? Have you seen that happen even once since they brought this stuff in? A runner scoring on a disengagement, I mean? I'm sure I haven't! The only other run the Blue Jays managed despite their eleven hits on the day came in the seventh, when Alejandro Kirk (four hits on the day!) singled home Giménez. Not much, but it looked like all the Blue Jays would need, given Dylan Cease's ten-strikeout, one-walk, two-hitter of a seven-inning performance, and a nice eighth from Braydon Fisher to set the stage for a Louis Varland ninth. But Varland, who nearly got out of the inning on a one-out grounder with a runner on first that might have turned into two outs had he fielded the ball himself rather than letting it roll by for Giménez to play (not a lack of effort, but a judgement call, and I'm honestly unsure if it mattered), had the Cubs down to their last strike when Alex Bregman homered to tie the game. That's Varland's first blown save of the year (le sabotage, as it is literally called in the language of Molière), and he can be immediately forgiven it, I think it is fair to say (unless you are actively deciding to be mean). The Blue Jays narrowly escaped Chase Lee's bottom of the tenth on a fairly absurd Ernie Clement catch up the middle (his best of the season), but the eleventh, though amazing (on a Pete Crow-Armstrong single to centre, Myles Straw threw out Carson Kelley at the plate on a [temporarily] game-saving play), did not entirely break our way (Brandon Valenzuela's errant throw to third on a double-steal attempt brough PCA in as the winning run). A wild finish to a great game. And whether we'd won or lost this one, we've still got to grab a couple in Philadelphia this weekend if we hope to get any closer than our current three-and-half-games out, right? Maybe we'll do just that; who can say.
In closing, I wanted to mention that it was surprisingly not that strange at all to see Kevin Gausman as a Cub (it no doubt would have been weirder had he pitched this game, which he reportedly lightly requested not to). The Cubs got the best of the Dodgers earlier in the week, causing one of Gausman's daughters to tell him that she thinks she likes the Cubs even more than the Blue Jays, since the Cubs can beat the Dodgers, and the Blue Jays can't (lol tough but fair!). Gausman had this to say to Arden Zwelling about the Blue Jays' trade deadline: "I'll be honest, I thought they did really good for the future. They got controllable starters, guys who have really good stuff. The pitching department over there is great. I think Pete is going to do wonders for those guys. I thought they did a great job of taking advantage of the market and, unfortunately, the situation that we put ourselves in. Listen, if a couple of us that got traded would've had good years, we're probably not getting traded. That's just the reality. But I thought they took advantage of what they had to to. You can't blame them for it. I'm happy for them. I do think they got better. They definitely got younger getting rid of me. That helps. I wish nothing but the best for that organization and especially those guys. I texted Varsh, 'Go Stros!' It's weird. But's it's part of the business. It's what we sign up for." This seemed like a characteristically Gausmanesque response to the whole unfortunate business, and I thought it worth including here for that reason. Okay cool!
Oh wait, actually: I almost forgot about our woes, specifically our injury ones. It turns out that Trey Yesavage, who left his start against the Astros earlier in the week after just two innings, has a meniscus tear, news that I receive as obviously a shame but not necessarily full-on dire, in that I have been around meniscus injuries through my decades-long participation in the exquisite art/Olympic sport of 講道館柔道 Kōdōkan Jūdō (give it a try some time! it's pretty fun!), and while they can certainly be a surgery-requiring drag, guys, even old guys, seem to recover from them quite well? I'm sure Yesavage will be ship shape in Bristol fashion once that gets taken care of (no fun for him in the meantime, of course). Though the team has not announced that it will require surgery and cost Yesavage the rest of the season, I think we might as well just assume that to be the case (it's what I'm doing, at least). Also our newly acquired "Big Spaghetti" Spencer Arighetti left his rehab start in Buffalo in the thrid, and though I have not come across the specific reason he was pulled, the injury he is working his way back from is listed as "right foot nerve irritation," which sounds like no picnic. And finally, Vladdy has been out the last two games after looking not-so-hot after running out a ball in Houston, and one wanders if the things that have plainly been nagging him for months are coming to a head here as the dog days deepen (could somebody check on the heliacal rising of Sirius real quick please?). Okay, there we are, then; woes fully noted for woe-posterity.
On to Philly!
KS
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