Early season hasn’t been short on highlights
The baseball season has just started and there’s already been plenty of news. Here are some of the biggest topics:
■ The season of Juan Soto: The Yankees are the third team Soto has played for in the last 20 months, which is a lot of hopping around for a 25-year-old three-time All-Star with a World Series ring and a batting title.
It could well be a fourth team at this point next year as Soto will become a free agent after the season.
He’s paving the road so far, having hit .345 with a .924 OPS in his first seven games batting second with Aaron Judge third.
Soto turned down a $440 million extension from the Nationals in 2022. What will it take to sign him now?
“He doesn’t pitch, so not $700 million,” said one executive, referring to Shohei Ohtani’s record-setting deal with the Dodgers. “But it’s going to be a huge number.”
Soto’s swing is built for Yankee Stadium. But there’s little chance he will make a deal to stay in New York before the season ends.
Scott Boras believes in a player finding his true worth in the open market and few players have ever been set up better to prove that than Soto, one of his most-prized clients.
That’s for the winter. For now, Soto’s job is to get the Yankees back into the playoffs.
■ Somebody you’ve never heard of threw a no-hitter: Ronel Blanco of the Astros, a 30-year-old righthander with two career wins, no-hit the Blue Jays last Monday. He walked two, struck out seven, and threw only 105 pitches.
It was the earliest no-hitter in a season in history.
Blanco joins Tyler Gilbert, Philip Humber, Joe Cowley, Chris Heston, and a few others on the list of previously unaccomplished pitchers who threw no-hitters.
Blanco is a product of Houston’s productive Latin American pipeline. He was signed for a modest $5,000 in 2016 when he was 22, and he made his way through the system, debuting in 2022 as a reliever.
Credit to Oz Ocampo, who ran Houston’s international scouting operation before becoming an assistant general manager of the Marlins.
The Astros have 17 no-hitters, four more than any other team since the franchise came into existence in 1962.
■ The race to the bottom: The Athletics opened the season with a luxury tax payroll of $61.9 million — $21.3 million less than the 29th-place Pirates. Another 100-loss season is coming in front of small crowds in what will be their last season at Oakland Coliseum.
Or at least that is what owner John Fisher says. He’s been wrong many times before.
But the real disaster could be in Miami, where the Marlins started 0-8 and were outscored by 30 runs.
After finishing 84-78 last season, the Marlins lost general manager Kim Ng when she turned down a mutual option to return after learning she would have less power.
The Marlins then did little to improve the team in the offseason, deciding not to sign any free agents to major league contracts other than Tim Anderson for $5 million. They also have four starting pitchers from last season — Sandy Alcantara (Tommy John surgery), Edward Cabrera (shoulder impingement), Braxton Garrett (left shoulder), and Eury Perez (Tommy John surgery) — on the injured list.
New GM Peter Bendix is focusing on improving the team’s staffing and infrastructure. That could lead to the Marlins trading second baseman Luis Arraez, their most notable player.
loanDepot Park drew huge, passionate crowds for the World Baseball Classic last year and the Caribbean World Series this year. But you wonder if the Marlins will ever experience that.
The Rockies, who haven’t had a winning season since 2018, were outscored by 34 runs in their first seven games, going 1-6. Nothing new there.
■ Mookie Mania: Mookie Betts, the shortstop and occasional second baseman of the Dodgers, had a 1.686 OPS through nine games and already had three defensive runs saved.
For a team with a $324.2 million luxury tax payroll, the Dodgers have a lot of ill-fitting parts. But Betts made the roster work by moving to the infield.
His contract was a bargain when he signed it in 2020, and has become even more valuable since. The Dodgers understood who they had as a player and person.
■ Uniformly a mess: The new Nike uniforms are said to be designed for better performance. But stylistically they’re a mess.
The names and numbers are oddly small, leaving the top looking more like a cheap knockoff instead of a major league jersey that’s something special. The stitching, belt loops, and other details that added character have largely vanished.
The league and Nike endured criticism during spring training, but the issues haven’t been solved.
MLB won over even staunch traditionalists with the pace-of-play rules. But messing with the uniforms was too much.
HELP WANTED?
Depth could become an issue
Red Sox starters performed incredibly well through the first two series, allowing eight earned runs over 38 innings and striking out 46 with only three walks.
But with Lucas Giolito out for the season recovering from elbow surgery, rotation depth is nearly nonexistent beyond the five pitchers in the rotation.
Cooper Criswell and Richard Fitts are in Worcester’s rotation. Criswell showed promise in spring training but has only two major league starts in his brief career. Fitts, 24, is in Triple A for the first time.
Josh Winckowski competed for a rotation job in spring training and landed in the bullpen. At some point soon, he will not be built up enough to start.
Injuries or poor performance are inevitable and where will the Sox go then?
It could have been James Paxton. The 35-year-old lefthander considered a return to Boston.
“They definitely had interest and we had interest, as well. It’s just that my family and I decided I wanted to try and stay on the West Coast,” said Paxton, who lives in the Seattle area.
Paxton said it came down to the Dodgers or Red Sox, but location won out along with a chance to play for a World Series contender.
The Red Sox offered Paxton a oneyear deal, as did the Dodgers. He ultimately agreed to $7 million with a potential for $6 million in bonuses. A health issue lowered his original guarantee.
Paxton pitched five shutout innings in his Dodgers debut to beat the Giants. Other observations on the Red Sox:
■ Triston Casas is confident he knows his strike zone. But how he displays that may be hurting him.
There were a few instances last season when Casas took a step toward first base believing he had drawn a walk, only to have the umpire call a strike.
Umpires don’t like when young players make such assumptions. Casas isn’t trying to show anybody up, that’s not his personality. But it could be interpreted that way.
Ryan Blakney called Casas out looking on a pitch barely above the dirt in Oakland last Tuesday. Was that a message?
■ The crowd of 6,618 in Oakland last Monday night was the smallest the Sox played before (excluding pandemic restrictions in 2020 and ‘21) since Sept. 9, 1991, when only 1,695 showed up at Cleveland Stadium for a game rescheduled after a rainout.
Prior to that, it was a crowd of 6,182 in Cleveland on April 19, 1989.
A Red Sox-Orioles game in 2022 drew 2,467, but that was the Little League Classic game at a minor league park in Williamsport, Pa.
Assuming this past week’s series was the last one there, let the record show the Red Sox finished 132-153 at Oakland Coliseum, 134-159 when counting four playoff series.
Dwight Evans had the most hits (94), home runs (14) and RBIs (42). He also played the most games (104).
■ Jarren Duran became the first player since at least 1961 to have a hit and stolen base in each of the first three innings of a game when the Sox beat Oakland last Monday.
Good for Duran. But it also speaks to how wretched the Athletics are to allow a hitter to come up three times in three innings, reach three times, and steal each time.
■ Jackie Bradley Jr. joined the independent Long Island Ducks, a team that has long served as a pathway back to the majors for veteran players.
Bradley, who turns 34 this month, is less than a season away from 10 years of service time, a milestone that fully vests the lucrative MLB pension.
■ The late Larry Lucchino had five World Series rings (1983 Orioles; 2004, ’07, ’13, and ’18 Red Sox), a Super Bowl ring (1982 Redskins as their general counsel), and a watch for making the Final Four with Princeton in 1965.
Lucchino was a reserve on a team that went 23-6 and lost in the semifinals to Michigan and Cazzie Russell. Bill Bradley was Princeton’s star that season.
Pedro Martinez and David Ortiz are already members of the Hall of Fame. It seems inevitable Terry Francona and Theo Epstein will follow.
Is there room for Lucchino in Cooperstown to further represent this era of Sox history? It’s unlikely as a team president, a position that has not merited Hall of Fame status unless paired with other achievements in the game.
But perhaps Lucchino could one day be inducted in recognition for his having built Camden Yards and revitalized Fenway Park, two accomplishments that changed how the game looks and feels.
ETC.
Kirby’s tribute to Wakefield
Seattle righthander George Kirby grew up in Westchester County rooting for the Yankees and was able to see a few Red Sox-Yankees games in person at Yankee Stadium.
As a pitcher, he couldn’t help but admire Tim Wakefield and his command of the knuckleball.
“It was always awesome to watch him pitch,” Kirby said. “Even though I was a Yankees fan, l loved to watch him.”
Kirby’s father, also named George, called him last Oct. 1 to tell him Wakefield had died of brain cancer. Kirby was starting against Texas later that day.
As a tribute to Wakefield, Kirby threw a knuckleball in the fourth inning to Corey Seager. It fluttered in at 73.2 miles per hour and Seager swung and missed.
What led to Kirby’s gesture?
“I just thought it was a good opportunity to honor him,” he said. “I hadn’t thrown a knuckleball all year and figured it was the last game.”
Kirby learned the pitch playing catch with his cousin William when he was a Little Leaguer.
“He threw one to me and I said, ‘I want to throw that,’ and I have been throwing it ever since,” Kirby said. “I work on it every day but I’ve only thrown it that one time.”
Could he throw it again in a game? “There could be a time and a place for it,” Kirby said. “It’s not easy to throw. It takes a lot of reps. But I can throw it.”
Hitters be warned.
Extra bases
Kansas City-area voters rejected a proposal to provide public funding for a new ballpark for the Royals and a refurbished stadium for the Chiefs. The proposal lost resoundingly, receiving only 42 percent of the votes. The teams wanted a three-eighths-of-a-cent sales tax for 40 years to pay for their projects. The Royals hope to move into a $2 billion stadium by 2028 with taxpayers picking up half the cost. Now that project faces an uncertain future. That the proposal was so soundly defeated comes in the wake of the Chiefs winning three of last five Super Bowls and the Royals building a promising core of young talent. Presumably the Royals have a backup plan. If not, they could be the next franchise that threatens to move... Alex Verdugo was3for24asa Yankee before hitting a two-run homer in the 10th inning at Arizona last Wednesday. He flipped the bat and took an Ortizian 30 seconds to trot around the bases. John Sterling’s call on the radio was “Alexander the Great.” Kind of pedestrian by his standards . . . Had a chance to meet Tucker, the clubhouse dog in Seattle. He’s a 5-yearold lab/golden retriever mix who came from a rescue shelter in Washington. He stays with a member of the baseball operations staff and occasionally goes on the road. Tucker even has a bio in the media guide, quite fitting for such a good boy . . . It pays to win the pennant. The Diamondbacks drew 171,056 fans to their first five home games, the most since 2004 . . . Forty-year-old Charlie Morton hit 95 m.p.h. with his fastball in his first start for the Braves . . . Ryan Fernandez, a Rule 5 selection out of the Red Sox organization by the Cardinals, struck out the side in his major league debut at Petco Park against the Padres. He had a 4.14 ERA at three minor league levels for the Sox last season as a reliever . . . Justin Verlander is scheduled to start for Triple A Sugar Land on Sunday with the goal of reaching 60-70 pitches. That would line him up to come off the injured list this coming week and throw roughly 80 pitches in his first start of the season for the Astros unless the team decided he needs a second minor league start. He was held back in spring training because of shoulder soreness. Verlander needs 43 victories to reach 300, which seems unlikely at age 41. He could well be the last pitcher to surpass even 200 wins given how starters are used today. The last 300-game winner was Randy Johnson in 2009. He’s 60 now . . . Aroldis Chapman hit 101.2 m.p.h. in his second outing, which should not come as much of a surprise. He averaged 99 with his four-seam fastball last season. The amazing part is that he has hit triple digits for 15 years in a row going back to 2010 . . . Friend of the column Bob Ryan checks in to note that nine of the 10 games played last Tuesday were under 2 hours 30 minutes. The exception was the Red Sox-Athletics game that lasted 11 innings and went 3:04 . . . Rhode Island native Pete Wilk, a longtime college coach who managed the Vermont Lake Monsters in the Futures League, died after a courageous battle with brain cancer that lasted more than a year. Wilk was a good baseball man with a lot of friends in the game . . . Happy birthday to Adrian Beltre, who is 45. His 21-year career included spending the 2010 season with the Red Sox. Beltre hit .321 with a .919 OPS and earned the respect of Sox fans with how hard he played. But the Sox let Beltre walk as a free agent, deciding instead to trade for Adrian Gonzalez and move Kevin Youkilis to third base. Both were traded in 2012 and Beltre went on to a Hall of Fame career.