Baseball began in earnest yesterday, which meant that Max and I exchanged about 100 iMessages as both of us were working watching more than one game at once. The biggest story on our mini-thread? the awesome-ness of one New York Mets outfielder named Andrew Brown. By starting in left field yesterday, Brown may have become the most unassuming and unknown starter in all of the games played yesterday. Forced into action by a Chris Young injury (raise your hand if you’re surprised) and the birth of Daniel Murphy’s daughter (raise your hand if you’re surprised she’s a softball player), Andrew Brown, owner of the .225 career average and a 29-year old on his third organization with only about 300 career plate appearances to show for his troubles, hit a home run. That’s right, Brown hit a three-run home run off of Stephen Strasburg on Opening Day. Baseball is great.
Brown’s story is just another example of why predicting baseball is such a fickle exercise. Here we had a 29-year old journeyman matched up against a former Number 1 overall draft pick with such filthy stuff that some minor league umpires had a hard time calling balls and strikes as his pitches crossed the plate. What happened? Brown crushed a three-run dinger to put the Mets ahead.
It is that inability to predict outcomes that makes baseball unlike any other sport.
Sure, we know that the best NBA 3-point shooters will make about 40% of their 3-point attempts and that similarly, the best baseball players will reach base in something like 40% of their trips to the plate. However, rarely other sports does the true underdog prevail with any semblance of the regularity that it does in baseball. Even the worst of teams–those that lose 100-games and make no effort to even look like they’re striving for a championship like the Astros–sport winning percentages nearly twice as good as their NBA counterparts. NFL teams regularly turn in 2-14 records simply by being outmatched. Even baseball’s worst teams win 30% of the time, often against the best teams. Why? Because of perfect swings like the one that Andrew Brown put on Stephen Straburgs wondrous fastball.
Our text thread contained some real gems from the first full day, and I wouldn’t want to hide them from the internet:
- “Life is too short to work on Opening Day. I’m an idiot for working. Seriously, never again.” -Me
- I wasn’t confident that I could name 9 Mets. I totally could.
- Naming 9 current Astros is more difficult. Even familiarity with last year’s Astros is not all that helpful. Justin Maxwell is a Royal, Jordan Lyles is on the Rockies, Bud Norris will be pitching for the Orioles this year, Jose Veras is on the Cubs joining Wesley Wright, who made a stop with the Rays before reuniting with Veras in Chicago. Excluding George Springer, who didn’t make the team out of spring training, and Mark Appel and Carlos Correa, the Astros top picks in the past two drafts, makes it even more difficult. Luckily for us, the Astros signed Scott Feldman to that terrible contract this winter, and we decided that Peter Moylan should count because he was in Astros camp this year before getting the bad news that he was headed for another Tommy John surgery.
- Max thinks JP Arencebia is bad, but I like that the Rangers have acquired his talents. On second thought, maybe Max is correct. Arencebia was worth -0.6 WAR last year and hit with just a .227 OBP. Meanwhile, the Rangers got good production from AJ Pierzynski, who also refuses to walk, last year. The drop off from Pierzynski to Arencebia could be a significant storyline this summer. The Braves may also be looking for a catcher if Evan Gattis proves he’s best served as a pinch hit power monster.
- Max also thinks that RA Dickey and the Phillies are bad. No argument here.
- Lineup decisions were interesting yesterday. Aside from the aforementioned Andrew Brown in the 5-hole, we had some interesting cleanup hitter/5-hole lineup cards. I’m not sure any were necessarily a travesty, but rather a bucking of the traditional power hitter/cleanup hitter stereotype. The Braves batted Chris Johnson cleanup while Justin Upton hit 5th. Martin Prado hit fourth and Mark Trumbo 5th for the Diamondbacks, while Bryce Harper followed Wilson Ramos for the Nationals.
- Trevor Rosenthal: 97, 97, 97, 87 = strikeout
- MLB Network did not mess around on Opening Day. They had their flagship program, MLB Tonight, on from 1 PM-1AM. It featured live look-ins to all the day’s action and recaps of games already finalized. Tremendous stuff.
- There were a few overzealous quotes that I caught yesterday.
- “You know, our offense hasn’t even clicked yet.” -Neil Walker after he hit a walkoff home run in the 10th to beat the Cubs 1-0.
- “We want to be a team that keeps grinding and keeps pushing. It was nice to be able to do that tonight out of the chute.” -Buster Posey after his team beat the Diamondbacks 9-8.
-Sean Morash
Stat of the Day: Cody Asche leads MLB in WAR.
