Thursday Bantering: Urgency

Last night’s game was far less than fun. It seems that every time the team has a good game, they follow it with a crappy game. I guess that isn’t true, but it seems that way.

Kevin Gausman was a bit frustrated yesterday too:

I’m not sure this stuff works in baseball. It isn’t like football or hockey. It isn’t like they can go out there and hit somebody. You can’t start using the body. There is no crashing into a defenseman on the forecheck. You can’t go hard and make a big hit on a receiver.

I don’t know that there is a ‘play harder’ version of baseball. I guess there is the ‘be more aggressive on the bases’ thing, but that doesn’t seem to work.

If urgency means more hits I’m all for it. I don’t know how to judge urgency in baseball. Break bats, break tables? Yell? Score some runs for your starting pitcher who is having a great season.

Play smarter? I don’t know what the answer is. Bear down on every at-bat. Well, yeah, Vlad has been hitting better in higher-leverage spots. Maybe there is something he could do to click a switch in lower-leverage spots. But then some guys (most guys) are hitting better in lower-leverage spots. Until this last month or so, the team hasn’t been hitting at all with RISP. I don’t know if there is an easy fix for that, but then they have been doing better lately.

Yesterday, well, five singles. It is hard to do much with five singles in 9 innings. It is hard to improve with RISP when you have one in a game. People always say, ‘they look lifeless’ when the team doesn’t hit, which is hard to argue, but then it is hard to look like anything other than lifeless when you don’t have baserunners.

But yes, they should go on a long winning streak. That would cure a lot of complaints. Let’s start with a win tonight.

Bad news for the MLB:

He will be able to bat. But what this does to his impending free agency is anyone’s guess. It sounds like he won’t be pitching next season. And maybe he shouldn’t pitch in the future?

And, after playing one game after being activated from the IL, Mike Trout is back on the IL.

We keep being told pitchers can do better with less velocity and better control. It doesn’t look to be true.

Baseball American has some nice things to say about Orelivis Martinez:

Orelvis Martinez, SS, Blue Jays: While Martinez wasn’t in the starting lineup on Wednesday, he still managed to have a standout day at the plate. After Spencer Horwitz was hit by a pitch, Martinez entered the game and proceeded to go 3-for-3 with a home run and a double, finishing a triple short of the cycle. Martinez is hitting .272/.342/.515 over his first 28 Triple-A games at just 21 years old. After a difficult 2022, Martinez has done well to recapture his prospect status.

As tends to be the case, the plate umpire leaned toward the trailing team in yesterday’s game: