This is an exhibition, so even if WPA was tracked for it somewhere (and I have no doubt that it was), we’re not going to do a WPA-centric, standard-issue recap. Instead, the highlights, the local interest, and then some big-picture thoughts, below.
Old Awards, New and Wonderful Names
Prior to this game, MLB officially renamed the AL batting title the Rod Carew American League Batting Champion Award, and the NL batting title the Tony Gwynn National League Batting Champion Award. We’ll have to hash out whether these will be called, in time, the Carew and the Gwynn (“he’s won three Carews, he’s headed for the Hall”), or the Rod Carew Award and the Tony Gwynn Award. It might well be that the names won’t really stick to the awards. Obviously, too, the batting title’s not what it used to be, now that we understand that OBP and slugging mean more than batting average.
None of that is the point, though. The point of this change is to honor two of the best hitters and most beloved people in baseball history, one (Gwynn) dead too young due to cancer, and the other (Carew) having just survived a massive heart attack, and still awaiting a heart transplant. Notable, too, is that both honorees are men of color, and that Carew is from Panama. Along with these awards, we already had the annual Hank Aaron Awards, and the Mariano Rivera AL Reliever of the Year Award. These are small symbols, but they matter. The batting titles could be named after Ty Cobb and Pete Rose, but that would fail to reflect either the diversity of the game’s great players or the comportment we admire in those greats. This is a wonderful turn for the better.
David Ortiz’s (Off-Key) Swan Song
If ever you wanted to build the argument against David Ortiz being elected to the Hall of Fame, and against DHs in general, you might point to Tuesday night. Ortiz’s final All-Star Game appearance was fraught with overhype, empty pomp, and anticlimax. Joe Buck oversold a hard groundout by Ortiz in the first inning, and after a long at-bat, Ortiz walked in the third inning. He was then lifted for pinch-runner Edwin Encarnacion, whereupon everyone poured out of the AL dugout to congratulate him, but the whole thing felt forced and foolish. Ortiz did nothing special or exciting during the game, and was a small part of the overall action. There was no opportunity for an Alex Rodriguez-Cal Ripken moment, and when Ortiz was pulled, it was for a slow-footed man whose first job was to run the bases.
I’m in favor of Ortiz’s Hall candidacy, and that of Edgar Martinez. The arguments against DHs are mostly vapid. But if this kind of pageantry was going to happen… I don’t know. There needed to be some real payoff. And because of both Ortiz’s failure to square a ball up and the fact that he can’t play the field, there was none.
An Oddly Awesome Matchup
The game basically came down to a based-loaded, two-out plate appearance in the top of the eighth inning, with Aledmys Diaz at the plate and Will Harris on the mound. Go back and tell your mid-March self that one. Diaz was pinch-hitting for Corey Seager, and Harris was just coming on for a struggling Andrew Miller (yeah, that guy’s worth Kyle Schwarber, can you put the crying/laughing emoji into WordPress? No? Well, imagine it.). As unlikely as the matchup might seem, the combatants proved themselves worthy of the moment. Harris showed how he’s managed a walk rate under four percent this season, and why he’s induced an insane 61.7-percent ground ball rate. His cutter and curve are both nasty, and he located the cutter, especially, with ruthless precision in this encounter. Most hitters would have been pretty helpless.
Diaz is much more carriage than pumpkin, though. He’s up to 334 career plate appearances and has a .338 TAv. He has 37 extra-base hits, 28 walks, and just 43 strikeouts in those 334 PA. If anyone still thinks he’s a fluke, they’re welcomed—challenged, even—to provide evidence in support of that claim. Diaz had a tough first strike called on him, on a cutter away, and then had to check his swing to stay alive on a wicked two-strike offering. In a full count, though, he got frozen on a cutter that had just a hair more of the plate than the first strike had, and went down looking. As anonymous as these two might seem, they put on a short and brilliant show, and reminded viewers of a crucial fact of modern baseball—that the list of players with prodigious talent and a level of sharpened skill of which their forebears could only dream is much longer than the list of players most casual fans can even name.
Bryant Bash!
Kris Bryant launched the first pitch he saw into the left-field seats, giving the NL a 1-0 lead in the top of the first. What a moment. Bryant is 0-for-6 with six strikeouts against Chris Sale during two regular-season encounters (last year), a fact notably exploited by meathead Tony Massarotti in a column last month. He hit the ball so hard on Sale’s first offering Tuesday night that you could almost hear the ball tearing the air (and whatever narrative Massarotti was hoping to craft) apart. The shot left his bat at 110.8 miles per hour on a low trajectory, and flew some 420 feet.
Cole Hamels did avenge Sale to some extent, though, fanning Bryant with runners at second and third and two outs in the top of the third. Bryant mostly spent the at-bat hunting fastballs, trying and failing to adjust to Hamels’s elite changeup. So it goes. Hamels is unhittable when he’s on, as the Cubs know all too well, and he had his good stuff on Tuesday night.
Bryant was tested a few times in the field, and though he was never forced to make any dazzling plays, he did make them all.
Rizzo Underrated?
This was not John Smoltz’s night. At one point, with Anthony Rizzo at the plate, he and Joe Buck began musing on whether Rizzo (the leading All-Star vote-getter, and probably the NL MVP for the first half) is flying under the radar on the star-studded Cubs. It was as silly as it sounds. He might not have Bryce Harper- or Bryant-level star power, but Rizzo is one of the game’s best and most famous players. He’s not a diamond in the rough.
It was a shame that Rizzo couldn’t get the ball elevated Tuesday night. He hit one ball 112 miles per hour and one 109 miles per hour, before being lifted in favor of Paul Goldschmidt. One was a groundout, and one a single. He looked as good as that sounds, right on the ball all night, and perhaps just needed a chance to see 100 miles per hour from someone so as to get a line drive barreled up without yanking it foul. Rizzo also snagged Ortiz’s 93-mph ground ball along the line in the first inning, navigating a tricky hop on the well-struck grounder despite playing right alongside the bag. The corner men in the starting Cubs infield were terrific.
Quiet Nights Up the Middle
Ben Zobrist and Addison Russell each went 0-for-2, and though neither made a defensive miscue, neither did they do anything special in the field. It was a pretty unremarkable night, save perhaps for the moment that Russell’s 101-mph fly ball to center field left his bat in the top of the third. It was a victory for Russell to square up Cole Hamels so well, even if it ended with Mike Trout grabbing the ball on the warning track. Russell has, notably and strangely, struggled against left-handed pitching over his young career, and he was, after all, starting at shortstop in the All-Star Game at 22. Russell wasn’t the most deserving of that nod this year, but as I’ve written before, superstardom never seems far away for Russell, and moments like his plate appearance against Hamels remind us of that.
Lester Holds ‘Em
Jake Arrieta took the night off, but Jon Lester came in to pitch the bottom of the seventh, with the AL leading 4-2. An error on a Mark Trumbo ground ball opened the door to a potential rally, and Lester walked Robinson Cano to put two on with nobody out (though he made some very good pitches during that at-bat, and got squeezed a little). He got a groundout from Ian Desmond and a shallow flyout from Josh Donaldson, though, before being lifted for Mark Melancon, who stranded both runners he inherited. It was a sharp outing for a pitcher who, the Cubs hope, will be much sharper coming out of the break than he was going into it.
And in the End
Royals batters connected for two homers, totaling three runs, and Ned Yost managed more aggressively than Terry Collins. He kept his starters in longer, and went only to his truly elite pitchers. The AL built an early lead and shut the NL down from the fifth inning onward. Whoever ends up playing in the World Series, they’ll play Game 1 in the AL team’s home park. Obviously, this could have implications for the Cubs, but that’s a bridge to be crossed if and when we come to it. Truthfully, home-field advantage just doesn’t matter that much in baseball, and remember, before the 2003 change that made this game determine the advantage in the Series, it just alternated years. We’ve basically swapped out an arbitrary distribution mechanism for a truly random one. I hope you didn’t let the minute consequence of the game distract you from the fun of the exhibition, and that you won’t lose sleep over the prospect of the Cubs being disadvantaged in the World Series. They’re a long, long way from having that matter right now. Tuesday night was, for the most part, good old-fashioned fun.
Lead photo courtesy Jake Roth—USA Today Sports
Can someone write an article analyzing Russell’s progress?
Between Russell, Bryant and Baez (all of whom I consider 2nd yr players, with Baez missing significant time), it seems as though the latter two have made significant strides, yet Russell appears to be lost at times. At other times, he’ll work a 12 pitch walk after starting in a 0-2 count.
I know he is 2 years younger than those guys, but as a 2nd year player, you want to see progress and I can’t see it, but I REALLY hope it’s there.