Hi friends-
This was not a good week to be a baseball fan. Last Sunday, NL MVP candidate Mookie Betts took a 98-mile-per hour fastball to his left hand, writhed on the ground in agony for a full five minutes, then left the game and headed straight to the injured list, where he will remain until August or September.
Just as the Dodgers revealed the fracture in Betts’ hand, they also announced that their co-ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto—who is three months into a 10-year deal worth $325 million—would also be out indefinitely due to a strained rotator cuff in his pitching arm. The “good news” was that neither one of these players were thought to have season-ending injuries.
The Dodgers did not respond by immediately trading for Garrett Crochet and Willy Adames. They just called up a few ho-hum minor leaguers, and are now proceeding with the same sort of somnambulant regular season ambivalence that has come to define this era of Dodger baseball, particularly now that the National League is an abomination and the rest of the NL West is a mess.
The other reason the Dodgers didn’t freak out is because they have entered a stretch of baseball against teams so bad that you or I could play left field for Los Angeles and bat ninth and they would still probably go 8-2. There’s no good time to lose players like Betts and Yamamoto on the same day, but if you had to pick, you could do worse than waving goodbye to those guys for 6-8 weeks in mid-June with a nine-game lead and the Rockies, Angels, and White Sox on deck.
“Just as long as Betts and Yoshi are back for the playoffs,” is the cope Dodger fans are clinging to right now. On one level, they’re not wrong. With the new expanded postseason, the 162-game regular season now means next to nothing. Feast your eyes on this ugliness:
Nine NL teams—eight of which are under .500—are now fighting for the final two wild card spots. (The Braves control the first wild card). The only two teams that are out of the hunt are the Rockies and Marlins.
This new playoff format is an abomination for many reasons, chief among them is that the regular season is now just extended spring training for good teams, and cover for cheap owners of mediocre teams who are barely trying to win. After all, how can anyone criticize the Reds and Pirates owners for holding their fans hostage when they’re *only* a game out of making the playoffs?
It’s true, the Dodgers probably won’t need Yamamoto or Betts over the next two months to win the division and make the playoffs. It’s not good that a team could lose two players of that caliber indefinitely and shrug their way into October because this league hands out playoff spots as participation trophies now.
And while these two June injuries change nothing about the Dodgers and whatever legacy they will write during the Ohtani era, I’m a masochist who watches baseball every day, and I enjoy my life more when the most talented players are on the field. I think that’s why all the injuries across the league this year have me bummed out so much. I miss Spencer Strider and Ronald Acuña Jr., and Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer and Clayton Kershaw and Mike Trout.
Every sport needs main characters and the 2024 MLB season is being propelled by a few superstars and a bunch of understudies.
One main character did return to the mound in the Bronx this week, however, as Gerrit Cole made his season debut against the current best team in baseball (in my opinion), the Baltimore Orioles. Cole looked fine, tossing four innings and allowing two runs in a no decision while striking out five.
The O’s took two of three from the Yankees, further frustrating Yankee fans who are freaking out about the fact that while New York has the best record in baseball at 51-28, they got beat up at home by Baltimore and the Dodgers this month—dropping four of six and getting outscored 43-25.
I watched all three of the Orioles/Yankee games this week, and besides coming away from it thinking the O’s are the best team in the AL (right now), I mostly just felt relief. A series of stupid decisions and beefs almost led to injuries to Jordan Westburg, Aaron Judge, and Gunnar Henderson—the latter two were plunked errant by fastballs. Judge took a pitch off the hand, and Henderson took one to the back in retaliation. It’s a miracle that neither wound up on the IL afterward. It’s been fun to watch Henderson and Judge both hit the crap out of baseballs, and I want their MVP chase to come down to the final weekend.
With Betts’ and Acuna’s injuries, the likelihood that we will see a DH win an MVP award for the first time ever has increased ten-fold. Shohei Ohtani leads the field with 3.9 fWAR, Bryce Harper is comfortably behind him at 3.2, tied with Ketel Marte.
Harper’s Phillies will make the playoffs, and Marte’s DBacks might. It used to be the case that voters would only pick MVPs from teams that made the postseason, but that weird wrinkle went away because Trout and Ohtani were often the best players in the world over the last decade and the Angels never made the playoffs. If those two hadn’t forced voters to sanity, the fact that more teams make the postseason than don’t now would have rendered it moot anyway.
All of which is to say: a series of injuries to the best players on Earth means that we are now officially on Ketel Marte NL MVP watch. He is a good player who, after getting a taste of October baseball last fall, has decided to try hard all season now.
Which means he’s probably due for a fastball to the hand because we can’t have nice things.
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Some housekeeping:
Our May/June book club selection is “Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy” by Jane Leavy. We will meet over zoom to discuss it on Monday, July 1st from 5:30 to 6:30 PM PT.
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STORIES YOU MAY HAVE MISSED THIS WEEK:
Willie Mays died on Tuesday. I’m including this gift link to his obituary in the New York Times. (Richard Goldstein / New York Times)
Royce Lewis has hit 26 homers in the first 85 games of his career. The only players in MLB history to hit more homers over the same time span are Rudy York (31), Mark McGwire (30), Jose Abreu (29), Pete Alonso (28), Cody Bellinger (28), and Yordan Alvarez (27). (Sarah Langs / MLB.com)
The Seattle Mariners have an eight game lead in the AL West. They are hitting .220 as a team, second-worst in MLB.
Padres manager Mike Shildt asked the umpire to eject him from a game. The video is incredible. (Jomboy Media).
Twenty teams in 1998 hit at least .260. The best team batting average today is .259 from the Houston Astros.
MLB says it averaged 39,179 fans on Saturday, giving the league its best attendance for a Saturday before July since 2008, and its best Saturday overall since 2013.
People were wondering how adding Shohei Ohtani would impact Dodger home game attendance. So far, LA is averaging 47,265- just a smidgen less than the 47,371 they averaged in 2023 and the 47,671 they got in 2022. However, that number is likely to climb now that kids in LA are on summer break. Will be interesting to see if the team can match its high water mark of this era of 49,065 set in 2019.
The Ohtani effect does seem to be real, however. The Dodgers are averaging 40,807 on the road, which is more than the Yankees average at home (40,462). I mention the Yankees because they have the second-highest average home attendance in MLB.
The Mets finally lost a game in their Grimace Era. :(
Justin Verlander’s trip to the injured list may have saved the Mets $17.5 million (SNY / Danny Abriano).
AL Cy Young frontrunner Luis Gil got destroyed by the Orioles on Thursday, and gave up 7 earned runs in 1.1 innings, raising his ERA from 2.03 to 2.77.
NL Cy Young frontrunner Shöta Imanaga got crushed by the Mets today, and gave up *10* runs on *11 hits* in three innings, raising his ERA from 1.89 to 2.96
Red Sox reliever Chris Martin returned to action after a ten day stint on the injured list due to anxiety. Martin says he has more tools now to help his mental health. (Peter Abraham / Boston Globe)
That’s all for today. See you guys tonight in the Substack chat app at 7 PM PT/4 PM PT, tomorrow over zoom from 12 PM PT - 1 PM PT, and on Sunday in the chat app during Sunday Night Baseball between the Mets and Cubs.
Now, granted it was the Rockies but watching the Dodgers these last four games, they seem to have reacted to losing Mookie in a way that bodes well for their playoff chances. They weren't likely to face much adversity this season but they have now. I dunno, maybe I'm reaching because I want to see this team win a chip but they've rebounded well from what had to be mentally a tough couple of loses.
I’m also glad that nobody was injured in that Yanks/O’s series. My heart sank when I saw Judge get hit with that ball. It sounded awful!