Hi friends-
We’ve got a lot to cover today, so let’s dive in.
Thank you to everyone who participated in The Artists’ Way 12-week program on creativity with me! We will read the book together again next off-season and will welcome all who would like to join.
There will be NO Lab Zoom tomorrow, as I’m traveling. The Lab will be back next week but will take place on Sunday instead of Saturday, from 12 PM PT to 1 PM PT. I’ll send out an email to paid subscribers with the Zoom link on Sunday morning.
Thank you to everyone who joined our book club discussion with Tyler Kepner on Monday night! Our book club selection for March/April is The Last Boy, by Jane Leavy. It’s a longer book than what we’ve read before, so I wanted to give people two months to finish it. We will meet on Monday, May 6, over Zoom at 5:30 PM PT, to discuss it.
I’m running a 5K during the L.A. Marathon next Saturday to raise money for the Hollywood Food Coalition. If you’d like to support me, you can donate here. Thank you so much to everyone who has contributed! <3
This newsletter was originally going to be called, “It’s March 8 and Jordan Montgomery and Blake Snell Are Not Signed” but it’s not as fun to write about a crazy thing that hasn’t happened yet than a crazy thing that has. Scott Boras continues to wait for Godot or the second coming of Christ (or a player on the Yankees to tear his UCL!) to bring down his asking price on the top two free-agent starting pitchers still on the market, so we are moving on to more pressing issues!
It’s spring training, and guys are getting their cleats wet playing 3-5 innings and getting 2-3 ABs a day. Placing too much emphasis on spring games will get you made fun of. Seeing something GOOD probably doesn’t mean too much. Any scrub could go on a heater and whack a couple of homers in a game in late February and never be seen again. I still remember when Chris Shelton lit the baseball world on fire with nine homers during the first 13 games of the 2006 season…. and then nine over the rest of his career. Getting overly excited about small sample sizes often ends in tears.
The exception to the “don’t overreact to anything that happened in spring training” rule is when you see something…. bad.
Gavin Lux has been trying to break through for the Dodgers for the last five seasons. He was a hotshot shortstop prospect out of high school, and when he made his debut late in 2019 he was one of the very best minor leaguers in the sport. But he was blocked at the position by Corey Seager, then Trea Turner, all the while dealing with rumors that he was battling the dreaded yips.
Lux was set to take over the starting job last season when he tore his ACL on a freak play while rounding the bases last February. He worked hard rehabbing for 12 months, and entered this spring penciled in to start at short this season.
Then spring training games started.
His footwork was bad. His throws were…. a mess. His timing was off. He forgot to cover bases when defensive situations involving other players went sideways.
With third baseman Max Muncy offering below-average defense, the Dodgers were in a position where a fine strategy against them might simply be hitting the ball to the left side of the infield. The White Sox did that on Wednesday when facing Yoshinobu Yamamoto and scored four runs off ground balls hit to short and third, none of them scorched.
I lit up the group chat saying Lux had to move off short. The Dodgers already have three of the top five hitters in the game. They are going to score a s—-t ton of runs. They can afford to plug in light-hitting Miguel Rojas at short because the dude is a defensive wizard. Because I am prone to hyperbole, my friends sometimes think I am overreacting. (Fair!) But I really thought this was a baseball emergency. “Time to trade for Willy Adames” I said. “Gavin Lux is not it.”
I hated saying it. It’s not his fault that generational talents like Seager and Turner delayed his ability to get a crack at the job. I felt awful when he tore his ACL, and I feel even worse if he’s mentally struggling with throwing the ball to first. I’ve been open about my own anxiety issues, and the idea that fear of something that to others seems ridiculous could derail a person’s career is nightmare fuel for me personally.
I didn’t think Dave Roberts helped the issue yesterday when he refused to commit to Lux being his Opening Day shortstop. If a guy is struggling with confidence, questioning his abilities to the press might not be the best strategy.
As it turns out, Roberts had probably already told Lux he lost the job. Because today, the Dodgers listed Mookie Betts at short. It’s not just a spring training whim, either: Roberts told reporters the move was “permanent, for now.” Which means, he’s the guy until we trade for Adames at the deadline.
Of course, the Dodgers might not need to trade for anyone if Lux can handle second base—the position Betts was supposed to play this year. Betts subbed in at short for a few games last year because of the Dodgers’ lack of depth at the position, but it’s absolutely wild to me that a man who played Gold Glove defense in rightfield his entire career is now shifting to short after 10 seasons because the team doesn’t have anyone else. For all the heat the Dodgers take for buying championships, they had three top shortstops in MLB over the past five years in Seager, Turner and Manny Machado. They let them all walk, thinking Lux would pan out at the position.
He did not. He still has a shot to be the Dodgers’ starting second baseman, and I hope it works out for him the way I hope fifth-year college seniors triumph after four years of stepping on mousetraps.
Mookie Betts told reporters last year that he was drafted as a shortstop out of high school back in 2011, and that playing the position in an MLB game last season was “a dream come true.” It’s absurd to me that any player would move from the outfield to shortstop in their thirties, especially on a team with championship expectations that just spent a billion dollars over the off-season. But Betts is probably one of the greatest athletes alive right now. In addition to being one of the best baseball hitters in the world, the guy can also dunk a basketball, and bowl perfect games. I’m guessing if he had any soccer training he could be on the pitch in the Premier League when its next season begins in August.
Moving from rightfield to shortstop at age 31 is a crazy thing for a human being to do. But Mookie Betts is not human.
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Baseball News From This Week You Need To Know:
Our long International nightmare is over: Joey Votto has signed a deal with the Blue Jays. One of the best dudes in baseball is not done yet!
Speaking of good Blue Jays’ news: Erik Swanson’s four-year old son, Toby, is leaving the hospital after being hit by a car near the team’s spring training complex in Clearwater, Fla. Toby’s injuries were so severe he was airlifted to a trauma center 10 days ago.
Mariners’ George Kirby said he doesn’t throw to a catcher in the off-season. He throws alone to a nine-pocket net while listening to dub-step.
Lucas Giolito has an elbow injury and might miss the 2024 season. The Red Sox will pay Giolito (injured list) and Chris Sale (who they traded to Atlanta) a combined $36.3 million this season. That beeping you hear is Scott Boras on line 1 with two starting pitchers for sale.
Anthony Rendon is injured again.
Ronald Acuña Jr. isn’t planning to slow down, despite knee soreness. His manager, Brian Snitker, says he expects him in the lineup on Opening Day.
Zack Wheeler agreed on a three-year extension worth $126 million to stay in Philadelphia. That marks the highest average annual value any player has ever received through a contract extension. It’s pretty easy to see why Phillies love being Phillies. This franchise takes care of its guys.
Reds’ top prospect Noelvi Marte was suspended 80 games for testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs.
Sonny Gray has a mild hamstring tear and may not be ready for Opening Day.
The Astros say Justin Verlander’s right shoulder is healing, but he will open the season on the injured list.
Jon Heyman of the New York Post says the Red Sox, Giants, Mariners, Cubs and Rangers are the teams most likely to sign Blake Snell or Jordan Montgomery. Snell is from Seattle, and people from Seattle are notoriously obsessed with Seattle. Maybe he’d give his hometown team a discount?
That’s all for this week. We are 12 days away from the start of the season. Plan your lives accordingly!
Mookie is amazing and very much a team guy. A player of his caliber/stature moving to yet another position for the good of the team is awesome
I live north of Tulsa, and we've had Tulsa Drillers season tickets for several years. In 2019, Kershaw started the year on the IL. He was going to do one rehab start and then join the Dodgers, and when he was ready, instead of doing it with OKC (who I think was playing in Omaha that week) he chose to do it in Tulsa because he'd had a good experience there several years prior.
Gavin Lux was the Drillers' shortstop that season. He was not a good one. Josiah Gray was on that team, and a couple other guys that ended up advancing, but Outman and Busch and Pepiot and Bobby Miller and that group are still a couple years away at this point.
I will never forget this game. The opponent is Springfield, the Cardinal's AA team. Second inning, there's no score. Kershaw allows a baserunner with two outs. The next batter hits a soft grounder to short, to our friend Gavin. He should have fielded it and held it because there was no play. Instead, he charges it hard and promptly airmails it waaaay over the first baseman's head into the Drillers dugout. The runners both advance and it's second and third with two out.
Kershaw is standing on the mound at the end of all that, and he turns to his left and stares Gavin down for a good ten to fifteen seconds. And the crowd goes quiet. It was a warm night, but I swear the temperature in that stadium dropped 15 degrees. I don't know how he had the nerve to go back into the dugout when the inning was over. I'd have just run out to the bullpen and jumped the fence and called an Uber to take me to the airport. It was brutal. And it's not like that was the first error he'd ever made at short. He was much better at second than at short.
So when I heard last season that they were going to try to play Lux at short, I thought, "This doesn't end well." I'm sorry he got hurt and I don't wish him ill, but he has no business as a major league shortstop.