Hello. While I was on paternity leave, I kept a journal about baseball and my daughter, not Derek Jr., but soon to be Derek Jr. You can read all the entries here.
May 17
Yesterday, when Derek Jr. busy, my wife played Black Eyes Peas on her phone and bounced our daughter with a yoga ball. Today it became clear that he considered this a successful experiment and that it will be a thing in our home going forward. The child is scared. Let’s dance to that Black Eyed Peas song. It repeats. Every day. The Black Eyed Peas are playing at our house. This was not a path I could have foreseen. This is not the path I would have chosen. This already seems like there is no way I can escape.
While feeding Derek Jr. in the evening, I catch the ninth and 10th innings of the Cubs and White Sox. The 10th inning was one of the most entertaining I’ve seen in a long time. Cubs starts with Pete Crow-Armstrong as a zombie runner, which is already making it to see TV. The White Sox broadcast clearly has some sort of children’s day celebration, and all of the graphics have a distinct Backyard Baseball feel to them. If you’ve never played Backyard Sports, then this will go over your head, but as I watch, a realization dawns on me: The speedy, lanky, red-haired Pete-Crow Armstrong is Major League Baseball’s version of the speedy, lanky, left-handed, red-haired Pete Wheeler. I mean, come on:
As if on cue, PCA steals third base from fourth. A classic Pete Wheeler move. Then things get scary for the White Sox. Tyler Davis walks Dansby Swanson, putting runners on first and third with no outs. The infield is in, but Crow-Armstrong will be a tough man to catch at the plate in anything other than a well-placed spot. The cameras zoom in on Davis just in time to watch him mutter expletives. I don’t really know what you mean, except for the last name, which is a complex word one avoids in respectable company. But my sense is that Davis isn’t so much crazy as he is talking about something. Maybe there’s something to his performance, maybe it’s about Swanson or the referee. I’m open to any ideas.
You are not a FanGraphs Member
It appears that you are not yet a FanGraphs Member (or signed in). We’re not mad, just disappointed.
We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we’d like to point out a few good reasons why you should become a Member.
1. Free Viewing! We will not mistake you for this ad, or any other.
2. Unlimited topics! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles per month. Members are never cut off.
3. Dark mode and classic mode!
4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, the way you want.
5. One-click data export! Use our predictions and leaderboards for your personal projects.
6. Remove images from the home page! (Honestly, this doesn’t sound that good to us, but other people wanted it, and we like to give our Members what they want.)
7. More Steam guesses! We have offer, percentage, and context neutral predictions available only to members.
8. Get the FanGraphs Walk-Off, a custom year-end review! Find out how you used FanGraphs this year, and how that compares to other Members. Don’t fall prey to FOMO.
9. Weekly mailbag column, for Members only.
10. Help support FanGraphs and all of our staff! Our members give us valuable resources to improve the site and bring new features!
We hope you will consider Membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize that this has been a very long marketing article, so we’ve removed all other ads from this article. We didn’t want to overdo it.
Nico Hoerner, the true type of contact the White Sox don’t want to deal with, will be next. But everything works, temporarily. Hoerner cuts the ball straight to the shortstop, and Crow-Armstrong is hopelessly stranded between third and home. Still, he did his best. He keeps the rundown going long enough for runners to advance to second and third, so the White Sox aren’t out of the woods yet. They re-entered the infield, but then decided to go with Michael Busch on purpose. It loads the bases and brings in a struggling Alex Bregman with an inning-ending double play opportunity.
The Sox go deep into the double play, and Bregman really grinds the ball, but he hits it so low that Colson Montgomery’s only play was first. Running scores. The Cubs lead 8-7 and two runners in scoring position are out. The White Sox also choose to intentionally walk the bases loaded, and I can’t help but feel for Davis, whose walk rate is greatly inflated by his lack of error.
Davis ties up, then ties up again. He hits Seiya Suzuki with a fastball to the outside corner, but Suzuki challenges the pitch, which turns out to be off the outside corner. Davis goes right back to the well, shaking his catcher a few times because he wants to challenge Suzuki with another outside fastball. Suzuki spins on this one, and the side is retired. The Cubs scored one run on one walk, no hits. The ball never left the field. Davis is credited with three walks. Little did he know that he was about to earn the second win of his major league career.
The White Sox start the bottom of the 10th with Chase Meidroth on second. He’s not Pete Wheeler, but he doesn’t have to be. Andrew Benintendi squares off and covers the first pitch he sees right in the middle of a triangle made up of the pitcher, first baseman, and second baseman. I think if the ball ends up between three people instead of two people, it doesn’t matter anymore a tweener; it is in the middle. Busch plays it well. He takes the lead, scoops the ball, turns and throws it to first base, but shortstop Ryan Rolison forgets to cover the bag, and though second baseman Hoerner runs, catches Busch’s throw lightly, and hits the bag so hard that he slightly rolls his ankle, he starts from deep to Bentendi’s reach. Now the White Sox are the team with runners on first and third with no outs, only missing. Replays show Hoerner hitting Benintendi on the bag, then showing how much his ankle turned inward before he jumped in the air to get his weight off of it as quickly as possible. It’s a wonder Hoerner made it there in time. As the game progresses, it looks like he doesn’t stand a chance.
Still, the White Sox have the game tied at third with one out. It was a lot of play on one field. The next pitch contains a lot of action, too. Rolison starts Edgar Quero with another fastball over the heart of the plate, and Quero does exactly what he’s supposed to do with a pitch like that. It sits in the first row of bleachers in left center. Everyone nearby jumps to their feet to try and catch it – everyone except the two Cubs fans with the ball sitting between them.
Davis gets the win by inducing two grounders, hitting a batter, and walking three, two intentional. Rolison throws two fastballs in the zone and earns a loss. As Quero crosses home plate in a Gatorade storm, the camera cuts to the stands, where, as if waiting for his vision, a White Sox fan with a glowing mustache in an Aaron Rowand jersey – that’s right, an Aaron Rowand jersey – jumps up and down with glee, then remembers his manners, turns to his kind neighbor cubs, and gives him a kind fan’s hand.
May 18
No games of the day today, so I’m catching up on yesterday’s highlights when Derek Jr. down to take an afternoon nap. The first highlight I see is Junior Caminero’s 12th home run of the year. It’s nuts. Eury Pérez throws him a 2-2 sweep down and away. And when I say down or far, I mean hitting down the edge of the zone, and just an inch or two from the outside corner. It’s a thin cement mix, and it may have been intended to end up a few inches from the corner, but it’s still a good spot. Caminero has no problem. He comes out in front of the field, so in order to slow down, he sells his lower half completely. With his weight already on his front leg, he thrusts his hips out, bends at the waist, and reaches out to hook the ball into the corner. By all rights, this should be a lefty blaze, but Caminero’s swing is so powerful that even this kind of hamstrung carries enough bat speed to send a ridiculous ball 372 feet and into the bleachers.
It immediately makes me think of Kirk Gibson’s homer in the 1988 World Series. The only difference is that Gibson was sitting on the rear slide all the way. The day before, scout Mel Didier had confirmed that Dennis Eckersley would throw one in such a situation: “When we got to Eckersley, and it was my turn to speak, I used my best southpaw drive and said, ‘Parders, you can focus on this as I’m standing here. Slide.'” Everyone on the bench was whispering “back slide.” Gibson was so sure of what he was going to get that he went straight to the plate to put himself in a position to handle that outfield. Caminero, on the other hand, is clearly delusional, and sadly, this slide goes away from him rather than towards him. But he’s strong and connected enough to send the ball up the field anyway.
Surprisingly, this wasn’t the longest homer hit in the offseason. April 10, Javier Báez – who else? — he reached out and opened Chris Paddack’s sweeper that was off the plate and down and out. Since 2008, the no-hitter Báez is one of four righties to hit multiple home runs on pitches in the Attack Zone 19 (bottom and outside corner, shade area). As I write this, I realize that maybe after seven weeks of maternity leave, I am suffering from baseball analysis withdrawal.
