#41 Only teams have team meetings

Plus: Should Shohei Ohtani really be throwing that hard?

The Opener

1. Astros shortstop Jeremy Peña, in the midst of a banner season, hired Scott Boras as his agent, and Houston GM Dana Brown apparently called immediately to make it clear that the team is interested in pursuing an extension.

2. The Miami Marlins are the hottest team in baseball. They have now won seven in a row behind the scorching bats of Otto Lopez and Kyle Stowers and, get this, are only half a game behind the Atlanta Braves.

3. Pirates legend Dave Parker, the 1978 NL MVP, died this weekend after battling Parkinson’s disease. The Cobra, who won just about everything there was to win — two batting titles, three Gold Gloves, three Silver Sluggers, two World Series rings, All-Star Game MVP and a Home Run Derby — will be inducted into the Hall of Fame next month.

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On Saturday, after losing their first two games against the Pirates (non-Paul Skenes iteration) 9-1 and 9-2, the Mets held a team meeting. On Sunday they lost again to the Pirates, 12-1. (Skenes didn’t pitch in that one either.) Hey, it’s Hannah and what did they say???

The Mets are 48-37, just a game and a half out of first place in the NL East. But they’ve lost 13 of their last 16. On the first day of June they had the best record in baseball, then they had a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad month. And so, in lieu of being able to conjure health for their starting rotation, the Mets gathered postgame and “six or seven” players spoke with a “theme of sticking together.”

This has, and will of course, get compared to the team meeting the Mets had in late May last year. That one became part of Mets lore after a then-sub-.500 team went on to have something of a charmed rest of the season. It’s a strong proof of concept for the potential power of a team meeting, but neither that nor Sunday’s loss can say anything definitive about the efficacy of a group pep talk. I know that, you know that. And yet, I’m intrigued by the mystique of the Team Meeting — and, based on the poll we ran recently, so are you.

I think it’s because team meetings are indicative of a communal experience and even a communal identity in an era when baseball is increasingly both an individual sport and an exercise in roster depth. The smart, dispassionate read on the Mets situation is that Juan Soto is having a fantastic June, so is Pete Alonso; that rotation depth has been strained beyond its breaking point because of a series of ill-timed injuries; that the bottom of the lineup isn’t coming up clutch but clutch doesn’t exist so it’s actually just a sustained stretch of bad luck.

And yet, the occurrence of a team meeting tells us that within the clubhouse, the losing still stings. Despite the hundreds of millions of dollars cushioning the blow and the private coaches to customize each hitter’s approach and the front office wonks who are pulling strings behind the scenes, the players are not merely mercenaries. They’re a team, a cohesive unit at least as far as deciding this shit sucks.

A team meeting is inherently cinematic. Sports movies love a stirring speech and I care less about whether or not a particular meeting “works” than finding out that there’s some truth to the pathos implied. In short: it means the Mets care what each other think. That’s gotta be worth something. Even if you still get swept by the Pirates.

The Lineup

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Sonny Gray, the veteran Cardinals pitcher, threw a shutout with 11 strikeouts in only 89 pitches this weekend (yes, all nine innings were played). The 89-pitch shutout alone is noteworthy. No one had thrown a shutout in fewer than 90 pitches since Adam Wainwright in 2021.

But that plus the 11 strikeouts part is bordering on the absurd. Gray is only the third pitcher on record to combine this level of efficiency and whiff-inducing dominance, joining David Cone and Jim Bunning.

I don’t think he knew this factoid when he made the comparison, but credit Mets announcer Ron Darling for noting that Gray might just be a latter day version of Cone, a smallish righty who mustered big stuff and turned himself into a multi-time All-Star and occasional Cy Young vote-getter. He won’t land in Cooperstown, but Gray has firmly placed himself among his generation’s most effective and reliable arms. –ZC

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The whole replay industrial complex has generally made sliding into bases more fraught and more annoying, but I do think it has helped elevate the art of the evasive maneuver in baseball.

To wit: This stutter-step (stutter-slide?) by White Sox shortstop Chase Meidroth. –ZC

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After a fan heckled Ketel Marte to the point of tears last week about his mother — who passed away in a car accident — Diamondback fans who don’t suck made a concerted effort to support their guy in his return to Phoenix on Friday. One particular fan organized a handout of pink “Ketel is my MVP” shirts pregame along with a note suggesting a standing ovation for his first at bat. Motherhood has officially changed me, because I teared up (in a public space!) at the invocation to “Let your cheer echo with the warmth, pride, and love Elpidia would have shown her son.”

dbacks

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The result was a really cool moment. –HK

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We were watching Shohei Ohtani’s third start back from a lengthy elbow rehab live and when this happened: