#45 There isn't a phenom every year

And that's just fine! Plus: Ceddanne Rafaela, the best Big Dumper merch, and maybe you'd like to be an Ivy League baseball coach?

The Opener

1. There is neither space in this bullet point nor knowledge in my brain (HK) to do meaningful draft analysis. But we can tell you that the first overall pick by the Washington Nationals is a 17-year-old high school shortstop named Eli Willits, who is the youngest one-one since the Mariners took Ken Griffey Jr. in 1987¹.

2. The Red Sox enter the break with a 10-game win streak that has them in Wild Card position and only three games back in the AL East. Since trading Rafael Devers, they’re 16-9. (Devers, meanwhile, is apparently playing through injury.) Just because it worked (thus far!) doesn’t make it any more defensible to trade your franchise player in the middle of a contending season. But if they wind up in October, it will be one of the stranger narrative arcs for a team’s season.

3. It’s the All-Star break! That means Home Run Derby tonight, All-Star Game Tuesday night and, uh, some other business for all other players.

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Paul Skenes doesn’t show up every year. Otherwise it wouldn’t feel particularly special when Paul Skenes shows up.

The Pirates phenom, who can accurately be described as such, is starting the All-Star Game for the second straight season. He made and started that first All-Star Game last year after just 11 MLB appearances, but with the momentum of a 1.90 ERA in those games and a freight train of dominance that stormed unabated through college baseball and the minors.

He will, at some point, be followed by Brewers rookie Jacob Misiorowski, who has pitched five times in the majors, yet got an All-Star nod with much fanfare via MLB’s murky pitcher replacement selection process.

I think Misiorowski is an exhilarating arm — 102 mph with a nutty mid 90s cutter slider thing — who might turn out to be something like a Jacob deGrom prototype escaped from a lab. But right now he’s a top 100 pitching prospect with amazing stuff, impressive strikeout numbers, command questions and a 2.81 ERA in five major-league starts.

I’m not here to rain on Misiorowski’s parade. He didn’t select himself, and everyone excited to see him pitch on a big stage should enjoy that moment when it arrives Tuesday night. I’m also not necessarily here to litigate MLB’s replacement process for All-Stars who can’t or won’t pitch, which fed into confusion as to how Misiorowski was elevated over pitchers who have obviously done more to earn the honor (and financial benefit, in many cases) of being named an All-Star; the Phillies made that case exceedingly well in speaking up for Cristopher Sanchez and Ranger Suarez.

My problem with it is more about the meta narrative. Whatever lightning in a bottle the league feels it caught with Skenes last season cannot be manufactured at will. Drumming up Store Brand Paul Skenes (Stretchy Diet Edition!) to capitalize on the attention an all-time inexperienced All-Star generates just immediately cheapens the actual extraordinary achievement.

The cool thing is cool when everyone can see it with their own eyes, then you can contextualize it and history-ify it and plaster it across the bottom third of every screen. Slapping the fun fact tag on a leading candidate every year, no matter what, doesn’t make the All-Star Game better. It says there must not be anything actually special happening this year, so we have this shiny object for you to look at.

If MLB is lucky, Skenes or Tarik Skubal or Cal Raleigh or any number of stars will seize the spotlight anyway. There are plenty of worthy phenomena in baseball this year, even if there isn’t specifically a young pitcher taking over the sport. No need to invent one.

—ZC

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The Bullpen

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The Phillies’ angle on the drama above is pretty compelling if you click through. Choice quotes include Trea Turner (himself a credible All-Star snub) calling the situation “fucking terrible” and Nick Castellanos say “It’s turning into the Savannah Bananas” — which is both an astute critique and a reasonable justification (the All-Star game literally is a baseball showcase that is more about entertainment than competition). I understand both the consternation — Cristopher Sánchez and Ranger Suárez have pitched to an All-Star level — and the complication — they’re not viable replacements if they can’t actually pitch at the game. Fortunately, this story has something of a happy ending: the Phillies agreed to pay Sánchez the $50,000 bonus that he would get for making an All-Star team. There are no truly benevolent billionaires but John Middleton likes keeping the Phillies clubhouse happy and full of talent. –HK

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One of the things the Home Run Derby gets unassailably correct is letting guys bring their own pitchers. It’s an often emotional pick that also has important strategic ramifications. To get you primed for tonight, here’s the Derby contestants and who will be throwing to them:

Raleigh is also bringing his little brother, Todd Jr., who will “catch” during his round. “T,” as they call him is 15-years-old and already taller than 6’3” Cal. One time, last year or the year before maybe, Cal told me his brother was the better baseball player. That was before the historic homer pace. –HK

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I can’t shake the idea that if you Rip Van Winkle’d your way from March to the All-Star break and woke up to the current standings, you’d find things more ho-hum than someone who lived through the experience? You’d have to catch up on the disasters in Baltimore and Atlanta, but beyond that? The aforementioned Red Sox, skeleton crew Astros and pretty much the entire NL Central have normalized into reasonable lanes that belie much more chaotic realities. –ZC

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Speaking of that Red Sox run, Ceddanne Rafaela is playing like he’s The Freeze and Pete Crow-Armstrong is the fan who got a head start.

The Cubs center fielder hasn’t done any tripping yet, but Rafaela is playing a similarly smooth, swing-happy game to similarly spectacular results after a much slower start. The 24-year-old Boston center fielder has posted top-five-player-in-baseball numbers since June 1 and hit another key home run on Sunday. –ZC

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I love it here at The Bandwagon but I’m still very much in the market for a full-time job. Just how in the market am I? I’ve exhausted LinkedIn’s algorithmic attempts to find something suited to my skillset so thoroughly that the other day it suggested I might want to apply to be the assistant baseball coach at Harvard University. Alas, I’m not CPR certified. (Nor do I have three years of collegiate coaching or professional baseball playing experience.) But maybe you are? –HK

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Mr. Met was on stage at The Lumineers’ show at Citi Field. Until he wasn’t. —ZC