#59 The snark is coming from within the Rockies' clubhouse
Or else someone is engaging in a very silly bit of fan fic
The Opener
The Pohlad family is not selling the Twins, contrary to their plans of the past year. According to a detailed report in the Athletic, they’ve instead brought on two new minority investors, who bought more than 20 percent stake in the club to help pay down some of the significant debt that may have represented a roadblock in finding a buyer to meet the Pohlad’s reported asking price of $1.7 billion.
MLB is negotiating potential broadcast packages with NBC and Netflix, in addition to existing partners ESPN and Apple. The Athletic reports that NBC and Apple could be the favorites for Sunday Night Baseball, while Netflix is eyeing the Home Run Derby.
Astros closer Josh Hader hit the IL with a shoulder injury that felt like a “gut punch” and will require a second opinion, which is to say things don’t look good. It’s yet another blow for an Astros team that has already missed the most projected production due to injury of any MLB team this year, per the handy Injured List Ledger at Baseball Prospectus.
The Bullpen
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First: I don’t know a lot of Colorado Rockies players, but now I have a favorite.
Next: Oh, he’s got other tweets to that effect as well! Hilarious.
Then suspicion set in: This is a lot of snark for a guy ostensibly employed by the Colorado Rockies. Maybe this is not really his account.
Which brings me to: Why would someone make a parody account of a 22-year-old Rockies infielder with 51 big-league games to his name?
Because I am a journalist:
Update this morning: Oh we got a response!
What do we think, believable? I will endeavor to secure us some proof. –HK
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Personally, I’m perfectly fine to continue believing the 2025 season is still relatively new and 2026 is eons away. But, objectively speaking, it’s getting a little strange that MLB hasn’t announced the regular season schedule for next year yet.
The 2025 regular season schedule was released on July 18, 2024. The 2024 regular season schedule was released July 13, 2023. Granted, the 2023 regular season schedule wasn’t announced until August 24, 2022, but that was the first year of the new balanced schedule format in which every team plays all 29 other teams so it’s possible that took slightly longer to build.
Thanks to a Reddit poster for directing me to the Phillies’ season-ticket plan landing page which was (apparently) updated a week ago to say “Specific game dates, times, and opponents for this plan will be released in conjunction with the MLB Schedule in mid-late August.” (emphasis added.) So I don’t think MLB just forgot to make one.
My best guess — totally speculative — is that the delay has to do either with the uncertainty over where the Rays will play and any schedule accommodations that might require (i.e. this year their schedule skews heavily towards being on the road during the hottest part of the summer because they are playing in an open-air ballpark in Florida) or maybe because of the uncertainty over what will happen with the Sunday night baseball package? –HK
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It’s going to be hard for anyone, let alone another rookie, to top Nick Kurtz’s four-homer bonanza, but Marlins outfielder Jakob Marsee gave it a go in his 13th career game on Wednesday.
Marsee ripped four hits, including two homers and a double, and drove in seven runs. Acquired from the Padres (as many major leaguers are) in the Luis Arraez trade, the former sixth-round pick is off to a scorching start in the majors after achieving liftoff in Triple-A in June. Count this as another point of intrigue in the Marlins’ midseason transformation. –ZC
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As someone who learned about the midwest burger chain George Webb at the same time as I learned about this promotion (that is: a couple minutes ago) I’m just going to trust the reporting that says their oddly specific promotion has existed since the 1940s.
Apparently!!! “For years George Webb customers have seen the famed prediction of a 12 game winning streak for the local baseball team triggering a free burger for customers.”
Well…
Unfortunately…
-HK
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At Baseball Prospectus this week, the great Patrick Dubuque wrote about the starter with the best ERA on the American League’s best team. (I’ll wait for a second while you try to puzzle that one out.)
OK, it’s Eric Lauer. The lefty boasts a 2.82 ERA in 83 innings for the Blue Jays, having returned from a stint in the KBO without any noticeable transformation — except for in the results. Dubuque gets at the mystery that still remains in an age of granular analysis.
In trying to explain Lauer’s success, he writes, we are “dwelling near the edges of charted territory when it comes to pitching.”
I couldn’t help but notice that Lauer is a left-hander. I went back to check on the leaguewide southpaw numbers I wrote about in early July and, lemme tell you, the historic edge for lefties is still very much intact. –ZC
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This might be specific to appearing regularly on SNY and thus consuming a lot of Mets-centric content, but I feel like people keep diagnosing the Mets’ recent struggles as the starters not going deep into games. And they’re not! Since June 13, the Mets have the fewest innings pitched by the starting rotation. But worse than the paucity of innings they’re pitching is the bushel of runs they’re surrendering in those innings. Mets starters have the fourth-worst ERA in that stretch, third-worst FIP. Also bad: the bullpen hasn’t been much better, sixth-worst ERA. But you don’t even have to break it down like that. Mets pitching on a whole has the third-worst (ahead of only the Nationals and the Rockies) ERA since June 13.
Of course, all these things are related. The starters are imploding early, getting pulled from the game, forcing the relievers to cover more and more innings and stretching the bullpen increasingly thin. The innings issue is an issue. I just wonder if there’s an over-analysis happening to avoid saying the simple thing: the pitching has been bad. –HK
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You know who has been sneaky good lately? Forty-one-year-old Max Scherzer. Pitching for the firmly first-place Toronto Blue Jays, Scherzer has gone at least six innings in four-straight starts and has a 2.42 ERA in that span, with an ERA under 2.00 in August.
Why can’t the Mets get a pitcher like that? –HK
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On Thursday, Scherzer was especially vintage-esque: seven one-run innings. But he also got some help from his defense:
That’s David Schneider ruining a very charming story about a hometown kid getting his first hit. Cubs top prospect Owen Caissie got called up to debut against the Blue Jays in Toronto, at a ballpark less than an hour from where he grew up, and would have had an extra base hit in his first big-league at bat if not for that catch. –HK
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Watching this 100 times and changing my mind after each one about whether or not they text. –HK
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Did not expect to see a composite image of Miguel Rojas, Junior Caminero, and Joc Pederson atop a story on Town & Country’s website. But apparently a cohort of baseball players have taken to sporting the Van Cleef & Arpels Alhambra necklace — an “icon” of a brand that dates to the 1800s and has been historically associated with Grace Kelly, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and Princess Diana.
T&C did their homework, tracing, in particular, Pederson’s trend-setting back to his pearl-wearing days in Atlanta.
Someone ask him what the athletes secure in their masculinity will be wearing next. –HK
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If Statcast is going to count swords, I hereby count this as the first known instance of a nunchuck.
–ZC
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I teased the stakes of the Padres-Dodgers series that starts tonight in Wednesday’s newsletter, but beyond the potential standings impact, it’s exciting any time we get MLB’s spiciest rivals battling in close quarters.
MLB put together a handy timeline of the conflagrations, including the June tensions that led to managers Mike Shildt and Dave Roberts screaming at each other in a scrum. –ZC
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Please do not bet on the Little League World Series, says Little League, because apparently that’s something they have to put out an official statement about these days. –HK
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Speaking of kids games, I’m co-opting the bottom of my newsletter for a bit of non-newsletter business. I’d like to do more feature writing on Youth Sports (baseball or anything else!) and I’m looking for leads on specific stories. (I got some emails saying like “the cost of youth sports is crazy!” Great, give me examples!)
As I posted on social media… Think: trends (cool/concerning/just kinda crazy) in training or fashion, malfeasance by individuals or organizations, inspirational achievements beyond the norm, someone worth spotlighting, increasing optimization/professionalization.
If you have ideas, hit me up at hrkeyser@gmail.com. –HK