Today was going to be about former team names, but I’m (to use a football term) calling an audible.
Just days after Roki Sasakithrew perhaps the greatest perfect game in the history of professional baseball, he almost did it again. Striking out 14, the 20-year-old only stopped because he was pulled from the tied game after eight perfect innings. The Chiba Lotte Marines would end up losing in 10, but that doesn’t change the fact that Sasaki may well be in the best hot streak in the history of professional baseball pitching. You can see some highlights below:
With his performance today, Sasaki has now had 17 straight perfect innings and has retired 52 hitters in a row. Just to give an example of how remarkable that is, the MLB record for consecutive hitters faced without a walk, hit, or error is 46 by Yusmeiro Petit.
In other words, Roki Sasaki is amazing, and is doing things nobody else has ever done. It’s entirely possible even more history will be made when he makes his next start.
During the 2022 season, I’ll have occasional reports on games I’ve attended of the Rochester Red Wings, the AAA affiliate of the Washington Nationals.
Cade Cavalliis the top pitching prospect of the Washington Nationals. Some lists have him as top prospect for the Nationals overall. For four innings on Thursday, he showed why. Working in the high 90s with off-speeds in the 80s, Cavalli struck out seven Buffalo Bisons while walking only one and giving up an earned run on four hits.
That Cavalli would rack up K’s (including three in the 3rd) isn’t surprising. He led the Minors in 2021 with 175 across three different levels while also being chosen for the Futures Game. However, he has struggled in AAA and didn’t have a good spring with the Nationals this year, including one game where he gave up 10 earned runs to the Cardinals.
The Cavalli of the first four innings on Thursday appeared to have put that behind him. The problem for Cavalli, though, is that he didn’t stop pitching in the 4th inning. He also came out in the 5th. There, the Bisons jumped on him for four straight hits. He was taken from the game after 82 pitches. A few batters later, Samad Taylor hit a grand slam off Jace Fry to put Buffalo up for good. Cavalli’s final line: 4+ IP, 8 H, 5 ER, 1 BB, 7 SO, season ERA after two starts: 9.00. The final score would ultimately be 10-1 Buffalo as the Wings fell to .500 on the year.
Despite how the game ended, however, Thursday spoke well of Cavalli and his future. He’s only had a small sample size of two starts this year, but his strikeout-to-walk ratio has improved (last season across three levels: 2.92 strikeouts for every walk, this season so far: 5.50 strikeouts for every walk). Plus, he certainly seemed more comfortable and less “raw” on the mound, although admittedly that is an intangible thing that is in the eye of the beholder. Doubtless he and the Nationals are hoping that he’ll be MLB-ready by mid-year. Until then, though, he’ll be in Rochester.
The Red Wings continue their series with Buffalo through the weekend.
During the 2022 season, I’ll have occasional reports on games I’ve attended of the Rochester Red Wings, the AAA affiliate of the Washington Nationals.
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The last few years have, frankly, stunk for Minor League Baseball. MLB was able to succeed in a plan (which some fear is not yet over) to decrease the minors, eliminate teams and entire leagues, forcibly shift surviving teams from long-held positions in the hierarchy, and impose certain scheduling restrictions that are a mixed bag for players, front offices, and fans. Add in COVID, which eliminated the 2020 season in its entirety and caused the 2021 season to have a hodgepodge of various restrictions and generally depressed attendance, and it has been a total bummer.
Which is part of the reason why last night in Rochester was so special. It still wasn’t as big of a crowd as it could have been (it was, after all, a school night), but the crowd of 8,170 was still larger than any crowd from 2021. And it was loud, into the game, and ready to cheer.
A good boy.
And the thing is, as an advertisement for Minor League Baseball, last night’s game was better than most. A back and forth game took place. The Bisons would pull ahead, the Red Wings would pull back even, and then it’d happen again. The promotions, as always, were on point, most notably an appearance by very good boy Milo the Bat Dog. He is, after all, a very good boy. I’m still waiting for an MLB team to have a bat dog. It needs to happen eventually, right? The dog would instantly go viral, would put butts in stands, and no doubt there’d be some great moments pre-game when players give the dog much-deserved head-pats. Make it happen, Major League Baseball.
Alas, the only thing that went wrong was the end of the game, as Buffalo took a 6-4 lead that the Red Wings couldn’t make up in the bottom of the 9th.
Other than that, though, it was perhaps the best night at the ballpark in Rochester since 2019.
Clippard not long for AAA
One highlight last night was the performance of Tyler Clippard. As I mentioned back in my one-line-look, the reason why the two-time All-Star with 803 MLB game appearances under his belt is in Rochester to begin with is largely because he signed late. He’s just in AAA for now to build up his arm.
If his performance last night was anything to go on, it won’t be too long. In the top of the 8th, Clippard sent down the Bisons with ease in order, including no-doubt strikeouts of Joshua Fuentes and Cullen Large.
So if you live in Rochester and want to see Tyler Clippard, make sure to head to Frontier Field soon, since he won’t be there long.
The Red Wings continue their long series against the Bisons through Sunday.
While we all slept, history was made in Japan, as Roki Sasaki of the Chiba Lotte Marines threw the first NPB perfect game since 1994. What’s more, the 20-year-old struck out 19 while doing it. Oh, and his catcher was a rookie named Ko (or Koh) Matsukawa… who is only 18.
To declare anything the greatest game ever pitched regardless of level is likely a fool’s errand, but there is a thing called Game Score. The highest game score in a 9-inning game in MLB history was Kerry Wood‘s famous 20 strikeout game in 1998, which scored a 105. The second-highest was Max Scherzer‘s 17-K no-hitter in 2015, which was 104.
Now, I’m not great at math, but it appears that Sasaki’s game score is 106. The only game I can think of off the top of my head that has that beat is Ron Necciai‘s Class-D 27 strikeout no-hitter back in 1952, which had a 112 game score (the maximum 114 minus a walk and a HBP).
Regardless of era, league, level, or country, however, Sasaki’s performance against the Orix Buffaloes will no doubt stand for all time as one of the greatest pitching performances ever.
One line (or at least a sentence- it could be longer than a line depending on your screen) on every member of the opening day roster of my hometown Rochester Red Wings. They range from statistics to trivia and everything in between. Of course, it’s possible that this roster will change drastically in just a few days once MLB begins its season.
Cade Cavalli is considered the Nationals’ top pitching prospect and should be the top man in the Rochester starting staff to begin the season.
Tyler Clippard was a two-time All-Star for the Nationals earlier in his career and will begin in Rochester primarily due to the fact he was signed late and needs more time to build his arm up.
Carl Edwards Jr. won a World Series title in 2016 with the Chicago Cubs.
Jace Fry played in the 2006 Little League World Series for Oregon.
Reed Garrettreturns to North America after pitching two seasons in Japan for the Seibu Lions.
Hunter Harveyhas pitched in 26 career games with the Orioles and joined the Nationals organization in late March.
Gabe Klobosits had a 2.45 ERA in 18.1 innings last season for the Wings while also spending time in Harrisburg and Washington.
Francisco Perez made his MLB debut last season for Cleveland.
Erasmo Ramirez has pitched in 216 career MLB games, primarily for Seattle and Tampa.
Luis Reyes was signed by the Nationals in Aug. 2012, when he was just 17.
Jefry Rodriguez split time between Rochester and Washington last season.
Seth Romero missed time this spring with a stiff back, hampering an attempt to start the season with the big club.
Aaron Sanchez was the 2016 AL ERA leader and made the All-Star Game that season for Toronto.
Curtis Taylor was acquired off waivers from the Toronto organization in December.
Lefty Carson Teel primarily played with Harrisburg in 2021 but did make five appearances for the Wings.
Jackson Tetreault threw all six innings in the Wings’ 4-0 rain-shortened loss to end the 2021 season.
Logan Verrett has pitched in 57 career games in MLB and has also had time in Korea and the independent leagues.
Jordan Weems split last season between the Oakland and Arizona organizations, including seven games in MLB.
Tres Barrera split time between Rochester and Washington last season, and actually hit better in MLB than he did in AAA!
Although he reportedly retired, longtime MLB catcher Welington Castillo is listed on the team’s roster, albeit not listed as not being with the team.
Chris Herrmann is no stranger to Rochester, having played here for parts of three seasons during the Twins era.
Wilmer Perez played some winter ball during the off-season in his native Venezuela.
Luis Garcia is once again the youngest member of the Red Wings (born: 5/16/00), and is considered one of the top prospects in the Nationals organization.
Bahamas-born Lucius Fox may be the fastest man on the team with 142 stolen bags during his minor league career so far.
Joey Meneseswas the IL MVP in 2018 and played for Team Mexico in the Olympics last season.
Jake Noll was last season’s team MVP and was named to the league’s All-Star Team at the end of the season.
Adrian Sanchez hit well in Rochester last season while splitting time between here and Washington.
Richard Urena was with the Buffalo Bisons the last several years and so is likely familiar to many Red Wings fans.
Andrew Young played in 58 games for Arizona last season before being selected in the MiLB Rule 5 draft by the Nationals.
Nick Banksis from Chris Herrmann’s hometown of Tomball, Texas.
Way back during the 2016 Blogathon (which I’ve never been able to do again due to “life”), I did a post on how the grandfather of John Cena, Tony Lupien, played in the big leagues during the 1940s. We’ve also covered “Macho Man” Randy Savage’s minor league career. Today we’re going back to the world of professional wrestling, albeit in Japan.
The player-turned-wrestler in question is Shohei Baba, better known as Giant Baba. While he had some stints in the USA, in Japan he is one of the most famous wrestlers ever and is remembered as the co-founder of the All-Japan Pro Wrestling organization.
Standing anywhere between 6’6″ and 6’10” depending on the source, Baba is believed to have been one of the tallest people to ever play baseball professionally in Japan. According to Wikipedia (which sources Japanese articles), Baba was known for his height from the beginning: in high school he was known as “Sanjo High School’s giant pitcher.” He had the talent to get signed by the Yomiuri Giants, and proceeded to do very well in the minor leagues in Japan, at one point even being named best pitcher in the minor league he was in. However, health injuries (including a brain tumor!) and injuries meant he never made it to the top level very often. He only pitched in three games for the top club, although he did do well in that limited action, holding a 1.29 ERA:
In Bizarre Baseball Culture 2.0, I take an updated look at some of the more unusual places that I previously covered where baseball has reared its head in pop culture and fiction. In the process, I clean up some mistakes of mine and add some more perspective.
Note: The original version of this post can be found here. It has some mistakes and out-of-date information that has been corrected in this post, but remains up for posterity.
As the latest Spider-Man film continues to break records, there is perhaps no better way to start up Bizarre Baseball Culture 2.0 than by renovating one of my old posts about the web-slinger. Now, ole’ Web-Head is no stranger to Bizarre Baseball Culture, having had shown up on several occasions (including fighting Doctor Doom alongside Billy the Marlin), but those were generally promotional comics that happened to feature Spider-Man. Peter Parker Spider-Man (Volume 2) #33, by contrast, is canon. It happened in the main Marvel Universe and presumably could be referenced by any writer working in those stories today. This issue from 2001 is about Peter Parker’s relation with his late Uncle Ben, and how baseball was a bond between them.
Now, before we begin, I’d like to write a bit about Spider-Man in general. What made the Marvel characters different when they first started appearing in the 1960s was that they were, in general, more relatable and flawed than the DC counterparts and the Marvel superheroes that had been created in the 30s and 40s. The Fantastic Four was often bickering with each other (like an family does), the X-Men were shunned by most of society (Stan Lee has said that being a mutant is basically meant to be a stand-in for being a minority), the Hulk was shunned by basically all of society… and Spider-Man, for lack of a better term, was a loser.
Okay, maybe not a loser, but definitely the closest thing there had been up to that point: an unpopular kid with no parents, only one family member of any sort (Aunt May) and little money. To make matters worse, when supervillains weren’t coming after him, the press and/or the police were. If things could go wrong for Peter Parker, they probably have. Parents? Dead. Uncle? Dead. Aunt? Perpetually sick. First true love (Gwen Stacy)? Murdered (and, amazingly, never came back to life). Second true love (Mary Jane)? Marriage magically annulled in a story far too stupid to talk about. At one point in the not-that-distant past poor Peter Parker evensaw his body body-snatched by Doctor Ocopus while he was forced to die in “Doc Ock’s” cancer-ridden body (don’t worry, he got better). But all of this pales in comparison to the greatest, most horrible fate to ever fall upon Spider-Man:
Well, now that the smoke has mostly settled from the World Series, it’s time for a look back at it and a look forward.
First off, the World Series itself. It was, admittedly, not the best series to end the season on. Both clubs had some off-the-field baggage (Houston with the cheating scandal, Atlanta with the continued existence of the chop as well as how they had become a prop for some politicos), and the series highlighted some of modern baseball’s most frustrating features (such as early pitching changes and the degradation of base-running ability for all but a few).
Still, it had some great moments and some big personalities. Freddie Freeman, a Hall-of-Famer in the making (the player most similar to him statistically through the age 31 season is Eddie Murray), now has a ring to show for it. Max Friedhad a coming-out party that helped solidify his place as one of the best pitchers in the NL (he had been great the previous two seasons as well, but sometimes the playoffs knocks people higher in the conscious). Jorge Soler, Eddie Rosario, and Adam Duvall proved to be perhaps the best trio of mid-season replacements in years, if not ever, a masterstroke for the Atlanta front office. On the Astros side, the usual suspects were joined by unexpected people like Zack Greinke, who will now likely go down in history as the last pitcher (aside from two-ways like Ohtani) to get a hit. And the two dugouts were run by old-time baseball men in a new-age baseball world: Brian Snitker and Dusty Baker, who both fittingly have deep ties to the late Henry Aaronand his family.
Ultimately, I consider any series that goes at least six games “good.” Nobody likes a sweep or a near-sweep (save for the team that wins, of course). So while the games themselves were, with one or two exceptions, hardly the most entertaining that baseball could give, I am generally happy.
Now, of course, is the offseason. It could prove tumultuous. A lockout in December is considered so likely that The Onion has already made a joke about it. The fact that the work stoppage will come during December is, ironically, probably a good thing, as it makes it more likely that some sort of new Collective Bargaining Agreement will come about before games are lost. However, given the greedy stubbornness of the owners as well as the (largely justified!) grievances of the players (who, frankly, got pantsed in the last CBA), the ultimate outcome is unknown.
What is known as that when a new CBA does come into force it is likely that baseball will have shifted into yet another new era. It is considered all-but-certain that the DH will become universal, and other rules changes will likely also be either implemented or be put on the road to being implemented. The financial rules will also doubtless change, although given the very nature of the CBA those are likely the hardest to predict.
And so we wait…
Finally, a word on Buster Posey. In my opinion, the three most important on-field people in the long history of the New York/San Francisco Giants are (we can argue a bit on the order) John McGraw, Willie Mays, and Barry Bonds. The fourth most important? Buster Posey.
The Baseball Continuum 