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Why I think the Giants are better than their performance so far, Ken’s pro-con list about the Mets and Spencer Strider speaks on his less-bad news. Plus, good week/bad week features an entire division (almost). I’m Levi Weaver, here with Ken Rosenthal — welcome to The Windup!
Are the Giants poised for a surge?
It wouldn’t be a huge surprise to see the Giants in fourth place if the Dodgers, Padres and Diamondbacks were playing up to their potential. But those three teams have a combined record of just 36-35. Meanwhile, the Giants are 10-13.
I can’t help thinking that they should (and will be) better. Here are a few factors that still have me bullish:
• The rotation should be great in the second half. Blake Snell isn’t an 11.57 ERA guy; I’m willing to chalk his rough start up to signing late. Logan Webb is already great, and the Jordan Hicks experiment is going brilliantly. When Robbie Ray returns in the second half, the rotation will be rounded out by Kyle Harrison … that will be a very good rotation!
• Patrick Bailey is having a breakout sophomore season. Bailey, who finished seventh in NL ROY voting last year, is hitting .321/.387/.528 (.915 OPS). His minor-league numbers don’t suggest that’s sustainable, buuuuuut … Look at his Baseball Savant page. He’s in the 94th percentile for average exit velocity and the 100th percentile in sweet-spot percentage. He’s still chasing a little too much, and pitchers will adjust to that. But it’s a good start.
• Mike Yastrzemski and Jorge Soler aren’t this bad. As Andrew Baggarly points out, Soler has come to bat with 69 runners on base this seaon, and has driven in just two of them. If we’re talking about an unsustainable trend, that absolutely qualifies. As for Yastrzemski, he’s hitting .182 (.530 OPS), but he homered yesterday, so we can stop worrying … right, Grant Brisbee?
Even if everything I mentioned here goes the Giants’ way, that’s no guarantee they’ll make the playoffs. I could also write optimistic things about the three teams ahead of them. The Giants are missing an opportunity to bank wins while the others sleep.
But I do think they’re better than this.
Ken’s Notebook: Are the Mets for real?
From my latest column:
The New York Mets were 0-5, six outs away from going 0-6. And yet their misery went even deeper. In the second game of a doubleheader against the Detroit Tigers, the Mets also were getting no-hit.
First-year manager Carlos Mendoza turned to his bench coach, John Gibbons, a former major-league manager himself.
“I wanted to manage in the big leagues?” Mendoza said.
In that moment, Mendoza could not have imagined what was to follow. A bloop single by Harrison Bader led off the eighth to break up the no-hitter. A game-tying homer by Pete Alonso led off the ninth. A walk-off single by Tyrone Taylor to propel the Mets toward becoming the team they believe they can be.
The 2-1 victory was the first of a 12-3 turnaround that included six straight wins before the Mets fell to the Los Angeles Dodgers on Sunday, 10-0. José Buttó and Reed Garrett, the pitchers who ended the team’s season-opening losing streak, have emerged as the kind of surprises every contender needs. And the prediction by new president of baseball operations David Stearns in spring training — “we are a playoff-caliber team” — no longer appears far-fetched, if it ever was at all. The Mets won 101 games in 2022 before collapsing to 75-87 last season. And their $323 million payroll remains the game’s highest.
The only teams in the National League that look dominant are the Dodgers, the Atlanta Braves and perhaps the Philadelphia Phillies. The NL Central champion will claim another postseason berth, leaving at least two wild-card spots. The Mets figure to at least contend for one, but every hot team in the early part of the season faces the same question: How real is what they’re doing?
In the column, I list five reasons to believe in the Mets (Starling Marte, the bullpen, the reinforcements J.D. Martinez and Kodai Senga will provide, the possibility of adding at the trade deadline and Mendoza’s impressive managing thus far).
I also list five reasons to worry (the rotation, the sustainability of the bullpen, the inability to throw out opposing base stealers, the overall team defense and the possibility of regression for some players).
Do you have a question for Ken? Send it our way — he will answer a few in an upcoming Windup mailbag.
The Mets placed Francisco Alvarez on the IL after leaving last night’s game with a thumb injury.@Ken_Rosenthal with more on the impact of Alvarez’s absence. pic.twitter.com/mLe1HNF1zs
— FOX Sports: MLB (@MLBONFOX) April 20, 2024
Spencer Strider sounds off about arm injuries
Good news: The damage to Spencer Strider’s UCL was not as bad as it could have been. As David O’Brien tells us here, Strider had “damage to the ligament that was caused by a bone fragment that he said became lodged in it.”
He’ll still miss the rest of the year, but since orthopedic surgeon Dr. Keith Meister was able to perform an internal brace procedure instead of a full Tommy John surgery, Strider could be back in around 12 months, instead of the second half of 2025.
There are a few baseball players whose quotes I make it a point to read attentively, and Strider tops the list. He spoke to reporters at length on Friday, not just about the injury and recovery process, but about being made a touchstone for a national conversation about pitcher injuries.
“I mean, if you’ve got three hours, I’ll sit down and have this conversation,” said Strider, 25. “I don’t want to create some sound bite for somebody to turn something into. There’s so many things that go into it. It’s such a complex situation. And I think what’s been frustrating from my end is reading things and seeing people talk and implying that it’s one thing or that they somehow are in a position to know why injuries are happening. If we knew, then they’d stop happening.”
There’s a lot more in there, but for now, the good news is that Strider will be back sooner, rather than later.
Monday vibe check
It’s our weekly small-sample-size review of the last week or so. Let’s see who’s trending up and down across the sport. All stats Sunday through Sunday unless otherwise noted.
Good week
Bo Naylor celebrates after hitting a double during a very good week for the Cleveland Guardians. (Ken Blaze / USA Today)
• Quick: Which team has the best record in baseball? Did you guess the Cleveland Guardians? At 16-6, their .727 winning percentage is best in the game, as is their +52 run differential. They went 7-1 this week, and as Zack Meisel says, everything is going their way right now.
• The NL East combined to go 25-11. Subtract the Marlins, and that number jumps to 22-6. The Braves, Phillies and Mets all went 6-1. Atlanta’s +35 run differential this year is tied for first in the NL (with the Brewers), the Phillies have a six-game win streak and Ken just told you all about the Mets (though they did get bad news: catcher Francisco Alvarez will likely miss 6-8 weeks after thumb surgery).
• The Baltimore Orioles also went 6-1, and they’re 7-3 in their last 10, trailing the Yankees by just a half-game in the AL East. Going into yesterday’s 5-0 win over the Royals, Baltimore had seven hitters with at least 20 plate appearances last week. Of those, the lowest batting average was Cedric Mullins (.286).
Bad week
• Yes, the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Mets 10-0 yesterday, but that 10-run outburst is almost equal to half the number of runs they scored in their other games last week: 21 (which tied them with Oakland for 24th in the sport over that stretch). Pair that with a 3-7 record in their last 10 games, and it was a bad week! Was it a speed bump or a blowout?
• I take no joy when my cynicism pays off, but I did say earlier this month that I wouldn’t get fooled again by the hot-start Pittsburgh Pirates. They won last Sunday, then proceeded to get swept by the Mets and Red Sox. They’re 2-8 in their last 10 games, and their 29.5 percent strikeout rate going into Sunday’s loss ranked dead last.
• The St. Louis Cardinals haven’t homered since the third inning on Friday. No, last Friday. As in, April 12. Their backup catcher Iván Herrera is tied for the team lead with three home runs this season (one fewer than Travis d’Arnaud hit against the Rangers over the weekend). It’s not just the power outage; Katie Woo has all the gnarly details.
Honorable mentions: The White Sox are 1-9 in their last 10 games and the Rockies scored a total of 11 runs in six games, but it will get very redundant if I list them here every time things go awry.
Handshakes and High Fives
Cody Stavenhagen looks back at every painful step of the last 12 months since the A’s announced they were moving to Las Vegas.
Since 1913, only two teams have stolen more than 300 bases (and not since 1985). Two teams — the Nationals and the Reds — are on pace for 300 this year.
Chris Kirschner tells us how Juan Soto went from “really bad swings” to hearing MVP chants.
On Friday, Justin Verlander returned from the IL. On Sunday, Cristian Javier hit the IL with “neck discomfort.” Meanwhile, in Arizona Merrill Kelly was scratched from his start, and the D-Backs are getting very Astros-y with their starting pitcher injuries.
Anthony Rendon is back on the IL (hamstring). Meanwhile, Sam Blum asks if the Angels are harming the development of Nolan Schanuel and Zach Neto by having them work through struggles in the big leagues.
Shohei Ohtani has officially hit more home runs in MLB than any other Japanese-born player. And of course, he broke the record in style (by crushing the baseball).
Shohei Ohtani stands alone with the most Major League home runs ever by a Japanese-born player! pic.twitter.com/sSzlp2K3Wt
— MLB (@MLB) April 21, 2024
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(Top photo of Jorge Soler: John Hefti / USA Today)
