Shohei Ohtani can hit impossible pitches, and the unwritten rules of screaming a naughty word after a home run

The Diamondbacks can’t lose a series. Jed Lowrie is Rod Carew now. The Braves and Phillies are fighting for postseason spots. People in my fantasy league are picking up players I’ve never heard of, which terrifies me. What do they know that I don’t? Baseball is happening far, far too quickly, and it feels like I’m missing it all. I can’t believe it’s only August.

However, we can do something about it. We can catch up together. Welcome to the week (+ one day) that was. What happened around baseball last week?

(I’m a day late with this column. because yesterday was all about the 30th anniversary of the Orioles winning exactly one game in April. Please read that. Please send it to friends. Please love and acknowledge me.)

As always, we have to start by remembering that ...

It’s always hard to pick just one moment that encapsulates just why I love baseball. Is baseball good because this screenshot came right before a double play?

Is baseball good because the Red Sox paid Pablo Sandoval about $111,000 to flop this niiiiiice curveball over the outside half of the plate?

Is baseball good because Nick Kingham can show up to the major leagues, fight through butterflies made out of heartburn, and pitch a masterpiece with his family watching?

Is baseball good because you can enter “Matt Chapman video” into a search bar every week and get definitive proof?

Yes. The answer to all of that is yes. But this week baseball is good because a left-handed reliever at the back of the Rays’ bullpen faced four batters.

That reliever is Jonny Venters, who clawed up the side of a mountain with his fingernails, inch by inch, to get back to the majors for the first time since 2012. Since 2012! The first Avengers was still in the theaters. The biggest song on the radio was Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used To Know.” That was so long ago, my GIFs looked like they were made on a Speak & Spell:

That pitch was a 95-mph sinker from the left side, and it was just about the most beautiful pitch I’ve ever followed, the first one to take the coveted “best pitch in baseball” award away from Mariano Rivera’s cutter. Venters was a revelation, pairing with Craig Kimbrel back in the days when it was actually unusual for a reliever to strike out more than 10 batters per nine innings. He was the rarest of setup men to make an All-Star team, and he was absolutely deserving. I hated it when he came in to pitch an inning against my team, and I loved it at the same time.

And then he broke. And broke again. And broke again. Since 2012, Venters has had two Tommy John surgeries, as well as another surgery to repair a partial tear in his left elbow. Counting the Tommy John surgery he had in the minor leagues, he’s had three. That’s nature telling you to cut it out, over and over again.

Venters pitching at all is a middle finger right in nature’s face. Oh, we shouldn’t taunt nature like that, but you’ll forgive him this once. If you’ve read Jeff Passan’s The Arm, you’ll know just how grueling it is to recover from major elbow surgery. The periods of uncertainty and inactivity seem absolutely punishing, and there were no guarantees that Venters would ever find a job again, considering that he was over 30 with a whole bunch of scars on his elbow.

The sinker is more 91 than 95 now, but he’s back. I don’t know if Venters ducks his head under the salad bar sneeze guard before he sneezes, and I don’t know if he pushes little old ladies down if they’re too slowly in front of him, so I can’t speak to his personality and character. But as of right now, there isn’t a single baseball player I’m rooting for more than him. Decay and dying cells will claim us all one day, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Except fight as hard as we can, for as long as we can.

Venters is fighting on behalf of all of us, dammit. Stop being such a jerk, nature.

What Shohei did was blow our danged minds, that’s all:

If you want the stats and metrics to confirm just how unlikely this was, head over to FanGraphs and read Jeff Sullivan. If you just want to read a guy type-stammer a bunch of nonsense about how Ohtani hit a home run on a 97-mph fastball that was probably six inches inside, well, you’ve come to the right place.

Because ... uh ... like ... I mean ... c’mon, that shouldn’t ... look, there are rules here.

There are rules, and Ohtani is politely tinkling on all of them. Of course, because we can’t have nice things, there was also a problem. Ohtani sprained his ankle running to first base, which will delay his next start by a few days. While his blister problems are apparently better, this is a reminder that his path will be fraught with a teensy bit more peril than most pitchers. Max Scherzer won’t ever sprain his ankle trying to beat out an infield grounder, for example.

Ohtani’s last start was a walk-fest, too, which serves as a good reminder that he’s still very much a 23-year-old pitcher, and perhaps we shouldn’t expect instant domination.

So if I were being honest with this week’s Shohei-o-Meter, it would go something like this:

Shohei-o-Meter: half-Luis Castillo, half Bryce Harper

Still young. Still raw. Still wildly talented. Still a Ferrari being driven on mountain roads, which means he might be hurt a lot.

But I don’t want to be honest. I want to be hyperbolic.

Shohei-o-Meter: Like, if Kenny Lofton were an enormous human being who could also throw 97 with a devastating splitter

That swing was a Lofton-like swing, except if Lofton hit it, he would have thrown the bat down and mumbled something to himself as the right fielder came in to catch the pop up.

Instead we have proof that large human being Shohei Ohtani is going to hit the kind of improbable large-human-being home runs that we’re used to from Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton. Slow down, baseball! I just got used to the idea that he’s blazing fast!

Last week, we studied a 21-pitch at-bat. Is it possible that baseball has offered something even more remarkable and rare?

I mean, your mileage may vary, but ...

Shoes are not supposed to come off that easily. Put on a pair of shoes right now — a pair that fits, mind you — and try to take them off by doing nothing more than running. For Stroman’s cleat to come off like that, he has to be absolutely swimming in his cleats. His toe would have to slide up a cool two inches with every step he took.

Maybe he was borrowing his dad’s cleats.

However, being an able forensic scientist, I have figured this out, and it makes much more sense now. His cleat comes loose as he turns and begins his sprint to first:

It almost looks like a gross compound fracture, but it’s instead the cleat coming loose in a completely normal-if-hard-to-repeat fashion. The tight baseball pants are the only thing keeping it attached as Stroman races for first:

At full speed, all you see is a guy’s shoe zipping up into the air. When you slow it down, it makes sense.

Thanks for talking this out with me. I needed it.

Can you imagine how much fun they’re having? Can you imagine being that talented? Can you imagine being that young and talented? In eight years, they’ll still be 27 and 28 and in their primes. I want my team to trade for them. I want to be them. Let me do anything as well as either of these two guys for, like, five seconds. Please help, I can’t stop perseverating on how good they are. Please, go get help, I’m stuck in an Albies-Acuña-appreciation loop.

oh noooooooooo no no no no. This is as close to a 9 or a 10 on the BEANS™ score as we can get, and I’m not at all comfortable making too much fun of this. How Todd Tichenor wasn’t airlifted out of that ballpark, I will never understand.

Unless he’s protected. Which I guess all umpires should. I would wear something the size of a Volvo that was made out of adamantium, just in case, so it stands to reason that while Tichenor wasn’t feeling good after a direct hit, he wasn’t throwing up his lower intestines, either.

MEMBER OF STUDIO AUDIENCE: C’mon, nerd, just say the line.

Ugh, fine.

doink

We have a new one! Every year, I think they’re all used up, and every year, there’s something new. Look at Tim Anderson and Salvador Perez talking in a manner that makes their teammates come out and sleepily mosh around like an Ozzfest crowd listening to Collective Soul between sets:

What was the problem? Did Anderson stare at his homer for too long? No. He was pretty much on track, there. It’s not like he pulled a Wladimir Balentien:

Was it that Anderson gestured to the sky as he touched home? Couldn’t be. Lots of players do that.

No, it was something I’d never heard of: He didn’t like that Anderson used potty words.

I don’t have any problems with the guy hitting a homer, taking a couple steps, walk two steps and keep running. But when you start to get loud, to say some bad words ... I don’t like that.

Anderson apparently screamed “Let’s ******* go!” after his leadoff homer, just like me when I rip through World 1-1 in 26 seconds, and I can understand his enthusiasm. I can also understand Perez not enjoying it when his opponent does something good and is extremely loud about it. Gotta hear both sides.

But this situation merits an eye-roll, I think, not actual angry words that cause men in pajamas to run in from the bullpen. I also think the cuss words are something of a red herring, because if Anderson screamed, “TIM ANDERSON” like Steve Holt, I’m sure Perez would have been just as mad.

Also, a player should totally scream their own name after hitting a homer. Please.

Anyway, enough about the unwritten rules. Did we see that during this fight, players were breaking the written rules?

Tsk tsk.

4.06 No Fraternization
Players in uniform shall not address or mingle with spectators, nor sit in the stands before, during, or after a game. No manager, coach or player shall address any spectator before or during a game. Players of opposing teams shall not fraternize at any time while in uniform.

Rob Manfred gets to throw a baseball at someone’s butt now. That’s the unwritten part of this written rule.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to watch that Wladimir Balentien home run six more times.

It doesn’t always have to be silly pitch faces and Khris Davis turning into an instant meme. Sometimes a baseball picture can just be beautiful. This one of Denard Span making a catch is worthy of a book cover:

The picture captures Span in full extension, framed perfectly by the scoreboard, with impeccable timing. It gets even better if you pretend that he’s standing on that blue light.

But, fine, if you must have silliness, we can do a ...

Because this sucker belongs in the Louvre. I know that the internet just broke because James Harden was in a painting-worthy picture, and this picture isn’t quite as good, there’s still a lot of beauty in it. From ho-hum guy in the top left, to the excited what-will-they-think-of-next expression on the woman in the middle, to the man in the front row who looks like he’s watching Requiem for a Dream with his parents, to the kid right behind him who, for some reason, appears to be photoshopped in, there’s a lot to like.

Stephen Piscotty closing his eyes and thinking “oh please oh please oh please” is a perfect cherry on top for me, though. Baseball players closing their eyes when making a play is never unfunny to me. It’s a great baseball picture.

It’s just not Denard Span catching a ball in front of a Fenway fence.

Hey, Cathy, about your Blue Jays sign ...

McGwire
16 AB this week (but 12 walks and 29 PA)
94 AB for the season

2 HR this week
12 for the season

.250/.552/.688 this week
.309/.492/.766 for the season

Sosa
23 AB this week
119 AB for the season

2 HR this week
7 for the season,

.435/.519/.739 this week
.353/.421/.580 for the season

McGwire is On Pace. He’s hitting roughly .4 home runs for every game the Cardinals play at this point, which translates to 65 homers. He’s also scaring the bejeepers out of major league managers, as you can tell by the 12 walks in 29 plate appearances. He’s a story at this point.

Sosa is a player having a nice season so far, but the expectation is that it probably isn’t going to last. He’s Jed Lowrie, in other words. It’s great that Lowrie is hitting like Rod Carew for the first time as a 34-year-old! It’s probably not going to last. Sosa was the same way, and beside, he was on pace for just 38 home runs. If we cared about BABIP back then, some nerdlinger would have pointed out that Sosa’s was .400. He would come back down to earth. Probably.

In the last game of this week, the Cardinals played the Cubs. It was remarkable in a boring ol’ Cubs-Cardinals kind of way, but it’s not like the nation was tuning in.

If you weren’t there, it really is hard to explain just how much the nation would freak out about the Cubs-Cardinals games in August and September.

They don’t all have to be dirty, you know! Sometimes you just get a fun name to say. Bally Wunker. Bally Wunker. Ol’ Bally Wunker with the career 6.9 WAR. Bally Wunker.

Although, to be fair, this spoonerism would work much better if he were a cricket player, because this is obviously a cricket term.

And Gib Benterly has first wicket. Coming steady, coming steady ... the bowl is off and IT’S, YES, I BELIEVE IT IS ... IT’S A BALLY WUNKER! A BALLY WUNKER TO DEAD-RIGHTS, AND THE LEFT JADGER CAN’T DO. A. THING. ABOUT. IT. HOWWWWWWWWWW ABOUT THAT, FOLKS?

See? They don’t all have to be dirty.

I mean ...

If you wanted to, you could switch the first two letters of the name.

Bully Wanker.

Eh, whatever, that’s still a cricket term. As you were.