Mound Visits: Sex, jugs, and catchers pitching

Welcome to Mound Visits, your weekly recap of the best things you might have missed in baseball every week. This week brings us Tim Tebow getting plonked on the head, the Yankees somehow finding another dinger machine, and Carlos Gomez destroying a dugout full of Gatorade jugs.

Have a favorite baseball moment from the week? Tweet it at me, and I’ll include it in next week’s column.

Last week, we had Dellin Betances doing his best Gary Sheffield impression and before being out on three pitches. This week, we have the polar opposite where it seems like every pitcher in Boston is raking. First, Rick Porcello hit a bases-clearing, three-run double off of Max Scherzer to help himself to a win, which involved the Nationals announcers saying “I think most of the ballpark is in shock right now.”

Then, Brian Johnson hit a single the next night, also on the way to a win over Washington. What exactly is in that dirty water in Boston? Their next set of interleague games comes against the Phillies at the end of July, so all we need is Chris Sale hitting a home run off of Aaron Nola for this to need a full-blown investigation into what this rotation is eating.

Sure, Rick Porcello hitting a double off of the best pitcher alive was the most unexpected part of Max Scherzer’s week. The most expected part of his week was him doing this to Sandy Leon:

I mean ... WHAT. Sometimes it’s just nice to be reminded of exactly how Scherzer can carve batters up at will.

Putting aside the fact that “AA All-Star Tim Tebow” is something we can say now and forevermore, which 2012 me would think was not just absurd but possibly a drug-spurred fever dream by my future self, baseballs plonking people on the head is just funny.

A baseball plonking 2018 AA All-Star Baseball Player Tim Tebow, is therefore at least three layers of funny. That the All-Star announcement happened right before the plonking ties things together very nicely. The one thing we can’t complain about in 2018 is Tim Tebow not giving us anything to write about.

I don’t really have much to say about Ohtani being back right now besides how much more fun baseball has been this year when Ohtani has been doing Ohtani things for the Angels — regardless of the team still managing to fail both him and Mike Trout, or which side of the game he’s doing Ohtani things on.

Baseball’s international signing period opened on Monday, July 2nd. Across all MLB teams, hundreds of players were signed over the first part of the week, ending what may have involved years of scouting teenagers’ baseball talent (which is weird, but that’s not what we’re here for.)

Teams are listed alphabetically by city on the ever-helpful Baseball America International Signing Tracker, which means the list starts Arizona, Baltimore, Boston. And on July 5th at approximately 7pm, nearly four full days after the signing period had begun, the list looked like this.

Nothing from Baltimore. Not a one. No international players signed. Between this and them seemingly already asking for all the wrong players in negotiations for a Manny Machado trade, the O’s are really O-ing it up this week. And with Machado leaving very much on the horizon, it can literally only get worse from here.

The Manny Machado trade rumors are all over the place already. The Diamondbacks want him but the Orioles aren’t asking for enough, same goes for what the Orioles are asking for from the Braves but Atlanta still apparently wouldn’t go for that deal which is wild. He won’t go to the Yankees or the Dodgers unless he does, and he could feasibly go to the Phillies, Cardinals, Cubs, Indians, or Brewers in addition to those teams. Unless he gets sent to a completely unexpected team who makes a big play, which is possible because he doesn’t have a no trade clause and is at the whim of what the Orioles can get for him. Which in itself could change depending on whether a team will give up more if Machado indicates he’ll stay there in free agency or not.

This is all to say that we wished for Machado rumors and now Machado rumors have already have ruined my brain and we are on the sixth of a month where Machado rumors are all we are going to be able to eat or drink until he’s actually traded. After which we will start speculating where he’ll go in free agency. It’s the King Midas fable for baseball content.

This is what we get for making fun of the Rays bullpenning all the time and being generally all over the place with their pitching strategy. “This will never work!” we said. “What are you doing Rays?!” we said. Well, it might not actually be working and we still might not be able to tell exactly what they’re doing from day to day, but joke’s on us.

Because at the end of an interminable 16-inning game against the Pirates, during which both teams went scoreless for ten straight innings of baseball, the Rays sealed their win by scoring five runs in the top of the 16th and then letting catcher Jesus Sucre serve as closer to finish things up.

During his unexpected time on the mound, it seemed like even Sucre knew it was absolutely ridiculous. Before this week, Sucre had pitched three innings combined for two teams across two seasons.

I really can’t blame him. That’s a level of position player pitching rarely seen, so of course it would come from the “Pitching Is A Wish Your Heart Makes” Rays.

On the 4th of July, Javy Baez pulled this off.

Then he called it sexy. Who are we to argue with logic that sound?

Recent Yankees callup Kyle Higashioka has three hits in his major league career — and that’s between six games on an MLB roster in 2018 as well as 9 games and 18 at-bats last season. Every one of those hits has been a home run. Yes, in 16 at-bats this year, Higashioka has gone 3-for-3 with three home runs.

While an amazing thing for Higashioka personally (and I won’t even come close to suggesting we should take that joy away from him), this is so “Yankees being Yankees” that it would seem unrealistic if you weren’t able to factcheck it with your own eyes. He went 0-for-22 to start his career. Now, all of a sudden, it’s all homers all the time. If the Red Sox are manufacturing raking pitchers, the Yankees’ dinger machine mold seems to be working just as well.

Lots of players around baseball celebrated the 4th of July one way or another. Kyle Schwarber wore an American flag beard in the dugout.

The Red Sox dressed up as a team for their flight out of D.C.

And Chris Sale ... well Chris Sale really committed to the patriotism. We probably didn’t need to see this Chris. But we can’t second guess your commitment to the theme.

Kids, it’s okay to get frustrated. But don’t take it out on Gatorade jugs that didn’t wrong you first. I mean, maybe one of those coolers accidentally sprayed fruit punch all over one of Gomez’s friends six years ago and he’s never forgiven it.

I don’t really know how to end the column this week so I’ll just leave you with this. You’re ... welcome?