MLB Daily: The Bronx Cheers for A-Rod; Dodgers Win on Walk-Off Balk
By Mike Cardillo
Welcome to MLB Daily on a Friday. We made it another week. Thank you for your continued, unwavering praise and support…
That’s baseball: Not to go all Peter Venkman and start raving about dogs and cats living together, but what happened last night in the Bronx was fairly incredible. Someone received a serenade of Bronx Cheers during a would-be milestone and it wasn’t Alexander Emmanuel Rodriguez. Instead, the jeers went to Marlins reliever Sam Dyson (watch here).
A-Rod, who already had two hits on the night, was one away from 3,000 — which would place him alongside Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Eddie Murray and (ahem) Rafael Palmeiro as the only players with 500 homers/3,000 hits. Dyson apparently decided he didn’t want to become a historical footnote and promptly walked A-Rod on four straight pitches. Odds are few fans in the stadium had heard of Dyson before last night, but he will forever be known in the Bronx as “asshole.”
"“You can’t really understand what they’re saying,” Dyson said. “You pretty much tune everything out. It’s just noise. I couldn’t hear exactly what they were saying. I just heard they were loud. That was it.”"
So here we are, through the baseball looking glass. Few, Mike Francesa aside, would have predicted A-Rod would have immediately become a fan favorite in New York coming back from his year-long suspension, but it happened.
The love-in for A-Rod by Yankees fans isn’t wholly crazy. For one, he’s been an effective offensive player(.278/.384/.557) on a team devoid of any other major personalities. His at-bats still provide the opportunity for historical milestones, even if they come with an asterisk attached. Human nature also tends to mean that for all the bashing A-Rod took in the papers, eventually some will feel sympathetic toward him. More than that, mostly it boils down to A-Rod not being all much of a “monster” or “evil” despite what some of the New York papers would have you believe. Most who know him repeatedly say A-Rod is a good guy and that they like him personally.
Instead all of his foibles are mostly of his own making through bad decisions, and that’s why it’s difficult to give A-Rod a pass completely since he made the choice to put whatever PEDs he used into his system. He did this more than once and certainly knew the repercussions by the time he started visiting Tony Bosch in South Florida.
The career, legacy and future of Alex Rodriguez is beyond complicated and will be debated forever and ever. However it shakes out we can remember that for one June evening an unknown Marlins’ reliever got the WWE “asshole” treatment because he didn’t want to pitch to him.
As John Sterling says, who can predict this crazy game?
Speaking of crazy: The Dodgers beat the Rangers last night 1-0 … on a walk-off balk committed by Keone Kela. Enrique Hernandez scampered down the line, which caused Kela to break his motion.
Bonus points here since Vin Scully is on the call. Holy mackerel!
Ouch: Bryce Harper is day-to-day after slipping in the outfield last night against the Rays. The team says its a mild left hamstring strain, but he’ll be evaluated further today. Per the Washington Post, Harper didn’t immediately rule himself out for today’s game, so we’ll see what happens.
2015 is Harper’s breakout season — he leads baseball in numerous offensive categories, including OPS, OPS+, walks and slugging. A big reason for this is a) he’s still maturing at only 22 years old and b) he’s avoided injuries. In 2013 and 2014, he managed to play just 218 regular season games combined. Slipping on wet grass and planting wrong is a bit of a fluke injury, although as Harper notes in the Post story, he’s previously had surgery on his left knee.
Hopefully Harper isn’t seriously injured or out for a any length of time. It’s fun watching him — and Giancarlo Stanton — crush the ball on a nightly basis. I guess my question today is what position will Harper be playing five years from now, let alone at the end of his career?
Cutch happens: Andrew McCutchen got off to a slow start at the plate in 2015, so his numbers don’t look quite as good as they usually do by mid-June. He’s up to an .854 OPS and, of course, his defense in center remains terrific, as seen by this catch to rob Alexei Ramirez.
Gerrit Cole picked up his 11th win for the Pirates in the game. His ERA stands at 1.78 and he’s in line to start the All-Star Game in about a month.
Record-setter: Congratulations to Edgar Frederick Yost III. The Man We Call Ned is now the winningest manager in Kansas City Royals history with 411 wins. What a time to be alive.
This & That: Kyle Schwarber hit his first home run for the Cubs, but the Indians won 4-3. … Victor Martinez should be back in the lineup for Detroit tonight vs. the Yankees in New York. … Carlos Correa stole three bases yesterday. I continue to kick myself for taking Carlos Rodon ahead of him with the first pick in an AL-only reserve draft this year. Ugh. … Baseball tracks everything and Nick Markakis set a record I never would have thought of on my own: most games in the outfield without an error (393). He broke the record held by Darren Lewis. Who knew? … Thanks for following along this week. See you soon.
[Photo via USAT]