Tanks for nothing

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Do you really need a solid argument against tanking? We all know that two teams thought it would get them to the World Series. In their outlying cases, they were right.

We all know one has a long-tainted Series win, the year after the other won its first Series since fourteen days after the Model T Ford was launched officially.

We all know a number of other teams have gone in the tanks and come up with nothing remotely close to those two. The ones with that tainted Series win is still in the thick of the races with a decent chance to win a clean Series. The ones who ended their 108-year rebuilding effort with a Series win had a fire sale at this year’s trade deadline.

And we also know that there’s no greater argument against tanking teams, not to mention the baseball regime that lets them get away with it, than the team that once set the American League losing streak record while falling two short of the Show record.

What’s the difference between the 1988 Orioles and this year’s model? Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic asked and answered a few days ago: The ’88 Orioles were at least trying. They had two future Hall of Famers, a few former All-Stars, and a Hall of Fame outfielder who’d been ornery as a player but developed an amazing sense of the absurd as a skipper.

Told that a local disc jockey would stay on the air until his Orioles finally won a game, Frank Robinson deadpanned, “We’re gonna kill the poor guy.” Late in the streak, Robinson pulled his office desk drawer open and pulled out a button he’d been handed by a sympathetic fan for luck: “It’s been lovely, but I have to scream now.”

Those Orioles themselves developed considerable gallows humour as the streak continued apace. Spotting a writer new on the Oriole beat, Cal Ripken, Jr. beckoned him over: “Join the hostages.”

They finally broke the streak on 29 April 1988. It took a guy with a 4.00+ ERA starting to hold the White Sox scoreless while the most they could muster through six was a two-run homer (Hall of Famer Eddie Murray in the first) and a run home on a wild pitch (to Hall of Famer Ripken).

Look at the line score and it looks like the Orioles rose from the dead in the seventh. Look at the actual inning and it was an RBI double, another run home on a throwing error, another run home on a busted, bases-loaded fielder’s choice, and a third run home on a sacrifice fly. Except for the RBI double all four runs were unearned.

In the ninth, Ripken led off with a home run off the White Sox’s then-remarkable closer Bobby Thigpen, and Terry Kennedy sent Fred Lynn home with a single off Thigpen.

The inspiring words on the outside of Baltimore’s old Memorial Stadium, on what was called Memorial Wall, read, “Time Will Not Dim the Glory of Their Deeds.” They finished the tribute to Baltimore’s wartime fallen. They took on a perverse new meaning when the Orioles ended that losing streak. Then the Orioles blew up again the day after, losing to the White Sox, 4-1. It must have been awful tempting to add a p.s. to the Memorial Wall: “No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.”

This year’s model should only be that lucky.

This year’s Orioles have committed few good deeds and inflicted excess punishment—on their fans. Oriole jokes run rampant. (The Orioles can’t use the Internet—they can’t put three Ws together!)

This year’s model has a couple of former All-Stars turned reclamation projects that look one day like stickers and the next like the Orioles can’t wait for someone else to re-claim them. Though even they might be hard pressed to figure out why.

Even the in-season retirement of Chris Davis, bombardier turned walking deadman for too long, too sadly, too lacking for knowledge as to what really happened and why, didn’t leave room for a change in fortune.

Now these Orioles have lost nineteen straight. Number nineteen really hits where it hurts. The good news Monday was the Orioles scoring eight runs. The bad news was that they were destroyed by the Angels—a team one game under .500 but still going nowhere much, despite the presence of Two-Way Ohtani while still missing Mike (Mr. Everything) Trout on the injured list—before they got their second run of the game.

The Angels bludgeoned the Orioles, 14-8, with thirteen runs in three innings straight (five in the second and fourth, three in the third) before tacking another on in the eighth. All that was after the Orioles opened with a 1-0 lead thanks to Ryan Mountcastle’s one-out homer off former Oriole Dylan Bundy. No lead goes unpunished anymore, either.

The Orioles have been in the tank since the 2016 wild card game. “I can sit here and tell you ten things you may not know about that situation, but nobody wants to hear it,” then-manager Buck Showalter still insisted four years later. “I’m at peace with that.”

Oriole fans (yes, there remain Oriole fans) may never be at peace with Showalter absolutely refusing to bring in the best relief pitcher of 2016 with two on, one out, and Edwin Encarnacion due to check in at the plate in the bottom of the eleventh—because Zack Britton doesn’t come in unless, you know, the Orioles have a lead to protect. The Gospel According to Blind Managers Needing a Stopper Five Seconds Ago.

So Showalter left Ubaldo Jimenez in. And Encarnacion left the Orioles behind when his three-run homer sailed into Rogers Centre’s second deck. Showalter’s still at peace with that? He’s lucky Earl Weaver didn’t throw lightning bolts down on his head from the Elysian Fields.

The Orioles decided the only way to get back to greatness from there was to go in the tank. They finished dead last in the American League East in three of the four seasons to follow, a fourth-place finish breaking the monotony. They’re 201-345 over the span. They also fired Showalter after their 47-115, fire-sale accented 2018. As if it was Showalter’s idea to go tanking the night away.

“The sport is cyclical,” Rosenthal wrote. “Teams, especially those with lower revenues, occasionally must rebuild. From 2012 to ’16, the Orioles won more regular-season games than any team in the American League. They were bound to regress. But even Major League Baseball is now implicitly acknowledging that some teams go too far in what Tony Clark, the head of the Players Association, once called “the race to the bottom.”

It won’t do to point to two more low-revenue teams and notice six trips to the postseason in the past nine years (a tip of the beak, Athletics) or six in the past thirteen including a pair of World Series appearances. (Greetings, Rays.) Those two teams have established front office brains. Orioles general manager Mike Elias came in in 2018—when Dan Duquette was executed after the season—with the Orioles tying one hand behind his back to open.

His own career having begun covering the Orioles for the Baltimore Evening Sun during that ’88 losing streak (was he the one Ripken invited to join the hostages?), Rosenthal points to Elias’s predecessor Dan Duquette stripping the major league roster with trades that haven’t proven successful yet, if they ever will.

The Orioles’ ten-thumbed ownership left Elias to spend his first few seasons on baseball’s version of poverty row. The team’s international and analytics departments need either a booster or an overhaul. These Orioles may also have the number two farm system at this writing, but they have the pitching depth of a match book up and down the organisation.

What a long, strange trip it’s been for an organisation that boasts seven men (Murray, Ripken, Brooks and Frank Robinson, Jim Palmer, Mike Mussina, and longtime manager Earl Weaver) wearing Orioles hats on their Hall of Fame plaques.

These Orioles, as Rosenthal says, should be hoisted as Exhibit A in the Tanking Hall of Shame. They’re the number one argument that tanking needs to be stopped, once and for all, that those who own major league franchises have an obligation to make their best efforts to put a competitive product on the field. Even modestly-endowed franchises can and have been known in the past to retool/remake/rebuild on the fly while continuing to keep competing.

It’s unhealthy for baseball when one of its formerly model franchises stands as the lead argument against what Rosenthal calls “owners perpetuat[ing] their rebuilding myths, getting away with lower payrolls and the losing that comes with them, knowing many fans will raise nary a whimper, wanting to see only the best in their favorite teams.”

“This is incredibly challenging and a huge gut check,” said manager Brandon Hyde after the Angels scorched the Camden Yards earth Monday. “We’re trying to keep our spirits high.” They may be tempted to drinking more than their fair share of spirits before this debacle ends.

If and when these Orioles finally figure out a way to keep from joining their 1988 forebears or the major league losing-streak record holders (the 1961 Phillies), I’m pretty sure they won’t resurrect the inspiring words posted on the outside of the late Memorial Stadium.

But they might hang a banner across the warehouse behind Camden Yards with a line from former Beatle George Harrison, of blessed memory: “All Things Must Pass.” The cynic will be ready to hang a next-day p.s.: “Including One-Game Winning Streaks.”

On the other hand . . .

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Javier Baez, J.D. Davis

The Good Javy (left, after scoring on J.D. Davis’s [center] two-run bomb in the seventh) returned from the injured list and doubled down against the Dodgers Sunday afternoon.

This time, J.D. Davis didn’t shrink. Either with one man on or with the bases loaded.

This time, too, trade deadline addition Javier Baez came off the injured list, swung like a pro, scored like a pro, and doubled down, literally. He put a small shot of rocket fuel into a team looking like the living dead too often this month.

This time, the Mets may have left eight men on but they also sent seven runs across the plate. They’ve now done that only twice since 21 July. And, this time, too, they didn’t let the Dodgers take a single lead all Sunday long.

The bad news is that Sunday’s 7-2 win to stop the Dodgers’ winning streak at nine probably won’t be enough to salvage the Mets’ 2021. They’d need a finish from here that you can describe politely as miraculous to do that. Losing eleven games in the standings this 6-15 doesn’t leave room for miracles.

But let’s worry about that later. Right now, let’s savour Baez cashing in Brandon Nimmo (leadoff full-count walk, on which he sprinted up the line to first) with one out, sending one ricocheting off the left center field fence in the top of the first, with Nimmo gunning home all the way from first.

Let’s savour Davis shooting one the other way up the right field line to send Baez home, and Jonathan Villar with two outs punching a quail into short center, Davis scoring when Cody Bellinger’s throw in brought Dodger catcher Will Smith well out in front of the plate.

Let’s savour Villar trying to take second on the throw in and Smith throwing wild enough to let Villar have third on the house, before a foul out caught by Dodger starter David Price ended the inning at three for the Mets.

Let’s savour the Dodgers getting only a pair back in the fourth, when Bellinger reached Mets starter Marcus Stroman for a two-out, two-run line single to right, making Stroman pay for walking the bases loaded ahead of Bellinger—whose season has been compromised badly by a couple of nagging leg issues and not having been able to recuperate properly from off-season shoulder surgery.

Let’s savour the Mets catching Bellinger in an inning-ending rundown out, catcher to short, Baez playing his old position in Francisco Lindor’s absence, feinting a throw toward third to keep A.J. Pollock from even thinking about a score before tagging Bellinger as he tried turning back toward second.

Let’s savour Stroman managing to keep the Dodgers at bay long enough for Baez to hustle a single into a double after two swift outs in the top of the seventh and Davis, right behind him, hitting the first pitch he saw from Dodger reliever Phil Bickford on a line over the left field fence.

Let’s savour the Mets loading the pads with one out in the top of the ninth off Dodger reclamation project Shane Greene—Nimmo’s base hit to right, Pete Alonso taking another plunk for the team, then Baez taking another plunk for the team.

And let’s savour Davis yet again, a day after he’d swung through a Max Scherzer meatball with the bases loaded for a strikeout. This time, Davis recovered promptly from falling into an immediate 0-2 hole. He wrung his way from there to a walk on four straight balls, resisting the temptation to pull the trigger on a sinker that sunk just a little too far below the strike zone floor for ball four and Nimmo trotting home.

But let’s not fool ourselves. These Mets may have a few energy reserves left, but there’s just a little too much still missing to give them much more than prayers. On paper, they’re only seven games out of first in the National League East. On the field and at the plate, Sunday’s showing is what they’ll need only every day from now on, practically, to have the prayer of even a prayer.

It may require what they may not have the rest of the way.

So just spend today thinking about Baez maybe playing his way into an extension that would keep him around the keystone with Lindor, when Lindor returns days from now.

Think about the Good Javy re-joining Lindor to turn the second base region into the swamp where base hits get sunk into ground outs. Lindor may have struggled at the plate this year but he remained a shortstop Electrolux. (Thirteen defensive runs above the league average shortstop before he was injured.)

Think about the Good Javy who turns the plate into his personal game-changing playpen, providing an energy jolt through this team that not even Con Edison could deliver, just the way he did Sunday afternoon.

Don’t think about the Bad Javy who chases pitches that deserve to escape, the one who tries a little too often to hit eight-run homers on pitches that provide the power just by the bat giving them a kiss. Not until or unless he shows up again, that is.

Think about the Good Javy outweighing the Bad Javy enough to convince Mets owner Steve Cohen it’ll be worth it to keep him around and use him as the perfect out to purge Robinson Cano, who’s due back for 2022.

Don’t say the Mets “will eat” Cano’s money for the final two years of his deal. That meal already went through the digestive tract and out the other end. They accepted him as part of the deal when they wanted relief pitcher Edwin Diaz that badly from the Mariners. Once his current suspension ends, Cano’s going to get paid whether or not he suits up for the Mets again.

Cano isn’t the defensive second baseman he used to be. He hasn’t been the hitter he once was since 2016, either. That’s something to ponder especially if wisdom finally prevails otherwise and the designated hitter finally becomes universal to stay.

The Mets may not be that inclined to have back a 38-year-old millstone drydocked an entire season over actual/alleged performance-enhancing substances, his second such suspension in four years. The Good Javy showed up in time Sunday to start helping make that decision so simple for the Mets that even Joe Biden could make it without screwing the proverbial pooch into a blood bath.

Bases full of Mets? You’re off the hook.

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J.D. Davis

J.D. Davis would love to have back that Max Scherzer meatball with the bases loaded in the fifth.

You hate to add to whatever inner misery comes into play for him. But J.D. Davis has spent this weekend making himself a prayer for the opposition. Bases full of Mets? Pray that Davis is the next man up. You can breathe again.

Missing about two months from May through past the All-Star break with a wrist injury has hurt like hell. It’s done Davis no favours, and it’s hurting the Mets in places where they need help, not hurt.

Friday night: Dodgers ace Walker Buehler left first and third for his relief Alex Vesia, after Pete Alonso caught a huge break when a ball he hit off his foot was ruled no foul and enabled him to beat out a run-scoring grounder. Vesia promptly walked Michael Conforto to load the pillows.

Up came Davis with the Mets down now by a single run. Ahead in the count, 2-1. Fastball rising—swing a shade too soon, swish. Fastball falling—Davis kept the bat on his shoulder and the ball barely hit the strike zone floor. Side retired, 3-2 Dodger win held up.

Saturday afternoon: The Mets down 3-0 to open the top of the fifth against Max Scherzer. Make that 3-1, after Brandon Nimmo hit one out. Jeff McNeil doubles to right. Alonso himself gets hit on the arm by a pitch. Conforto goes from 1-2 to three straight balls.

Pads padded. The Mets have Max the Knife going rope-a-dope. Up steps Davis. Another 2-1 count. Looks at a pitch just off the middle—called strike. Gets an unlikely meatball down the pipe—fouls it off. Gets damn near the same pitch next—swings right through it for strikeout, side, and the Dodgers clinging with their lives to that 3-1 lead.

That lead became 4-1 after Mets reliever Miguel Castro, relieving starter Rich Hill to open the Los Angeles sixth, surrendered a leadoff base hit to Dodger pinch hitter Matt Beaty, then walked the bases loaded and a run home. Leaving Jeurys Familia to enter the burning building and get the Mets out alive with a pop out behind second base, a fly out to somewhat deep right, and a force out at second.

Leaving Nimmo himself wondering perhaps what he might have to do, short of bribery, to arrange men on base when he’s at the plate later in the game. He ended his day a triple short of the cycle, the Dodgers unable to get rid of him until reliever Blake Treinen caught him looking at a third strike barely on the floor of the zone in the seventh. His first-inning double opened the game; his third inning single came with one out and nobody on in the third.

And, of course, no Met managed to reach base in the fifth until after Nimmo fouled off a fastball to open with two out in the first before pulling an inside Scherzer service into the right field bleachers.

There’s no point in singling one long-haul culprit out. These Mets overall have been a mess since Jacob deGrom went down for the count yet again, and maybe for good this season, in early July.

One big reason is their inability to hit with the bases loaded: holding a .208 average in that situation, the fifth lowest in the Show, isn’t the way to win games. Especially when the other guys are hitting .292 against them with the bases loaded.

Castro walking the bases loaded and then walking Beaty home ended up being the difference Saturday—Alonso’s two-out, seventh-inning blast into the left field bleachers with McNeil aboard gave them their second and third runs. The Mets put a man aboard in each of the eighth and the ninth and stranded both.

Things weren’t exactly helped when Hill opened by surrendering a leadoff bomb off the top of the left field fence to Trea Turner opening the bottom of the first and, one fly out to deep center later, a first-pitch yank over the center field fence to ancient Albert Pujols, to put the Mets into an almost-immediate 2-0 hole.

At 41 years old each, Hill vs. Pujols weren’t quite the oldest pitcher-batter matchup to end in a home run in Show history. That belongs to Julio Franco and Hall of Famer Randy Johnson. Thanks to my sabermetric friend Jessica Brand, I learned The Big Unit was a young turk at 43 when Franco, then a measly 49 and a Met, no less, turned on an 0-2 service in the top of the second and drove it over the left field fence. It was the 173rd and final home run of Franco’s career.

With 92 years of age between that pair, there’s something to be said for respecting your elders.

Davis himself is 0-for-6 with six strikeouts when he hits with the bases loaded this season. If you take Mets manager Luis Rojas at his word, Davis is pressing it too hard when he checks in at the plate with chances to do major damage. “Sometimes, guys tend to get anxious,” the skipper told MLB.com’s Anthony DiComo after Saturday’s loss.

I use J.D. as an example with the bases loaded in that situation; he was trying to do too much. He was trying to gather a little bit too much. It caused him to be late on a fastball. That’s probably from a mental standpoint what happens, you just get a little anxious because you have the bases loaded. It’s a key situation. There’s an adrenaline rush, and sometimes you drift away from your approach of being aggressive in the zone, which is what we preach here.

Davis wasn’t even trying to murder the ball. As peculiar as this might sound to those dismissing this year’s game as just a bomb-or-bust offensive game, neither the Mets nor the Dodgers tried hitting six-run homers in every plate appearance. Even with six of the game’s seven runs scoring on home runs, there was about as much hard ground contact as air lifting between the sides Saturday afternoon.

It’s not that the National League East is a division full of invincibles. But the Mets held the division’s ownership papers despite their glandular injury issues until very recently. They’ve now lost seventeen of twenty-three; they’ve fallen two games below .500; they’re seven back of the now division-leading Braves almost a month after they led the division by four.

It got bad enough for the Mets at the plate that new owner Steve Cohen—who’d shown the patience of Job up to that point—zapped them for their inconsistent hitting aboard Twitter during the week just finished. In cold print, it looked like a mini-tirade. In actuality, we’re not exactly talking about a certain late Yankee owner.

Cohen didn’t throw out the first manager of the year. He didn’t even really single any particular Met out for embarrassment. He didn’t demand an apology to the city of New York or build a guillotine outside Citi Field. He didn’t compare any pitcher to a horse who spit the bit; he didn’t dismiss his best power hitter as Mr. May.

He didn’t do anything, really, except get Rojas and injured shortstop Francisco Lindor—the off-season splash signing whose bat’s been inconsistent but whose defense has been off the chart (he was worth thirteen defensive runs before his injury)—to say he was right about the bats.

The fact that the Mets didn’t exactly hog the headlines at the trade deadline lingered in the back of some minds, too.

The Mets’ immediate response to Cohen’s comparatively benign bop was to beat the Giants in twelve with a three-run homer (Kevin Pillar) and an RBI double (freshly called-up Chance Sisco, pinch hitting). From there, it’s three straight lost to the Dodgers with one more to play Sunday before a cross country trip home to host the Giants.

It may also be one of the only periods in which you might hear Met fans saying to themselves, “We have the bases loaded? We’re doomed.”

Bauer wins . . . nothing much, really

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Trevor Bauer

Bauer in the shadows. He isn’t even close to being off the hook yet. Nor should he be.

Read very carefully. Under MLB’s formal domestic violence policy, commissioner Rob Manfred can still discipline Dodger pitcher Trevor Bauer. Even if a woman accusing him of taking consensual rough sex into non-consensual territory was denied a permanent restraining order Thursday. Even if no criminal charges end up being filed.

Bauer’s been on paid administrative leave since 2 July. The leave was extended yet again, with full agreement between MLB and the Major League Baseball Players Association, this time through 27 August. With Pasadena police still investigating—criminal charges remain a distinct possibility—and Manfred’s office doing likewise, it’s fair to assume Bauer won’t pitch again this season.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Dianna Gould-Saltman agreed that “injuries as shown in the photographs” the woman’s legal team provided of her aftermath from Bauer encounters “are terrible.” The judge went on: “If she set limits and he exceeded them, this case would’ve been clear. But she set limits without considering all the consequences, and respondent did not exceed limits that the petitioner set.”

I seem to remember the victim saying it was one thing to have a mutually brutal round of rough sex with Bauer but it was something else again for him to keep it up when she was out cold. Unless I’m very wrong, when you’re out cold or sound asleep you can’t exactly say “yes” to something, anything, competently or with knowledge. You don’t need to be a legal beagle to know that.

“At the moment,” tweeted Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times, “MLB and police investigations continue, with focus not on whether Bauer should be restrained from contacting accuser going forward, but on whether previous conduct alleged by accuser merits criminal charges and/or MLB suspension.”

Sheryl Ring, an attorney who devotes a considerable amount of her time to watching and analysing baseball, writes that—pace his social media sycophancy crowing that he beat the rap and should be back on the mound post haste—the only thing Bauer really won Thursday was the right not to be blocked from contacting the lady in question in the future.

He’s not even close to being off the hook for what he did to her in the past. Yet.

Ring agrees the lady and her legal team tripped over themselves a few times during the hearings, particularly over the consent issue. “You can lose a case on an inaccurate statement in a sworn pleading, even on a collateral issue, and that clearly weighed heavily on the judge here,” she writes. “Finally, they elected not to have their expert witness testify on the issue of consent even after briefing the issue and winning that briefing, which I think was also a mistake.”

But Gould-Saltman also made a crucial mistake in her ruling, Ring continues:

Right after saying at the beginning of her ruling that future harm was not necessary to the issuance of a restraining order, she talked about how there was no need for a restraining order because there was no risk of future harm. She also, in my opinion, incorrectly applied the law of consent when it came to this line:

If she set limits and he exceeded them, this case would’ve been clear. But she set limits without considering all the consequences, and respondent did not exceed limits that the petitioner set.

Given a phone call was played in which Bauer admitted to punching the petitioner whilst she was unconscious, what the court stated is an incorrect statement of the law. You cannot give consent to anything when unconscious. In my opinion, that’s reversible error and grounds for a potentially meritorious appeal.

If Gould-Saltman could rule the lady didn’t make her boundaries “clear,” perhaps the judge would like to explain how she was supposed to keep making them clear, or to stop Bauer from crossing the line further when she was in dreamland—when she was in dreamland in fact after Bauer choked her unconscious with her own hair—while he crossed that line.

One of the worst-kept secrets throughout this entire disgrace is that there may be no one in a Dodger uniform who wants Bauer back with the team no matter how well he pitched before 2 July. The Dodgers themselves have legal recourse to rid themselves of him.

The standard, uniform player’s contract includes 7(b)1: they can terminate Bauer’s deal if he “fail[s], refuse[s] or neglect[s] to conform his personal conduct to the standards of good citizenship and good sportsmanship or to keep himself in first-class physical condition or to obey the club’s training rules.”

Paragraph 7(b)1 isn’t exactly an obscure or a previously-unapplied contract clause. When pitcher Denny Neagle got caught soliciting a woman for oral sex in 2004, the Rockies invoked the clause to terminate his five-year, $51 million deal. (Neagle missed pitching in 2004 due to ligament and elbow injuries.)

The players association filed a grievance in that case and it was settled in due course with the Rockies paying about 7/8ths of Neagle’s 2004 salary. Neagle’s marriage ended over the incident; he signed a deal with Tampa Bay for 2005 but didn’t pitch because of elbow issues and subsequently retired.

The Dodgers stand on far more solid ground if they elect to terminate Bauer’s deal with them. If they want to invoke 7(b)1 and cite MLB’s domestic violence policy, all they have to do, as Ring points out, is ask MLB’s permission—and if it’s permission denied, the Dodgers can do it anyway.

A man who likes his sex on the rough side and a lady who wants it likewise from and with him are merely kinky, in politest possible terms. A man who’d choke her out cold, then take her from the rear and punch her between the legs, is beyond mere depravity.

“This is, by far, the most serious case yet for MLB of an alleged violator, and it’s not close,” Ring writes.

No other person was accused of multiple violations against multiple victims. No other case . . . had this much court evidence. No other alleged violator so dramatically attacked their accusers in the press, either. The longest suspensions ever meted out for violations of the domestic violence policy were to Sam Dyson (a full season) and Jose Torres (100 games); as horrifying as the allegations were in those cases, this is somehow worse than both of those cases, and it’s not close. Notably, in none of the other domestic violence cases were multiple orders of protection sought by multiple people against the same player.

The last alludes to the revelation from the Washington Post, last week, that an Ohio woman also sought a restraining order against Bauer in 2020. She, too, accused Bauer of punching and choking her without consent during sex. Some winner.

Bauer prevailed regarding the restraining order in California, Ring writes, “by arguing that he is so dangerous that a woman who agrees to have sex with him assumes the risk of being harmed when doing so. And he made a great spectacle of dragging through the mud the woman he admits to having punched whilst she was unconscious.” Some model citizen.

Ring may not be the only legal-minded, legal-oriented baseball analyst to think it’s not out of the question that Manfred might consider suspending Bauer for two years. Effectively, that would wipe him out as a Dodger, since his current deal has two more seasons to go.

Practically, it might end Bauer’s life as a major league pitcher, period. But that would assume no other team would even think about plighting its troth to a man for whom women are little more than playthings with targets on their lady parts. We’ve known only too well what happens when you [ass][u][me].

“The inconsistencies Bauer’s attorneys elicited from the accuser spoke to secondary and surrounding matters — how she reacted to the assault — and not at all to the assault itself,” writes Craig Calcaterra, formerly an NBC Sports baseball analyst now writing the newsletter Cup of Coffee.

The text messages show a person who is at turns confused, angry, sad, depressed, or desiring vengeance, but those are all understandable feelings for a person in her situation to have. What Bauer’s attorneys did not do at all was discredit the central claim that he assaulted her in horrible ways.

. . . [T]he central truth of this entire affair — the stuff that Major League Baseball will look to regarding Bauer’s behavior, irrespective of whether [criminal] charges are brought — points pretty clearly to Bauer doing exactly what his accuser said he did. Everything else is secondary.

After 12 hours of testimony, his accuser said, under oath, “I did not consent to bruises all over my body that sent me to the hospital and having that done to me while I was unconscious.” There was zero evidence presented which explained how those bruises appeared in a way that was benign or refuted the idea that the woman was unconscious when Bauer inflicted them. That, in my mind, is all that matters.

Small wonder Brewers pitcher Brett Anderson could and did tweet, “Crazy to think that I could never get anyone out ever again and still feel better about my career than Trevor Bauer’s.” Indeed it is better to surrender six runs in three and a third innings than to be known for abusing women, violently or otherwise.

Crazy Joey Votto, Cooperstown bound

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Joey Votto, looking like a man infected with a combination of St. Vitus Dance and laughing gas. If it helps get him to Cooperstown, he won’t complain.

This is the kind of person Joey Votto can be. One minute, he’s his own kind of crazy. Especially with a bat in his hands. The next, he’s . . . well, the word is onorevole in Italian. In Yiddish, the word is mensch.

On 19 July, in San Diego, Votto fumed over a call at the plate in the first inning, resulting in himself and Reds manager David Bell being tossed. Votto thought he’d checked his swing on a 1-2 pitch missing up and away. The plate umpire sought help; the third base umpire said Votto went. Replays showed it was hair-thin close. It could have gone either way.

Votto and the arbiters kept it civil until the third base ump, apparently, said something to trip Votto’s trigger. Votto could be seen (and heard?) saying, “what the (fornicate)?!?” The plate ump interjected, as if to suggest Votto had no business talking to the third base ump. Bell hurried out to protect his player to no avail. Both got sent to bed without their supper.

In the Petco Park stands (the Reds were playing the Padres), a six-year-old Los Angeles girl named Abigail—wearing a Votto T-shirt, attending her first live major league game—cried because she wouldn’t get to see her hero play all game long. Another fan tweeted a photograph of Abigail in tears.

Somehow, someone on the Reds caught the tweet and made Votto aware of her. So he sent Abigail a ball he signed, “I am sorry I didn’t play the entire game. Joey Votto.”

The next afternoon, there were Abigail and her family in the Petco field boxes, courtesy of Votto and the Reds. Votto went out of his way to meet her, in her Reds T-shirt and a large bow with baseball stitching in her hair. He signed anything she handed him and left her with a grin about equal to the distance of a textbook Votto line drive hit.

Now, this is the kind of baseball player Abigail picked as a hero: As the irrepressible Jayson Stark has exhumed, Votto’s one of only six players in Show history to lead his league in on-base percentage seven times or better. He’s done it seven times. The other five: Ted Williams (twelve), Babe Ruth (ten), Barry Bonds (ten), Rogers Hornsby (nine), and Ty Cobb (nine). You may have noticed all but one of them are Hall of Famers.

A Canadian who grew up with a poster of Williams tacked on his bedroom wall, Votto will be a Hall of Famer in due course.

Spare me the lack of three thousand hits (he isn’t likely to reach that number) or five hundred home runs (he isn’t likely to get there, either). The Hall of Fame was supposed to be about greatness, not raw totals. With two more years on his current Cincinnati contract and at age 37, Votto isn’t going to join the 500 bomb club or the 3,000 hit club unless he swings a telephone pole for a bat before he’s Jack Benny’s (alleged) age.

But he’s going to be remembered for all-around greatness. The sole legitimate question around Votto’s Hall of Fame case is whether he’ll make it on the first try or have to wait a few.

As of Wednesday morning Votto’s was A Space Odyssey hit total: 2,001. Guess what. According to my Real Batting Average (RBA) metric (total bases + walks + intentional walks + sacrifice flies + hit by pitches), if Votto’s career ended the instant I wrote the words he’d become the number three Hall of Fame first baseman whose career came entirely or mostly in the post-World War II/post-integration/night-ball era:

HOF First Base PA TB BB IBB SF HBP RBA
Jim Thome 10313 4667 1747 173 74 69 .653
Jeff Bagwell 9431 4213 1401 155 102 128 .636
Joey Votto 7978 3433 1265 143 46 63 .620
Willie McCovey 9692 4219 1345 260 70 69 .615
Harmon Killebrew 9833 4143 1559 160 77 48 .609
Orlando Cepeda 8698 3959 588 154 74 102 .561
Eddie Murray 12817 5397 1333 222 128 18 .554
Tony Perez 10861 4532 925 150 106 43 .526
HOF AVG .597

Stark narrows his seven-or-more OBP titlist list to those who won seven in any ten-year period. The list shrinks to Hornsby (eight), Williams (seven), Ruth (seven), Cobb (seven), and Votto (seven). “How’s that,” Stark asks, knowing the answer good and well, “for a Mount Rushmore of OBP?”

How’s this, too, for a winning player? Baseball-Reference says the Reds would win 75 percent of their games if they could run a lineup of nine Joey Vottos to the plate. Since they’re playing a 162-game season this year, that would equal 122 wins. A Reds lineup of nine Vottos wouldn’t be eight and a half games behind the National League Central-leading Brewers. But they might be about 28.5 games ahead.

You might care to know, too, that among active players the guy Reds fans call Vottomatic is number two for career OPS+ with 148. That’s 27 points behind the active leader. A fellow (albeit still on this year’s injured list) named Mike Trout. You can do an awful lot worse than pull up second behind Trout.

Allow me to tell you what RBA says about Votto by leverage. We’re talking about the most game-on-the-line moments in which Votto’s checked in at the plate over his entire career through this morning. No one can premeditate the situation in which a batter will step up to the plate at any time–unless he’s being sent out to pinch hit. But RBA says Votto’s one beast you wish you could save for premeditated high-leverage plate appearances:

Joey Votto PA TB BB IBB SF HBP RBA
High leverage 1510 687 274 77 19 13 .709
Medium leverage 2769 1140 442 30 22 21 .598
Low Leverage 3699 1606 549 36 5 29 .601

Essentially, he’s the same batter overall in low as in medium leverage, adjusting for a few particulars. (His combined RBA in those two situations: .600.) But he’s 109 points more monstrous in the highest leverage moments, the moments when the game’s likely outcome is most squarely on the line or close to it.

As a defensive first baseman? A guy who’s 55 defensive runs saved above his league average, lifetime, isn’t exactly lame with the leather out there. He’s not the rangiest first baseman ever to patrol the pad—but neither was Lou Gehrig. He’s gotten the job done and then some. He’s probably also used the position to keep fans at home and on the road entertained with more than a few amusing quirks and tricks.

Small wonder fans in road ballparks forgive Votto his periodic needles and horseplay at their expense. (He once needled a friendly road fan with, “I remember you when you used to be thin.”) Small wonder young fans like little Abigail in San Diego weep when he gets tossed too early for arguing with umpires who still think (erroneously) that they’re Gods, Jr.

Small wonder, too, that fans such as another young girl in Atlanta last week think they can will Votto to prolific evenings.

A week ago, the Braves beat the Reds in eleven in Truist Park, 8-6. Votto did everything he could think of, short of spiking the Braves’ Gatorade with a liquid sedative, to enable a Reds win. He had a little help from his new young friend, to whom he gave his game jersey as he walked off the field following Ozzie Albies’s game-ending three-run homer.

What a surprise he’d do that: She coaxed him all game long. Votto swore the young girl called every one of his four hits on the night: a line single to somewhat deep center in the top of the first, a two-run homer in the top of the sixth, a line single to right setting up first and third in the top of the seventh, another two-run homer in the top of the ninth to tie the game at five. (Apparently, she didn’t call the full-count, bases-loading walk he coaxed out of Braves pitcher Touki Toussaint in the top of the third.)

The fact that both homers made Votto the first Red since Hall of Famer Frank Robinson to hit fourteen bombs in a twenty-game stretch—after becoming the eighth in Show to hit one out in seven straight games—was almost irrelevant. Almost.

“We made an agreement before every at-bat,” Votto told the press after the game. (When you like us, we’re the press. When you hate us, we’re the media.—William Safire.) “I talked to her a little bit mid-at-bat and she was screaming at me and supporting me. I’m not sure if it’ll end up on social media, but she was incredibly supportive despite lots of people that were not on her side. We almost did it together.”

Just another night at the park for Crazy Joey Votto, also known as future Hall of Famer Onorevole Mensch.