MLB withdrawal: a guest post

The following is a guest post by WH, who holds the dual distinction of A. being at Yankee Stadium for game 4 of the 2001 World Series and nearly passing away during Tino Martinez's game-tying, ninth-inning home run, and B. starting and maintaining a game-long, stadium-wide "Let's Go Yankees" chant during a road game at Turner Field in Atlanta in 2009. 

We call this piece Fever Dreams About Mike Tauchman.



Day four without Major League Baseball and I've already gone through a wide range of emotions. I almost cried on Thursday (March 26) when I realized that I would not be watching opening day games; Friday, I was blaming the global pandemic for letting the Astros off the hook for their cheating scandal. By Saturday I was spending an hour showing my newborn son Youtube clips of sweet swinging lefties from my youth. 

Which brings us to Monday, March 30.

I woke up this morning so confused, but it seemed so real. I had a dream I was sitting in the outfield bleachers at the Stadium watching my beloved Yankees playing in a game (opponent not important). For some ungodly reason, Mike Tauchman was in center field and I was heckling him for his terrible batting average, (he was hitting .080 before all spring training games were cancelled) and the fact that he is stealing playing time from my favorite current Yankee, Clint Frazier. 

As the game is progressing he hears my heckling but has yet to respond to my lunacy. Then the inevitable happens: Tauchman misplays a ball in center and I let him have it. Still no response on his part. The next half inning he comes to the plate with runners on first and second and rips a double down the line scoring both runners. We take the lead. This is still not enough to earn my admiration. I am still yelling nonsense at Tauchman. His next at bat, he crushes a home run to right. So now he's 2-for-3 with 3 RBIs.

As he's tossing warmup throws before the next half-inning, he looks up at me and says "that one was for you." I retaliate with "I'm never going to stop heckling you!", and he looks me dead in the eyes and says "Please don't, I thrive on it."

Sure, Dream Mike Tauchman finally came through, but its been just four days without baseball and already my own brain is turning on me. I am terrified to see how far this will go, but who knows, in a few weeks I will probably have some weird nightmare where me, Nick Swisher and Don Mattingly are in some kind of crazy Tiger King-type of polygamous relationship.

Strap in folks, its going be a long, wild, horrifying ride without MLB for the foreseeable future.

Believing In Brandon Belt

Friend of Off Base and talented writer, Julian Levine of Splashing Pumpkins, and I shared a pre-season prediction about Brandon Belt winning the National League Rookie of the Year. But after some early hiccups, Julian had to swing by to remind me not to give up on Belt. Here's the guest post.

Coming into 2011, Brandon Belt hype was at an all-time high. And, well, why wouldn't it be? The 2009 fifth-round pick had rocketed himself into top prospect status, hitting .352/.455/.620 across three levels of the minors in his first professional season. Belt was the real deal. A guy who combined astounding plate discipline with solid power, gold glove potential at first, a strong arm, and acute baserunning skills.

I myself had immediately fallen in love with Belt for one particular reason: his on-base abilities. Over the last three seasons, the San Francisco Giants had ranked 21st, 30th, and 28th in the majors in BB%, so it was refreshing to see a guy who could draw walks.

Anyway, everything with respect to Belt looked good entering the season. He had ranked 23rd in Baseball America's top 100 prospects list, and Keith Law had him at 17th overall. Dan Szymborski had released his 2011 Giants ZiPS projections on January 4, and Belt was forecasted to hit .266/.357/.440 as a rookie. Not too shabby. And of course, in Spring Training, Belt began where he'd left off -- posting a .282/.338/.479 slash line over 72 at-bats.

He looked ready for the majors, but few expected him to start the year there. Service time issues and a crowded roster would most likely leave him starting the year in Triple-A Fresno. That was, until Cody Ross suffered a calf injury that put him on the Disabled List to start the season. Belt would enter 2011 as the Giants' starting first baseman. I was excited.

But things didn't go so well. In 52 at-bats, he struck out 13 times, and he seemed to be hitting the ball on the ground too much (22 GB/13 FB). The plate discipline was there (eight walks in 60 PAs), but Belt just seemed too passive at the plate, and the consensus among scouts was that he needed more seasoning:

He needs more time in the minor leagues. Pitchers are disrupting his timing. He isn’t confident up there. He still has terrific plate discipline, but we all know rookies cannot always count on getting the borderline calls from umpires.

So when Cody Ross was activated from the DL on April 20, Belt was optioned to Triple-A. Where he promptly returned to raking. In his second Triple-A stint, Belt OPS'd .994 over 132 PAs; and in the wake of the notorious Buster Posey collision, Belt received a call-up.

Of course, as luck would have it, Belt landed on the Disabled List just two games into his second run at the majors, as a hit-by-pitch left a small fracture in his left wrist.

The latest update has Belt returning within two weeks. From what I've seen, he's not an adequate defensive left-fielder, and with Aubrey Huff heating up (OPSing over .900 in the month of June), Belt will have to fight for playing time at first. But I still can't wait to see what he does.

At the beginning of the year, I had Brandon Belt winning the 2011 Rookie of the Year. In retrospect, that prediction looks rather ridiculous -- as we all know ROY awards are built for RBI machines, not on-base machines (just ask Jason Heyward). Nevertheless, my expectations remain high. Belt will get on base. He won't be a slugger, but he should be able to hit as many as 20 home runs over the course of a full season. And he's still got that plus glove at first base.

Over the past few years, the Giants have developed some pretty nice homegrown talent -- Madison Bumgarner, Buster Posey, and Pablo Sandoval to name a few. And though things haven't gone well so far this year for Belt, the Giants seem to have developed yet another gem to add to their collection.

Thanks Julian. You can read more of his work at Splashing Pumpkins, Beyond the Boxscore and MLB Daily Dish. He's busy. You can also follow him on Twitter @SPGiantsBlog.

An Evening With Pops Derwood

Pops Derwood is practically a celebrity in his living room, so we've asked him to bring that fame and a .205 career batting average to Offbase and share a story or two about his illustrious career in the Chicago Cubs organization. His book, I Didn't See That Fast Ball, But I Heard It, is not scheduled for release until January, 2012, but here is an excerpt.


MORE TALES FROM THE LOW MINOR LEAGUES

While my four packs of Camels per day habit was nasty, nothing prepared me for my first taste of Beechnut. Ah, I love the smell of puke in the morning.

Beechnut was the tobacco of choice in the late 1960’s. You could find other stuff, but if it was not name-brand, not chewed in the show, nobody in the low, low, low (did I mention low?) minor leagues would be caught dead with it.

Of course, I had never even seen the stuff before reporting to Huron (South Dakota) in the old Northern League. Oh, I knew about it because guys like Don Zimmer and others had a wad the size of Rhode Island in their mouth when they played. And they spit long, black gobs of disgusting juice about a gazillion times a game. So, I knew chew existed, I had just never seen it.

“Gotta try it or you’re a pussy,” was the way the verbally challenged Ralph Pipes said to me in the clubhouse one day. (Pipes once gave up a home run that carried over the wall, over the scoreboard and landed in North Dakota. When he got back to the bench someone had painted a face on the ball with X’s for eyes and told him they had found the home run). Man threw hard-90+, but his fastball was flatter than Twiggy’s ass (look her up), so while it arrived in the strike zone with some speed, it usually departed even faster. Bottom line was, according to Pipes and several other guys who had played either a year of pro ball already or were born in an f’in barn, I had to try the chew or I would be forever seen as the woos from New York.

Try it I did, slowly, as in small amounts to start with, which turned out to be a problem (more on that later). I would roll it up in a ball, put it in my cheek and then spend the rest of the practice or game worrying about nothing except not swallowing the spit. No wonder I hit .175.

After a while I got to like it and added larger amounts. Of course, my teammates had never told me it was easier to control the spit if the wad is so big nothing can go down, it can just go out. Then some guys showed me how to wrap bubble gum around it, and after a while I got good at it. And it was so healthy! There I was smoking four packs a day, chewing from the minute I got to the ballpark until I left, then smoking again. Oh, and between innings sometimes I would go down the runway from the dugout to catch a smoke, with the chew still in my mouth! Yes, boys & girls, I was a picture of health! Did I mention I hit .175?

I made it through without swallowing much of anything. Which was not the case for a backup catcher in Caldwell, Idaho (he came up after I got sent down from Huron; how do you get sent down from Huron? That’s like the country song-‘lyin in the gutter and still lookin’ down at you’). He was catching batting practice one night with a big wad when he took a foul tip in the chest. When he went to his knees I knew we were in for a treat, and there he was projectile vomiting right through his face mask! It was a thing of beauty.

I finally kicked the habit(s) after coaching high school ball for five years every minute with a chew in my mouth. What a role model. But every now and then I still have a hankering for some Red Man, which became the chew of choice in baseball before the prudes in charge banned it. But I usually withstand the pressure and do something healthy, like drink a fifth of Jack Daniels. Much better for me.

An Evening with Pops Derwood

Pops Derwood is practically a celebrity in his living room, so we've asked him to bring that fame and a .205 career batting average to Offbase and share a story or two about his illustrious career in the Chicago Cubs organization. His book, I Didn't See That Fast Ball, But I Heard It, is not scheduled for release until January, 2012, but here is an excerpt.


OK, I swear this is a true story though I wasn’t there. I have it from good sources though, my college roommate and fellow Chicago Cubs farmhand, Tommy Badcock, that this story was completely true. I had already been long gone from the organization when Badcock was in Triple-A with a catcher named Steve Swisher-yea, little Nicky’s Dad. Now Swisher (just like me) was a terrible hitter but not a bad catcher. Not a great catcher (like me), but good nevertheless.

Well (Swisher) was hitting about .150 in Triple-A playing in Iowa and according to Badcock was getting worse and worse. In fact, it was affecting his catching and everyone---and I mean everyone---thought his days were numbered. Even that lousy, crappy Cubs organization wasn’t going to hold on to a Triple-A, so-so catcher hitting a buck and a half.

One lazy, summer afternoon (yes we played in the after-freakin’-noon in those days) during BP there was no Swisher to be found; gone. He wasn't on the field and nobody could find him in the clubhouse either. The word in the outfield during hitting was ‘oh-oh, this could be it.’

And sure enough, a little while later, here comes Swish (original huh?), walking out of the clubhouse onto the field with his big old Cubs equipment bag over his shoulder (catching gear, helmet, gloves etc). Everyone was absolutely sure what that meant: “you don’t have to go home, but you gotta’ leave here.”

As Swisher meandered around the park talking to individual players, he would talk, shake hands, sometimes hug, and move on. Badcock’s group in the outfield just waited for him, head down, and wondered 'what the hell do you say to a guy who just had his life long dream blasted away on him?' (I remember what everyone said to me a few years earlier after being released in Spring Training: “get the hell out of here you’re using up space"). Tommy told me it was the longest five minutes of his life, just waiting for Swisher, who of course was Badcock’s catcher, to make his way out to him.

Slowly, he walked. It seemed like time stood still and when he got to Badcock he looked up with tears in his eyes. (Well that seals it--he’s toast). As if on cue, Swisher looked up, locked eyes with Tommy, and Tommy began to say “sorry Swish” but Swisher beat him to it: “I’m going to Wrigley.”

“Yea, so sorry to hear it, Swish…what did you say?”

“I’m going to Wrigley. Hundley’s hurt and they need a catcher.”

He never came back and played nine years in the big leagues.

Go figure.