Welcome to Last Week in Baseball, a series condensing some of baseball’s biggest and most interesting headlines (at least, in my opinion) for a quick look back to begin the work week. Today’s first game (Cleveland Guardians @ Boston Red Sox) begins at 10:10 a.m. CT followed by an evening full of clashes with highlights including Yankees – Blue Jays, Padres – Brewers, and Braves – Astros. Our first installment admittedly doesn’t have the cheeriest headlines, but we’ll try to have a little fun as we explore what happened in the world of MLB.
Angel Hernandez Is Terrible
In case you need any reminder of who the worst umpire in the game is, Angel Hernandez is here to stake his claim once again. It feels like every year, once games get underway and people have a chance to see the umpires at work again, there’s always a wave of backlash for Hernandez early on as everyone re-experiences his strike zone. He’s far from the only bad official, but he’s the one truly capable of uniting rival fans and players with his incompetence. Sure enough, he’s wasted no time infuriating everyone again through the first two full weeks of the season.
Hernandez’s latest performance that had everyone in an uproar came in Friday night’s game between the Texas Rangers and Houston Astros. Umpire Scorecards, the Twitter account dedicated to tracking umpire accuracy, consistency, and favorability toward teams, as well as their most impactful missed calls, did not paint a positive picture of his work behind the plate, to say the least. Among other issues, his calls were in the Astros’ favor by 1.79 runs, which is BRUUUUTAL.
The peak of said brutality came when rookie Wyatt Langford was at the plate in the top of the 4th inning. As noted by the scorecard, Hernandez miscalled three straight balls as strikes to send Langford back to the dugout, all of which weren’t even close. Another tracker, Umpire Auditor, noted that the put-away pitch set a record for them for the largest missed called strikeout at a mind-boggling 6.78 inches outside the strike zone. Even worse, the Rangers had the bases loaded.
Thankfully, Texas went on to win 12-8 so it didn’t matter in the long run, but in another situation where the score is closer and that run from Langford’s should’ve been walk mattered more, it would’ve been ugly.
I generally tend to think umpires have gotten a little too much flak, especially considering how much better they are today (if you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend this video of Livan Hernandez’s ABSURD strike zone from 1997). The good folks at Pitcher List just did a fantastic write-up on how the percentage of missed balls and strikes has been in a steady decline for years. Even between 2008 and 2023, the officials were, on average, able to cut their missed strikes and balls from 8.1% and 7.7% respectively to 3.3% and 3.9%. That’s about a 50% improvement overall which is nothing to scoff at.
It still sucks, however, that such obviously bad calls are still a reality and that they keep thrusting umpires like Hernandez into the spotlight when the focus should be on the players. If you’re a proponent of robot umpires, then there is hope on the horizon. Although there are a multitude of issues, the Automated Ball-Strike System (ABS) is being tested in the minors and is definitely coming within the next few years.
Spencer Strider Out for the Season
Baseball has begun to have a serious conversation this year about the health of pitchers and the limits of the human arm. We’re starting to see the real consequences of an ever-escalating arms race between teams trying to find the hardest throwers who can be molded into future superstars. Shane Bieber, Eury Perez, and Jonathan Loaisiga have all recently undergone Tommy John surgery, but there was one more name everyone was waiting to hear about – Spencer Strider.
Back on April 5, the Braves ace left his start early with discomfort in his shoulder and, the next day, an MRI revealed damage to the Ulnar Collateral Ligament (UCL). Anything involving the UCL is always deeply concerning, especially in the case of Strider, who already has one Tommy John procedure under his belt from his days at Clemson in 2019. While he won’t be getting that surgery for a second time, he is set to go under the knife again for internal brace surgery which will end his season.
Strider has solidified himself over the past few seasons as a perennial Cy Young contender and the standout in a Braves rotation that also includes Max Fried. Following a rookie campaign where he finished second in Rookie of the Year voting behind his teammate Michael Harris II, he came in fourth in MVP voting in 2023 with a 3.87 ERA and league-leading 281 strikeouts in 186.2 innings. 2024 seemed like a prime year for him to continue his run of success and maybe capture some hardware. Now, he’ll have to wait until 2025.
The Braves likely have the rotation depth to replace Strider and his rotation-mates – Fried, Chris Sale, Charlie Morton, and Reynaldo Lopez – are all very good pitchers. There’s nobody on that team, however, quite like Strider and his eye-popping high-strikeout stuff. It’s another hugely disappointing development in a year wracked with injuries.
Jackson Holliday Makes His MLB Debut
On the happier side of things, baseball’s biggest prospect has made it to the majors! Jackson Holliday debuted for the Baltimore Orioles last week after a meteoric rise through the minors in just a couple of seasons. Widely seen and ranked as the #1 prospect in the sport, he was simply hitting too well at Triple-A Norfolk (.333/.482/.595) to ignore any longer and will now bring his talents to an Orioles team that’s already stacked with young stars.
Baltimore selected Holliday, the son of former big leaguer Matt Holliday, #1 overall out of Stillwater High School back in 2022 and since then, it’s been smooth sailing for him. He blew the doors off of minor league pitching with a .321/.451/.497 slash line across all levels of the Orioles farm system, all while being a strong defender in the middle infield. This year at Spring Training, he just continued to rake, proving that the big leagues were in his near future. It’s a little weird that Baltimore kept him in the minors for such little time rather than just giving him a spot on the Opening Day roster, but what matters now is that they have the potential for one of the scariest infields imaginable with Gunnar Henderson as his double-play partner and Adley Rutschman behind the plate.
So far, the majors haven’t been as automatic for Holliday as the minors – 1-15, 9 strikeouts. That’s reasonable. He only played 154 games for the Orioles affiliates before reaching Baltimore, after all, and he’s only 20. It’s also a super small sample size. On Sunday, he was able to get his first big league hit at least, smacking a single to right field off Brewers pitcher Abner Uribe and taking part in a rally that would save Brandon Hyde’s battling birds from being swept.
It’s rare to see this much young, wildly-heralded talent coming together on one team at once. The Orioles are going to be good for a while. The craziest thing? Their farm system is STILL loaded after Holliday’s promotion. Keep an eye out for Coby Mayo and Heston Kjerstad coming down the pipeline.
Ippei Mizuhara Reportedly Facing Federal Charges in Theft of Shohei Ohtani
Finally, we learned last week per a report from The New York Times that Shohei Ohtani’s former interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, was reportedly negotiating a guilty plea for charges of bank fraud as federal prosecutors neared the end of their investigation. At the start of the season, Ohtani and Mizuhara were both in the middle of baseball’s biggest scandal when ESPN reported over $4.5 million had been wired to an illegal bookmaking operation in Ohtani’s name. A strange back-and-forth ensued where Mizuhara initially claimed that the Dodgers superstar merely helped him pay off his debts until Ohtani and his legal team caught wind of it and Mizuhara quickly backtracked, saying Ohtani had no knowledge.
Ohtani later made a statement disavowing Mizuhara’s version of events, adding that he and Mizuhara met face-to-face after the interpreter had addressed the Dodgers clubhouse where Mizuhara admitted to the theft. The Ringer has a good write-up going in-depth on the whole process, including the texts that showed Mizuhara’s acknowledgment that he was spiraling into debt. The big development, however, was that we learned afterward from multiple reports that Mizuhara was indeed facing federal charges and that he had allegedly stolen more than $16 million from his former friend. In all, everything appears to line up with Ohtani’s version of events. The full 37-page complaint from the DOJ is available online.
Obviously, it’s a horrible situation for everyone. The report and all of the evidence paints a picture of betrayal and addiction that, sadly, is probably going to cloud Ohtani for the rest of his career in the eyes of some fans. We’ll still have to wait for MLB to conduct its former investigation, though it’s unlikely we’ll see any more seismic shifts in this story. The lone silver lining is that the investigation at least showed that Mizuhara didn’t bet on baseball.
Weekly Weird/Wonderful
Every week, I want to highlight a moment from a game or from around the game of baseball that I found funny, weird, or just really cool. It could be a play, a fun interaction, or something more. This week, I’m turning the spotlight on the Oakland Athletics, who are off to a solid start considering the expectations surrounding their team. In the 8th inning of their contest against the Washington Nationals on Sunday, a ball ricocheted off the leg of A’s reliever Lucas Erceg. Attempting to avert disaster, he reached his glove out and rolled the ball to first base where Ryan Noda was able to pick the ball up in time and get the third out:
Bunting For Power 