As the 2024 regular season continues, here are three things we’ll be keeping an eye on around the baseball world headed into the weekend:
1. Phillies to honor Hamels:
Left-hander Cole Hamels announced his retirement back in August of last year after spending much of the 2023 campaign attempting a comeback in the Padres minor league system. After playing in parts of 15 seasons in the majors with the Phillies, Rangers, Cubs, and Braves the southpaw is set to return to Philadelphia this evening where, as noted by Scott Lauber of the Philadelphia Inquirer, he’ll be honored with a retirement ceremony prior to the club’s game against the Diamondbacks.
The veteran of ten seasons with the Phillies is set to throw out the first pitch of the game, which is schedule for 6:40pm local time, before D’backs lefty Jordan Montgomery (6.00 ERA) and Phillies righty Taijuan Walker (5.33 ERA) take over. Hamels pitched to a 3.30 ERA and 3.47 FIP in nearly 2,000 innings of work with the Phillies from 2006 to 2015 and helped lead the club to back-to-back World Series appearances in 2008 and 2009, where he secured MVP honors for both the 2008 World Series and that same year’s NLCS.
2. Yastrzemski sidelined:
Giants outfielder Mike Yastrzemski departed yesterday’s game against the Cardinals at Rickwood Field due to a bout of side tightness, as noted by MLB.com’s Injury Tracker. Acquired from the Orioles just before Opening Day 2019, Yastrzemski has been a staple of the outfield in San Francisco for six seasons now with a .239/.325/.456 slash line in 621 games for the club to this point in his career. The club’s plan is currently to re-evaluate the 33-year-old in St. Louis after the clubs take a day to travel from Birmingham to Missouri, though it would be a tough blow to the Giants if the veteran were to miss time.
The Giants are already down one key lefty bat in the form of LaMonte Wade Jr. after the first baseman was placed on the 10-day injured list with a strained hamstring last month. If Yastrzemski joins Wade on the IL, the club could turn to Luis Matos to replace the veteran in the outfield mix alongside Heliot Ramos, Michael Conforto, and Austin Slater. Another option would be to simply stick with utility man Tyler Fitzgerald, who served as the 27th man in last night’s game.
3. Astros hurler to debut:
The Astros are set to select the contract of right-hander Jake Bloss prior to today’s home game against the Orioles. It’ll be the 22-year-old’s MLB debut, where he’ll be tasked with facing a difficult Baltimore lineup opposite fellow youngster Grayson Rodriguez (3.20 ERA). The club’s 40-man roster is full currently, so Houston will need to make corresponding moves to clear space for Bloss on both the 40-man and active rosters prior to tonight’s game, which will start at 7:10pm local time.
Bloss is set to skip the Triple-A level entirely as he heads to the majors after starting the season in High-A earlier this year. Despite that minimal experience, the right-hander looked fantastic in eight starts at the Double-A level with a 1.61 ERA and a 21.2% strikeout rate in 44 2/3 innings of work. That limited body of work was enough to earn Bloss his first call up to the big leagues amid a string of injuries to the Astros rotation that has seen both Jose Urquidy and Cristian Javier suffer season-ending injuries, while veteran ace Justin Verlander recently joined them on the injured list due to a bout of discomfort in his neck.
Lots of “bouts” in baseball, despite a typical lack of fights.
Yaz had a bout of side tightness, which I guess is a new medical term.
Verlander had a bout of neck discomfort.
That’s what today’s MLB news is a-bout.
Hardly a “tough blow” for the Giants to lose Yaz. After six years of .239 hitting it’s time for this nepo baby to hit the bricks. Bring back Matos and don’t look back.
His 162 game average includes 32 2b’s, 25 hr’s & 3.5 bWAR. For his career he has been 14% better than the league average hitter.
In otherwords, a respectable above-average big league ballplayer.
@draker
This year, he’s about 5% better than league average at creating runs while for his career, he’s 15%. Matos is 61 wRC+ this year and 80 for his career. Why do you want someone who is significantly worse than league average, starting in your lineup?
Because he’s not as good as his grandfather, a literal Hall of Famer, so he has to be a “nepo baby” who doesn’t deserve to be in the big leagues. I mean, have you looked at his BATTING AVERAGE???
@No Soup For Yu!
Okay, decent argument. Let’s DFA him!
Mike is welcome on my team. Which, if you don’t know, is NotTheYankees. There are 29 teams I’d be happy with him being on. I’ll never stop rooting fo rthe guy. YAZ
If teams still cared about batting average, a lot of current major leaguers would’ve been out of baseball years ago. Batting average doesn’t tell the whole story; it doesn’t even account for walks.
Nor does BA take into account factors such as opposing team’s defense, stadium, exit velocity, and launch angle.
Any one statistic is typically looking at only one facet of whatever is being measured. With BA, it seems a small facet.
One is young enough to expect better. One is old enough you can’t expect better. Its not what they’ve done. Its what you hope expect them to do from here on.
Matos is 11 years younger and 7 million cheaper than Yaz and capable of delivering similar if not better production, notwithstanding your cherry-picking his small sample size stats. After six years we know what Yaz is: average and capable of nothing more. Why prosblock a guy when your team isn’t going anywhere anyway?
Matos stinks.
Mentioning only batting average when disparaging a hitter is revealing significant ignorance.
Batting average is the first stat that everyone looks at, it’s part of the picture. On base and slugging percentages have also become important along with the somewhat convoluted OPS (hey, just add them, easy).
Anyone who has watched baseball over the decades pre and post geek stats understands that not all .239 batting averages are created by equal players.
As someone who taught himself how to calculate batting averages using a slide rule and made a career out of statiustical analysis, I still like the stat.
They might ask Hamels to stay on the mound after the ceremonial first pitch.
I hear they’re selling Hamels shirts at the team store tonight, they’re next to the battery packs they put out on Walker’s starts.
Oh, a battery joke about Phillies fans! That’s a good one!
I don’t want to start a rumor, but Jace Jung was pulled from yesterday’s Toledo Mudhens game. The Detroit papers are silent…
Perhaps he was pulled for side tightness.
Ohio and Michigan once “fought” over which state would have Toledo.
Ohio lost.
No need for quotes. There was actual fighting, and casualties.
Actual fighting and casualties? Holy Toledo!
Bloss debuting and ESPN’s trash player pool doesn’t even have him in it.
Hamels is a borderline HOF’er in my opinion. really undervalued and over shadowed but great.
Perhaps he was properly valued as a very good, at times great, pitcher?
163 career wins. 59 rWAR. Four All-Star selections. Four times receiving Cy Young votes, but never higher than 5th. This all points to a very good pitcher, but someone short of Cooperstown. The specialness of the HOF is the exclusion of fine players like Hamels.
Please, they put Baines and Jim rice in the hall, it ain’t that special.
Besides, 59 war is barely beneath the 60 benchmark that most would agree is the minimum for a modern HOF argument. I’m not here to say he was the best ever, but he’s going to get 0 hof votes and that’s a shame because he’s right there. Just another modern player who wont get his due or even a discussion (lofton, edmonds, johan santana to name a few)
I don’t think Hamels will get 0 HOF votes. He won’t make a second ballot, and I think that’s reasonable. I do suspect at least a couple of HOF voters will vote for a candidate with 59 WAR, 1+ no-hitters (1 of his own, 1 in a combined), an NLC MVP, a WS MVP. He had a solid career.
Him being a one and done is sad, it was tragic for lofton. I’d rather see either get in than another random dh, put in as a favor
Yeah but nobody even showed up to Hamels’ start for the Barves in 2020. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Can we please continue to call them the ‘Barves’?
Does that mean one player is a Barf?
Not even those two-dimensional weirdos that were in every other ballpark?
O’s crushed the Yankees yesterday. Gil was terrible and the bullpen didn’t help.
Stars of the Game
Gunnar Henderson SS
Ryan O’Hearn DH
Bryan Baker P
“C”mon Cole, get it over the plate!”
“Who are you?”
I remember when Hamels was part of the Phillies and my brother always tried to say that he was terrible. He didn’t like him cause he said sucked. His excuse was because he had 2 seasons that didn’t go well for Hamels and he ended up with an ERA over 4. I have a feeling now that he’d be praising the crap out of him. I even still have my Hamels pinstripe jersey.
That’s kind of cruel to throw a guy who hasn’t even seen AAA to the Orioles nasty lineup. Dang