Raphael Devers, injuries, opening weekend emotions

The FanSided MLB team is here with the first edition of The Moonshot, our weekly newsletter that collects all the fun of baseball.

Well, we believe exit speed, bat flips, launch angles, house steals, curveball hanging, Big League Chew, sausage races, and that unwritten rules of any kind are subjective folly, and an overstatement. We think Greg Maddox was a true magician. We believe that there should be a constitutional amendment protecting minor league baseball and that framing the stadium is an art and a science. We believe in the beautiful place, making WARP not a war, keeping you chasing closely, we believe love is the most important thing in the world, but baseball is good too.

Welcome to The Moonshot.

This MLB season could be all about survival of the fittest

There was fear among most – but not all – executives, coaches and players of an increase in injuries early in the season due to intense spring training. Within less than a week of the regular season, that was exactly the case.

Just look at the players who already have injuries: Lucas Giolito, Lance Lane, Luke Jackson, AJ Bullock, Andrew Chavin, Louis Urreas, Mickey Moniak, Blake Snell, Casey Sadler, Evan White, Jack Flaherty, Alex Reyes, Shane Paz, John Gray, Nate Pearson.

He decimated the high-end pitch of the Chicago White Sox and forced them to sign Johnny Koito. The Cardinals had been expecting an outstanding season from Flaherty and without the right hand, lacking depth over the spin alongside Adam Wainwright. The Braves were designed to withstand a loss for Jackson, but the Mariners’ loss to Sadler, perhaps the most loyal in baseball, for the season prior to opening day was a huge blow.

This season, especially early on, will have a similar slogan to the COVID abbreviated season: survival of the fittest.

Teams with greater organizational depth will be created to win early. But it wouldn’t be surprising to see teams continue to make deals and juggle at the bottom of their rosters. The Giants have called up the field’s best player, Heliot Ramos, after just two games, and some baseball folks are wondering if this continues the league-wide trend after Bobby Witt Jr., Julio Rodriguez, CJ Abrams, Spencer Turkelson and Bryson Stott. Opening day menus prepared.

But the growing number of injuries will be something to track throughout the first part of the regular season. The number has steadily increased in recent seasons, especially with teams using IL more aggressively to protect players and keep the roster flexible. But this year, it could rise to a level that even the most optimistic baseball fan feels uncomfortable.

– Robert Murray

Baseball, but for your ears

Raphael Devers heads into breakout season again

The problem is that outside of the Red Sox Nation, I felt like no one cared. The Sox didn’t do very well that season, especially compared to the 108-win election season and the previous year’s championship. By post-2004 standards, being above 0.500 is not good enough.

But the 22-year-old Devers led Major League Soccer with 54 doubles — more than double his previous career — and led all of Major League Baseball with a total of 359 bases. Over 156 games, he made 0.311 with 916 OPS, 201 hits, scored 129 hits, 115 RBI, and 32 home runs. He ranked 12th in the MLS MVP vote.

David Ortiz , Who says he sees himself in DeversI expected everything, by the way.

Devers is coming off another stellar season, underestimated in 2021 as well. Over the course of the same number of games played in 2019, he made 38 new runs in his career, but this time, he made only 37 hits. His average exit speed was 92.9 mph, tied with Nelson Cruz and Joey Foto (and before anyone else on the Sox) for 10th in the majors; With the exception of the brief 2020 season, his average EV has steadily increased each year. And reduced the rate of strike action from 27 per cent to 21.5 per cent. For his efforts, he became an All-Star for the first time and won the first Silver Slugger player, placing 11th in the MVP vote.

Now 25, Devers is playing his sixth season in the majors. He’s a much more polished and experienced slug player than he was in 2017, when he became a rookie Youngest player in MLB history To score a goal inside the park in a post-season game. (And Kiki Hernandez) tied Ortiz’s record with five games at home in an unexpected playoff in Boston last October. He hit six home runs in spring training, which of course, doesn’t count. And on opening day, he made it to the first inning at home off Gerrit Cole, once again torturing the Yankees’ expensive starting layup. According to Soxis the first player in franchise history to achieve home ground success in his last regular season appearance and then his first board appearance the following season.

In 2017, the Red Sox needed Devers to fill the gap left by Ortiz. They brought him in from Triple-A before he was really ready, and he had to learn fast. Brute force was present, but discipline (and defense) was not. He was playing in postseason before he could legally drink. Now, with half a decade of big league ball under his belt now, and already more post-season experience than most players who’ve been in the game twice, he’s about to explode in 2022.

Devers says he wants to hit at least 40 times this year. I wouldn’t bet on it.

– Gabriel Starr

Ronald Acuna Jr. and Freddy Freeman: Old School vs. New School, Part 2924

Baseball has always been a game for the elderly, but that is changing, and fast. Sports don’t belong to past generations – and the current group has to decide how to play it. If that leaves some unremarkable fans behind, so be it. This isn’t the way things have worked out at the Braves Club, at least as recently as 2018.

So far, most have seen a live Instagram interview with Ronald Acuña, in which he stated that he “wouldn’t miss” Freddy Freeman, in part because of the way he was treated as a rookie. Acuña appeared before the dressed adults to play in a way Freeman might not have recognized. There is nothing wrong with that, not on the roof or under it. You can drill as deep as you want.

But Freeman found something, not because of any argument based on the present tense but because of how he was treated as a novice. When asked why he treated Aconia this way, Freeman answered this way: “I saw the case of the black eye. When you wear a Braves costume, there are regulations. You don’t cover the letter ‘A’ with sunglasses, you don’t wear earrings, you have hair a certain length, you wear a uniform. During BP, you don’t have a black eye that comes down all over your face,” Freeman said.

Whether Freeman misinterpreted it (unlikely) or those were the rules the organization imposed on him, that’s further evidence that baseball is changing. It’s time to embrace a new era full of glow and excitement. Acuña (and Freeman, in other ways) exemplify this at their best.

– Mark Powell

Anthony Rizzo: The Yankees’ third choice for difference maker

he was there. That all-too-familiar feeling of watching a Yankee crumble on dirt from the pain. Ironically, the 2022 spring and short drill was the healthiest in New York in years, but the era of good vibes lasted about 5/9 of Game 1 before Anthony Rizzo was dug up on his wrist by a pitch and collapsed with a shriek.

Somewhat miraculously, he got rid of him, the same way he dumped them to the third tier of the rumor mill this off-season, buried behind Matt Olson and Freddy Freeman. For months of dead air, Rizzo had to get up and read daily, sure, the Yankees would want him back—unless, of course, they can secure either of two better options. When the Olson-to-Atlanta deal was finalized and the Freeman-to-LA hype reached its climax, both parties finally closed their eyes, felt their teeth (the Yankees have one collective dental set), and came to an agreement.

If Rizzo feels disrespected, you won’t know. The potential benefits of hiring him for a full season in pinstripe soon became apparent. Against the Red Sox in the opening series, Rizzo hits him again in all three games. His two-shot first-half shot on opening day signaled that Yanke had opted not to die, and tied the second and third rounds with another two-round and one-on-one shot.

The intangible edge was also evident; Novice bowler Ron Marinaccio couldn’t buy a strike on Saturday afternoon until Rizzo took it upon himself to come to the pile and sell it. While Olson or Freeman might have been brighter long-term commitments, Rizzo appears eager to prove that the 2021 season – marred by COVID-19 and his hometown change – may have been a cultured one, not the rest of his career.

– Adam Weinrb



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