The Opener

1. The Miami Marlins are 55-55, a .500 record, third-best in the NL East. Six games back of the final Wild Card with only two teams ahead of them. Crucially — for schadenfreude and historical fun facts — they got there by sweeping the New York Yankees over the weekend, to become the only(?!) team in Major League Baseball with an all-time winning record against the Bombers. Since the start of June, the Marlins are the fourth-best team in all of baseball and second-best in the National League. Since June 13, they’re second-best in all MLB. Stay Tuned while Bandwagon HQ tries to understand what the fuck is happening with the Fish.
2. Right before heading to Miami to end up on the wrong side of that first news item, the Yankees released Marcus Stroman, who signed a two-year $37 million contract before last season. Stroman’s 6.23 ERA certainly justifies the move, but I do wonder if he’ll end up on a club that could use an extra arm for the low, low price of the prorated major league minimum. Maybe that’s what he was referring to with an Instagram story that said “Life is just beginning.”
3. Julio Rodríguez has yet to have a truly worthy encore to his 2022 Rookie of the Year campaign that instantly launched him into the conversation for face of baseball. But frustratingly falling short of his full potential may have masked that he is still a dynamic young star — and with a home run on Sunday, became “the first player in major league history with 20 or more home runs and 20 or more stolen bases in each of his first four seasons.” It also happened to be his 100th career home run and it came off of Jacob deGrom in a tightly contested division race.

The Bullpen

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I was on the Tipping Pitches podcast late last week to talk a little bit about how the story of the Phillies heated meeting with Rob Manfred came together. We ended up talking about player engagement with the impending labor fight more generally and I landed on an impassioned version of a take I alluded to a few weeks ago here: MLB players should be loudly, publicly, and demonstrably complaining about the A’s situation in Sacramento all the time as a display of labor solidarity. Part of what can be a little tricky about athlete messaging around CBA negotiations is that fans aren’t always sympathetic to salary quibbles coming from millionaires. But I’m pretty sure everyone except John Fisher himself and maybe Manfred thinks the potentially interminable plan for the A’s to play in a minor league stadium in service of Fisher moving the team to a much smaller market than the one they left behind is, as best, ill-conceived. Put that on a shirt à la the WNBA! Or, you know, something pithier. –HK

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The consensus review of the Detroit Tigers’ deadline seemed to be: mild disappointment that they favored quantity over quality. But that’s because we were all classifying 41-year-old Charlie Morton, with his then-5.42 ERA, as a clear back-of-the-rotation depth piece and not a guy you’d trust to go a third-time through the order in a tight contest. But on Sunday night baseball against the Phillies, Morton didn’t quite outduel but did definitively participate admirably in a pitchers’ duel with Cristopher Sánchez.

Look at those peers embracing. Morton is closer in age to manager A.J. Hinch than he is to anyone else in the Tigers rotation! –HK

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The total teardown of the Twins as part of the trade deadline marks the end of a very specific storyline that I’ve been lowkey obsessed with the last three and a half seasons: The team’s often explicit deference to Carlos Correa as something uniquely greater than just another baseball player. That’s really the overarching theme of this Athletic story about his final days in Minnesota, but it’s even more evident in the details.

Correa, who said he would only waive his no-trade clause for Houston, essentially instructing the president of baseball operations to make that happen:

“When he told (me) that we were going to go into rebuild mode, I said then I deserve to go somewhere where I have a chance to win and my kids can watch me go out there in the playoffs and perform,” Correa said. “He agreed with me and he said out of respect for me he would get to work.”

Correa acting as like, player representation, for an aggrieved reliever in a meeting with the manager:

Following the fireworks in the dugout, Correa approached Jax and asked if he wanted to clear the air with Baldelli, even offering to accompany him to see the manager. Jax took him up on it.

And the manager appreciating it!

Baldelli described the sit-down as productive. He applauded Correa’s leadership and praised the veteran for acting as a conduit between players and management.

I will miss this strange subplot in Minnesota. –HK

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On another offshoot of the Twins’ teardown, new Phillies closer Jhoan Duran’s arrival has been particularly memorable because his entrance sequence was so instantly recreated in Citizens Bank Park.

Turns out, there’s a lot that went into that! The Athletic’s Matt Gelb had a superb, in-depth look at how the Twins and Phillies combined to make that happen behind the scenes, and it really makes you think about all the relationships and workplace camaraderie that extends far beyond the dugout or even the clubhouse. Twins communications VP Dustin Morse, who was instrumental in porting the Durantula entrance to Philly, relayed a moment I probably won’t forget.

Morse texted Duran at 10:55 p.m. It had been a long day for both of them, albeit on different sides of the transaction. Morse did not expect a response. He just had to say it.

“Wow, I’m so proud of you. Entrance looked amazing.”

“Thank you so much, Dustin,” Duran wrote back. “Thank you for being a part of that creation.”

–ZC

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The Speedway Classic — that’s the thing where the Braves and Reds played a game inside the Bristol Motor Speedway over the weekend — held absolutely no appeal to me from the moment it was announced. There’s no baseball lore to the location, no aesthetic value add, and obvious geometric hurdles that don’t seem worth haphazardly overcoming. But I recognize it wasn’t for me! A person who has never seen a NASCAR race, doesn’t know what kind of car she currently owns and drives, and doesn’t live in Tennessee.

My plan was to ignore it altogether, both personally and for purposes of this newsletter, but then it was the “MLB version of the Fyre Fest.” That post gets into how the problems with crowds and concessions extend beyond the bigger but less blame-able problem of a torrential downpour that forced a several hour delay before MLB suspended the Saturday game to be resumed on Sunday. I imagine the rain, though, exacerbated those issues and made the whole thing more meme-able and newsworthy. I don’t have a great holistic take, to be honest. My boredom with the concept is not necessarily validated by the disappointing execution. But if MLB wants to keep iterating on these showcases, I would like them to have an authentic tie-in to the sport so the hype doesn’t feel quite as empty if the game itself falls flat. –HK

I have actually been to a gimmick sporing event at Bristol Motor Speedway before — the 2016 college football game that matched up Tennessee and Virginia Tech (go Hokies). That had its sightline issues, but generally went off without a hitch.

The difference, which you hit on, is the lack of connection to the game at hand. Tech and Tennessee played there because Bristol sits on the Virginia-Tennessee line in a part of the world where college football (and these two specific college football programs) looms large. I’m a huge fan of the Field of Dreams Game, and of MLB’s efforts to restore Rickwood Field in Alabama and shine a spotlight on the history of the Negro Leagues. This speedway game felt extravagant and weird for the sake of extravagant and weird. That could be a good thing, but you’ll earn a lot more understanding for hiccups or outright missteps if the vision is more sympathetic. –ZC

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The Orioles had three guys with Jackson in their name in the lineup this weekend, and they even completed a relay play together. MLB.com managed to get Elias Sports Bureau on the case and confirmed that it was “the first time a team in the Modern Era (since 1900) has started at least three players with the name Jackson (first or last).”

This was Jackson Holliday, Alex Jackson and Jeremiah Jackson, which frankly makes it less fun. A couple years ago, I spent the Futures Game talking to multiple hotshot prospects with the first name Jackson about the impending Jackson singularity. Frankly, I think I was more correct than I could have even guessed. Jackson Merrill nearly turned me to dust when he reacted to my question about Jackson Browne by explaining why didn’t know of the singer-songwriter, “Oh, I’m an ‘03 guy, so I don’t really know ‘70s.”

I’m fairly confident we’ll have a full-on Gen Z takeover where a trio (or more) of first-name Jacksons complete a play together. –ZC