This One Was Televised
Luis Guillorme walks on 22 pitches, and Jacob deGrom prepares to take the mound in front of the cameras.
deGrom
So far this spring, Jacob deGrom has done two things: 1) dominated his opposition, and 2) been completely unseen by anyone outside of Florida. deGrom has made two starts, struck out ten, and not allowed a run, but by an unlucky accident, neither of his starts has been televised.
That ends tomorrow afternoon, when the Mets play the Astros at home in Florida: the game will be televised on SNY. Spring Training has been interesting and fun and all so far, but it strikes me that the first deGrom start is when it really all begins. Once Jacob deGrom has taken the mound on television and watched the Mets fail to score behind him, it’s obvious that baseball is in near-full swing.
The fact that there are still games at all — even Spring Training games — that aren’t televised is sort of strange, when you think about it. Anything can happen in these games. A Mets batter can draw a 22-pitch walk or catch a bat that goes flying into the dugout. So every game that’s not televised is a sort of reverse lottery ticket. It’s SNY betting that by not televising the game, they’re not going to miss anything that’s rare enough that fans clamor to see it. Sure, fans will see deGrom tomorrow — but Wednesday against the Marlins, the game will not be televised. What if Dom Smith hits three home runs, or Edwin Díaz starts throwing a knuckleball? We’ll just have to take your word for it.
Every time I hear about games not being televised, I think back to April 10th, 1969, when Tommie Agee hit the longest home run in Mets history. The ball traveled an estimated 505 feet and was the only fair ball ever to land in the third deck at Shea Stadium, but people hadn’t realized how exciting the 1969 Mets were, so the game wasn’t televised, and only 8,608 people were there in-person. So the only marker to the entire world minus 8,608 people of how far the ball flew was a painted plaque commemorating its landing spot in the third deck. Beyond that, we’ve can only rely on the slimmest, most intriguing bits of anecdotal memory: things like “Cleon Jones insists that the ball was still rising when it landed.”
It’s expensive to televise Spring Training games, especially away games, and it’s not like many people are going to watch once it’s the eighth inning and Jacob Barnes is pitching to three Marlins minor league lifers. Let’s just hope that while he’s doing that, Barnes doesn’t do a backflip or something. In ten years we’d be reduced to chasing down the few people who were actually there, and listening to their accounts of the legendary gymnastic feat. “Most impressive thing I’ve ever seen,” they’ll say. “He was still rising when he landed.”
Guillorme
You’ve all seen the video by now, especially after MLB began promoting it relentlessly: yesterday, against Cardinals reliever Jordan Hicks, Luis Guillorme stepped into the batter’s box, fell behind 0-2, and, 20 pitches later, walked. The at-bat took nearly fifteen minutes, and had it been a regular-season at-bat, would have set the record for longest at-bat (by pitches) of all time.
I don’t want to read too much into Guillorme’s walk (although that sounds like the title of an Oscar-winning movie): it’s just one plate appearance (not one at-bat), and it’s a Spring Training game against a pitcher making his first appearance in two years. Guillorme’s Walk, really, sums up the fundamental question of Spring Training: why does it matter? If anyone is expecting Luis Guillorme to start taking 22-pitch at-bats as a matter of routine, prepare for disappointment. If anyone takes yesterday’s walk as evidence that Guillorme has improved his approach at the plate, be ready for anything. And if anyone was watching a baseball game just to see if anything interesting might happen, they’ve already been satisfied.
How did Guillorme do it? He hit a lot of foul balls, got out of the way of some close pitches, and took advantage of one questionable call on a pitch that wasn’t where Yadier Molina expected it, but still might have been a strike. Hicks throws so hard that umpires can’t really react to what they’re seeing; everyone, even professional umpires, has to rely on the catcher’s positioning, and Hicks’ pitch didn’t match up with where Molina was. Molina was set up away, and Hicks’ 100 MPH fastball was up and in, and the catcher reaching across the plate for a pitch makes it tough to call a strike no matter where it is. Adding even further to the umpires confusion, I’m pretty sure that as Molina caught the pitch, it was still rising.