Under The Knife 4/3/24

#Paddedglove

For a couple years now, #paddedglove has become something of a running bit here. At the heart of it is a simple solution to a costly problem and it’s finally been addressed. Several players, including Shohei Ohtani and Trea Turner, are wearing protective gloves on the top batting hand. Ohtani was wearing this for at least some of last year, but this season’s is larger and appears more “solid” or at least formed, so there’s some iteration beyond the color change his move necessitated.

I couldn’t get a clear look at Turner’s, so I don’t know if his has changed. He was wearing an Evoshield glove most of the year, then had something during the postseason. It looked more like a wristband wrapped over his palm, but I can’t imagine thats the case. It’s likely this Pro-SRZ from Evoshield, though the batting gloves are Adidas.

For Ohtani, there’s no listing of this on New Balance’s baseball site so it’s unclear if they’re just rebranding something or if this is a special request. It’s likely more players are wearing this, or other such devices around the league so if you see some, drop it in the comments or email me.

My question is - why isn’t everyone? I know, batting gloves, like everything, are a personal decision and some might have what they think are a good reason for not wearing them. If two of the biggest stars in the game think their hands are worth protecting from the 100 mph sinkers coming in on their hands, maybe everyone should. Before some #braingone idiot starts telling me how soft this is and that we should issue skirts with the protective equipment, fine. You be the last one with a broken hand.

I’d love to know more about these and have ordered one of the Evoshield guards, though I expect it will be a pretty standard fitted piece. The “gel to shell” material they devised over a decade ago has become ubiquitous; I remember meeting the original crew in the lobby of the Opryland a decade ago and wish I’d invested then!

Regardless, this is a good thing. Maybe I can write about broken and bruised hands less and we can have the best baseball players in the world on the field rather than in casts. For now, let’s get to the injuries:

RONEL BLANCO, SP HOU (no injury)

“Who the bleep is Ronel Blanco?” would have been heard around every newsroom in America, if we still had those. You probably don’t remember Bud Smith, but the reason why you don’t has a lot to do with the no-hitter Smith threw. Smith’s 134 pitches on a very tight no-hitter is the apotheosis of no-hitter stress. Even near no-hitters seem to multiply those last pitches, when a pitcher is most fatigued and yet is bearing down both physically and mentally. Velocity often goes up in spite of the fatigue and there is cost.

Blanco’s 105 pitch no-hitter was nothing like that. Forget the pitch count, or the time of the season. 105 pitches is not a big taxing number. Pitcher Abuse Point was built around the idea that 105 … no, re-arrange those numbers to 150 - one hundred fifty - pitches would cause fatigue, and remember that many in baseball argued against the very concept of it. Pitchers regular went close and beyond it in the 1990’s and into the 2000’s, before “100 pitches” somehow got locked in.

I hate that the pitch Blanco dominated with is called a sinker. The down and in run to a right hander would be a damn good slider if it moved the opposite way. It’s our nomenclature that makes people think a sinker sinks - or goes down, when in fact, this is darn near a great screwball. Blanco isn’t young, isn’t a great prospect, but he’s the kind of pitcher with one great pitch that can show just how far it can go on one night. When he’s on, he’s that good. At worst, he can keep a team in the running until a Justin Verlander is healthy again.

There’s no reason Blanco should need extra rest. While his spring training work didn’t suggest this, it was fine. 18 K’s, 4 walks in 4 starts gets him this chance. He was built up in the same way the other starters were and Blanco’s in there in place of someone like Justin Verlander because he was and Verlander wasn’t, at least in the workload sense. I don’t think we have to keep “100” as some holy number that cannot be surpassed, as long as the chronic workload was built properly.

Few will remember Smith had two other no-hitters, albeit minor league ones and 7-inning jobs. Taking nothing away, Smith was a top prospect - he ranked ahead of Albert Pujols in Baseball America’s rankings - and while young pitchers are always fragile, he was as good as any other top pitching prospect of that era. Smith didn’t immediately lose it. He pitched for the Cards in 2002 and the minors until 2005. He even pitched in the Indy’s for another couple seasons. Finding someone named “Bud Smith” on Google is a near impossibility, but I’m very curious where he is. Regardless, my guess is that Ronel Blanco would take that fate along with his no-hitter.

MOOKIE BETTS, IF LAD (no injury)

From Joe Sheehan’s newsletter: “Gavin Lux is platooning with Miguel Rojas, with Mookie Betts playing shortstop or second base accordingly. You have to love Betts’s willingness to do just about anything he’s asked to do, but is this really the best way to use a Hall of Famer and potential MVP? Does constantly changing positions increase injury risk?”

The answer is no, not in any significant or measurable way. There’s risk in a new position, where a player gets used to it and the things around him - players, walls - and there’s some slight increase on that for road games. Play a player out of position and you see this, especially left and right field. Betts isn’t really doing that. Without digging through rosters, my guess is that Betts is going to play with similar lineups dictated by platoons when he’s in so there’s some familiarity. There’s not a notable contingent of new guys to learn/train and no notable language barrier.

My guess is that these rosters aren’t as simple as just platoons either. The Dodgers and their consultants are looking for any advantage and one thing I know they’re doing is range charting. Basically, we can position seven players across a bunch of acreage, with the no-shift rule limiting it slightly. From any starting position, we know how far someone has gone in any direction and can model how far they could go. Players aren’t standing out there at random. Given this, the Dodgers likely know what plays Betts is most likely to be injured on. I haven’t seen yet how they might be mitigating this, but I’m watching for it.

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