Under The Knife 8/6/25

Oh you want a SPEEDWAY Classic?

They called it the Speedway Classic and despite a rain delay that soaked the Saturday night version and turned outfield warning tracks into soft clay slip-n-slides, it worked. Not just worked, it landed. The made-for-TV spectacle of a baseball game inside Bristol Motor Speedway looked like something from a lost MLB Slugfest cheat code and that’s exactly why it resonated. A ballpark inside a NASCAR track? It was ridiculous and it was brilliant. It was the kind of thing you talk about a week before and keep sharing pictures of for a week after. Not because it’s the best baseball, but because it’s baseball unafraid to be a little weird, a little wild, and made to be seen. No one really remembers the game. Maybe the highlights, but the feel? Yes.

It helps that Bristol has the right shape. A tight bowl. Stacked seats. Banked turns that feel more like “the last Colisseum” than a raceway. It helps that FOX now sits under the same corporate roof as IndyCar, which makes the rumors of what’s next feel a lot less like whispers and a lot more like soft pitches up in the zone. So let’s talk about it. Because the only thing bigger than the idea of baseball at a race track … is doing it at The Track.

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway is too big for metaphor. You don’t say it’s “as big as Yankee Stadium.” You say, “You could fit Yankee Stadium inside it. Along with the White House, Churchill Downs, the Roman Colosseum, and a couple of aircraft carriers just for fun.” Here’s the catch: for all that space, most of the seats are nowhere near where the action would be. The oval is two and a half miles around. You could build ten full-size MLB ballparks in the infield and still have room for the world’s biggest lazy river (which suddenly sounds really cool.) But if you’re sitting in turn one? You’re nearly a mile - literally - from turn three. A home run might still be traveling by the time the echo reaches the cheap seats.

So if you’re actually going to do it - if FOX and IndyCar and MLB decide to go for it -they have to make choices. Turn one is a no-go: too many buildings, including the Speedway’s museum and some crucial infrastructure. Turn two’s got a golf course. Not a country club offsite but four holes of the championship caliber course come in the infield down the backstretch. Turn three? That space is taken too, already housing the 5/8-mile dirt oval used for an annual midget pilgrimage. (The cars!) Which leaves us one obvious, oddly perfect choice.

Turn four.

The sweep of turn four is the most spacious part of the infield - VATICAN CITY! - that doesn’t already have a structure or a tradition built into it. Snake Pit? It was turn one traditionally and the DJ fest it’s turned into is kind of the north chute. It overlays a chunk of the lesser-used road course, meaning you’re not bulldozing anything or even covering something sacred. It offers a long, clear stretch leading toward the front straight, which could function like a deep outfield - longer than long, pushing center field past the 500 mark if you let it. Put the clubhouses in the pits, the bullpens on the bricks, and drive relievers in with a Vette, not a cart. In the picture below, you’ll see a small yellow line in Turn Four — that’s 550 feet, so imagine that as the home to center line with the sweep of the straight in left center down to the Pagoda and pits. You can see how even this big park gets dwarfed.

Build it there. Use the existing seats in turn four and bleed into the front stretch grandstands. Erect temporary lower-deck bleachers inside the oval, just like Bristol did. Put fans between the racetrack and the field, maybe even let the curve of the turn become part of the outfield fence, echoing the bizarre geometry of the Polo Grounds or Griffith Stadium. Baseball’s past is littered with asymmetric, unthinkably deep parks. Bring that weird back. Make it massive. Make it mythic. If St Peters’ fits, imagine what kind of park you could build with some imagination and a ton of Murdoch money. Both? No, that would be crazy.

In raw seating terms, you could reasonably use about 40,000 of the Speedway’s permanent seats around turn four and the front straight. Add another 20,000–25,000 in temporary lower-deck stands - wrap them tight around the infield and the first few rows of foul territory - and you’re approaching a 75,000-seat setup with zero bad views. MLB was willing to have “obstructed views” at Bristol, so don’t tell me we couldn’t have more people, especially if we have a dirt car race at the same time, also inside the track!

Make the scale of the field so large that it dwarfs the seats. A 550-foot center field and an echoing expanse of space between batter’s eye and grandstand. Force hitters to earn it. Make inside-the-park homers possible. You want a made-for-TV event? Show something that can’t be seen anywhere else. Go massive. No, bigger.

Would it be perfect? Not even close. But baseball wasn’t meant to be perfect. It was meant to be a little romantic, a little strange, and sometimes, a little impossible. A ballpark inside the Indianapolis Motor Speedway would be all three and then some. Not just a stunt, but a statement: that baseball still has room to surprise us, even in the biggest venue we’ve ever built. 100k, a Penske first pitch, and John Smoltz’s head exploding at 400 feet to the corners? Yeah, sign me up.

Now, on to the injuries:

AARON JUDGE, DH NYY (strained forearm)

The easy stat is that the Yankees are scoring 4.9 runs per game without Aaron Judge, as opposed to 5.2 runs with him. Small sample size warning and let’s have some damn sense as well. The Yankees are better with the guy who’s the likely MVP, again, than they are without him. He can have an 0-3 day, as he did in his first game back, and be limited to DH, creating roster problems, and Stevie Wonder can see that the team is better. Let’s not debate that, but look at the issues the Yankees and Judge have now.

First, that roster issue is tough. One game is nothing - two hits against a dominant Nathan Eovaldi and the two came from the 8 and 9 hitters. But look - Trent Grisham in CF and Codey Bellinger in RF may be better defensively than other options, but not better. Giancarlo Stanton in the on deck circle as the game ends, with no chance to insert in a high leverage situation is part situation (and Eovaldi) and part the kind of thing that Aaron Boone is going to have to explain to his team and his owner. This isn’t the knee-jerk days of George Steinbrenner, but Boone’s had his detractors since Day One and playing this wrong could turn the players or the front office against him.

Second, we don’t yet have any indication about what Judge can actually do. Eovaldi was on, 0-fers happen, and until we get to … I don’t know, a number of games we’re dealing with small sample. I’d like to see Judge connect with a ball and see things like bat speed and exit velocity, even if it’s not fair or a hit, which does give us an advantage. Whispers that Judge can hit off a Trajekt are nice, but pics or it didn’t happen as far as I’m concerned. Time will tell on this one, and quicker than you’d think. That flexor strain is more concerning for the things that affect a hitter than most are letting on now, so I’m on record.

Austin Slater goes to the IL with a hamstring strain and is likely to be the counterweight move for Judge. It makes sense on a lot of levels but one FOT asked me who would be the immediate replacement if Judge were to need to be pulled. It’s Stanton in most situations, though Boone could juggle someone like Jazz Chisholm who’s played the outfield. Again, this is very thin ice for Boone and risky for a Yankees team that seems playoff or bust, but I’m not sure who busts if they miss.

GRAYSON RODRIGUEZ, SP BAL (inflamed elbow)

Grayson Rodriguez hasn’t had the season anyone expected and neither have the Orioles. Amid underperformance, an ownership group that doesn’t seem to have a plan, and some infighting that led to Brandon Hyde’s exit, there have also been injuries. While it’s hard to call Rodriguez’s a surprise given his history, the Orioles overall have always had very good stats for injury prevention and management.

Rodriguez’s ‘25 is over, after the announcement he’ll have an elbow debridement. This is a simple cleanup procedure but it could be a lot of things done. There could be chips, some articular surfaces that need cleaned up, some loose bodies that act as irritants and can grind, and there could be some scar tissue in there. The whole key will be not just washing and grinding that out, but seeing why. Is the UCL intact will be one question and the surgeon will actually look with his scope.

The second is the why - why all the damage inside? The usual answer is that the elbow is slamming shut, with the two bones hitting each other at the end of the motion. Pitching is fast enough to hyperextend, but if the tip of the elbow is banging like a door against a stopper, nothing good is going to happen in the long term. There’s debate as to what to do next. Surgeons say some of it is anatomical, some is biomechanical, and some is both. There are tools to access this now, rather than just guessing and one would assume that the O’s are using all of these on Rodriguez and all their pitchers, though none of my sources would confirm.

The normal timeframe on this would have Rodriguez throwing again in about 8 weeks and back pitching in 3-4 months. That time frame means he won’t have a “normal” off-season, if such a thing exists any more, but that he should be ready for spring training. Seeing him start up late would be a very negative first indication, even if the O’s say they’re just being conservative. Rodriguez is still just age-25 but a cautious, conservative approach to his issues hasn’t made him any healthier. Time for Plan B. Or C. Or whatever we’re on now.

There’s a lot more today below the paywall, including a parade of rehab starts around the minors, a big Cardinals injury, and one of the longest Quick Cuts ever.