Generation MLB: The new kids are taking over the block
Today's young stars are thrilling traditionalists and statheads alike.
Baseball knows the All-Star Game isn’t what it used to be.
It has folded its free-agent draft into All-Star weekend. It has a Futures Game to show off its minor league stars. For years it has staged a Home Run Derby, although it threatens to deteriorate like the NBA’s Slam Dunk has.
The American Leaguers used to be National Leaguers and vice versa. League president Warren Giles doesn’t come to the clubhouse and cajole the N.L. to impose its will, primarily because there are no league presidents. There’s no Carl Hubbell to strike out five consecutive surefire Hall of Fames, there’s no Pedro Martinez to provide the five-strikeout, two-inning coda to Ted Williams’ last Fenway Park ride. Today’s starting pitcher also works one inning and that’s it. And today’s Ray Fosse would be safe from today’s Pete Rose.
Still, the other sports have no idea what to do with their midseason rituals. The NBA’s game has lapsed into 3-point practice. The NHL has an interdivisional tournament that remains indecipherable even to those who know the divisions. The Pro Bowl is basically the company picnic. Baseball’s All-Star Game and its Hall of Fame inductions are the ones that matter most, to the extent they matter at all. Both are happening in the same week.
You might be forgiven for assuming that baseball has disappeared into a dumpster of algorithms and exponents, especially if you listen to the ESPN chatterers who would measure the spin rate of a garlic fry. But all of that is sausage-making, irrelevant to the enjoyment of what these players do on an everyday basis. It has maybe numbed the game a bit, but it hasn’t ruined it.
Sure, we’d all like to see the starters pitch more innings, and we get nostalgic for a good old-fashioned Lou Piniella-style rhubarb, but instant replay gives us the proper outcomes, no matter how long it takes. As for pitcher perishability, the seeds of that are being grown in Travel Ball and Little League, and it will take a generation or so to reverse it.
Despite the comical prices of tickets, burgers and beers, people are parking at major league ballparks and going inside. Per-game attendance is up more than 2,000 per game over 2022, when we all finally awakened from Covid-19. Over half the teams have attendance increases this season. There is no reason for the Giants to pick up over 150,000 fans from this juncture last year, at least none that is visible on the field. Why would the Nationals be up nearly 157,000? It helps that game times are roughly a half-hour shorter than in 2022, that the National Passed-Time is now On Time. But if the game were as dull and drab as our sons and grandsons maintain, the turnstiles would be rusted by now.
What we’re seeing is an unusually strong cast of young players, at all levels. Here’s a possible lineup for those who were 24 for at least a part of this season:
1B: Mark Vientos, 24, Mets. He has 12 homers, 33 RBI, hits .291 with an .896 OPS.
2B: Bryce Turang, 24, Milwaukee. Has two errors in 87 games, hitting .277 with 38 RBIs, 30 steals and a .731 OPS.
SS: Bobby Witt Jr., 24, Kansas City. Leads the A.L. with 125 hits, hitting .323 with a .558 slugging percentage and 16 home runs.
3B: Gunnar Henderson, 23, Baltimore. Leads the A.L. with 78 runs, has 28 home runs and a .584 slugging percentage.
C: Francisco Alvarez, 22, Mets. Is hitting .296 with an .844 OPS.
OF: Jackson Merrill, 21, San Diego. Has 12 home runs and 46 RBI and is hitting .278
OF: Heliot Ramos, 24, San Francisco. Hitting .298 with an .888 OPS.
OF: Julio Rodriguez, 23, Seattle. Hitting .267 with 10 home runs but showing warmer signs. He was the A.L. Rookie of the Year in 2022.
DH: Riley Greene, 23, Detroit. Has 17 home runs and 50 RBI with an .866 OPS.
Witt and Henderson are both shortstops in real life. They are joined by Elly De La Cruz (220 of Cincinnati, Ezequiel Tovar (22) of Colorado, Anthony Volpe (23) of the Yankees and Zack Neto (23) of the Angels.
Other prominent reserves would be outfielder Collin Cowser (24) of Baltimore, catcher Logan O’Hoppe (24) of the Angels, outfielder Jarred Kelenic (24) of Atlanta, second baseman Luis Garcia (24) of Washington, outfielder and reigning Rookie of the Year Corbin Carroll (23) of Arizona, outfielder Wyatt Langford (22) of Texas, shortstop/outfielder Cedanne Rafaela (23) of Boston, shortstop Geraldo Perdomo (24) of Arizona, catcher Gabriel Moreno (24) of Arizona, and outfielder Jackson Chourio (19) of Milwaukee.
The rotation:
Paul Skenes, 22,Pittsburgh. Has a 6-0 record with a 1.00 ERA and has 13 walks and 89 strikeouts in his first 10 starts.
Grayson Rodriguez, 24, Baltimore. He’s 11-4, leading the A.L. in wins, with 112 strikeouts and 33 walks.
Jared Jones, 22, Pittsburgh. He’s 5-6 with a 3.56 ERA but has 98 strikeouts in 91 innings.
Hunter Greene, 24, Cincinnati. Much advertised, Greene has smoothed out the edges. He is 6-4 with a 3.34 ERA, and has given up 78 hits in 110 innings.
Taj Bradley, 23, Tampa Bay. He is 4-4 with a 2.90 ERA and a 1.112 WHIP.
Bryan Woo (24) of Seattle, Reese Olson (24) of Detroit, Ben Brown (24) of the Cubs, Mitchell Parker (24) of Washington, Spencer Schwellenbach (24) of Atlanta, Simeon Woods Richardson (24) of Minnesota are right behind them.
Or one of them could be the closer. Mason Miller, the neutron bomb for the Athletics who is likely to be a contending team’s closer in a few days, is 25. Without turning back his clock, the job could go to one of the second-tier starters or to Julian Martinez, the 22-year-old rookie from Arizona. There’s also Randy Rodriguez, 24, of the Giants.
Watching this crew attack September would be a fine backdrop for a pennant race….except we can’t have pennant races anymore. No matter how many knockdown-dragouts the Yankees and Orioles stage, there are two musical chairs in the A.L. East for two contenders. The Yanks and Orioles, one game apart, are both going to the postseason, and so are 10 other teams. Last year’s Diamondbacks won 84 regular-season games and still got to the World Series. That makes for a drab November, especially for TV ratings.
Maybe it’s better to look at a baseball regular-season as a marathon rock concert tour, appearing nightly in multiple venues. We don’t ask Keith Richards about his hand speed. We watch and rock along.
And we all can sit there and blink at the numbers and pretend that yesterday’s game was better. That is permitted, as long as we understand that, yesterday, somebody was pretending the same thing.
The Allstar Game used to be a wonderful summer tradition. It's mystique -- Mantle v. Mays, Aaron v. Killebrew -- was transfixing. You know what damaged it beyond repair: interleague play. Even more than free agency -- I mean, Pete Rose never played in the American League and Reggie Jackson was never in the NL -- requiring teams to play each other in the regular season diluted that mystique into, well, what we now have. The expansion of interleague play with the new scheduling is so horrific that division races no longer are decided by head-to-head play among divisional opponents. I'm old and way too traditional, and I love baseball as much as any child of the Mantle-Mays era. But I reduce my viewing of interleague games with my beloved Atlanta Braves to glimpses at the score and taped highlights. I am not part of the audience, because I don't like the script. And I think the diminishing of the Allstar Game lies at the feet of that issue.