The Windup Newsletter ⚾ | This is The Athletic’s daily MLB newsletter. Sign up here to receive The Windup directly to your inbox.
Gunnar Henderson is on his way to making history. Plus: Ken talks the Blue Jays, Sam Blum has an exclusive interview with Eric Kay, and part four of Missing Bats tells us what happens when the bill arrives. Levi Weaverattach Ken RosenthalWelcome to The Windup!
History? We need to talk about Gunnar Henderson
Here is a list of all shortstops (at least 50 percent of games played at that position) who hit 50 home runs in a season:
In fact, the list of 40-homer shortstop seasons is just 13. Only two of them, Fernando Tatis Jr. (42 in 2021) and Rico Petrocelli (40 in 1969), were by anyone other than Rodriguez or Ernie Banks.
It seems unlikely that that phrase will remain true for long. Gunnar Henderson hit his 26th homer of the year last night in a 4-2 win over the Guardians. No other shortstop is over 14.
Given that the Orioles played their 80th game of the season last night, it’s pretty easy to make a projection that they’re “on track to reach” the record. Even if he rests tonight, Henderson will be on pace to reach history: .282/.383/.607 (.989 OPS), 52 homers, 32 doubles, eight triples, 140 runs and 110 RBIs.
If you value the concept of Wins Above Replacement, here’s some context: Rodriguez’s 2002 season was worth just 8.8 bWAR, since, uh, everyone was hitting more home runs at the time (wink, wink). Rodríguez’s best season in bWAR was 2000 (10.4). Banks peaked at 10.2 bWAR in 1959.
The record? 11.5, established by Honus Wagner in 1908 and tied by Cal Ripken Jr. in 1991.
Henderson is on pace for 11.8. Last year, Henderson won the American League Rookie of the Year and the Silver Slugger award. He may have the best season by a shortstop in baseball history.
Ken’s Notebook: The Looming Question for the Blue Jays
Back in December, during the Blue Jays’ surprising pursuit of Shohei Ohtani and Juan Soto, we posed the question: What has Toronto gotten into?
Six months later, with Ohtani gone, Soto gone and a 14 1/2-game deficit in the AL East, the question is, “What now?”
- The Jays seem like safe sellers, but they will almost certainly wait as long as possible to choose a direction.
- The Astros, Mets, Cardinals and Red Sox are among the teams that have seemingly turned around their seasons. Jays management, operating with a record $225 million payroll, wants to give their underperforming roster every opportunity to do the same.
At the moment, such a reversal is hard to imagine. The Blue Jays entered Wednesday ranked 22nd in the majors in ERA and 26th in runs per game. And it’s not that they were unlucky. Their projected win-loss record, based on run differential, was actually a game worse than their actual 36-43 mark.
So if the “What now?” question isn’t appropriate yet, it soon will be as the deadline to make changes is five weeks away. And if the Jays end up selling, the questions will multiply. Which players will they get rid of? How quickly will they be able to restructure? And what will the concession of failure mean for the future of team president Mark Shapiro and general manager Ross Atkins?
Last October, after Jose Berrios’ controversial removal from a shutout in the fourth inning of an elimination game, Shapiro defended Atkins, telling reporters: “In evaluating, you’re not evaluating a series or even a season, and in the case of Ross, the body of my work is undeniable.”
Shapiro also said: “We need to get better. Ross needs to improve, but he has done a good job and put us in a good position next year to be a very good team.” Well, the biggest acquisitions of the offseason without Ohtani and Soto were infielder Isiah Kiner-Falefa and designated hitter Justin Turner. And free agent departures included third baseman Matt Chapman and right-hander Jordan Hicks.
The Jays were coming off their third playoff appearance in four years under Shapiro and Atkins, who arrived in 2015. Their tenure has included a number of blockbuster moves, including trades for Berrios, Chapman and Robbie Ray and the signings of Kevin Gausman, Chris Bassitt and Yusei Kikuchi. But their overcorrection for defense after the 2022 season, when they parted ways with veteran outfielders Teoscar Hernandez and Lourdes Gurriel Jr. along with young catcher Gabriel Moreno, continues to haunt this team.
Exclusive: Eric Kay speaks
It would be easy (maybe lazy is a better word) to fall back on easy platitudes when writing about Sam Blum’s exclusive interview with former Los Angeles Angels communications director Eric Kay. Kay is in prison, serving a 22-year sentence for his role in the 2019 drug overdose death of Angels pitcher Tyler Skaggs.
But nothing in this story is easy.
- On the one hand, yes: Kay’s actions were indefensible. A team employee providing opioids to players is about as reckless as it gets, not just in a high-profile job but also with the human beings he interacts with on a daily basis.
- On the other hand, Kay was an addict and Blum highlights some aspects of the trial that appear to have been very poorly handled by his lawyers. Kay has three children and 22 years is an incomprehensible amount of time to be apart.
- On the other hand, for the Skaggs family, that period of time is forever.
- Fourth: Skaggs’ death can never be reversed. Kay is still alive; Does justice really require mutual destruction or is there a better bad outcome?
It doesn’t take long to veer into much larger, critical conversations about justice, rehabilitation, and incarceration as a whole. It is an important topic in sports journalism that requires deeper reflection on how the world works.
So the only opinion I’m willing to offer is this: I think Sam Blum is one of the best sportswriters in the world. It’s not easy, but it’s worth your time.
Missing bats: the price of gas
If you missed Parts 1-3 of our Missing Bats project, you can catch up on them here and learn how we got from “the good old days” to where we are now (there’s a podcast, too!) in Part 4 today: In a change of tone, as Stephen Nesbitt examines the cost of all this progress: pitching injuries have more than doubled since 2010.
There are many theories as to why, but Nesbitt delves into a few specific ones:
- If strikeouts are the most foolproof way to avoid runs, of course training and data will be geared toward swing and miss. Unfortunately, the best way to do this seems to be to hit each pitch as hard as possible and with as much spin as the human body can generate. Both things require maximum effort and, surprise, The greater the effort, the greater the injuries.
- For pitchers, it’s a choice handed down by a malevolent genie: I can give you 10 years of health, but you never make it past Double A, or I can give you Major League material, but you can blow off your arm once or twice. twice. Warning: If you’re on the Major League roster when you get hurt, you still get paid at least the league minimum ($740,000 a year) and earn service time. Simply put, for athletes who have sacrificed everything else for this dream, it’s a risk they’re willing to take.
- Similarly (and perhaps a bit cynically), for budget-conscious baseball teams, which investment makes the most fiscal sense? An endless stream of short-lived pitchers who reach their peak effectiveness during their pre-arbitration and arbitration years? Or players who could burn through a decade of years as free agents, but with middling effectiveness and diminished strength?
I don’t mean to say that headquarters don’t care about the human cost of staff turnover; by all indications, they do. But as high-level training becomes more widely available, it’s at least worth noting that The arms crisis is due to prioritizing success over longevity, not finances.
I can almost imagine the innovators we covered in Parts 1-3 looking out over a baseball field, pondering “changing the game forever” with a blank stare while muttering “I think we did it.”
Handshakes and high fives
Subscribe to our other newsletters: The pulse | Athletic FC
️ | The rebound
| Full time
| Premium quality tire
| First city
| To Saturday
(Photo: Nathan Ray Seebeck / USA Today)
Keynote USA
For the Latest Sports News, Follow Keynote USA Sports on Twitter.