Kuzul

Got your graduation gifts all purchased? That time of year again….

1. Big Apples, Monuments and The Millennial Men

They are both 23, and each will play an enormous role as the summer heats up and the Washington Nationals and New York Mets duel in the National League East.

One is as flamboyant as a pink flamingo in the front yard, as ostentatious as a Porsche in the driveway. Yeah, you know all about Bryce Harper, who came in as one of the hottest prospects in the history of Major League Baseball and put his stamp on the NL MVP award last summer.

The other? As nondescript as a welcome mat at the front door, as plain Jane as a sprinkler watering the lawn. But know this: Despite the fact that his batting average dipped during the month of May, the Mets have gone 22-12 in 34 games in which Michael Conforto has batted either third or fourth in the lineup.

Yeah, Conforto. Oregon State kid. First-round pick in 2014. The Mets got him 10th overall. Spotted Harper a huge head start into the majors: Bryce debuted at 19, of course, in 2012. Conforto didn’t land in New York until last summer, though he zoomed all the way up from Class A St. Lucie in just four months.

Then, Conforto did something Harper still hasn’t done: stepped to the plate in a World Series game.

In fact, Conforto started all five games of the Mets’ Fall Classic loss to Kansas City last October.

Yes, they both are 23, and though the natural comparison/rival for Harper has always been the Los Angeles Angels’ Mike Trout, Conforto is Harper’s intradivisional peer, and won’t it be a blast watching these guys jockey for position in what might become the most thrilling race in baseball this summer?

The three hole is where Mets manager Terry Collins and his staff envisioned Conforto would end up all along in the Mets lineup, though when they moved him there for good on April 15 at Cleveland, with Yoenis Cespedes hitting behind him, nobody knew then how it would solidify things.

“We talked about it in spring training,” Collins tells B/R. “We thought down the road, this guy’s going to be a three-hole hitter. Then when we looked at it early in the year we thought, ‘You know what? This guy is swinging the bat good right now, let’s put him in that spot and see how it goes.’

“And it’s paid off.”

Funny how “down the road” during spring training can suddenly translate into two or three weeks.

“It might have even been next year,” Collins says. “We just thought, this kid’s a good hitter and he’s going to produce runs. And we just said one of these days he’s going to be a three-hole hitter.

“We didn’t know if it was going to be this year, next year or two years from now. I just thought he’s going to be a guy with a high ceiling offensively, so we just took a shot.”

Despite hitting .169/.242/.349 in the month of May, Conforto, who swings lefty, is still hitting .261/.339/.503 overall with eight homers and 24 RBI.

Of Conforto’s 17 career home runs, 10 have either given the Mets the lead or tied the game (eight go-ahead, two game-tying). And for those of you who are Sabermetrically inclined, through Monday, Conforto had a well-hit average of .275 against right-handers, fourth-highest in the majors.

“He has the ability to drive the ball to all fields; he has power. And the good thing with this team is…it wasn’t like, ‘Isn’t so-and-so supposed to hit there?'” Mets outfielder Curtis Granderson says.

As Granderson notes, that’s the “cool thing” about the Mets: They have the ability to move guys around, which helps lessen the pressure on any one individual.

Tell Harper about it. Nobody in the game is under more pressure than him each night, given who he is and what he’s capable of. When he went 11 consecutive games in May without homering, let’s just say it was the loudest silent streak anybody has had in the majors this season.   

During that streak, from May 14-26, Harper was 4-for-33 with 11 walks. Overall this season, he’s still not exactly tearing it up, hitting .242/.415/.535 with 13 homers and 34 RBI.

Conforto is no Harper. Though he is capable of carrying the Mets on his back for a couple of games, he’s certainly not going to do so all summer. Nor is he expected to. But with Cespedes hitting behind him, he is one of New York’s keys, especially with David Wright facing another trip to the disabled list (herniated disk in his neck) and Matt Harvey’s struggles (through Monday, at least). Cespedes and Neil Walker can’t do it all themselves.

Conforto hit third in the lineup throughout high school, college and the minor leagues.

“It’s been my spot,” he says. “It’s where I want to be. But I felt it was something I needed to earn. I wasn’t going to have it right away.

“I still have to earn it.”

Part of that is hitting left-handers better: Against them in 2016, through Tuesday, he was hitting .118/.143/.118. As such, it was no coincidence that Collins gave him a day off Sunday, when the Mets faced Los Angeles Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw.

After Conforto hit .365/.442/.676 overall in April, rival pitchers spent much of May searching for holes in his swing. What he noticed was a steady diet of breaking balls and sliders, with a few changeups thrown in.

“When I first got there, it was clear I was getting an extra fastball a game, or a pitch that they would have buried in the dirt before, they weren’t,” Conforto says of the move to third from lower in the order.

No small part of that, of course, was that pitchers wanted to take their chances with him rather than with the big bopper hitting next, Cespedes.

So now, for both his sake and that of the Mets, it’s time for Conforto to again start turning some of those sliders and breaking balls around, a lot more frequently than he has of late.

“You’ve always got to be cognizant of what they’re trying to do,” he says.

And if he happens to chat with Harper behind the cage during batting practice one of these days when the Mets and Nationals next meet later this month, the Washington megastar undoubtedly will tell him, “Yes, you do.”

2. Messing With the Strike Zone

Look out, the MLB Competition Committee is at it again, and the resulting changes could mean a remapped strike zone and the extinction of the good old-fashioned four-pitch intentional walk.

The first idea is questionable at best.

The second idea stinks.

Where the strike zone is concerned, the competition committee agreed on a motion to raise the bottom part of the strike zone from below the knees to above the knees. Given that almost 30 percent of at-bats are ending in a strikeout or walk this season (and that’s not even when Kershaw is pitching; see next item), it is worth discussing ways to lessen the dead time in games and put more balls in play.

The problem is beware the laws of unintended consequences: If the strike zone is raised, many players and managers think all it will do is turn some of the strikeouts into walks, not help hitters put more balls in play.

Why? Because it is far easier for a hitter to drop the bat head down on a 95 mph fastball than it is for him to get around on a higher fastball. So, in theory, this change could cause hitters to stop attempting to swing at the low fastball, figuring it will be called a ball.

So now you may not be doing anything but ladling more walks into games.

Nothing will change until approved by the playing rules committee. So while we continue to mull the strike zone, here’s hoping that committee quickly shoots down the idea of abolishing the four-pitch intentional walk.

Look, pace of game is an issue, no question, with games this season averaging just over three hours, per Baseball Prospectus. But a manager holding up four fingers instead of a pitcher lobbing four balls? Saves maybe 20 seconds, tops.

And it completely eliminates a part of the game that requires execution. There are times when a pitcher tosses a wild pitch…or leaves an intentional ball too close to the plate and the hitter reaches out and swats it.

Eliminate the four-pitch intentional walk, and you’ll deprive people of entertaining (and potentially game-changing) moments like this:

3. Clayton Kershaw’s Dead Time

That 30 percent of at-bats in today’s game ending without the hitter putting the ball in play?

That’s low when Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw pitches.

When he’s on the mound, a whopping 36 percent of at-bats end without the ball being put into play.

Following his last start, Sunday night against the Mets, Kershaw entered this week with the astounding strikeout-to-walk ratio of 21-1. He had 105 whiffs against just five walks. He also had hit one of his 309 batters faced.

4. The Life and Times of Yankees Pitching

The New York Yankees optioned young prospect Luis Severino to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre on Monday, another significant move for a club stuck carefully juggling starting pitchers as if they were knives.

Severino was viewed as a potential savior this spring after going 5-3 with a 2.89 ERA in 11 stretch-run starts last summer. This year, he is 0-6 with a 7.46 ERA.

With him gone, all eyes turn to the enigmatic Michael Pineda, who next starts Thursday in Detroit. Into that start in the Motor City, among qualifiers, Pineda ranks last (52nd) in the AL in ERA (6.92) and second-to-last (51st) in opponents’ batting average (.322).

But just when things look bleak for the Bronx Bombers, check this out from Sunday’s game against Tampa Bay, started by Nathan Eovaldi and then turned over to bullpen stars Dellin Betances, Andrew Miller and Aroldis Chapman, as Inside Edge noted:

That’s some serious cheese right there. Wow.

5. Cheating With the Dodgers Outfielders

More than once this season, alert fans have posted brief videos or photos on Twitter showing a Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder dipping into his pocket and checking what looks like a cell phone:

What gives? Have we finally reached the point where even players cannot go half an inning without checking for messages?

Are there pressing dinner reservations? Social arrangements for tonight that cannot wait until after the game? What?

Well, none of the above, it turns out. Rather, Dodgers outfielders now take their positions with cheat sheets for their intricate shifting patterns. There is so much information to remember for each hitter that sometimes a guy like Howie Kendrick needs to fish some of that information out of his pocket to see where to station himself because he can’t remember it.

In fact, according to Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports, the Mets complained to MLB officials last Friday after learning that Los Angeles intended to mark prearranged defensive positions on the CitiField grass. The Dodgers now use a laser rangefinder before games to determine certain fielding positions. Were they to use it in-game, it would be a violation of rules.

Stay tuned.

6. Weekly Power Rankings

1. Memorial Day: Finally, summer (unofficially) begins. Put those cheeseburgers on the grill and cue up some Jimmy Buffett.

2. Matt Harvey: Not only did he fire seven shutout innings against the Chicago White Sox on Monday, he even spoke with reporters afterward. Maybe he’s not washed up, after all.

3. Indianapolis 500: Other than a hand-scooped milkshake, the best reason to drink milk.

4. Golden State Warriors: Did you see those pregame aerial shots of the Oakland Athletics’ home field? You couldn’t even see any leaking sewage. That’s how impressive Stephen Curry is.

5. Julio Urias: Dodgers wunderkind debuts at age 19 on Friday but is dispatched back to Triple-A Oklahoma City in time for Saturday’s Thunder-Warriors Game 6. I know they say teenagers have short attention spans, but, man, that was quick.

7. Bat Flip This

Et tu, Mickey Mantle? Wonder how Goose Gossage would frame this!

8. Chatter

• The Miami Marlins are thrilled with some of the things Barry Bonds is doing as hitting coach, most notably in reaching outfielder Marcell Ozuna. Things between the Marlins and Ozuna haven’t always been copacetic, but that’s changed this summer. Ozuna’s on-base streak reached 36 consecutive games, longest in the majors this season, before finally ending Monday. “It meant a lot because it meant that I maintained my swing and showed a lot of patience at the plate,” Ozuna, 25, told Miami reporters (via MLB.com). “Now it’s a matter of maintaining that and moving forward.”

• Look out for the Pittsburgh Pirates: They’ve won 11 of 16 to shave the deficit between them and the first-place Chicago Cubs from a season-high nine games on May 14 to 6.5 through Tuesday’s games. We knew Pittsburgh had one of the game’s best outfields in Andrew McCutchen, Starling Marte and Gregory Polanco, and the trio is hot: Pittsburgh outfielders lead the majors in batting average (.301) and extra-base hits (72) and rank second in on-base percentage (.371), slugging percentage (.500) and OPS (.871).

• Good move by the New York Mets to acquire James Loney, who was languishing in El Paso, San Diego’s Triple-A affiliate. He’s a perfect place-holder for the injured Lucas Duda. Loney, 32, was hitting .342 with a .373 on-base percentage. A scout who saw him last week praised his offensive work and noted that his defense was Gold Glove-caliber.

• No question, sources tell Bleacher Report, the San Diego Padres absolutely would love to trade right-hander James Shields and unload a contract that pays him $21 million this year, $21 million in 2017 and another $21 million in 2018 with a $16 million club option or a $2 million buyout in 2019. Shields has an opt-out option after this season, which could discourage potential trade partners.

• The Chicago White Sox are among the teams talking Shields with San Diego, sources say. The Sox could use an upgrade in their rotation over Mat Latos, who started 4-0 with a 0.74 ERA but is 2-1 with a 7.21 ERA since, and Miguel Gonzalez.

• Of course, after their weekend series with Kansas City, the White Sox look like they could use some bullpen reinforcements, too. They blew a 7-1 ninth-inning lead on Saturday, one of three staggering bullpen losses, and their relievers combined to surrender 17 runs, 15 hits and eight walks over 6.1 innings to Kansas City in the three days. Ouch. And that was only the start of a 10-game trip to KC, New York (Mets) and Detroit.

• One of the issues with Tim Lincecum, says a scout who was at his showcase in Scottsdale, Arizona, a couple of weeks ago, is that his stride toward the plate has shortened significantly. That is likely a result of his hip procedure, which is a contributing factor as to why his fastball no longer sizzles. There was little interest in Lincecum after the showcase, except from the injury-depleted Los Angeles Angels of Our Rotation Is Broken. Lincecum is next scheduled to start for Triple-A Salt Lake at Tacoma on Thursday and, if all goes well, is expected to join the Angels in 10 or so days.

• Great news, Hall of Fame broadcaster Marty Brennaman confirming that he will return to Cincinnati’s booth in 2017.

• Here’s why it is imperative the Cleveland Indians get their pitching sorted out. Through Tuesday, Cleveland had played 50 games—tied for fewest in the majors with the Baltimore Orioles, Cubs and Rays—yet scored 238 runs, fourth-most in the American League. There’s an opportunity here…if manager Terry Francona can get all the pieces moving in the same direction.

• Speaking of the Indians, it still could not be more fitting that a slugging designated hitter named Carlos Santana plays in the city that houses the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame museum.

• Thursday’s Arizona-Houston match features two of the most disappointing starting pitchers in the land: the Diamondbacks’ Zack Greinke, whose 4.71 ERA ranks 78th in the majors (you sure couldn’t tell by that $206 million contract) against the Astros’ Dallas Keuchel, whose 5.58 ERA ranks 97th (nowhere near last season’s Cy Young form).

9. Andrew Miller IS Going to Throw the Slider

The New York Yankees’ ace setup man, into last weekend, per Inside Edge:

9a. Rock ‘n’ Roll Lyric of the Week

Paul Simon’s new record, Stranger to Stranger, drops June 3, and the man who gave us the immortal line “Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you” goes back to baseball again with a song called “Cool Papa Bell.” Hall of Famer Satchel Paige once said, in one of the greatest quips in the history of baseball, that Bell was so fast that he could click off the light and jump in bed and be under the covers before the room got dark.

“Have you all heard the news?

“‘Heaven finally found!’

“OK, it’s six trillion light-years away

“But we’re all gonna get there someday

“Yes, we’re all gonna get there one day

“But, but not you!

“You stay and explain the suffering

“And the pain you caused

“The thrill you feel when evil dreams come true

“Check out my tattoo!

“It says ‘wall-to-wall fun’

“Does everyone know everyone

“Mr. wall-to-wall fun

“We got the well, well, well

“And Cool Papa Bell

“The fastest man on Earth did dwell as

“Cool Papa Bell”

— Paul Simon, “Cool Papa Bell”

Scott Miller covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.

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