Tag: AL East

David Ortiz Speaks on Steroids, Retirement, More in Sports Illustrated Interview

Boston Red Sox slugger David Ortiz, who is retiring after the 2016 season, spoke with Sports Illustrated‘s Tom Verducci about retiring, steroids, his approach to the game and more in a lengthy interview.

One of the topics discussed was why Ortiz, who is hitting .318 with 37 home runs and 124 RBI, would retire after a campaign where he’s a candidate to win the American League MVP. 

For Ortiz, his decision is about much more than his performance.

“Well, like everybody knows, I’ve been dealing with injuries the past four years,” he told Verducci. “Also, [I’m] not getting any younger, man. You look around, everybody’s 20 years old. Also, this traveling thing, it catches up with you.”

He added: “The reality is a lot of us give up on chasing things as we get older because our body, our mind, you know. … In my case, man, I want to be good. I want to continue being productive. My hitting coaches know that. I chase things still, knowing that I’m going to retire after this season. I’d like to give that to our fans.”

Certainly, Ortiz’s curtain call has been spectacular. The Red Sox are first in the AL East and a threat to win the World Series, and Ortiz is having one of his finest seasons. Even at 40, the passion to be great drives him.

“I work extremely hard on my hitting, man,” he said. “Like I’m a psycho when it comes down to hitting. Like I live for that. I always tell our younger hitters. … I mean, we sit down, batting practice, videos, stuff like that, and we just talk about it.”

That guidance has paid off. A number of Boston hitters are having enormous seasons:

But Verducci and Ortiz also talked about the biggest scandal of his career—the fact that, in 2009, he was named as one of the players to fail a 2003 drug-screening test. Those results were supposed to remain confidential but were leaked publicly, and Verducci asked Ortiz what he could do to convince people that he didn’t use steroids.

Ortiz said:

I don’t think I can do anything. A noise comes out, and do you think I’m just going to sit down and believe what somebody I don’t know comes off saying? That came out [in] 2009, [but it was] about 2003. [MLB’s] drug policies started in 2004. I never failed a test. I kept on banging. So, you know, the reality is that it’s a noise that I think was more damaging [to some players’ careers] than anything else, because a lot of guys that were pronounced [as having tested] positive for things or having been caught using things, their careers went away. Yet I am [here]. Let me tell you, there’s not one player in baseball, not one player, that has been drug-tested more than David Ortiz. I guarantee you that. I never failed a test.

Verducci then wondered why Ortiz, or any other player, wouldn’t have used banned substances if they saw other players doing so. Why wouldn’t Ortiz also want that edge? 

Because there’s one thing that I have been afraid of my whole life: chemicals. I don’t like to put chemicals in my body. I’m a happy person. I’m a person that believes in nature. I’m a person that believes in secondary effects when you start using things that you are not supposed to.

And it was something that never came to my attention. Yes, I used to go to GNC and buy supplements like everybody else. I mean, I’m an athlete. I’m a high-performing athlete. So it was legal to go to GNC. [Now] I don’t even know where GNC is, since they told us not to go to GNC to buy any supplement. Now we get [information] from our trainers so you don’t get caught in any kind of trouble.

Ortiz’s link to steroids, fair or not, may always remain a part of his legacy. So will the relatively slow start to his career. On the other hand, he has three World Series titles, 10 All-Star selections and his reputation as one of the most outgoing, friendly players in the game.

Many people will miss his presence. But Ortiz thinks baseball will be fine without him. In fact, he thinks the game is in a great place.

“Well, I don’t know how a lot of people are going to feel about what I’m going to say, but I think this game right now is at its best,” he noted. “Like I don’t think this game is going to get better, or used to be better than it is right now.”

We might say the same about Ortiz.

       

You can follow Timothy Rapp on Twitter

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Joaquin Benoit Injury: Updates on Blue Jays Pitcher’s Calf and Return

Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Joaquin Benoit suffered a leg injury attempting to join a bench-clearing brawl in Monday’s game against the New York Yankees.

Continue for updates.


Reliever Injured in Melee

Tuesday, Sept. 27

According to ESPN.com, Benoit suffered a torn left calf when he tripped while running in from the bullpen.

Bob Nightengale of USA Today reported the pitcher will miss at least the first round of the playoffs.

“It felt like something hit me,” Benoit said, according to ESPN.com. “I won’t be able to get on the mound anytime soon, so personally this is really disappointing.”

The incident occurred in the bottom of the second inning in Monday’s matchup, when Justin Smoak became the third player of the game hit by a pitch.

Toronto ended up losing the game 7-5, but the squad still remains in the first wild-card position as of Tuesday.

Before the injury, Benoit had been one of the hottest pitchers in baseball. Since coming over from the Seattle Mariners, the 39-year-old veteran has a 0.38 ERA, allowing just one earned run in 23.2 innings. He also has 10 holds and just one blown save in this stretch.

Roberto Osuna remains the team’s closer, but Jason Grilli and others will have to step up to solidify the bullpen in Benoit’s absence. 

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From a Fractured Skull to Baseball’s Best Closer: ‘It’s a Real Miracle’

Watching on television, through the eye of the center field camera, the pitch looks unhittable.

Standing at home plate, with a bat in your hands, it looks just about the same.

“A devastating pitch,” Tampa Bay Rays third baseman Evan Longoria said. “Really hard, and with tremendous sink. It looks straight until it gets to the plate, and then it goes down.”

Zach Britton throws it, game after game, pitch after pitch. Hitters pound it into the ground, or they just whiff. According to FanGraphs, their batting average against it was .154, the slugging percentage was .197, and nearly 30 percent of the time they swung, they missed, through Sept. 24.

The average velocity: 96.3 mph.

“It’s the best left-handed sinker I’ve ever seen,” said one American League scout with decades of experience watching thousands of pitches.

“He’s kind of like the modern-day Mariano Rivera,” Longoria said. “Basically just one pitch, but it’s a devastating pitch.”

The pitch—call it a turbo sinker or, in the words of Baltimore Orioles general manager Dan Duquette, “a sinker with a trap door on the way to the plate”—has helped turn Britton into baseball’s best closer.

Brandon Crow, Luke Elliott, Tommy Kimmerle and the other kids from the 2003 Canyon High freshman team watch and marvel. That’s their buddy, their onetime teammate. That’s the kid they remember from that awful day at Bouquet Canyon Park, lying on the ground, screaming in pain after he ran head-on into a light standard.

Even now, 13 years later, Crow can remember details from that day. Even now, Elliott says that day sticks in his mind more than anything else from his high school baseball career.

They remember the sound, the “thwack” as Britton collided with the standard. They remember the scene, the blood and the medics arriving to take Britton to the hospital.

They remember, and then they think of what that 15-year-old kid has become.

“It’s a real miracle, to be honest,” Crow said.

Britton is the one guy who barely remembers the details of that day in Santa Clarita, California. One minute he was chasing a fly ball, thinking he had a chance to catch it. The next thing he knew, he was in an ambulance, in pain.

Then he was in a hospital bed, with a fractured skull, a fractured right collarbone, a separated shoulder and a doctor telling his parents he had bleeding in his brain. If the swelling didn’t go away, they would need to drill a hole in his skull.

“That’s when I knew it was serious,” he said.


The freshman team at Canyon practiced at Bouquet Canyon Park, across town from the school. The varsity team got the main diamond, and the junior varsity squad had a park closer to campus.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was what they had, and they were freshmen and they weren’t going to complain. They’d grown up together, some playing in the Canyon Country Little League and others, such as Britton, playing in the nearby Hart Little League.

“I remember Zach pitching against us when we were eight or nine years old,” Crow said.

Britton was the best player on the Canyon freshman team, the Most Valuable Player when the team handed out postseason awards. But the team wasn’t winning its league, and on that late-spring day, coach Mike Newman decided to have a little fun.

Instead of a normal practice, the kids would play over-the-line, a baseball-like contest popularly played by kids on California streets. Newman divided the group into two teams, and the game began.

Britton played the outfield on days he didn’t pitch, and he was standing in the outfield that day when Crow was at the plate. Newman was pitching, and Crow swung and hit it foul down the left field line.

“Everyone else peeled off,” Crow said. “But Zach kept running. He wanted to get the ball.”

Crow and Britton‘s other Canyon teammates say that was just Zach. He went all-out after everything. He always had.

“My dad had me play Pop Warner football one year,” Britton said. “He thought maybe I’d get some of the energy out by hitting people on defense.”

The light standard was just off the main field, on a berm that several players described as looking like the center field hill at Houston‘s Minute Maid Park. And it wasn’t just any light standard. It was huge, like something you might see on the side of a freeway.

“One of those monster light standards,” Britton said.

The ball kept going, and Britton did, too.

“I was watching the ball, the pole and Zach all coming together,” Crow said.

As they reconstructed later what they had seen, some of the kids figured Britton might have lost his balance as he ran up the berm chasing the ball. They all remember hearing the sound, although some at first thought it was the ball hitting the light standard.

It wasn’t the ball.

Britton went into the standard with enough force to fracture his skull and collarbone. He’s still not sure exactly where he hit, because there’s no scar (and no memory).

He hit the post, and then he hit the ground. And then he tried to get up.

“He got up, and he went right back down,” Elliott said. “It went from ‘ooh’ to ‘oh, wow’ to ‘I hope he’s all right.'”

Some of the players went right to Britton, who was screaming and covered in blood. Any touch brought on louder screams. Other players went to an elementary school across the street in search of ice bags. The park medics came quickly, and so did Britton‘s mother, Martha.

“I remember thinking this is bad,” Elliott said.


The Britton family was well-known in the Canyon High School baseball community. Zach’s older brothers, Clay and Buck, were both starting players on the varsity team, Martha Britton was active in the booster club, and Greg Britton helped get the field ready for games.

“We knew Zach was going to be all that and more,” said Adam Schulhofer, the varsity coach. “He was the best athlete in the program.”

Schulhofer wasn’t at Bouquet Canyon Park, but when Zach was at Henry Mayo Hospital, he went to visit.

“I went and saw him, and he was flanked on both sides by his parents and brothers,” Schulhofer remembered. “It may have been a little tense at the time, but luckily it all worked out.”

It was more than just a little tense.

“It was really one of the worst days of our lives,” Greg Britton told Kevin Van Valkenburg of the Baltimore Sun for a 2011 story. “When we were in the hospital, the doctors showed us his scans, and he had a bubble on his brain about the size of a quarter. They told us: ‘If this doesn’t go down in a day or so, we’re going to have to drill through his skull to relieve the pressure. And if we do that, it may affect his motor skills.’

“At that point, you just drop to your knees and start praying.”

Zach still remembers the look on his parents’ faces as the doctor spoke. He remembers doctors testing his ability to speak and his sense of taste.

“I remember them giving me math stuff to do,” he said. “I was just like, ‘I’m not good at math, anyway.'”

He could tell his left from his right and knew he was fortunate the broken collarbone was on his right side. The collarbone remained sore for a full year, but because he threw left-handed, he was able to return to pitching later that year.

Britton returned to Canyon High before the school year ended. His arm was in a sling and his neck was in a brace, but by then, doctors were confident he had avoided any serious damage to his brain.

His teammates were thrilled to see him but couldn’t resist one question: “What were you thinking going after that ball?”

“I don’t know,” Britton told them.

He knew one thing. He was lucky it wasn’t worse.

“I got pretty fortunate,” Britton said. “It could have been something pretty serious.”


The journey from hospital room to the title of baseball’s best closer wasn’t always smooth, but the obstacles had little to do with the injuries Britton suffered that day at Bouquet Canyon Park.

He was back to playing baseball later that year after the family moved from California to Texas. He was a third-round draft pick three years later and a highly rated prospect who made the Opening Day rotation in 2011 with the Orioles.

He had already shown off the signature sinker, a pitch Britton stumbled on in 2007 in Aberdeen, Maryland, when coach Calvin Maduro was trying to teach him to throw a cutter. Instead of cutting, the ball sank.

“It was doing the opposite of what we wanted it to do,” Britton said. “He said, ‘OK, well just keep doing it.’ Over the years, I started doing a few different things, throwing it harder.”

It seems a little funny now. The closer Britton is compared to the most is Rivera, who made his career throwing basically one pitch—a cutter he said appeared when he wasn’t trying to throw one.

Like Rivera with the New York Yankees, Britton struggled to find consistency as a starter. He was sent back down to the minor leagues in July 2011, and while he spent parts of the next two seasons in the Baltimore rotation, he also found himself pitching in Double-A Bowie and Triple-A Norfolk in 2012, and at Norfolk again in 2013.

By the time the 2013 season ended, he was out of options and still without a guaranteed job. And just as spring training began, the Orioles spent $50 million on Ubaldo Jimenez, filling what had been the only open spot in the rotation.

But something else happened that winter, something that would have just as big an impact on Britton‘s career.

The Orioles hired Dave Wallace as their pitching coach and Dom Chiti as bullpen coach. Before their first spring training began, Wallace and Chiti flew to California to work with Britton and two other Orioles pitchers in person.

They had both watched Britton on video, and Chiti had seen him quite a few times in person while scouting for the Atlanta Braves. They met Britton at the baseball field at UC Irvine, and they brought along their ideas.

“It was let’s just go back to being simple again [with the delivery],” Britton said. “And they wanted me to only throw the sinker in the spring and focus on commanding it to both sides of the plate. They felt that was going to be the way to stay in the big leagues and be successful.”

It became more than that. The Orioles don’t think of Britton as a one-pitch pitcher, but since going to the bullpen, he has thrown the sinker more than 90 percent of the time.

He stayed in the big leagues. And he was so successful that he made back-to-back All-Star teams and has a chance to win the Cy Young Award.


When spring training began in 2014, the Orioles still weren’t sure what Britton would become or even what role he would fill. But Wallace and Chiti saw quickly he had picked up what they gave him.

“Zach bought it,” Chiti said. “He listened and made it his own. And halfway through spring training, it was like, ‘Here it comes!'”

Britton began the season in the bullpen, but not as the closer. The Orioles went with Tommy Hunter in the ninth inning. Britton was still thinking that if he pitched well enough, he’d get another chance at starting.

Instead, a month into the season, manager Buck Showalter made him the closer.

Showalter still wasn’t sure how it would work. Then came a sequence of games in late June.

Called on to protect a 3-1 lead at Yankee Stadium, Britton gave up a three-run, walk-off home run to Carlos Beltran. It wasn’t his first blown save, but it was the first really bad one.

They wondered how he would react. Here’s how: It was almost a month before Britton allowed another run.

When he converted his next save opportunity without trouble, Showalter turned to Wallace and said, “We may have something here.”

They had something, all right.

Britton converted 37 of 41 save opportunities that season and 36 of 40 in 2015. He still hasn’t missed one in 46 chances this year, and in 43 appearances between May 5 and Aug. 22, he didn’t allow a single earned run.

He’s almost certain to get votes for the Cy Young Award and probably for Most Valuable Player, as well. He’s unlikely to win either one, simply because many voters believe awards like that shouldn’t go to someone who appears in just 60-70 innings a season.

Showalter disagrees.

“You don’t think he’s valuable?” Showalter asked. “Try winning without him.”


There are other things Britton does that you don’t notice. Showalter talked about the work he has done on his defense, which is necessary because his sinker induces so many swinging bunts.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone improve as much defensively,” Showalter said.

Chiti talked about how much of a leader Britton has become in the bullpen.

“Zach does a lot of things to let the other guys in the bullpen know how important they are,” he said. “To me, that’s a sign of people who are better than good.”

As for Britton, he has found that the bullpen suits his personality in a way pitching out of the rotation never seemed to fit him.

The hidden truth is he always preferred hitting and that, as a kid, he was very good at it. Flint Wallace, who coached Britton at Weatherford High in Texas, said Britton was the best hitter he has ever coached.

“That’s what I wanted to do was hit,” Britton said. “I wasn’t completely sold on pitching. There’s something about being able to play every day that I really wanted to do.”

As a closer, he has found the next best thing. Unlike a starter who gets in a game once every five or six days, Britton has to be ready nearly every day.

He pitches one inning a night, but he can go all out. He’s always done that.

He did it as a kid, and he did it on that awful day at Bouquet Canyon Park. No one else was going to keep chasing a foul ball in a simple game of over-the-line.

Zach Britton did it, and years later, the other kids who were there that day say they’ll never forget it.

The memories come back, and because it all worked out, they don’t try to suppress them. They think of Britton, and then they see an Orioles game or an All-Star Game, and there he is.

“Every time I see him on TV, I think, ‘We almost killed the kid,'” Crow said. “Now look at him.”

Now look at him. He’s the best closer in baseball, with the best pitch in baseball.

It is a real miracle.

    

Danny Knobler covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.

Follow Danny on Twitter and talk baseball.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com


If 2016 Is Last Ride of Blue Jays Core, Toronto Still Has Firepower for Deep Run

It was easy to like the Toronto Blue Jays last September. They made the deals of the summer. For the final two months of the regular season, all they did was win.

They had David Price, they had a lineup that didn’t stop, they had a boost from Marcus Stroman’s return and they had whatever momentum you get from going 21-6 in August and 18-9 in September.

They have almost none of that this year. No David Price, no big flashy trades, no big boost and no late-season momentum. Before Friday, they were 7-12 and had scored the fewest runs in baseball in September.

Blah.

Then the Blue Jays play a game like Friday’s, and suddenly you remember why you shouldn’t dismiss them as October contenders. They beat the New York Yankees 9-0, with Josh Donaldson hitting and Jose Bautista hitting and Edwin Encarnacion hitting and Troy Tulowitzki hitting, and suddenly you remember this is the same group that bludgeoned the Texas Rangers in the American League Division Series and took the soon-to-be champion Kansas City Royals to six games in the AL Championship Series.

Price isn’t here, but given his 6.17 ERA last October, are you going to give that as a reason the team that almost won last year can’t win this time around?

Bautista and Encarnacion are free agents this winter, but don’t you think they’d like to put on a big-stage demonstration of why they should be paid big bucks? Don’t you think they’d love to deliver in one last go-round with the organization they’ve served since 2008 (Bautista) and 2009 (Encarnacion)?

It’s been a fun ride—one that has energized the fanbase to the point where the Blue Jays lead the American League in attendance. They broke the longest postseason drought in baseball last year, but they also fell two wins shy of bringing the World Series north of the border for the first time since 1993.

The Blue Jays have had a wildly inconsistent offense—that’s offence in Canada—this season. I remember sitting in manager John Gibbons’ office one day in August listening to him bemoan the lack of big hits and then watching them score 19 runs in two days.

Sure enough, their run totals the last six days are one, zero, three, 10, one and now nine.

The inconsistency is the biggest reason the Jays haven’t been able to hang with the Boston Red Sox atop the American League East. The Red Sox won their ninth in a row Friday and lead the division by 5.5 games with nine days to play. The Jays had one seven-game winning streak in early July, but other than that they haven’t won more than four in a row all year.

They’ll still need a few more wins to clinch a playoff spot. The Detroit Tigers and Baltimore Orioles both won Friday night as well, so the Jays ended the night a half-game ahead of the Tigers and 1.5 ahead of the O’s. Two of those three teams likely make it, although the Houston Astros or Seattle Mariners could still sneak in.

The Jays don’t have an easy schedule. After three more games with the Yankees, they have three at home with the Orioles and three in Boston.

They do have Russell Martin, and history says teams with Martin play in October. The veteran catcher is in his 11th major league season, with his fourth organization. He’s been in the playoffs every year but two, and in one of those years (2010 with the Los Angeles Dodgers), he was hurt and couldn’t have played anyway.

Martin is like most of the other Blue Jays. He’s had an inconsistent season, and he’s having a lousy final month (.172 batting average).

I’d take him. I’d take that lineup. I’d take a chance with that team, in a postseason series against anyone.

The Blue Jays won’t be anyone’s favorite when the playoffs begin. But games like Friday’s serve as a reminder they’re absolutely dangerous enough to win.

 

Danny Knobler covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.

Follow Danny on Twitter and talk baseball.

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Masahiro Tanaka Injury: Updates on Yankees Star’s Elbow and Return

New York Yankees pitcher Masahiro Tanaka has suffered a flexor mass injury, Mark Feinsand of the New York Daily News reported Thursday.

Continue for updates.


Tanaka to Miss Monday’s Start

Thursday, Sept. 22

Feinsand reported Tanaka, who will miss his scheduled start Monday, won’t throw for five days as he recovers from the injury.

This is another setback for the injury-prone pitcher, which is particularly worrisome for a Yankees team that’s relying on him to be the ace of the staff as it fights for a postseason berth.

He underwent elbow surgery in October 2015 to remove a bone spur and was on the disabled list from April 23 to June 3 last season with right wrist tendinitis and a forearm strain. He missed another start down the stretch in September 2015 because of a strained right hamstring.

Tanaka could have had surgery after suffering a partially torn elbow ligament in 2014, but he decided against it.

The right-hander tallied 24 starts in 2015, posting a 12-7 record, a 3.51 ERA, and 139 strikeouts in 154 innings. He also finished with an impressive 0.99 WHIP and 3.1 WAR, according to ESPN.com. In 2016, he’s 14-4 with a 3.07 ERA, a 1.08 WHIP and 165 strikeouts in 199.2 innings pitched.

While injuries have prevented him from living up to the astronomical hype that surrounded him when New York signed him before the 2014 campaign, he is the anchor of the Yankees pitching staff when healthy. He has struggled to keep the ball in the park, allowing 62 home runs in his first three seasons, but his 1.08 WHIP makes the ace valuable at the front end of the rotation.

New York will have to rely on pitchers such as Michael Pineda and CC Sabathia in the meantime. It also has a formidable bullpen with pieces such as Adam Warren and Dellin Betances to help shorten games until Tanaka is ready to return.

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Gary Sanchez’s MLB Superstar Breakout Just the Start of an All-Star Future

There’s a New York Yankees coach named Tony Pena. He was an All-Star catcher when he played in the major leagues, the only All-Star catcher ever born in the Dominican Republic.

When you ask him why there’s only been one, he first says, “Don’t ask me that question.” Then he points across the Yankees clubhouse, at the corner where 23-year-old Gary Sanchez is sitting in front of his locker.

“There’s one coming up,” he says.

There’s a major league scout who grew up as a Yankees fan and has long followed the Yankees farm system while working for a rival team. You ask him about Sanchez, and he points to Monument Park.

“That’s where he could end up,” the scout says.

You see, it’s not only fans and writers who are caught up in the Sanchez craze. It’s real, because while no one could rightly expect 19 home runs in the first 45 games of his major league career (no one had ever done that), plenty of people who know Sanchez best have long believed he would succeed, and succeed big. 

His path to the big leagues hasn’t always been smooth, but the benchings and suspensions and “time outs” can easily give the wrong impression about a kid who signed at 16 for $3 million and simply needed to grow up.

“He’s always been a good guy in the clubhouse,” said pitcher Bryan Mitchell, who signed with the Yankees a month before Sanchez and saw him at every level, starting in the rookie Gulf Coast League in 2010. “You always want that guy on your team.”

As Andrew Marchand wrote in a fantastic ESPN.com story on Sanchez’s development, becoming a father two years ago helped Sanchez move from sometimes-immature kid to fast-developing man.

“When he got the baby, that changed his life,” Sanchez’s friend Francisco Arcia told Marchand. “He thought about what he has to do.”

He had to do a lot, because modern data-driven baseball puts more pressure on young catchers than on any other players. They need to understand scouting reports but also adjust from them. They also need to understand pitchers, a difficult enough task even when they speak the same language and share a culture.

Sanchez had to learn all that, including English, because he barely spoke the language when he first showed up in the minor leagues. He still uses an interpreter for interviews now, although teammates say his command of the language is more than adequate.

In fact, when Masahiro Tanaka was asked what language he and Sanchez communicate in (since both use interpreters), he said they speak English. When he was then asked who speaks the language better, Tanaka quickly pointed across the room.

“Sanchez!” he said.

The language was a challenge, but so was the position. The best young players in the Dominican Republic simply don’t go behind the plate, and neither did Sanchez, at first.

He was a third baseman as a kid and only became a catcher when a coach suggested his strong arm might fit better behind the plate.

“At first, I didn’t like it,” he said. “Eventually, I came to like it.”

With few Dominican-born catchers to use as role models, Sanchez said he watched Ivan Rodriguez and Jorge Posada (both Puerto Rican) and Jason Varitek.

“The money [in the Dominican Republic] goes to infielders and outfielders,” he said. “When you grow up there and have a coach, they want to teach you third base, shortstop, second base. There aren’t too many catchers.”

He was still raw when he signed. His manager at Single-A Staten Island, former major league catcher Josh Paul, told Marchand that Sanchez “couldn’t catch a fastball down the middle” when he played for him in 2010. Paul, now a minor league catching instructor with the Yankees, also told Marchand, “I’ve never seen anyone work harder on a baseball field [than Sanchez did last year].”

That work ethic stands in contrast to some of the stories told about Sanchez. Even now, he has to fight the tag that he’s sometimes lazy.

“If somebody doesn’t know you, and they see you one time, it’s hard to have that judgment,” Sanchez said. “When you go through a season with them, they know.”

The ones who knew told the Yankees front office that Sanchez was a keeper, a potential star worth sticking with. But Yankees general manager Brian Cashman admitted to Billy Witz of the New York Times he listened to trade offers for Sanchez as recently as last summer.

“I’m glad for my sake that I didn’t do it,” Cashman told Witz. “All the people guiding me through the process were saying: ‘This guy’s going to get there. He’s going to be the difference-maker. He’s going to be special.'”

A year later, everybody can see that. But others saw it before Sanchez began hitting home runs in the big leagues.

There was the umpire in the Double-A Eastern League who made time at the end of the 2014 season to go find the Trenton Thunder coaching staff. He knocked on the office door, just to deliver a message.

“That kid made more progress this year than anyone in this league,” the umpire told them.

There was Carlos Subero, the Milwaukee Brewers first base coach who managed Sanchez in the Arizona Fall League last October.

“I’m as high on this guy as anybody could be,” Subero said.

The fall league is filled with prospects from every organization, but it can also be grueling. Almost every player in it has already been through a full season, and by the time the championship game is played the Saturday before Thanksgiving, everyone just wants to get out of there and go home.

Well, not everyone.

“Eleven o’clock, the night before the championship game, I get a text from Gary,” Subero said. “He’s sent me what he thinks my whole lineup should be for the next day, and not only where they should hit but why. Everyone wanted to go home, but Gary wanted to win.

“That’s who Gary Sanchez is. I told my wife, that’s why this kid is going to be an All-Star.”

That’s one reason, for sure, to go along with the power that enabled him to hit 19 home runs in just 166 major league at-bats this season and the arm that has already erased nine baserunners. (Did you see the one he threw out from his knees?)

Subero noticed how smart a hitter Sanchez already is, something Yankees manager Joe Girardi has also referred to. He noticed how diligent Sanchez is at controlling a game and working with pitchers, something Yankees pitching coach Larry Rothschild has mentioned.

“He’s not afraid to take charge, and that’s sometimes hard when you have a young catcher working with veteran pitchers,” Rothschild said. “It’s been good to see.”

Rothschild also praised Sanchez’s game-calling ability, another rare quality in a young catcher in the big leagues.

A few scouts still pick at things Sanchez needs to work on, though, especially with his receiving skills. But one scout marveled at a pitch Sanchez blocked, a split-finger fastball from Mitchell that bounced on the edge of the batter’s box.

“Only Pudge [Rodriguez] and [Yadier] Molina block that ball,” the scout said.

Rodriguez played in 14 All-Star Games and has a good chance at being voted into the Hall of Fame this winter, the first time he’s eligible. Molina is a seven-time All-Star likely headed for Cooperstown, as well.

Sanchez played in the All-Star Futures Game each of the last two years. He was an All-Star in the Eastern League in 2014, in the Florida State League in 2013 and in the South Atlantic League in 2012.

If you had to pick an American League All-Star team right now, he might make it.

You wonder if things will change, if kids in the Dominican Republic will see Sanchez and say they want to catch, they want to be him.

For now, though, Sanchez is the best bet. Only five Dominican-born catchers played even one game in the major leagues this season, and only Welington Castillo of the Arizona Diamondbacks—hardly a star—played regularly all season.

The other World Team catcher in the Futures Game, Cleveland Indians prospect Francisco Mejia, was born in the Dominican Republic but has yet to advance past the Single-A level.

Sanchez is already a star, if not yet an All-Star.

“He’s gotten better every year,” said Mitchell, who has seen all the progress close-up.

He’s 23, two years younger than Pena was when he made the first of his five All-Star teams in 1982. Pena was the first Dominican catcher in the All-Star Game.

Thirty-four years later, he’s still the only one.

There’s one coming up.

    

Danny Knobler covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.

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Red-Hot Red Sox Emerging as Alpha Dog in AL Playoff Picture

As the National League continues to leave no doubt about who its World Series favorite is, the American League may finally be settling on one of its own.

The Boston Red Sox.

The Red Sox are rolling, folks. Hanley Ramirez’s dramatic home run last week kicked off a four-game sweep of the New York Yankees, and they’ve begun this week by taking three straight from the Baltimore Orioles.

The latest is Wednesday’s 5-1 triumph. Clay Buchholz pitched seven innings of one-run ball. The Red Sox took the lead on a two-out, bases-loaded error in the sixth and padded it when Andrew Benintendi’s name was plucked from the “Clutch Red Sox Hitter” hat and a three-run homer materialized.

It wasn’t long ago that the AL East race looked like one nobody was going to run away with. The Red Sox, Orioles, Toronto Blue Jays and New York Yankees were all very much in it and armed to the teeth for a bloody gladiator fight that would take a toll on everyone.

Instead, there are the Red Sox at 14-5 in September and 88-64 overall. They are Maximus standing unharmed amid the wreckage and asking if we’re entertained.

It’s not just the seven wins in a row. Nor is it even the breathing room they have. They lead the Blue Jays by five, the Orioles by six and the Yankees by 8.5. FanGraphs gives them a 98.1 percent chance of winning the division. Impressive, but it’s not the most resonant thing about the Red Sox right now.

Nope. That would be just how darn ready for the postseason they’re looking.

The Red Sox haven’t been a bad team at any point in 2016, but they’ve spent the bulk of it flexing one or two big muscles while trying to hide puny, undeveloped muscles. In the beginning, they had offense but no pitching. In the middle, they got some starting pitching just as their offense finally slumped. Shortly after that, their bullpen fell apart.

That last point brings us to one of the biggest factors in Boston’s September surge. As Alex Speier of the Boston Globe observed, it’s thus far been a historic month for the club’s relievers:

And the band played on with two more scoreless innings Wednesday. Make it a 0.88 ERA in September, a figure that all the key members—Craig Kimbrel, Koji Uehara, Brad Ziegler, Joe Kelly, Junichi Tazawa, Matt Barnes, et al.—share the credit for.

Meanwhile, Boston’s starters are doing well in their own right.

They have a 3.45 ERA in September, and a 3.59 ERA in the second half. Rick Porcello might be the AL Cy Young favorite with 21 wins and a 3.08 ERA, and is rolling with a 2.34 ERA in his last 11 starts. David Price has a 2.84 ERA in his last 11 starts. The waters beyond them are murky, but it’s saying something that there are solid arguments to make for Buchholz, Eduardo Rodriguez, Drew Pomeranz and a potentially healthy Steven Wright as the team’s third-best starter.

As for that offense, well, it just keeps on ticking.

The Red Sox have scored at least five runs in all seven of their consecutive wins, and 121 total in September. With either Benintendi or Chris Young in left field, Red Sox manager John Farrell must be very pleased knowing that only one of his regulars (Travis Shaw) has an OPS under .799.

This is a very complete team. And they know it.

“I think we know, and I think everybody else knows, you’ve got to play 27 outs to beat us—and we keep that mindset,” Mookie Betts, the possible AL MVP front-runner, said recently to MLB.com’s Paul Hagen. “We’re never out of it.”

And as the Red Sox get hotter, the competition both within and without the AL East only seems to be getting weaker. 

If the season ended today, the Red Sox would play the Cleveland Indians in the American League Division Series. They’re playing well but are running out of arms faster than the Black Knight in a fight with King Arthur. Corey Kluber still lives, but Carlos Carrasco is done for the season and Danny Salazar is fighting to return from an arm injury.

The Texas Rangers loom as the bigger roadblock to the World Series for the Red Sox. And while theirs don’t involve any backbreaking injuries, they have pitching woes of their own. They entered Wednesday with a 5.63 ERA in September, no thanks to co-aces Cole Hamels and Yu Darvish combining for an 8.59 ERA.

In a seemingly related story, the same number-crunching system that shows a 98.1 percent chance of the Red Sox winning the AL East also gives the Red Sox a 19.0 percent chance to win the World Series. That’s the highest of any team in the American League. And the way they’re shaping up, that’s not so hard to believe.

What’s harder to believe is the Red Sox have a higher chance of winning it all than even the Chicago Cubs, which the odds state they do. These are the same Cubs that have won 97 games and are a powerhouse in every conceivable way. There’s supposedly a goat-related hex on them, but they’re at least as well equipped to beat their curse as the Red Sox were back when they popularized beating curses back in 2004.

However, a matchup with the Cubs in the World Series is a bridge the Red Sox can worry about crossing when they get to it. For now, they can enjoy knowing they have a team that’s turned getting there at all into a realistic possibility.

The Red Sox have been searching and searching and searching for that team. They’ve finally found it.

   

Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.

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Gary Sanchez Becomes Fastest Player to Hit 19 HR in MLB’s Modern Era

New York Yankees catcher Gary Sanchez is having a better start to his career than anyone in baseball history.

The rookie hit his 18th home run of the season Wednesday night against the Tampa Bay Rays, making him the fastest to reach that mark in the modern era, according to Andrew Marchand of ESPN.com. It took the 23-year-old phenom just 45 games.

Sanchez amazingly followed the second-inning home run with another long ball later in the game, making him the fastest to 19 home runs as well.

According to MLB, the next-fastest player to reach that milestone was Wally Berger, who needed 51 games to do so in 1930.

The catcher went 0-for-2 in two games at the major league level last season and then 0-for-4 in one appearance in May this year. However, he has been unstoppable since rejoining the roster, producing at an extremely high level over his last 42 games.

In addition to the home runs, Sanchez finished Wednesday’s contest with a .337 batting average and .410 on-base percentage.

Teammate Brian McCann had high praise for the rookie, per Bryan Hoch of MLB.com:

Seth Rothman of the YES Network considers him a top contender for Rookie of the Year despite his short time in the majors:

Manager Joe Girardi believes he deserves the award, per Erik Boland of Newsday:

Prior to joining the big league club on a full-time basis, Sanchez hit only 10 home runs in 71 games in Triple-A this year and didn’t reach 19 home runs in any minor league season.

However, he has found magic in the Bronx.

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Adam Jones Comments on Camden Yards Attendance for Red Sox Series

The Baltimore Orioles are in a fight for the playoffs, but the fans haven’t been around to witness it.

Outfielder Adam Jones voiced his displeasure Wednesday with the lack of attendance at Camden Yards, per Eddie Matz of ESPN.com:

It’s sad. It’s eerie. We grind and grind and grind. We understand, there’s a lot that that factors into it. Ticket prices being higher, although you can bring in food and beverages. Marketing and promotions, I’m sure they’re not the best. I get all that. I’m just saying, the city wanted a winner – the last five years we got ’em a winner. I don’t if know if they’ve gotten complacent already on us winning. I wish they haven’t. I hope they haven’t. Because winning is fun every single year, and being in this race is exciting every single year. So to the ones that come every night, thank you with open arms.

The Orioles are in the midst of a three-game homestand against the first-place Boston Red Sox, a team they trailed by three games entering Monday. Despite the importance of the series, the team drew only 18,456 fans for the first game and 20,387 in the second, according to ESPN.com. Oriole Park at Camden Yards has a capacity of 45,971 fans.

Boston won both games by a score of 5-2 to extend its lead in the American League East, although the Orioles still have control of the second AL Wild Card as of Wednesday.

Attendance issues have been a problem all year long for Baltimore. According to ESPN.com, the squad ranks 20th in the majors with an average of 26,513 fans per game. Interestingly, the Orioles also rank ninth in road attendance.

According to Baseball-Reference.com, Camden Yards has seen a drop of over 2,600 people per game in the past year, which ranks fifth worst in baseball. Of the four teams with sharper declines, three of them (Milwaukee, Minnesota and Cincinnati) are at least 15 games below .500, while the Pittsburgh Pirates have failed to live up to expectations after winning 98 games a year ago.

The Orioles, however, still can’t get fans into the seats despite remaining in contention. 

We’ve fought our tails off for 145 games to put ourselves into a unique situation as of September,” Jones noted.

The question will be whether the fans will hold up their end of the bargain.

   

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David Ortiz Passes Dave Kingman for Most HRs by a Player in His Final Season

Fact: David Ortiz hit his 36th home run of the season in the Boston Red Sox‘s 5-2 win over the Baltimore Orioles on Tuesday, passing Dave Kingman for the most home runs by a player in his final season.

Bleacher Report will be bringing sports fans the most interesting and engaging Cold Hard Fact of the day, presented by Coors Light.

Source: @MLBStatoftheDay

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