Tuesday Night Observations

With all but two teams playing Tuesday, there was no shortage of inspiration to draw observations. Here are a few quick things that I noticed.

New Humidors

Late in the Cubs' loss to the Brewers, Cubs broadcaster Boog Sciambi mentioned that the five teams that installed new humidors were the Astros, Marlins, Cardinals, Rangers and Blue Jays:

Listen to the entire clip - Sciambi made a pretty good point that installing a humidor doesn't necessarily hurt the ball's flight in places that are already humid - particularly Miami. We tend to think a humidor automatically hurts a hitting environment, but that might not be the case. The general goal is to level the playing field across all ballparks.

The wild part of this story was that it was 'broken' by Sciambi - the Cubs' broadcaster, in a game against the Brewers - neither team being one that had a humidor or was installing one this year. This all presupposes that I didn't just miss an earlier announcement today about those ballparks. But it was brought up so casually in the broadcast, you'd have thought that there was such a press release.

Angel Hernandez's Tough Day

Fresh off of losing a lawsuit against Major League Baseball, umpire Angel Hernandez had the home plate duties on Tuesday afternoon's game between the Astros and Angels. It ... did not go well:

Yeah, go ahead and put me on Team Robot Umpires, at least as it pertains to ball/strike calls.

A's Malaise

When the A's scored in the first inning to go up 1-0 against the Dodgers, they took their first lead of the season, in their 46th inning of the year. Heading into Tuesday night, the A's had been outscored 45-12 in their first five games, lost their closer Trevor Rosenthal to what might be thoracic outlet syndrome, and have had injuries to Chad Pinder, Ramon Laureano, Sean Murphy and now Matt Olson. They had a lousy offseason, letting Marcus Semien walk after giving him a ridiculous lowball offer, settling instead for Elvis Andrus, who is already batting eighth for them. They're not dead-and-buried - we've seen them start slow and recover before - but they're in for a tough road to hoe, and it doesn't help that they started with the Astros, Dodgers and then the Astros again. That lead lasted one inning, by the way.

More Closer Definition

Monday night brought some definition to two unsettled closer situations in St. Louis and Cincinnati as they were able to bring in their preferred orders to close out wins. The Cardinals went with Jordan Hicks in the sixth, Giovany Gallegos in the seventh and eighth innings, and Alex Reyes getting the save in the ninth. They got to repeat part of that again Tuesday night, with Gallegos instead pitching in the seventh - striking out the side! - while Reyes got the last four outs to record back-to-back saves. Meanwhile in Cincinnati on Monday, Sean Doolittle was lights' out in the seventh, Lucas Sims cruised in the eighth and Amir Garrett got the save in the ninth, albeit in shaky fashion. 

The Rangers added a little more definition to their picture Tuesday night, with their first real save situation, with Matt Bush pitching the eighth and Ian Kennedy getting the save in the ninth. It's not to say he's immune from losing the role with one bad outing, but his save at least probably buys him the next chance. That's more than we can say for the Royals, who are doing their best to keep us guessing.

Silly Early Rate Stats

No, I don't mean rate stats that show a certain player (let's just call him Nate Lowe) is on-pace for a crazy season-long statistic. I'm referring to league-wide rate stats - which are also ludicrously early, but it's a topic that I obsess about annually. These rate stats eventually can confirm how lively the ball is, what the league is doing as a whole in terms of walks, strikeouts, stolen bases and of course, homers. Right now it's not possible to draw real conclusions, but I find it entertaining nonetheless.

(These stats are through Tuesday night's games.)

First, the league-wide hitting stats:

Again, I must reiterate it's insanely early so this is just a small snapshot, but strikeouts are up, way up, even over 2019's rates, at 9.65 K's per team each game. That more than accounts for pitchers hitting in the NL again. Homers are down from last year, but they were also way down early last season before spiking in the second month.

And here are the league-wide pitching stats:

Unlucky Alcantara

Sandy Alcantara was both incredible and incredibly unlucky against the Cardinals on Tuesday night, getting the loss despite allowing three runs (two earned) while striking out 10 over six innings. All videos from MLB.com's awesome Film Room.

First, the good - his 10 strikeouts. He was regularly hitting 98-99 mph on his fastball, and getting a ton of movement diving in on right-handed hitters with a 91 mph changeup. Even after laboring in the sixth inning, when the Cardinals scored their three runs, he still was at 93 pitches - pretty efficient for six innings when he had so many strikeouts.

Alas, he got the loss mostly because he was exceedingly unlucky. Tommy Edman led off the sixth on an infield hit off of a deflection. Paul Goldschmidt then also reached on an infield hit that deflected off of Alcantara - if it doesn't hit him, it's at least a force-out and maybe a double play. Following a walk to Nolan Arenado (and to be fair, walks have been a problem for Alcantara in the past), the Cardinals first run scored on an ugly passed ball by Jorge Alfaro. 

That passed ball took away the force, which meant that this weak ground ball by Paul DeJong scored the tying run, rather than the first run on a potential double play. You'll note that the contact play wasn't even on - Goldschmidt didn't even run until the third basemen threw to first. 

Finally the go-ahead run scored on a sac fly. The Cardinals didn't have a base hit to the outfield the entire sequence. 

Alcantara deserved a lot better - especially considering how often the Marlins had runners on early, netting just one run in the first four innings, including none in the third when they loaded the bases with none out. Still, through two starts Alcantara really looks the part, building off of a great spring training campaign.