Yesterday, I marveled at a minor league baseball game where pitchers could not find home plate if you game them a radar; that game saw 32 batters reach base with a walk. Today, I want to report on another oddball happenstance in a minor league game. Today’s focus is on the Midwest League and a game between the Beloit Sky Carp and the Cedar Rapid Kernels. Emaarion Boyd is an outfielder for the Sky Carp; in yesterday’s game, Boyd stole 6 bases which is impressive by itself. What makes it just a tad unusual is this:
- He did not have a hit in the game.
He was walked once, hit by a pitch in another at-bat and reached first on a fielder’s choice. On those three occasions, he stole second and third base. Boyd is 21 years old and has been in pro baseball for three seasons; in 2023 he played in 91 games for Clearwater in the Florida League and stole 56 bases there. Boyd is in the Marlins’ minor-league system for now and has appeared in 6 games for the Sky Carp this season with 7 stolen bases as of today.
Sticking with baseball … The Atlanta Braves have gotten off to a miserable start to the 2025 season; this morning they are dead last in the NL East with a 3-9 record. However, they did get a bit of good news yesterday in the performance of Spencer Strider in a rehab start. Strider had an alternative to Tommy John surgery last year to repair a partial tear in his ulnar collateral ligament and last night was his third rehab start as he prepares to return to the Braves.
Last night, Strider threw 5 1/3 innings and struck out 13 batters in a Triple-A game between the Gwinnett Stripers and the Norfolk Tides. The Braves’ awful start can be attributed to their lack of offense; the Braves have scored a total of 38 runs in 12 games this year; only the woebegone White Sox have scored fewer runs (35 in 12 games). If Strider returns to the Braves’ rotation and pitches to his previous standard, that would be a blessing for the Braves as they wait for their bats to wake up.
Moving on … The oddsmakers had the NBA’s Phoenix Suns as one of the favorites to win the NBA Championship this year with futures odds at +650. As a point of reference, the co-favorites on the futures board were the Celtics and the Nuggets at odds of +450. Talk about underachieving, the Suns have been eliminated from the playoffs – – let alone the NBA Finals and will finish the season with a record below .500.
I think there are two components to this underachievement that could get less scrutiny than they deserve:
- There is more to winning than just scoring; it helps to be able to keep the other guys from scoring at will. The Suns signed/acquired three star players – – Bradley Beal, Devin Booker and Kevin Durant. All of them are proven scorers; none of them are more than average defenders. I recall a chat I had with a friend back at the beginning of the NBA season; he is into wagering on NBA games – – among other events – – and he said that whenever he thinks about the Suns he immediately thinks, “Take the OVER.”
- Maybe the “problem” isn’t always the coach. Maybe what a winning team needs is some consistency on the bench and some time for the coach to get his “system” ingrained in the roster. The Suns fired Monty Willians who had amassed win percentage of .628 with the team; they hired and then fired Frank Vogel whose win percentage with the Suns was .598. Mike Budenholzer is the current coach and given the disappointing performance of the Suns this year, I would suggest that he is not a shoo-in to continue in that position. Here’s the thing; all three of those coaches have been successful NBA coaches and two of them were successful in Phoenix. And yet, they are gone.
Switching gears – – but staying with basketball … JT Toppin was an important part of Texas Tech’s run to the Elite Eight in this year’s March Madness. Demonstrating how college athletics have changed over the past year or two, Toppin announced that he will not enter the NBA Draft this year and that he will not enter the Transfer Portal either. He will stay at Texas Tech for another year and will get an NIL deal that reports say will be worth $4M.
Toppin has played two years of college basketball so he has “eligibility” left – – whatever “eligibility” might mean these days. Just suppose Toppin really likes living and playing in Lubbock, TX; if he were to stay there next season and the one after that for $4M a year, what would be wrong with him continuing to play basketball for Texas Tech beyond that? The whole idea behind “eligibility” was to try to prevent colleges from amassing a set of “ringers” who were not students but were there as “hired hands” to win games. And that is exactly the situation now in college athletics and Toppin’s decision simply brings the details of such a deal out of the shadows and into the open.
Finally, in support of my suggestion that defense is part of winning basketball, let me close with this from Tom Glavine:
“There is no second baseman in the game who can turn the double play better than [Mark Lemke]. Why are people always looking for offense at that position? What’s more important is getting outs, and turning the double is a huge factor in getting outs.”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………
The greatest second basemen of all time were great hitters and mediocre fielders. Joe Morgen comes to mind. Even at shortstop, a position of significant defensive value, the most successful have been great hitters and mediocre to weak defenders. Derek Jeter comes to mind.
Recently, I read an entire book on the subject of calculating “wins above replacement” in baseball. The author stated flatly that second basemen who are strong offensive performers are far more valuable than classy glovemen. This is baseball by the numbers, not necessarily by the artistry.