Shortly after Yermín Mercedes set the baseball world ablaze with his record-setting 8-for-8 start to the 2021 season, Ken Rosenthal tried to explain to a national audience how somebody with Mercedes’ talent was initially relegated to minor league obscurity.
Unfortunately, Rosenthal weighed down his copy with multiple references to unspecified indiscretions that led the Nationals and Orioles to sour on him. That’s not to say that Mercedes’ misdeeds shouldn’t have been mentioned, but when adding Rick Hahn’s corroborations that Mercedes’ background required some scrutiny, the unsaid overshadowed the said. That ends up being an unsatisfying read, especially during a time when the sport is learning how much abhorrent behavior it actually tolerates.
James Fegan took a crack at resolving this tension, and while he too can’t offer a blow-by-blow (or blow-for-blow) recap of his conflicts with previous management, he’s able to relay information from members of the White Sox player development staff saying what they anticipated adding to the organization. Best I can tell, it sounds like Mercedes regarded himself too highly for A-ball.
“One of the first few conversations that I had with Chris Getz was regarding Yermín Mercedes,” said Quiróz. “He talked about his personality, we talked about his ability. And he basically said, ‘Hey, would you please help me out with this kid? I know the talent is there. We need to guide him through the process the right way.’ Meaning that, just make sure that he was on time, that he was hustling every time he played, and that he did the early work he needed every day.”
Mercedes didn’t necessarily need a harsh taskmaster. As Peter Gammons reported, Mercedes was shown compassion when he was accidentally late for Opening Day. For Quiróz and Poe, it meant showing they cared about his goals to support his growing family and were sympathetic to the difficulties of his journey. In turn, they found that at 25, Mercedes was ready to be serious about what was keeping him from advancing to levels commensurate with his talent. Ultimately, the confidence that drives someone to think they really are the best hitter on the planet is something a good coach should be able to work with.
Elsewhere you’ll see descriptions of a guy who carried himself as a big-leaguer well before he was a big-leaguer, and it’s something that looks silly once that guy becomes a big-leaguer. Of course, that’s something that’s much harder to handle in real time, especially if most of the other couple dozen personnel around don’t care for it. There’s also the matter that Rosenthal quoted Buck Showalter, somebody wound so tight that Ozzie Guillen couldn’t resist needling him with his words and his lineup cards.
All in all, it looks like Mercedes needed to find the right fit, and maybe experience enough frustration to wear down the biggest sticking points so that a fit could be found. Here’s hoping this the start of something beautiful, even if regression has dragged Mercedes’ average down to a measly .404.
PERTINENT: Tim Anderson heads to injured list; Yermín Mercedes commands attention
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On Sunday, I wrote about how just every team is experiencing miserable results with runners in scoring position, making me wonder if the line between bad and good is the one between going 1-for-7 and 2-for-8. Following a similar theme, Rob Mains at Baseball Prospectus wrote about the frequency of home runs, and how they’re become almost necessary for winning the game at hand.
The article includes a couple of helpful charts, but here’s the text that best sums them up:
Of course, home runs are good for the team hitting them. They always score at least one run. Teams that hit home runs consequently improve their likelihood of winning. But they’re not a prerequisite. In 1976, when the percentage of games without a homer peaked, teams not hitting a homer still won 41 percent of their games. Teams not hitting a home run managed to win at least a third of their games every year through 2008. Since then, though…I’ve superimposed team won-lost record in games in which they didn’t homer on the graph above.
Home runs aren’t just useful in constructing team wins. They’ve become necessary. In 2017, teams that failed to homer won only 29.7 percent of their games. That rose to 31.0 in 2018, fell to 27.3 in 2019, and rose to 31.8 in last year’s short season. This year—yes, I know, we’re barely halfway through April—teams not homering are 36-105, on course for a .255 winning percentage.
This dynamic kinda played out on Monday. The White Sox went 3-for-11 with runners in scoring position, dutifully converting every opportunity they created for themselves. That was good for just four runs, because none of their hits left the yard. Meanwhile, the Red Sox homered twice and won 11-4. Granted, Lucas Giolito’s spectacularly ineffective changeup had more to do with that than anything else, but when it takes that many consecutive useful at-bats to contribute single runs in four different innings, it’s easier to see the appeal of trying to do it on one swing.
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As for Giolito, he didn’t have one clear answer why his normally baffling fastball-changeup combination looked so simple to solve for the Red Sox, and Danny Farquhar isn’t around to let a friendly reporter know whether something sketchy was afoot.
Giolito blamed the quality of his changeup, at least to start.
“The big thing for me was I was leaving my changeup up and it didn’t have good action, based on the replays and stuff I saw,” he said. “They didn’t miss them.
“I need to throw better changeups. This is the worst it’s been in a long time. I haven’t broken anything down, these are my first thoughts but I was just not finishing the pitch, and making it hittable.”
There’s a chance that further investigation could yield pitch-tipping. Fegan relayed a quote from Ethan Katz saying that Giolito gave away something during his unsuccessful Opening Day start last year. He recovered from a 17.18 ERA after one start to finish sixth in Cy Young voting, so Giolito’s brand of success has a history of recovering from a roughing-up. There’s no reason to panic just yet, even if the Red Sox made it a little too easy to envision how it all comes crashing down.
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April 21, 2021 at 04:03AM
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Following up: A better Yermín Mercedes origin story - Sox Machine
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