Baseball Daily Dose: Dose: Marte Saves the Day
Later this week I’ll be getting my master’s degree in creative writing, which makes what I’m about to say a little embarrassing. For years, I’ve had a book on my shelf. You probably have it on yours too. I’ve picked at it, read a few pages here and there but I can say with a good deal of confidence that I’ll never finish the thing. You know the book I’m talking about. It’s Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. At 1,079 pages (100 of which are just footnotes), the book weighs about as much as my one-year-old beagle. It is an obnoxiously long piece of literature.
Sunday we witnessed the Infinite Jest of baseball games. The Nationals and Pirates played and they played and when they were almost out of players, they kept playing. Good thing the high temperature in Washington on Sunday was only 91 degrees. The 18-inning affair lasted five hours and 48 minutes. It ended with a 2-1 Pirates victory, but we’ll get to that in a minute.
Some players saw seven at-bats on Sunday (Starling Marte, Jordy Mercer, Jayson Werth, Stephen Drew and Clint Robinson). Andrew McCutchen went to the plate eight times without a hit. Daniel Murphy only logged one at-bat Sunday but boy did he make it count.
Murphy, who demoralized the Mets to the tune of three homers and 10 RBI last week (D.J. Short was not amused), reached into his bag of tricks for another clutch homer Sunday in the ninth inning. Murphy hadn’t played the previous two games because of a hamstring injury he suffered at the All-Star Game and didn’t start Sunday’s series finale. He didn’t let any of those obstacles stand in his way against Mark Melancon, a three-time All-Star who entered Sunday’s action with a 1.23 ERA and only one blown save. Murphy’s 396-foot missile to right field knotted the score at one, while dooming both bullpens to another nine innings of baseball. If Murphy had played the whole game, maybe the two teams would have gone home at a reasonable hour. But alas, this game was destined for extras.
After eight innings of zeros (if this were soccer the game would have gone into PKs), Starling Marte, who drove in the Pirates’ first run on a sixth-inning double, decided to take matters into his own hands. He pounced on Oliver Perez’s 92 mph fastball and sent it into the left field bleachers for a blast that ESPN’s Home Run Tracker will surely classify as a no-doubter (it traveled an absurd 429 feet). Jon Niese, the guy from all those trade rumors you’ve been hearing this month, stranded a pair of runners in the 18th inning for his eighth win of the season.
The return of Marte’s power stroke has to be a welcome sight for fantasy owners. Marte has excelled in many areas this year. His batting average (.315) is seventh-highest in the National League while the 32 steals he’s tallied rank second only to Brewers shortstop Jonathan Villar (33 thefts). But the power Marte displayed last year when he slugged a career-high 19 homers has mostly abandoned him in 2016. Sunday’s tie-breaking blast was only his seventh round-tripper of the season. Marte is already a top-ten player in most formats but if he can hit for consistent power, he could ascend to a level only reached by Jose Altuve, Mike Trout and a handful of others. It’s convenient that Marte has picked up the slack during Andrew McCutchen’s worst season.
It got buried beneath the late-inning heroics, but Sunday featured a battle of surprisingly well-matched arms. The up-and-comer Chad Kuhl went toe-to-toe with former Cy Young winner Max Scherzer in the nation’s capital. While Kuhl may not be as celebrated as some of the Pirates’ other top prospects (Jameson Taillon and Tyler Glasnow come to mind), he held his own Sunday with a six-inning, one-hit gem. If there’s one thing we know about Kuhl, it’s that he isn’t afraid to match wits with other top starters. He out-pitched Clayton Kershaw in his major league debut on June 26 and followed that up with another impressive outing against Rich Hill, who figures to be the most sought-after pitcher at this year’s trade deadline.
The Nationals were trailing when he left but Scherzer did his part by allowing just one run over seven solid innings. Scherzer got off to an inauspicious start this year but has turned the corner with four strong outings in a row. During that stretch he’s posted a tidy 0.66 ERA with a 10.87 K/9 and a 0.80 WHIP. Home runs have been a problem for Scherzer throughout the year (fifth-most in the league) but he’s only been taken deep once in his last four starts. Scherzer leads all MLB hurlers with 171 strikeouts this season.
Unlike The Dude, the Nationals are not into the whole brevity thing. Earlier this season I wrote a Daily Dose after the Nationals played a 16-inning game against Minnesota. They also endured a 14-inning marathon against the Reds earlier this month. Unlike those other two contests, Sunday’s thriller resulted in a loss. The Nats still took two out of three against Pittsburgh while padding their lead in the NL East to six games. In fact, thanks to the Padres’ three-game sweep against San Francisco, the Nats are now within one game of the Giants for the best record in all of baseball.
For those of you interested in winning a future sports trivia contest, Sunday was the Nationals’ longest contest since a novel-length 22-inning game against the Dodgers in 1989. The Nationals played in another country back then as the Montreal Expos (my second-favorite defunct team behind the Hartford Whalers) and Starling Marte wasn’t even a year old. Infinite Jest would not hit shelves for another seven years.
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AL Quick Hits: Albert Pujols launched two homers Sunday in a win over the White Sox. Both came off former top prospect Jacob Turner, who was making his first big league start in two years. The occasion marked Pujols’ 53rd career multi-homer game … Jose Altuve is running away with the American League MVP award. Altuve, who is one of the few major leaguers I’m taller than (I think I have Dustin Pedroia beat too), crushed his 15th homer Sunday as part of a four-hit outburst in Houston’s 8-1 win over the Mariners. He’s already matched his career-high in homers and there are still 70 games to go … Rich Hill lasted just five pitches Sunday against Toronto after popping a blister on his pitching hand. It’s unclear if he’ll be ready to go Friday against Tampa Bay … Dylan Bundy made his first career start Sunday against the Rays. It didn’t go well as the Rays pummeled Bundy for four runs on five hits over 3 1/3 innings. Bundy entered Sunday with a 3.08 ERA in 22 relief appearances this year … A day after his teammates sacrificed a Boston Market chicken to break him out of his slump (it didn’t work, by the way), Yan Gomes left Sunday’s game with a nasty shoulder injury. He’ll be reevaluated on Monday … Jarrod Saltalamacchia, who famously delivered a walk-off single against the Tigers in the 2013 ALCS (it came one inning after this iconic home run), sent Detroit home with a two-run blast off Royals right-hander Joakim Soria on Sunday. It was his ninth home run of the year.
NL Quick Hits: The Mets did a little switcheroo after Sunday’s win over the Phillies. They swapped Michael Conforto for Brandon Nimmo, a reversal of the roster move made on June 25. Conforto earned his promotion by hitting .344 in 64 at-bats for Triple-A Las Vegas … Jacob deGrom fired a one-hit shutout Sunday against the Phillies. It was deGrom’s first complete game in 68 career starts. His 2.38 ERA is third-lowest in the majors behind Clayton Kershaw (1.79) and Madison Bumgarner (2.12) … Yoenis Cespedes returned to the Mets’ lineup on Sunday after missing the previous four games (five if you include the All-Star Game) with a strained quad. He went 0-for-3 with a walk … Chase d’Arnaud, older brother of Mets catcher Travis d’Arnaud, lifted the Braves to victory with a walk-off single against the Rockies. That was the only time either team scored on Sunday … The fastest man in baseball Billy Hamilton gave the Reds a walk-off win against the Brewers by scoring from third base on a passed ball by Jonathan Lucroy. It was the first and only run of the afternoon … Sunday’s “that came out of nowhere” award goes to Edwin Jackson. The journeyman right-hander took a no-hitter into the seventh inning against San Francisco. Jackson, who is replacing Drew Pomeranz in the Padres’ starting rotation, was called up despite going winless in five minor league starts this year with an ugly 7.11 ERA … Johnny Cueto was handed his first loss since April 21 Sunday against the Padres. The Giants started the year 9-0 against the Padres but dropped three straight against them this weekend … Matt Cain threw a successful bullpen session on Sunday and will officially return Wednesday against Boston. Cain is coming off a disastrous rehab outing for High-A San Jose on Friday night (4 IP, 10 H, 9 ER) … Ichiro Suzuki stacked up three more hits Sunday in a win over the Cardinals. He’s six away from 3,000. The last player to reach that mark was Alex Rodriguez in 2015.
