An interesting experience happened recently. A few days ago I received a PWE addressed to me from none other than the Staten Island Yankees.
It wouldn't be the first time I received mail from the team but the last times have centered around giveaways.
This time was a bit different. For one thing Jason Nazzaro, the SI Yankees' Chief Financial Officer, sent along his card with the PWE.
Ooh must be something important?
Inside was this typed letter apologizing for a failed TTM request. I sent a request to Chase Hodson prior to the end of the season and Nazzaro and his staff took the time to send this to me. Luckily for both of us I have gone to the ballpark to witness the beautiful view of downtown Manhattan (and the Hudson), and will continue to do so in the future. The note was sent along with my SASE, the card I sent and my original letter. The real proof that the team put in effort into this was that someone wrote my address on the PWE to me by hand.
I've had failed TTM returns before (unsigned cards sent back to me), but this was the first time I got a team official apologizing. They didn't need to do this but they did. It's pretty cool on SIY's part and I totally appreciate the gesture.
Got this signed in person, a fine addition indeed
What makes this even more awesome is the fact that I didn't even send the Hodson request to Staten Island. Back when I first sent it he had been assigned to Charleston, so I sent it via the Charleston Riverdogs. If I had to guess the people over at Charleston probably got my request by the time Hodson was sent back to Staten Island, so they decided to redirect it to SI. Then I assume the letter was in limbo for a while before it got to SI maybe a week or so ago.
So we've got two things going on here.
1). The Charleston Riverdogs redirected fanmail for a former player on their roster to the appropriate affiliate
2). The Staten Island Yankees apologized for not getting the fanmail in time to the player and sending it back to the sender
This is very sweet on both clubs' parts. They both could've easily tossed the letter aside at various points and yet they saw fit to go this extra distance.
This has certainly boosted my appreciation for the minor league affiliates. This is the kind of act fans remember when they consider being season ticket holders. Which may be a direction I take in the future (like three decades from now).
So yeah, big props to Jay Nazzaro and the other people involved both at Staten Island and Charleston. Your devotion to fan service will not go unnoticed (that's why I have this blog ;)).
So if Shigeru Sugishita is my favorite NPB HoFer, my favorite active* NPB player is Ryosuke Nomura here.
I put an asterisk there because he was recently DFA'd by the Chunichi Dragons.
A few days ago it was announced that Nomura and five others were being let go by the Dragons. They're now free agents and are free to go about their merry way.
Nomura was the Dragons' first rounder back in 2014 so I think a team will take a shot on him on a low-cost deal. Personally I'd love it if the Yankees signed him to a minor league deal with a Spring Training invite but, well, I thought my hallucinations ended when I put down the bong for good.
Nomura's career to date has been marred by inconsistency, bad mechanics, and some of the best breaking pitches you'd ever seen when he's at his best. Armed with a fastball, slider, curveball, forkball and cutter, Nomura once projected to be an elite starter for the Dragons, maybe even an ace.
Fast forward to 2017 where Nomura's mechanics were reworked, then reworked again, all the while spending most of his time in the minors (nigun) with some shots at the big league ichigun club every once in a blue moon.
I still think Nomura has the pure stuff to be a good professional pitcher but his time is running out. Chances are he'll get maybe one or two more chances to prove himself before being cut off for good.
Best of luck to him going forward. And if nothing else, I'll still collect him on the low. At least he's dirt cheap lol.
As always thanks for stopping by and take care :).
Mistakes. I've made a lot of them over the years. Some of them were minor and forgotten in a day or so. Others, well they linger in the back of my mind until I'm alone at night and then they attack me.
Most of them aren't blog related. But every now and then I do feel guilty for certain things I've done.
The biggest is when I messed up Night Owl Cards' plan to complete the 1975 Topps mini set on his own. A lifelong mission he's had since his childhood that I had to go and ruin by bringing it to an anticlimactic finish sandwiched between Jeremy Rathjen and Zach Lee.
I left a comment when he blogged about completing the set, saying that I was going to become a hermit out of shame. Obviously that was sarcastic but I did feel guilty. Still do. Had I known that NO wanted to end matters with his own hands I would have let him. But I didn't know and well, disaster struck.
Night Owl has since reassured me that what I did was good but the psychology major in me sees that as just a way for him to hide his feelings of emptiness and contempt as his goal came to an end (and maybe so I don't feel so bad).
Before we go on let me just say that this is not meant to shame or embarrass NO. I know it's dumb to think that helping someone finish off a set is a bad thing. It's just that if it's a set which has as much significance. As much influence. As much importance as the 1975 mini set does to Night Owl, well I'd want to finish it with my own hands too. I can't help feeling like I really fumbled the ball there.
Well I learned my lesson immediately, no more helping people with completing sets. It just screws things up. Better to just chuck random singles their way in hopes that some of them click. That's the way I've rolled since.
I hadn't really picked up any 1975 minis since then either. But I figured that it was time to change that. A set that left that much of an impression on NO must be significant.
And my very first 1975 Topps mini card of Sweet Lou is here to show me what is/was that significance.
A lot of the charm can be attributed to the design itself, the same one used by the regular sized version. It's very colorful and pops out. It's really no wonder why the design has held up over the years.
Truth be told I'm not big on facsimile signatures and part of me thinks this design would've been better without them, but it doesn't ruin it either. At a time when certified autographs weren't a thing these must've been a great way for young fans to see their favorite players' signatures. Especially those who lived miles away from their favorite teams or an MLB team in general.
Somehow this mini is in better shape than my standard size version
As a collector in the 2010's the idea of a "mini" doesn't exactly knock my socks off but I can see why these were cool back in the day when minis were still a novelty. I assume it'd be like when I first came across mini cards. Something about a smaller variation makes you just pause for a second and say "wow, these are different but cool." Seeing the tinier versions in your hand. They're so small, so frail, so vulnerable. They're at your mercy and must do as you say or lest they suffer your unholy wra...
Anyway, according to NO, this is apparently Piniella's first card as a Yankee (in Yankees gear). One of these days I might as well collect all of his Yankees-era base cards and add him to the unofficial PC player list. Until then all eyes are focused on Piniella there, staring at something off in the distance. He's so awestruck that his mouth is open. My guess is that it's either Mickey Mantle getting head or an Aaron Judge dinger breaking a TV.
And there you have it. The very first 1975 Topps mini card in my collection. Apologies to Night Owl again for ruining what was supposed to be his shining achievement. Hopefully that Buehler really can go into triple digits like Kershaw did.
And as always thank you (the readers) for stopping by. Take care :).
The 2017 season has come to an end. By the time the Expanded Rosters/September call-ups season came along it was very clear that Luis Torrens would be lost to the clutches of San Diego, but now it's pretty much done. The New York Yankees have officially lost him for nothing (maybe some cash).
(More on this card later)
So how was Luis Torrens in 2017? Well let's look at his offensive output first.
Luis Torrens, Major League Hitter
There's no sugar coating it, Torrens didn't hit all that much in his rookie year. He hit .163/.243/.203, good for a 18 wRC+ and a -0.8 fWAR. Which is either a disappointment or much better than what you'd think he'd do after making the jump from single-A to quad-A.
Overall his approach can be described as "steady." He's pretty patient and isn't afraid to make the pitcher throw some more.
However, he still ends up getting a fair bit of pitches outside the zone. He chases them and gets burned in the process.
Keep in mind that Torrens barely played 60 games this year so the sample size is, well, not as big as you'd want it to be tell anything substantial. But it's a good enough indicator of what he will need to work on next season.
Like how he tends to be a bit swing happy. I don't have access to every video of Torrens up at the plate but a good example of this might be this at-bat when a pitch up above the zone struck out Torrens.
In addition pitchers usually attacked the lower left corner of the zone (and the area just below the zone) where Torrens whiffs significantly as well. I'm sure this is the part where I'm supposed to say what he can do to improve that, but I'm 100% sure the Padres hitting coordinators are already on it. Plus I'm not a coach. I'm a guy with a baseball card collection.
Still, leave the pitch about belt high on either side and Torrens can get a nice hit here and there (yeah, yeah, I know, it's standard for a pro to be able to do that). Like this one off of Robbie Ray. Ready or not, Torrens can punish mistakes.
One bright spot is that Torrens did better against lefties than he did against righties overall. Torrens hit for a .216 average and .250 BABIP against lefties while hitting for a .140 average and .197 BABIP against righties. Although, yes, it's important to remember that he faced twice as many RHPs as he did LHPs.
No real complaints from me though. This is how we got Torrens' best at-bat of the year. A three run triple off of Steven Matz (which would've been a home run in not-Petco).
Most of the balls Torrens put in play ended up being grounders and most of his fly balls didn't get far (his triple was the furthest hit he had all season). Torrens won't have a lot of power in his career but as he really gets going in his development it wouldn't surprise me to see him turn into a steady backstop with 15 HR power (most of those will be hit during away games at Coors I'm sure). He's really started to bulk up these past couple of years, could be any day now.
I suppose one more interesting factoid was that Fangraphs had Torrens as more of a groundball hitter (59.1% GBP on the year) this year than a flyball hitter (24.7% FBP in 2017). As Torrens taps into his power more I could see him churning out a few more line drives (16.1% LDP in 2017). Reminiscent of the hitting machine he was in Staten Island. Yes, I'm grasping at straws here and being mildly redundant, analysis is not my forte.
Going forward the number one key is getting Torrens consistent at-bats. Torrens ended up only playing eight games in April, 11 games in May, 13 games in June, 11 games in July, six (SIX!) games in August, and six (SIX!) games in September. Getting big league experience is well and good but for me it's hard to think of this as not being another lost year of development. I shudder to think of how many games Torrens would've had to spend on the bench if injuries to Hector Sanchez and Austin Hedges hadn't forced San Diego's hand at various points of the season.
In an ideal and sane world where Torrens is still in the Yankees org, his 2017 would've likely been being the everyday catcher at single-A Charleston to open the season before a quick callup to high-A Tampa and possibly a small cameo in double-A Trenton near the end of the season. But we live in our twisted reality which means that Torrens is likely headed to double-A next year. Torrens' patient approach is fine, but his bat does need some work and he's going to get a lot more at-bats next year to help him do just that.
Alright, so how did Torrens do defensively?
Luis Torrens, Major League Catcher
Torrens definitely had some high moments behind the plate in 2017. Like when he called a great game during a rare start behind the plate on July 2nd against the Dodgers. Torrens and Jhoulys Chacin held the then-juggernaut Dodgers offense at bay for most of the game. That said when all was said and done he ended the season with a catcher's ERA of 4.74 and a -3 DRS, the Padres didn't have much of a pitching rotation going into the season and they (and Torrens) got punished for it.
Torrens' arm showed no significant signs of post major arm surgery issues as he did throw out four would-be base stealers, good for a 22% caught stealing percentage. Unfortunately he also had 14 runners steal a base on him. And yes there were three passed balls. I wish I could see how fast his throws to second were compared to league average but I couldn't find that data.
This was Torrens' first time catching big league caliber pitching, going from catching Daris Vargas to Carter Capps. That's probably the greatest development Torrens got all season that's going to immediately make a difference for his growth. If nothing else, I at least think it's cool that Torrens got to be Chacin and Luis Perdomo's personal catcher for a bit. Chacin is a fellow native of Venezuela and Perdomo was the Padres' Rule 5 Draftee in 2016 after all.
My takeaway is that he didn't embarrass himself and learned some intangible stuff that's going to be part of a narrative in a Padres beat writer's profile of Torrens if/when he capitalizes on his potential as an all time great. Much like his at-bats, Torrens will need consistent time behind the plate too. His defensive capabilities have always made him a promising backstop, I suspect that his glove will come along faster than his bat when given more playing time.
Final Thoughts
First off I'm very glad that Torrens managed to make it throughout the whole season without any major injuries. It's now been two years since Torrens had that surgery that took away his 2015 season, and his arm showed no real signs of wear or tear. Hopefully he can have a normal season next year and finish with something like 130 games played under his belt.
Second, while I am bummed that Torrens won't be returning to the Bronx anytime soon, I am glad that Torrens can be clear of mind in 2018 and focus solely on making improvements and being really MLB ready as soon as possible.
Lastly, I'm just really glad I can say that my favorite player Luis Torrens is a big leaguer. Imagine, a player I've been following since his time in the very low minors made it. Now I have an answer to "so who's your favorite baseball player?" without having to explain he's a minor leaguer. Although I still have to explain that the Padres are indeed a real team :P. Nonetheless, I'm giddy all the same.
Thank you all for sticking with me to the end of this post. It's my first attempt at doing any sort of analysis of baseball matters and I'm very sure I've made a fool of myself one way or another. Please call me out on it if I did. I want to learn and improve. This post was fun and I do plan on doing it again every year of Torrens' career.
I was so dedicated to this point I made a bad video to accompany it. Behold my bad editing skills that butchered a perfectly good Modest Mouse song.
BTW, the card at the very top was my latest Torrens pickup. An orange Bowman Chrome refractor that's numbered 19/25. One more card closer to #100!
This was my first year in review post of Torrens the big leaguer. *Sobs* they grow up so fast.
