The Sunday Ramble

Garcia goes yard. So do the Yankees with some...ahem...unique bats. MLB.tv is a disaster. Welcome to the first Ramble of the 2025 season.

One of the hallmarks of the 2024 Royals team was that they were hardly ever out of any ballgame. There was a belief in the dugout that they were always alive, no matter how tepid the bats looked at times.

Jump ahead to the brand new season where they’ve played just two games, but damnit, it looks like that same never-say-die ethos remains part of the Royals’ DNA.

After collecting just one hit the first time through the order—courtesy Jonathan India—against Cleveland starter Gavin Williams, they finally broke through in the fourth on the back of another India single and a Salvador Perez two out, RBI base hit.

Perez was at it again a couple of innings later to pull the Royals to within a run. That set up the heroics of Maikel Garcia.

Witness:

That’s a bit of a hanging sweeper from reliever Paul Sewald. Yet it was located on the inner half, which meant Garcia needed to pull his hands in to yank that pitch. And yank it he did, right off the foul pole to tie the game.

We’ve been over this before: For Garcia to realize his full potential, he has to hit the ball in the air. And when he hits the ball in the air, he has to pull it. Last year, Garcia put it on the ground nearly 50 percent of the time. Far, far too high. He hit a fly ball around 20 percent of the time. Far, far too low. And when Garcia hit the ball in the air, he rarely pulled it. Of the balls put in play off his bat in 2024, just 10.8 percent were pulled in the air.

Recall last year that Garcia launched three home runs in the first six games of the season (two to the pull field and one the opposite way). I raved about what looked to be a new approach where he would increase his average launch angle and put the ball more in the air. That…did not stick.

We’ll see how this plays out over the course of the next 160 games. What we do know: Good things happen when Garcia pulls the ball in the air.

I may have some more on Saturday’s game, but for now a couple of random thoughts:

• How enjoyable will it be to watch Jonathan India grind out some quality PAs? The Royals first run of the afternoon was possible after an 11-pitch at bat that ended with a single.

• Daniel Lynch IV looked good in his middle relief role, bridging the gap from the starter (Seth Lugo who went five) and the back of the bullpen (Lucas Erceg and Carlos Estévez, the latter of whom picked up his first save as a Royal).

• India looked much more comfortable in left than at third. The infield alignment of Garcia-Witt-Massey is still the best defense the Royals can put out there.

• Credit to Lugo who was not sharp, but found a way to get through five.

The New York Yankees bludgeoned the Milwaukee Brewers on Saturday by a football score of 20-9. They homered on the first three pitches they saw in the bottom of the first. That’s never happened before in major league history.

Overall, the Yankees bashed a franchise-record nine home runs, with Aaron Judge hitting three of them. They also committed five errors.

Oh! They are also using bats that have a barrel further down the bat.

Early in the game, in which the team hit a franchise-record nine home runs, YES Network’s play-by-play broadcaster Michael Kay mentioned that several Yankees players were using newly designed bats, including shortstop Anthony Volpe and second baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr., who both homered in the game. These bats feature a barrel closer to the hands rather than near the end of the bat, which is the standard.

“You see the shape of Chisholm’s bat? The Yankee front office, the analytics department, did a study on Anthony Volpe, and every single ball it seemed like he hit on the label,” Kay explained. “He didn’t hit any on the barrel, so they had bats made up where they moved a lot of the wood into the label, so the harder part of the bat is going to actually strike the ball. It’ll allow you to wait a little bit longer.”

The shape of the bat does not violate the rules, per a league spokesperson.

Here’s a photo of said lumber:

That just looks…weird. And illegal, despite what a league spokesman may say. The Evil Empire gonna evil empire. As if you needed another reason to despise the Yankees.

There was quite a streaming snafu on Opening Day as MLB.tv went dark for most of the afternoon. It doesn’t exactly inspire confidence as Rob Manfred continues to insist that the league needs to gain control of streaming rights.

I’ve been a subscriber for maybe 20 years. I’m not entirely sure. I’ve had it forever. I stream on the app on Apple TV, I stream on my laptop in a browser. I also stream on my iPad. Let’s just say I’m a power user of this service.

While I’ve only been using it for a couple of days, I am impressed by Major League Baseball’s total commitment to the enshittification of its streaming product. Gone from the iOS app are the overlays. Gone is the ability to scroll through the play-by-play if you decide to join a game in progress. Gone is the ease of jumping from game to game. They took a product that was fairly robust and stripped nearly everything from it. It’s just a vanilla service at this point.

Thanks for nothing, Manfred.

Perhaps the best sign that baseball was back came in Toronto on Opening Day when Tyler O’Neill smashed a home run. It was a three-run shot off starter Jose Berríos and was part of a home run barrage for the Baltimore Orioles as they trounced Blue Jays 12-2.

It was the sixth consecutive Opening Day that O’Neill has hit a home run. Six! Yes, that is a record.

A record both bizarre and delightful.

Speaking of bizarre and delightful, there’s this pitching line from Colorado’s Antonio Senzatela.

Senzatela recorded 13 outs and allowed 11 base runners without allowing a run. Doing that with 16 hard-hit balls was just showing off as far as I’m concerned.

In major league history, a starting pitcher who allowed nine or more hits in five or fewer innings without giving up a run had happened just four times prior to Saturday. The only starter who did that and didn’t strike out a batter was Bill Doak, pitching for the Cardinals against the Boston Braves in 1922.

This season is off to a cracking start.

It’s weird watching the Tampa Bay Rays play their home games outside. It’s even weirder to watch them play in a spring training ballpark. I know it’s a major league game and they’ve done a lot to make the ballpark the home of the Rays, but it still feels like a minor league game.

Part of that minor league feeling may have come from the Colorado Rockies as the visiting team in their first series of the year.

Still smarting from that double TOOTBLAN from the Royals on Opening Day? I present to you former Royal Garrett Hampson taking a wide—and completely unnecessary—turn at third in the ninth inning with two outs and his Diamondbacks down 4-3 to the Cubs. Dansby Swanson chased him down and slapped the tag as Hampson tried to get back to the base. Ballgame. That’s brutal.