Ever heard of Rickwood Field? It’s a cozy little place in Birmingham, Alabama that is filled with so much history it dwarfs any 21st century facility. It’s good to remember our past – even the ugly parts – in order to grow. You know, those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it. There will be a special event there in mid-June.
That’s just one of the 30 things to know about the rest of the National League with the baseball season at hand. We start with the Braves, toss in a tribute to a former Phillies reliever’s tenacity and close some rules changes to keep in mind.
NL East
1. Adding Chris Sale probably gives the Braves the deepest rotation in the National League. Sale, who once incurred a five-game suspension for cutting up a teamload of jerseys he felt were too baggy, has a pretty simple plan for winning over Braves’ fans. “Just don’t suck,” he told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “and they’ll like [you].”
2. Because Sale has spent his entire career in the AL, most of Sale’s history against the current Phillies is limited to the start he made last season when he went six innings in a Red Sox win. J.T. Realmuto tripled and Nick Castellanos doubled off him that night. Castellanos has faced Sale 44 times, struck out 19 times and has a .190 batting average.
3. Spencer Strider set the Braves’ modern-day record with 281 strikeouts last season, pretty impressive given the pitchers that organization has trotted out there. The overall record is held by our man Charlie Buffinton, who struck out a mere 417 in 1884 when he went 48-16 and tossed 63 complete games. Of course the pitching mound was just 50 feet from home plate in those days.
4. The Phillies accounted for 38 of Strider’s strikeouts last season, more than any other team. Strider was 4-0 against the Phillies, but that was in the regular season. He was 0-2 in the postseason, of course, including the deciding Game 4 when Castellanos homered twice off Strider and Trea Turner homered once.
5. Orlando Arcia led the Braves with four home runs in the spring. Atta Boy, Orlando. Can’t wait to see the reception he gets during Atlanta’s visit to Citizens Bank Park for the opening series.
6. The Braves host the Mets on April 8, the 50th anniversary of Hank Aaron’s 715th home run – an important moment in both baseball and U.S. cultural history.
7. Miami, already missing staff ace Sandy Alcantara for the season following Tommy John surgery, have seen fellow starters Eury Perez, Braxton Garrett and Edwin Cabrera battle arm injuries this spring. Perez – who last year became the youngest pitcher in Marlins history at 20 years, 27 days old – went 6-5 in his rookie season with a 3.15 ERA, and 108 strikeouts in 91 1/3 innings.
8. The Marlins have moved former closer A.J. Puk (15 saves last season) into the starting rotation. Puk was the 6th overall pick in 2016, a/k/a the Mickey Moniak draft.
9. Carlos Mendoza is the Mets fifth manager in the last eight years. In fairness, the Phillies have had four different skippers in the same time frame.
10. The Mets open the season on Thursday against Milwaukee, the first time they are beginning a new year at home in front of fans since 2018. They started on the road in 2019, 2021, 2022 and 2023. They opened at home in 2020, but the Citi Field was empty because of the pandemic.
11. Pete Alonso will be a free agent after the season and Mets’ owner Steve Cohen seems in no hurry to lock him up. Alonso, 29, has 192 homers in his first five seasons. He needs 61 to break Darryl Strawberry’s team record. A season like that also would break the proverbial free agency bank
12. Jake Diekman is the poster child of persistence.
*He’s 37 years old.
*Signed with the Mets in February, his fourth different team in two years.
*This is his ninth club in his 13 seasons.
*He was released by the White Sox mid-season last year, but picked up by Tampa Bay less than a week later.
*Became a reliable piece of the bullpen (50 games, 2.15 ERA) as the Rays made the playoffs.
*Parlayed that into a $4 million contract with the Mets, equaling the highest salary of his career.
*According to Baseball-Reference.com, Diekman has made $29.8 million in his career, not including a Mets’ option of another $4 million for 2025.
*Not bad for a former 30th round draft pick of the Phillies in 2007.
NL Central
13. Rhys Hoskins went through a full spring training for his new team, the Brewers. He banged out four home runs in 41 ABs (with 11 strikeouts) in his first action since tearing his ACL with the Phillies last spring.
14. Good line from Milwaukee Journal Sentinel writer JR Radcliffe right after Hoskins signed with the Brewers in January. Radcliffe noted Hoskins’ wife Jayme’s habit of buying beers for Phillies fans. “Yeah,” Radcliffe wrote, “the Hoskins’ family is going to fit in great in Milwaukee.”
15. The Brewers’ only visit to Philadelphia is June 3-5. Their projected win total is 77.5, way below the 92 wins they had last year when they won the NL Central.
16. The Cubs, who plucked manager Craig Counsell from Milwaukee, are slightly favored over St. Louis to win the Central.
17. Cubs starting pitcher Shota Imanaga is nicknamed “The Throwing Philosopher” for his intellectual approach to his craft. Along those lines, we should start calling Anthony Gargano “The Talking Philosopher.”
18. Bemoan and criticize the Reds all you want, but they’re not changing their flamboyant style. Oh, and get off my lawn. “We play with passion,” infielder and team leader Jonathan India told the Cincinnati Enquirer. “We don’t care what people think. I don’t care what people think. We’ll play our brand of baseball. If people have a problem with that, so what? We don’t care.”
19. The Reds improved from 62-100 in 2022 to 82-80 last season. DraftKings has an over/under for number of wins this season at 81.5.
20. Entertaining antagonist Joey Votto, second in Reds’ history in home runs behind only Johnny Bench, is now with Toronto.
21. The Cardinals will wear a patch commemorating the 60th anniversary of their 1964 World Series title. That’ll go down like 12-day-old flounder when St. Louis comes to Philadelphia May 31-June 2.
22. The Pirates hired Philadelphia native Sarah Gelles as a senior vice president, assistant general manager. Gelles, who attended Germantown Friends, is an analytics whiz who has been in baseball since 2011. She was most recently with the Astros, joining their front office in 2018 – the year after their tainted World Series win, by the way.
NL West
23. Dodgers RHP Yoshinobu Yamamoto is still the preseason favorite for NL Rookie of the Year, but don’t go running to the betting window just yet. The 25-year-old Yamamoto, who signed a 12-year, $325 million contract, had a rough spring and an even worse regular-season debut. He allowed five earned runs in the first inning in the Dodgers’ loss to San Diego in Seoul on March 21.
24. The Dodgers have won 100 games in four consecutive full seasons. The exception was 2020 when they won their only World Series in this span. They went 43-17 in that pandemic-shortened season, a pace that equates to 116 wins over a 162-game schedule.
25. DraftKings’ line on home runs hit by Shohei Ohtani is 38.5. Whichever side the former interpreter likes, go the other way.
26. The Dodgers visit Citizens Bank Park for a midweek series July 9-11. Ohtani will primarily DH this year, at least to start the season. He definitely will not pitch after having Tommy John surgery in September.
27. With all due respect to the Phillies-Mets in London, the coolest thing on anybody’s schedule is the Giants-Cardinals game on June 20 in Birmingham, Ala. They’re honoring Willie Mays that night at historic Rickwood Field where Mays played in the Negro Leagues in 1948 before joining the Giants in 1951. Mays, who will be 93 on May 6, is the greatest living ballplayer and arguably the best of all time. He was selected to 24 All-Star Games, led the league in home runs four times and had four other seasons where he led the league in stolen bases.
28. Rickwood was built in 1910 and is modeled after Connie Mack’s Shibe Park (21st & Lehigh), where the Philadelphia A’s, Phillies and Eagles played. Rickwood is the oldest professional baseball field in the country. Its capacity is 10,800.
29. Bob Melvin has switched from managing the Padres to managing the Giants. Mike Shildt is the Padres’ new skipper. They just keep recycling these dudes, don’t they?
30. It appears to be another lost season for the Rockies, especially in the piranha pit of a division that is the NL West. Colorado lost 100 games last year for the first time in franchise history (103, to be exact).
“It hasn’t been a ton of fun out on the field, having losing seasons, watching the playoffs, watching the Dodgers always go, the Giants and Padres in the mix and the Diamondbacks doing their thing last year,” Kyle Freeland, the Rockies opening-day starter told the Denver Post. “That’s where we want to get back to, that 2017, 2018 kind of team where we know showing up to the ballpark we are winning tonight.”
And finally
There are a couple tweaks to the rules to further enhance pace of play. Give MLB credit, they’re at least on the right path here. The sweeping changes enacted in 2023, according to USA Today, cut the average game down nearly 25 minutes to 2 hours, 39 minutes.
*Mound visits have been cut from five to four. MLB data showed “98% of games would not have exceeded a limit of four mound visits.”
*The pitch clock with runners on base has been reduced from 20 seconds to 18. (It remains at 15 seconds when the bases are empty.)
https://www.mlb.com/press-release/press-release-mlb-announces-rules-modifications-for-2024-season
*Pitchers who warm up on the field of play between innings must face at least one batter. According to USA Today, MLB said this happened 24 times last season where a pitcher was replaced before throwing a pitch which added “approximately three minutes of dead time per event.”
Ed Barkowitz is a semi-retired sports writer formerly with the Philadelphia Daily News/Inquirer. His email is EdBarkowitz2.0@gmail.com.
