The Little Joys of Baseball - 6/29/25
Let's play hooky! Moore, Moore, Moore, how do you like it? MLB & GATBP?
This week brought an interesting variety of little joys, including some highs that came from some lows. Let’s get into it!
Position Players Pitching!
I touched on this a few weeks ago, about how much I enjoy everyone else enjoying the return of the little position player emoticon guys since MLB/Cut4 abandoned them some years ago. It’s gotten to the point where it’s almost become like a game with how many people can tag me on Threads anytime someone steps up to the mound! The fact that we’re all able to experience this little joy as a community truly brings ME continued joy.
Lucky for us the last couple of days have not disappointed. There have been SIX different position players who have pitched between Friday (6/27) and Saturday’s (6/28) games, with FOUR of those appearances happening in back-to-back nights in the same series, and all of Saturday’s appearances occurring within an under 40-minute span!
On Friday, we saw:
Red Sox utilityman Nate Eaton pitch against the Blue Jays.
Rays utilityman José Caballero pitch against the Orioles.
Braves utilityman Luke Williams pitched against the Phillies (even striking out Kyle Schwarber).
Then on Saturday, it was:
Orioles infielder Luis Vázquez pitching against the Rays (2 innings!)
Dodgers SS Miguel Rojas gave go-to-guy Kiké Hernández a break against the Royals.
Blue Jays C Tyler Heineman pitching against the Red Sox.
While not necessarily a great thing if it’s your team that’s got the position player up, it’s entertaining for the fans and oftentimes even the players.
Fans step up for Ketel Marte
Earlier in the week the aftermath of an incident between Diamondbacks 2B Ketel Marte and a fan in Chicago was caught on camera. Marte was in tears as he was consoled by manager Torey Lovullo and SS Geraldo Perdomo. We later learned that the fan shouted something about Marte’s late mother who died in an accident back in 2017.
The fan has (rightly) since been banned by the White Sox and MLB indefinitely as we’ve increasingly see fans become unafraid to bark at players or put their hands on them (as we saw with Jarren Duran and Mookie Betts during the World Series respectively) without due consequence, and sending death threats as Lance McCullers Jr. revealed as well as Red Sox pitcher Garrett Whitlock’s wife posted this week. The connection between this and the mass infiltration of betting is an entirely separate conversation, and this is supposed to be about the positive, so I won’t digress any further.
As a show of support and solidarity with Marte, fans responded by donating over $18,000 to-date to the Diamondbacks foundation, proving that the baseball community is truly one of the best!
Playing Hooky
The upside to having had quit a toxic job a couple of years ago was that I had the freedom to attend midweek day games whenever I wanted. Typically the crowds are smaller, you can just stroll on down to some great seats, and just take a break on a Wednesday afternoon. And while nowadays I’m a freelancer with a digital agency, it allows me to be remote, which still gives me that flexibility. Only this season, due in part to having to change up the schedule because of the Rays stadium situation, this was only the Angels second midweek day home game of the season! Especially with an opportunity to sweep the Red Sox, I had to take advantage of my first Wednesday day-game of the season. And of course, it had to include ice cream in a helmet. I’m grateful for these opportunities to watch the game I love and my favorite team.
Christian Moore's breakout game
The Angels top pick in last year’s draft, Christian Moore, had just about two weeks of playing at the major league level when he delivered a breakout performance on Tuesday night against the Red Sox. With Cy Young candidate Garrett Crochet starting that game against the Halos, you knew it was going to be an uphill battle to even remotely get to him. Luckily, Angels pitching kept the game close and Angels batters hung in there long enough to get to the Red Sox bullpen which has struggled often this season. Not only did he hit the game-tying home run in the bottom of the 8th, he delivered the walk-off blow with a 2-run homerun (which he initially thought was a game-tying triple).
Moore was quickly promoted from A-ball to AA with the Rocket City Trash Pandas after being drafted, and immediately started crushing the ball. It’s possible he would’ve made his major league debut last season when rosters expanded in September had he not suffered a knee injury at the end of August, that kept him out for a little over two weeks. Despite this, he continued to mash upon his return and earned an invite to Spring Training this year, although failed to break camp with the club. He started again at AA and was recently promoted to AAA before making his MLB debut on June 16.
Logan Gilbert draws Cal Raleigh like one of his French girls
The 2025 season thus far has been the year of Big Dumper. Yeah, yeah, Aaron Judge and all that, I’m not taking anything away from him, but Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh with all that junk in the trunk is on his own historic path. After being named AL Player of the Week for this past week, SP Logan Gilbert let Cal know he had earned the achievement by flexiing his artistic “skills” and presenting this masterpiece. Although his Cal drawing definitely did not have enough “dumper”.
BIG day for GATBP on Threads
And finally, I thought I had peaked when I learned that both Mr. and Mrs. Met had begun following me on Instagram and Threads (and they do like to watch my IG Stories which I thank them for!), but imagine my surprise when I saw this follower notification from MLB on Threads! Does this mean I’ve made it? Has all my yapping paid off? It remains to be seen as they have not interacted with the account yet aside from following. Nevertheless, it’s one to mark down as an accomplishment!
That’s all for the little joys this week, we’ll see what this next week brings!