Unwritten

by Danny Knobler

  It wasn’t acceptable when Cole Hamels threw at Bryce Harper when Harper was a rookie in 2012. Hamels admitted intent, saying he was trying to follow “old baseball” and give Harper something that said, “Welcome to the big leagues.”

  It was the wrong thing to say, and it helped earn Hamels a five-game suspension. But throwing at Harper simply because he was a top young star was also the wrong thing to do, even if Harper would later tell the Washington Post that he half expected it.

  “I thought I would get it from somebody, just because of who I was,” said Harper, who always took pride in understanding and appreciating old-school baseball. “But I didn’t think it would be Hamels.”

  It was Hamels, and he didn’t have many defenders. If anything, it was Harper who gained some respect that night, because after taking first base quietly when he was hit—not even looking at Hamels on the way there—he went to third on a single and stole home while Hamels was making a pickoff throw to first base.

  That’s how you get your revenge.

  There are still old-school/new-school divides. But on this issue, the old-school position has fewer and fewer adherents.

  15. Is There Still Room for a Purpose Pitch?

  WHEN SYNDERGAARD WAS IN TRIPLE-A WITH the Mets, his pitching coach was Frank Viola, who pitched in the major leagues for 15 years beginning in 1982. Viola saw in ­Syndergaard a pitcher who didn’t make hitters as uncomfortable as they should be when facing a guy that big (6’6”, 240) who threw that hard (fastballs at 100–102 mph, sliders sometimes as hard as 95 mph).

  Viola and other pitching coaches told Syndergaard he could be intimidating if he wanted to be. But he had to show it with his attitude, and he might need to show it once in a while by coming inside on a batter.

  It’s an issue pitching coaches and scouts talk about all the time, and there’s definitely a feeling that today’s pitchers don’t use intimidation enough. They’ll admit it’s harder than it used to be, because some hitters react so dramatically to any pitch inside and MLB orders fines and suspensions if you hit a guy and they determine it’s intentional.

  Beyond that, more and more hitters come to the plate with padding on their front arm. Body armor, the pitchers call it. They’re able to hang that elbow right over the inside part of the plate with no real fear that getting hit on the elbow will hurt.

  Early in the 2018 season, I did a story for Bleacher Report on the increasing prevalence of hitters using the C-Flap, the helmet extension that covers a batter’s jaw and lower face. When I posted the story to Facebook, a former major-league hitter responded with a comment that linked the C-Flap to the elbow guards.

  “With the C-flap, hitters are taking away any fear they might have at the plate,” wrote Randy Johnson, who was an infielder with the Atlanta Braves in the early 1980s and has worked as a major-league scout for many years. “That is one of the biggest differences in today’s game. Pitchers can’t intimidate any more. Hitters can crowd the plate with no risk or fear of being brushed back or retaliated against for swinging from their heels every pitch or standing on top of the plate. I would have loved to use one [C-flap], but I don’t think it was allowed in the past unless you had a prior [hit by pitch] in the head or facial fracture. The hitters now own the inside part of the plate, and I doubt that will ever change with the lean toward helping the hitters any way possible. Bigger, stronger players, smaller strike zone and ballparks, juiced baseballs, dry/ultra light bats, lightning-fast infields, and very few pitchers that can locate a [fastball] all ­contribute to helping the hitters now. More [home runs] but fewer runs scored. Contact does make a difference and [I’m] not sure where the advantage is with today’s hitting approaches. Why is the new wave style of ‘all or nothing’ so popular?”

  Still, making hitters uncomfortable at the plate is a big part of a pitcher’s job. So few pitchers are able to do it by throwing inside with a purpose that when I asked a former major-league pitcher if anyone now uses intimidation as a strategy, the answer was, “not intentionally.”

  In other words, the only guys who intimidate do it because they throw hard and they don’t have great command. That’s not really a strategy, and it wouldn’t have fit with anything Bob Gibson or Pedro Martinez did.

  Some writers have argued that pitchers from Gibson’s era get more credit for intimidation than they should. Even Gibson questioned his reputation as a pitcher who used intimidation as a weapon, in a story Joe Posnanski did for MLB.com in early 2018.

  “Ah,” Gibson told Posnanski, “hitters don’t get intimidated. That was just one of those things people said.”

  Perhaps, but when Gibson wrote his autobiography, Stranger to the Game, in 1994, he had a slightly different story.

  “It was said that I basically threw five pitches—fastball, slider, curve, changeup, and the knockdown,” Gibson wrote. “I don’t believe that did me justice, though. I actually used about nine pitches—two different fastballs, two sliders, a curve, a changeup, knockdown, brushback, and hit batsman.”

  Don Drysdale understood the same thing.

  “I never hit anybody in the head in my life,” Drysdale told Murray Chass of the New York Times in 1987, “but you have to move them off the plate; you have to get them out of there. This was part of the game and everybody accepted it as part of the game.

  “The pitcher is trying to keep the hitter off-balance and keep his timing different from your timing. Once the hitter gets in sync, you’re in trouble. I’m not condoning hitting anybody, but you want to back him off the plate. Pitchers [nowadays] don’t know how to come inside.”

  Drysdale certainly knew how.

  “Drysdale used to knock Willie Mays on his butt every other pitch,” former big-league player and manager Buck Rodgers told Scott Miller of the Los Angeles Times in a 1993 story. “Then Mays would get up and hit a line drive.”

  So maybe it wasn’t that easy to intimidate hitters. But coaches are always going to try to convince guys like Syndergaard to do it.

  He learned from Viola, and he kept learning when he got to the major leagues. In 2015, Syndergaard was fascinated by the movie Fastball, which studied hard throwers from Walter Johnson to Bob Feller to Gibson and Nolan Ryan.

  “I think of Bob Gibson a lot,” Syndergaard said. “Listening to him in the documentary, he was the nicest guy in the world. But then he was a savage on the mound. Nolan Ryan seemed like a great guy, and he was an intimidating presence on the mound.”

  So in that 2015 World Series, when he watched the first two games and saw the Royals swinging at nearly every first pitch and having success with it, Syndergaard decided a purpose pitch to begin Game 3 might help.

  He even telegraphed it, telling reporters at a press conference the day before the game: “It’s something else being able to watch Escobar walk up there and swing at the first pitch almost every single game. I have a few tricks up my sleeve that I’ll be able to break out tomorrow night. I’m looking forward to it.”

  Then came the pitch, a 97.8 mph fastball that backed Escobar off the plate and flew all the way to the backstop.

  Later that night, after he had won the game and addressed the reporters again, Syndergaard went to his phone and sent Viola a pointed text message.

  “Hit that first pitch,” the message read.

  Viola loved it.

  16. Kenley Jansen’s Blacklist

  AS A KID GROWING UP IN CURACAO, KENLEY Jansen and his friends had no unwritten rules. Or maybe they had one.

  “You just play,” Jansen said. “Have fun. We have fun. We play.”

  He signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2004, a couple of months after his 17th birthday, one of many to leave the island that also gave baseball Andruw Jones, Didi Gregorius, Andrelton Simmons, and Ozzie Albies, among others. Jansen was a catcher then. Even after he moved to the mound five years later and even after he developed into one of the best closers
in the major leagues, he would always maintain he could have made it as a catcher.

  It worked out, and in January 2017 the Dodgers gave him a five-year, $80 million contract that made him one of the game’s highest-paid relievers.

  On the way there, he learned the unwritten rules.

  “At certain innings, when you have a lot of runs, you can’t steal a base,” he said. “That’s one thing we had to adjust to. Here, in the States, it’s an unwritten rule that if you steal [with a big lead], you’re going to get hit by a pitch. Or if you hit a homer and you don’t run hard—not pimping it but just Cadillacing it a little, the pitcher won’t like that, either.

  “Those are two things that were different for us.”

  Jansen didn’t hit many home runs in the minor leagues (15 in 953 plate appearances), which is one reason he became a pitcher. But one thing he decided when he moved to the mound was that he wasn’t going to care how a hitter celebrated success against him.

  “I really don’t,” he said. “I didn’t make my pitch. Sometimes my execution was very poor, and you got me, or sometimes I’ve just got to tip my cap, if I made a really good pitch and you take me deep. But to be honest with you, that doesn’t bother me. When a guy takes me deep, do whatever you want to.

  “You’re going to be on my blacklist regardless.”

  Wait a minute. It doesn’t bother him, but if you hit a home run off him, you’re on his blacklist?

  Let Jansen explain.

  “Because the next few times we play that team, the only guy I want to face is the guy that took me deep,” he said. “That’s my attitude.”

  Don’t get this wrong. He doesn’t want to face the guy again so he can throw at him.

  “No, it’s to get you out,” he said. “Punch you out.”

  Punch out as in a strikeout, not in terms of throwing fists.

  “I just want to punch him out,” Jansen said. “I want to embarrass him. That’s how I feel about it. So I really don’t care, man. Hitters do whatever they want to. Once you hit me, I’m going to have you on my blacklist to get you out, for the next few times.”

  There’s a good chance he will. Jansen has faced more than 2,000 batters in his major-league career. He has struck out nearly 40 percent of them.

  There’s an even better chance Jansen won’t throw at you. In nine big-league seasons combined, with all those batters faced, he hit just 17 batters. He’s no head-hunter, that’s for sure.

  Even if one of his teammates has been hit by the other pitcher, Jansen doesn’t believe in retaliation, at least not by throwing at someone in the other team’s lineup.

  “That’s so stupid,” he said. “That’s another thing I really don’t like. Sometimes the ball’s going to come out of your hand and you’re going to hit somebody. Like [in 2017], I hit the best hitter from the Chicago Cubs, Anthony Rizzo. I have a lot of respect for that man. I love seeing the way he plays. But I have to go in on him. He’s a guy if you don’t go in and you leave it over the plate, you’re going to get beat.”

  Jansen knows that all too well. Through the end of the 2018 regular season, Rizzo had come to the plate 16 times against him. Rizzo had five hits, including a game-tying home run that cost Jansen a save, and a walkoff single. Jansen had retired him 10 times, including twice as the final out in a save. The other time, as Jansen said, he hit Rizzo with a pitch, obviously without intent, in the ninth inning of a tie game in the 2017 National League Championship Series.

  “Same thing with Bryce Harper,” Jansen said. “I don’t think I’ve hit Bryce Harper, but I have to go in on Bryce Harper and I hate that. If I hit them, I hate that rule that if I hit their best hitter they have to hit our best hitter. Stop being sensitive. That’s how the game is.”

  Jansen actually did hit Harper once, also in a playoff game, also in the ninth inning when the game situation made it clear there was no intent.

  For Jansen, this goes both ways. He doesn’t want other pitchers throwing at Dodger hitters just because he hit one of theirs, but he also understands that most times when a Dodger gets hit, the pitcher wasn’t intentionally throwing at him.

  “Like [Justin Turner],” he said. “I’m not mad at teams that bust him in. You have to throw him in. He’s the best hitter on our team. That’s how you’re going to get him out. He stands right on top of the plate. I really don’t get that unwritten rule. I’m not speaking for any other pitcher, but for me, I’m not ever going to try to hit a batter on purpose. I’m going to try to get you out.

  “In the ninth inning, when I pitch, I really don’t care about anything but getting the hitters out. If I hit a guy, it’s not going to do me any good. There’s a guy on first, and I’m in trouble.”

  Jansen has strong opinions, but he isn’t a rebel. He’s not fighting against the way baseball is played in the major leagues, and he believes in most of what people say when they talk about “playing the game the right way.”

  “Those guys, I have high respect for them, and I love seeing how they play the game,” he said. “One of my favorite guys I love to watch is Bryce Harper. He always plays the game hard. He always plays the right way. And he understands that sometimes we are coming in on him. If we hit him, he understands that we have to come in.”

  Through the end of the 2018 season, Harper had faced Jansen 14 times. Harper had four hits, including one home run in July 2015 at Nationals Park.

  Did that put him on the blacklist? You’d better believe it. The Dodgers and Nationals met again a month later in a three-game series at Dodger Stadium. Twice in that series, Jansen faced Harper.

  He didn’t throw at him. But both times, he struck him out.

  17. Torey (Just Like Earl) Takes a Stand

  ONE TEAM THAT CHANGED MANAGERS RECENTLY noticed something interesting. When they came to a point in the job interview where they explored a potential manager’s philosophy, the older candidates all believed in the baseball tradition that when your guys are getting drilled by pitches, your pitcher retaliates and throws at one of their guys.

  The younger candidates, almost to a man, didn’t share that belief.

  It turns out it’s not simply a young/old divide. When I asked major-league managers in 2018 how they felt, 46-year-old Dave Roberts of the Los Angeles Dodgers said he believes in pitchers protecting hitters. And 40-year-old Kevin Cash of the Tampa Bay Rays said he was willing to leave it up to his players.

  Torey Lovullo wasn’t willing to do that.

  “I’m not a really big fan of taking a baseball and throwing it at somebody as hard as you can,” the 52-year-old Lovullo told reporters early in the 2018 season, saying he had directed his Arizona Diamondbacks pitchers not to retaliate in that way. “I know that there are some old-school baseball thoughts and some old-school baseball traditions that are still followed. I believe there’s other ways that you can go out and operate and make things hurt when something like that happens.”

  The Diamondbacks followed their manager’s directive. In a June 2018 game in Colorado, Rockies pitcher Brooks Pounders hit Diamondbacks star Paul Goldschmidt after Goldschmidt had homered four times in two games. Pounders’ response was a 93 mph fastball that got Goldschmidt squarely in the ribs, and the response from many other teams would have been a missile directed at one of the Rockies’ biggest hitters.

  The Diamondbacks didn’t respond, at least not in that way. And while their players weren’t happy to see Goldschmidt hit, they seemed to support their manager, too.

  “I think the game has matured and you understand that hitting guys isn’t necessarily the best thing,” pitcher Archie Bradley told MLB.com. “You can injure some guys and put guys in bad spots. But at the end of the day, you want to protect your guys and it was unfortunate and kind of uncalled for.”

  There are old-school thoughts and traditions that are still followed. But Lovullo’s views weren’t that different from those exp
ressed decades before by Hall of Fame manager Earl Weaver.

  Weaver always counseled his pitchers against retaliation, believing beanball wars and the resulting fights could lead to injuries his teams didn’t need. He knew he had a good team, but he also knew the team was only good if his best players stayed on the field. If an Orioles pitcher threw at someone and the opponent responded by throwing at Brooks Robinson, the ­Orioles would not be better off.

  Weaver wasn’t alone, even in his own era.

  In Game 3 of the 1981 ALCS, Oakland A’s right-hander Matt Keough threw his very first pitch up and in on Yankees leadoff man Jerry Mumphrey. The Yankees responded by winning the game and finishing up a sweep that sent them to the World Series. But they didn’t respond with a similar knockdown pitch to any of Keough’s teammates.

  Bob Lemon was the Yankee manager at the time, and like Weaver he didn’t believe in retaliation. Lemon had been a Hall of Fame pitcher himself, and he never forgot the feeling that he might have seriously hurt a batter he was throwing at.

  “That’s why I’ll never order a pitcher to knock down a hitter,” Lemon said.

  Keough knew the feeling, especially after he saw the look in Mumphrey’s eyes.

  “I so regretted it,” he said years later. “His life and family could have been destroyed.”

  Keough’s regret only grew when he was traded from the A’s to the Yankees in June 1983. He arrived in the middle of the season and needed black cleats (the A’s wore white). The player who wore the same size shoe and generously offered Keough his cleats was… Jerry Mumphrey.

  But Keough was doing what pitchers in his era normally did when he threw at Mumphrey in 1981. Keough had watched the Yankees take advantage of A’s pitching in the first two games of the ALCS in New York, and he wanted to make a point from the start that the A’s wouldn’t be pushed around.