Tag: Javier Baez

Celebrations, Showing Players Up

Javier Baez Is In No Mood For Your Gesticulations, Mr. Pitcher

Posted on by Jason Turbow

Baez v Garrett

Turnabout is fair play. The shoe’s on the other foot. Something about geese and ganders. When a player like Javier Baez takes exception to an opponent’s display of emotion on the field, one can’t help but think about such phrases. Also, hypocrisy.

On Saturday, Reds reliever Amir Garrett whiffed Baez to close out the top of the seventh, and grew somewhat animated on his way down the hill, loosing what Cubs manager Joe Maddon later called “a Lion King’s type of roar.”

There is, of course, some history. On May 18, 2017—one day short of one year earlier—Baez touched Garrett for a grand slam at Wrigley Field, and did just a touch of home run pimping.

As is the way of big leaguers, Garrett has a long memory and an overt willingness to respond in kind. Baez didn’t appreciate it. Following his strikeout, he and the pitcher had words, and benches emptied. The surprising part about it is that Baez, the guy behind this:

… and this:

… and oh hell yeah this:

… even took the time to consider his opponent’s reaction.

Baez (and some of his teammates) pointed out after the game that Cubs celebrations are strictly intramural, and not in any way directed at the opposition. So how about Garrett, a guy also known to occasionally show some emotion on the mound? Even if the pitcher’s Lion Kinging was directed at Baez (which it was probably was), there’s plenty of gray area when it comes to Baez’s own roaring. At some point, when a player is simply howling into the wind, it becomes difficult to draw too many distinctions.

Mostly, this seems like protracted frustration drawn quickly to the surface. At the time of the incident, Baez was 2-for-his-last-22, with nine strikeouts. The slugger has hit only .226 since April 26, watching his batting average fall from .310 to .265 in the process, with a meager .410 slugging percentage. He hasn’t drawn a walk since April 11. Suffice it to say that he’s in no mood for these types of shenanigans.

None of that, however, is particularly relevant. Javier Baez has rightly become a prominent face in the Let Ballplayers Celebrate movement, which is predicated on playing with emotion. Even if some of his points about Saturday’s game have merit, the overall optics of a guy like that calling out a response like Garrett’s doesn’t do much to further the cause.

Garrett himself said it perfectly after the game, in a Chicago Tribune report: “You dish it, you have to take it.”

 

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Evolution of the Unwritten Rules

Baez Wags, Puig Grins, All is Well With Baseball

Posted on by Jason Turbow

Baez wags

In an otherwise dispiriting game for the Cubs last night, second baseman Javier Baez at least gave us this, the culmination of a play in which Yasiel Puig tried to stretch a base hit off the left-field wall in Wrigley into a double.

 

(Watch the whole thing here.)

It’s an undeniably fabulous moment, the reasons for which show exactly how far baseball has come in this regard. Baez knows exactly who he’s dealing with, and how his response will be taken—that there’s no chance Puig will cry “disrespect” in response. The runner does not disappoint, grinning once he realizes what’s happening.

Here it is from another angle:

This, then, is where baseball is headed, a game in which players making great plays are able to mess around with each other in mutually beneficial ways. To call it showboat-on-showboat crime would be inaccurate, because it’s not a look-at-me moment in any way. Far from a post-homer pimp—something which Joe Maddon is decidedly against—it is instead a means for Baez to connect with a like-minded colleague and make the game a little bit more fun for everybody.

Had it been Madison Bumgarner sliding into second, of course, Baez’s finger wag would have been way out of line (and he’d have heard about it in some potentially painful ways), but that’s the point. Bumgarner is among a shrinking cadre of red-asses who maintain that old-school is the only way to play the game.

In reality, however, there is ever more space for players like Baez, who simply glow with the joy of baseball—and allow others to do the same.

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