Redasses and red faces
Bill Hanstock tries a little tenderness with Madison Bumgarner in his Willets Pen debut; Colleen Sullivan looks at the Phillies, who are embarrassing and historic losers
Trivia question: Last night, the Mets had their biggest ninth-inning comeback in 25 years, specifically since September 13, 1997, when Bobby Valentine’s club got off the deck after being one-hit by Dustin Hermanson of the Expos for eight innings, scored six in the ninth, and went on to win, 9-6, on a three-run homer by Bernard Gilkey in the 11th.
According to Fangraphs’ game log, the Phillies’ peak win expectancy last night was 99.8%. The Expos were at 99.9% win expectancy with one out in the ninth inning in that 1997 game, according to Baseball-Reference, which lists it as tied the 16th-most improbable regular season comeback of all time (last night’s was tied for 54th on the list), along with the Mets’ win over which team, whom they trailed 8-0 against in the eighth inning on September 2, 1972?
Last Caress
By Bill Hanstock
If there’s one thing that all MLB fans know about Madison Bumgarner, it’s that he is 100 percent confirmed as that strangest of baseball player types: the redass. If you are somehow unfamiliar with the “redass” variant of hardballer, it basically means they embody Clint Eastwood’s entire deal since around the time he decided to berate an empty chair as a type of avant-garde political theatre.
The redass in the wild will exhibit staunch gatekeepery tendencies at all times, with no small amount of “get off my lawn”-ery and a soupçon of “hmmm, a white guy doing this to specific people is making me a little uncomfortable!” When he pitches, Bumgarner is a level of intense that isn’t of the Max Scherzer pure psychopath variety, but rather of the “why don’t you come over here and say that to my fuckin’ FACE” variety. When he talks, he sounds like he has his mouth full of equal parts gravel and Sam Elliott. This is a guy who participated in rodeos in the offseason under a fake name because he is a dyed-in-the-wool cowpuncher.*
As a lifelong Giants fan, I’m marked down to owe a large measure of gratitude, love and respect to a guy who was varying percentages of responsible for three entire championships. In the case of the 2014 championship, that percentage is in the HIGH double digits. But the guy has a storied history of flying off the handle at the slightest provocation, any time one occurs, to the point that it has often been embarrassing. (Although he didn’t reach Hunter Strickland levels of redassery, which resulted in Buster Posey not even attempting to enter a fracas, started by his pitcher, which had Bryce Harper attempting grievous bodily harm and prematurely ended Michael Morse’s career.)
Madison Bumgarner hates showboats, he hates cockiness, he hates flash, and he absolutely hates umpires. He has shown no qualms about staring down or hollering at umps, scads of times, and his temper is well known throughout the league. So I honestly couldn’t tell you what the hell decade-plus veteran umpire Dan Bellino was thinking during a foreign substance check after the first inning on Wednesday in Miami.
Bumgarner had already been doing some low-level barking after giving up a leadoff homer and maybe (in his mind) getting squeezed a bit by the home plate ump, Ryan Wills. But as he came off the field, Bellino gave him the oddest substance check ever … one that SURE seems like it might have had an ulterior motive.
If you hadn’t heard, the substance checks are completely different this season from last season’s radical patdown that had Sergio Romo dropping his pants and Scherzer … well, being a psychopath. This year, umps are simply to ensure a pitcher does not wipe his hand anywhere following the final pitch of the inning, and are to check the throwing hand for any hint of super-sticky substance. You can see third base umpire Adrian Johnson give Miami Marlins starter Elieser Hernández the most cursory and routine of checks, helpfully contrasted here with Bellino’s deep eye contact and digit massage.
Some people were confused in the immediate aftermath of this substance check, thinking Bumgarner was ejected for having a foreign substance present. Subsequent replays made painstaking clear the actual sequence of events:
Bellino massaging Bumgarner’s hand at length, with no attempt to ever once look at said hand
Bumgarner taking exception to this deep, mad-dog stare that seemed designed specifically to get a rise out of him
Bumgarner saying something to Bellino in reference to him being an obvious dipshit about this
Bumgarner getting ejected as a result of whatever he said to the umpire
And you don’t DO that to an avowed and noted redass.
Bumgarner went ballistic at being ejected after just one inning’s worth of work, needing to be restrained after being tossed. Like, seriously restrained:
After the game, Bumgarner naturally declined to say exactly what comment he made to get tossed, but he made no bones about how he felt, while still being able to find the humor in the situation.
“It just shouldn’t happen,” he said as he got to the heart of the matter. “The whole thing shouldn’t [have happened].”
Even a tossed redass is right two times a day. Umpires do not have an easy job, and it’s extremely difficult to actually become an MLB umpire. That said, there is a not-insignificant portion of MLB umpires who act like bullies and like to throw their position of authority around. And those that do so tend to delight in it. We all know how much Ángel Hernández loves being a talking point, and how much Joe West did prior to his glorious retirement last year.
And umpires (the cops of baseball) have the best job security this side of the actual police, with a union just as strong. Umpires rarely, if ever, seem to be penalized or punished for being bad at their jobs, and their job performance evaluations are generally shrouded in secrecy. A recent ESPN+ article by Jeff Passan revealed that the helpful-to-varying-degrees-based-on-your-personal-preference strike zone visualization on television broadcasts is the as-defined-by-the-rulebook strike zone, but the strike zone criteria that umpires are actually internally evaluated on gives umpires about a two-inch leeway on each border of the strike zone. That’s a … that’s a big leeway, man. That sort of means that if you get stuck with an iffy home plate umpire (and don’t get me started on the requirement that all umpires have to take turns calling balls and strikes from game to game), every baseball player on both sides of the ball could be starting the game with the deck stacked against them. That stinks!
Getting back to umpires being bullies, it really seems to be as if Bellino was mad-dogging Bumgarner with the express purpose of getting a rise out of him so that he could eject the guy. I honestly don’t know any other way you can interpret this situation. That also stinks! It stinks real bad!
I had never heard Bellino’s name prior to this escapade, despite him being a full-time MLB umpire since 2011. I’m sure that there is probably at least one fanbase that knows his name VERY well and hates his guts because of some controversial call or other; that’s just how baseball works. That’s how umpires work.
But baseball players, it seems, know this gentleman VERY well. And he’s a noted … hardo.
Is a hardo the umpire equivalent of a redass? It certainly seems that way. And when a redass meets a hardo, comin’ thro’ the rye …
Regardless, we all know this guy now. He’s made it his business for us to know him, and I’m going to clock him pretty closely from now on. It’s totally possible that with West out of the game and Hernández’s lawsuit against MLB settled with the finding being that he’s officially bad at his job, some of these up-and-coming hardos are staking the claim on being the New Joe West. If that thought makes you shudder, it should. There’s no good that can come out of that.
Hardo or no hardo, here’s hoping that Dan Bellino is just a huge weirdo, and not a burgeoning tyrant. No baseball player or baseball fan deserves the latter.
*He’s also from a town so small that he once went on a date with a woman named Madison Bumgarner. That isn’t relevant to anything, but as a knower of that factoid, I’m practically required to mention it.
Trivia interlude: It’s not really helpful to answering the question of who the Mets rallied against in 1972, but here’s Carl Everett’s game-tying grand slam off an attempted murderer from that 1997 Mets-Expos game. But here is a hint: the answer is the team that Everett was traded to, three months after this homer. And thanks to Willets Friend Ryan Kelly for sharing this video on our Discord server (join for free!).
Behind Enemy (Base)Lines: Phillies
By Colleen Sullivan
The Mets are playing the Phillies again. Not for the first time, not for the last time. Actually, speaking of...
What happened last time?
Kyle Schwarber got his toes buzzed, leading to Yoan López getting suspended. The tricky thing here is that López got sent back down and will serve his suspension if/when he gets called up again. Buck Showalter was also suspended, and rumor has it his one phone call to find out about his suspension was considered his appeal. Come on, Rob. Even prisoners get a phone call.
Let’s rewind to what happened before all that nonsense.
The group of Tylor Megill, Drew Smith, Joely Rodriguez, Seth Lugo, and Edwin Díaz gifted fans with the second no-hitter in Mets history and the first combined no-hitter of the season on Friday. There were a grand total of 159 pitches thrown, the most in a recorded nine-inning no-hitter. Fun fact: James McCann caught the no-hitter for the Mets and was behind the plate for Lucas Giolito’s no-no in 2020. Is McCann the magic man? Who can say, but there’s nothing better than striking out Bryce Harper, Nick Castellanos, and J.T. Realmuto to close out a game.
Outside of that, the Mets supported their pitchers with a Polar Bear homer to left and a two-run single from Jeff McNeil.
Saturday was a messy and stupid 4-1 loss featuring stupid Kyle Schwarber hitting a stupid go-ahead two-run home run.
Sunday was broadcast on ESPN for the world to see Max Scherzer take on the Phillies. The Phillies took a 10-6 beating, the Mets got plunked and the benches cleared, and the Mets got suspended for reasons, I’m told. Joe Girardi probably complained that MLB needed to protect Schwarber’s precious little baby feet.
The latest encounter in Philadelphia began last night with… well… you already know, but also you’re gonna spend the next three minutes watching it again.
Friday night, now rained out, it was going to be Scherzer vs. Kyle Gibson. Gibson has a 2-1 record with a 2.93 ERA. The Mets haven’t lost with Mad Max on the mound, so that’s a good sign to start the weekend. Saturday is Chris Bassitt against Zach Eflin. Bassitt has been a solid get for the Mets, posting a 2.61 ERA over 31 innings. Eflin has been meh, 1-2 with a 4.50 ERA over 24 innings. Closing out the series is Carlos Carrasco and Ranger Suarez on Sunday afternoon, with the Mets somehow escaping another series without facing a Zack Wheeler revenge game.
A favorite head-to-head matchup this series is Alonso vs. Schwarber in a home run derby. One of them is the actual champ of a home run derby and the other likes to get in fights with umpires. A comedy of errors also awaits us, as the Phillies are very bad at defense. Girardi thinks they’re OK, so that’s what really matters to someone, I’m sure.
And If all else fails, surround yourself with guys who will leap out of the dugout for you (and Max Scherzer, who will get tossed out of a game he’s not pitching) when you get beaned for the 567,912nd time.
Trivia answer: The Houston Astros coughed up seven runs to the Mets in the eighth inning at the Astrodome on September 7, 1972, then four more in the ninth. And, for what it’s worth, Everett was traded for John Hudek, straight up. Not the best deal the Mets ever made, but Hudek was traded midway through 1998 for Lenny Harris, who left the Mets after that season, then returned in 2000 in a straight-up trade for Bill Pulsipher. And then the Mets used Harris as part of the deal that brought back another outfielder they’d once let get away to be productive elsewhere, Jeromy Burnitz. Anyway, in that 1972 game, Ken Boswell’s three-run homer was the big hit in the eighth inning, and then Boswell singled and scored the tie-breaking run on a single by Cleon Jones.