If Your Birthday is August 26th...

 

...you share it a couple of players with distinctive first names. Ranger Suarez joins Aaron Nola, Zack Wheeler, Kyle Gibson and Noah Syndergaard in the Phillies rotation.  An outstanding fielder, he has a chance to become the first Philadelphia pitcher since Steve Carlton to win a gold glove.

He's also the first major league player named Ranger...while

Elvis Andrus is the second to sport that first name. (Elvis Peña, who played 25 games with Rockies and Brewers in 2000 and 2001, was the first.)

This Elvis hasn't left the building, but he's changed homes twice in the past year and half... First, when his longtime team the Rangers traded him to the A's.  More recently, when he signed with the White Sox after being released by Oakland.

David Price, the talented lefthander who's starred mainly for the Rays and Red Sox -- winning 15 or more games six times -- but until 2018, had struggled mightily in the post-season. Sent from Boston to the Dodgers as a salary dump in the Mookie Betts deal, he's enjoying a productive season in Dave Roberts' bullpen.

Morgan Ensburg was one of the Astros' power hitters during the decade of the 2000s. The California native put up his best numbers in 2005, when his 36 homers and 101 RBI helped him finished fourth for NL MVP.

We've got a couple of players-turned-broadcasters:

Ricky Bottalico, best known for spending seven of his 12 big league seasons in the Phillies bullpen. These days, he's an outspoken member of the Phils pre- and post-game TV crew.

Alex Trevino played parts of 13 seasons in the major leagues, but was only a regular with the 1982 Reds. Slugging was not his niche --  he holds the Mets franchise record for the most at bats without a home run (733). Alex has built a far more prolific second career -- he's spent more than a quarter-century on the Astros' Spanish-language broadcast team. That assignment  has earned him a spot on the club's Wall of Honor.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rare Remnant of a Lost Ballpark

Image
When the subject of baseball in Brooklyn comes up, the discussion centers around Ebbets Field, the Flatbush venue most famously home to The Boys of Summer.  Those legendary 1940s and '50s teams that featured such historic and beloved players as Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Pee Wee Reese, Roy Campanella and Gil Hodges. Ebbets Field hosted its last major league game in 1957 and was torn down during the winter of 1960. But decades earlier, just before World War One, the Dodgers were based in the Park Slope area and played at Washington Park.  Once they moved out, the land was occupied by another stadium, which housed a different franchise.  The upstart Federal League, which played in the 1914 and '15 seasons, had a Brooklyn team called the TipTops.  Owned by a local baking magnate Robert Ward, whose company produced TipTop bread, the club took over the abandoned lot along 3rd Street and built a new brick and steel venue. The only no-hitter in the Federal League's two-year r
Read more

Another Yankee Trade

Image
Yankee fans: here's a last look at shortstop Trey Sweeney .  The 2021 first round draft choice was part of the three player trade with the Dodgers that brings reliever Victor Gonzalez and infield prospect Jorbit Vivas to New York. Now seeking to rebuild their pitching depth after dealing for Juan Soto and Alex Verdugo, the Yanks deemed Sweeney expendable.  While the Louisville native showed promising power in his three seasons with the organization -- he batted only .248 to go with his 36 career homers -- Brian Cashman has committed to Anthony Volpe and Oswald Peraza as his young middle infielders.  So Sweeney became a trade chip. ( My images of Trey Sweeney are from the Somerset/Binghamton AA games on July 15th and September 19th, 2023. )
Read more

Will He Wear Zero in the Bronx?

Image
The Yankees bolstered their starting rotation with Thursday's signing of Marcus Stroman .  The Long Island native, who spent 2019 and '21 with the Mets before moving onto the Cubs, brings a 77-76 career record to the Bronx, along with a recent loyalty to uniform number (?) zero.  If he requests that, he'd become the third Yank to wear it, following the path of Adam Ottavino and Domingo German.  Of course, neither of their Yankee tenures ended all that well -- Ottavino struggled badly in 2020, before reviving his career with the Red Sox and Mets; German's alcohol and domestic violence issues sabotaged such Yankee highlights as last year's perfect game. Can a number truly be lucky? You can understand kids in little league or high school ball wanting to wear 2 in honor of Derek Jeter or 7 for Mickey Mantle.  But is there an heroic ballplayer associated with 0?  The closest I recall comes from pro football, where the Oakland Raiders Hall of Fame center Jim Otto wore 00
Read more