CHS Field, St. Paul (Second Chances and Last Chances)

 

 

One of the poignant things about Triple-A baseball is the quiet desperation beneath the surface. Every player there is trying to make it to “The Show,” the major leagues. Some are young players streaking through the minor league system, just biding their time until their inevitable call-up. Some are who’ve had a taste of the majors, but didn’t play well enough to stick, and are trying to prove that they deserve another chance. Some are players in their 30s who have spent a decade or more as major league regulars, some even making All-Star teams or playing in the 9^th inning of a World Series Game 7, trying to make it back for one last shot. It’s those latter two categories that fascinate me.

Cooper Hummel, who was never a star, but ended up playing in 119 major league games for four teams over four seasons, is now 31, and playing in Japan. His best season (66 games) was as a rookie with the Diamondbacks in 2022. One of the notes about him that was shown regularly on the Jumbotron said that his father taught him that one of the two most important things he needed as a baseball player was to learn to switch hit (be able to bat either left or right-handed, since it’s distinctly easier for a left-handed hitter to hit against a right-handed pitcher, and vice versa). I’m always intrigued by the “one of X” notes (“one of six active players with 2000 hits”; “one of 10 father-son combinations who were both first-round draft picks” both showed up on the Jumbotron in Phoenix last week), because I wonder who the other people on the list are, or, in Hummel’s case, what that other most important thing was. Late in the 2022 season, he was signing autographs for kids near our seats, so I got his attention, and asked him. He said, “He told me I had to love the game.” I guess he does.

The struggle to get back to the majors was brought into focus by the ending of Friday’s game.

Taylor Rashi

To say that  we feel invested in Taylor Rashi’s career is an understatement. The first we heard of him was when he came in to pitch for the Diamondbacks in a close game in Milwaukee last August. He pitched well for three innings, retired a tough hitter for the final out, and was one of the stars of the game in his first major league game. More intriguingly, he was 29 years old when he started the season in the minors. By age 29, most professional baseball players have either made it to the majors or given up (or both), but he was still plugging away.

He pitched well in his next game for the Diamondbacks as well, and Kerry went and bought a jersey with his name and number on it. How can you not root for a guy like that? We didn’t expect him to be a star, but he finished out the season in the bigs, and pitched reasonably well. He wasn’t as good the first week of this season in three major league games, and spent most of his time in Triple-A Reno before the Diamondbacks traded him to Minnesota, who sent him to their Triple-A team, the St. Paul Saints.

That makes the jersey mostly a moot point, although you see a lot of people in stadiums wearing jerseys celebrating former players (though mostly players with longer careers with the team than Rashi’s 13 games). However, we were in St. Paul this week, so Kerry wore the jersey both nights. Rashi didn’t get into the first game, but with the Saints down by two runs in the 8^th inning of the second game, with a runner on third and two outs, Rashi came in to pitch. Kerry made sure that everyone near us understood that her jersey was celebrating his career.

Unfortunately, he threw a wild pitch that allowed the runner on third to score, then hung a curve ball to the first hitter in the 9^th, who hit it for a triple, and came in to score on another hit. So now the Saints were down by four. Improbably, just like the previous night, they mounted a comeback in the 9^th inning, but they only scored three, so they lost by one. Had Rashi pitched a little better, they might have won.

Will he make it back to the big leagues? I suspect this may be his last real chance, given that he’s now 30. I give him a 50-50 shot at best, but he’s been there once, which is more than most young men who sign a professional baseball contract can say.

Checking in on last chances

Throughout this tour, I’ve commented on players in Triple-A who were looking for a second chance, or a last chance. Thinking about Rashi got me to go back through my blogs, and pick out some of those players, to see how their stories played out, or are playing out.

Cole Tucker, Kole Calhoun, and David Bote all got back up to the majors for less than 50 games, then retired rather than going back to the minors. Jose Iglesias made it back up for 197 games over two seasons, then retired. Garrett Cooper didn’t make it back up.

A couple of players look like they just can’t give up the game. I mentioned Hummel, now in Japan. Bryan Shaw is another. He pitched in the majors for all or part of 15 seasons. For years, he was a solid middle relief pitcher for Cleveland. In fact, he was the losing pitcher in Game 7 of the 2016 World Series against the Cubs. Being the losing pitcher in a game doesn’t sound like an achievement, but the fact that they trusted him to pitch in a crucial moment in the most crucial game of the team’s last 75 years does mean that he was very, very good. After we saw him in the minors in 2024, he made it back up to the majors for five not-very-successful games, and is now pitching in an independent league, at age 38. I don’t think I’ll see either Hummel or Shaw in the majors again.

On the other hand, we saw José  Suarez pitching in the minors in a game in Lawrenceville, Georgia last year, and I wondered whether he’d be back. He’s spent the entire year in the majors this year, although he’s pitched for three different teams. He’s a left-handed pitcher who throws pretty hard, so he may keep bouncing around for awhile.

Then there is James McCann. He’s a catcher who was a regular, and even an All-Star, thoughout the late 2010s, but we saw him play in the minors twice last year, and I wondered whether he’d ever make it back. But then the Diamondbacks had a catcher injured and didn’t trust the catchers they had in the minors, so they signed McCann! He proceeded to have his best season in years, so they signed him to a two-year contract this spring. Last week, I saw him hit the 100^th home run of his career. His is the ending that every 30-something one-time regular is chasing.

Second impressions

I’ve been talking about second chances, but this game was also about second impressions. We went to back-to-back games in St. Paul so that the best man at our wedding, Randy Saliares, and his wife Jan, could join us for one of the games. Randy and I were childhood friends, although he became a starter on our very good high school baseball team, so he understands the game at a level I don’t.

It was fun talking baseball with Randy, but it was also interesting going back to see the Saints after enjoying the atmosphere so thoroughly the evening before.

It wasn’t as much fun the second time around. We’d seen all the goofy races. We were intrigued by some of the promotions (I could have gotten a haircut at the ballpark before the game), and the crowd was nearly as big, and was enthusiastic, but it just didn’t play as well two nights in a row. From an entertainment viewpoint, I suspect it would be worth going again next year, when they’ve got new sponsors and new promotions. From a baseball viewpoint, well, Triple-A is one step from the majors, with good-but-not-great games and all those careers on the line.

But I’ll close with a great announcement from Thursday’s game:

“CHS Field is a non-smoking facility. That means you can’t smoke anything inside the ballpark. If you really need to smoke, please go to the right field gates.

"Exit the gate there, turn right, and go a block.

"Turn left, and go two more blocks.

"Turn right at that intersection and go one more block to the parking lot.

"There you’ll find a shuttle, which will take you to Wisconsin, where you can smoke all you want.”