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06-12-2014 "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." -Ferris Bueller Baseball. It's a long season of long games. The day-to-day is easy to overlook. Especially now, as baseball competes for sports fans' attention with not just one, but two championship series currently happening in the NBA and NHL. Warning: Don't sleep on baseball. We may get nostalgic for the Golden Age and names like Mays, Mantle, Clemente, Koufax, and Gibson, but there are PLENTY of stars in today's game doing amazing things every day. And yesterday, June 11th, featured a lot of amazing and quirky things. We could have looked at the slate of pitching matchups alone yesterday and known there was great potential. Now that all the results have poured in, take a peek at all these statlines: Johnny Cueto: W, 6IP, 3H, 0R, 0BB, 12K! Masahiro Tanaka: W, CG, 11K Yu Darvish: W, (first career shutout), 10K Cole Hamels: ND, 8IP, 0ER, 11K And this doesn't even include all of the following who also took the hill on Wednesday: Jason Hammel, who the MLB Network just yesterday put into their Top 5 pitchers in the league (a little high, I was thinking), or Yordano Ventura, who can dial it up to 100MPH+, or Trevor Bauer, 3rd pick in the 2011 draft, or 2013 NLCS MVP Michael Wacha, or Julio Teheran, the NL ERA leader, or Dallas Kuechel, doing great things in near anonymity for an emerging Houston team... Proving the internationality of baseball, that makes four Asian starters (Tanaka, Darvish, Ryu, Chen) who were a combined 28-7 on the season before Wednesday, and then went 3-1 yesterday. (Two notes: 1) Here is a sneaky-awesome link to a list of yesterday's MLB performances. Unfortunately, it isn't updated yet...maybe it will be by the time you read this. Because 2) I couldn't sleep, so I started writing this at 3:30AM. That'll explain any typos, right?) We're also in the midst of the decline of Justin Verlander. It's a stretch to call this a passing of the torch moment, but rookie sensation Jose Abreu took him deep in the 2nd inning last night. Speaking of rookies, we're also experiencing the very early days of Oscar Taveras, George Springer, and Gregory Polanco. Fielding Inspiring some Clemente-esque comparisons, Yoenis Cespedes made yet another *doink* in left, following by a tremendous throw to get a put out. Tuesday was the far better of the two, gunning out Howie Kendrick at the plate. Wednesday was another good moment, as he caught Pujols trying to stretch a double into a triple. Well, don't take my word for it. If you haven't seen these on ESPN or the MLB Network, check them out for yourself... Cespedes from June 10: Video/story on Deadspin if the video won't play. Cespedes from June 11: Again, video/story on Deadspin if the video won't play. (Note: Gary DiSarcina is the Angels third base coach.) With the Angels Twitter account also giving him props, I think in my head how cool it would have been if the MLB teams had Twitter through their whole histories...the great things that the Red Sox would have tweeted about Bucky Dent, etc. Not to be completely overlooked, but in this same game, both Mike Trout and Coco Crisp made home run saving catches! Hitting: Robbie Cano, with the 4th biggest contract in MLB history, although leading the AL in batting average, has seen his power numbers fall off the table in Seattle this season. He went yard on Wednesday, and if you're a Mariners fan, you're hoping yesterday marks the day he turns the corner and gets back to that 20+ HR form. Jayson Werth homered a day after the Washington Potomacs tweeted a pic of their giveaway this coming Saturday, a Werth "bobble beard" that actually has "hair-like material." Oddities/Notes: K-Rod notched a save, and could easily be within the Top 10 in career saves sometime next season. The Tampa Bay Rays scored for the first time in 31 innings. Throw another log on the pitching fire, because beating the Braves and NL ERA leader Julio Tehran was Tyler Matzek, only making his MLB Debut!  Last but not least, camera-friendly Yasiel Puig went to the zoo in Cinci yesterday, and then was nearly a goat in the game, going 0-4 with 3 Ks against Johnny Cueto and the Reds. So if you count pitching, hitting, fielding, rookies, and throw in a trip to the zoo, that's what I can a 5-tool day in the world of baseball! Great things happen in this game every day. Don't miss out! Have fun! -T You can now find me all over the web:  Like Monster Cards on Facebook (Frequent updates and scans of new inventory - graded and ungraded!)
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