I had just gotten home from the grocery store.
It can be a desolate place at 9 p.m. on a Saturday, but it couldn't be helped. Like many of you, I tend to let things pile up over the course of a week, so between daddy daycare in the morning, vacuuming and toilet-scrubbing in the afternoon, and then the long-overdue installation of child safety locks on drawers and cabinets (because apparently daddy daycare looked too much like daddy deathtrap to some who will remain nameless), the day kind of got away from me. And so I needed to get away from it.
As I lay on the floor (now dog hair-free!) for a minute, contemplating my place in this world, the thought suddenly occurred to me. Baseball!
It's happening -- it's always happening -- but rarely does it happen quite like it did Saturday night.
My first clue was this tweet:
@CBSScottWhite Alex Wood 87 pitches 13 k. How are you not tweeting about this? #wakeup
— Michael Hoffman (@Huffstermania) May 22, 2016
Now, Michael Hoffman, so far as I can tell, isn't one to prod me whenever a fringy starting pitcher has a notable performance, but you may remember, like he did, my column from just a short while ago, wherein I exposed myself as the most ardent of Wood supporters. I say "column," but it was really more like a love letter, with praise so effusive that I struggled to live it down even before he had thrown his next pitch.
But throw his next pitch he did. And then another. And another. And by the time the dust had settled Saturday at the Padres, he had struck out a career-high 13. I can only assume it was his way of saying, "Love you, too."
Witness and testify:
When going out on a limb like that, so rare is the payoff so immediate and so magnified that at least for my small sphere of influence within the Twitterverse, Saturday was a night of celebration.
@CBSScottWhite I bet you are loving this Alex wood start. Just get the man a run please!
— buzzing (@KCbatman034) May 22, 2016
@AdamAizer I bet I know who @CBSScottWhite will be talking about on Mondays pod. #woodcrush
— Jason A (@Jallen00) May 22, 2016
@CBSScottWhite thank you Scott!! So happy I added him
— Jimmy Deger (@JimmyDeger) May 22, 2016
@CBSScottWhite Alex Wood bro....
— B. Higgs (@HiggySmalls15) May 22, 2016
Which I guess goes to show just how small my sphere is, because here two days later, Wood is still available in 30 percent of CBSSports.com leagues. So is the expanse of the Internet. No matter how loud the voice and emphatic the message, it's still shouted into a void deep, dark and endless ... like the bottom of a toilet bowl.
Hello there!
The tepid interest at least makes sense on one level: Wood didn't have the headlines all to himself Saturday. He was denied the win, first of all, and as double-digit strikeout performances go, his was maybe the most anticipated.
Unless you can honestly say you saw one of these coming:
Fulmer, maybe. The rookie has a 97-mph fastball and is thought to have great strikeout potential. And hey, maybe he's on the verge of a breakthrough. He introduced a changeup to his arsenal in this start, actually throwing it more often than his 87-mph slider, according to BrooksBaseball.net, and you see the effect it had. That third pitch is a game-changer for major-league pitchers, who need something to keep high-level hitters honest.
Still, that's one of many hurdles Fulmer has to clear to become a worthy Fantasy option. Command, for instance -- not just throwing the ball in the strike zone, but exactly where it's intended -- has had a profound impact on proven pitchers like Chris Archer, Dallas Keuchel and Sonny Gray this year, and it's still a work in progress for the 23-year-old Fulmer.
Shoemaker, too, offers some reason for optimism if you squint hard enough. It was only two years ago he went 16-4 with a 3.04 ERA, 1.07 WHIP and 8.2 strikeouts per nine innings, after all, and he has switched up his arsenal in his last two starts, the first of which was a near quality start:
Really? A near quality start? Look, we're squinting, OK? And you can't deny the pitch's effectiveness in this start. It was responsible for more than half of Shoemaker's 23(!) swings-and-misses, many of which you'll see here:
To put that swings-and-misses stat into the perspective, it's equal to Jake Arrieta's (he of the MLB-leading 1.29 ERA) season high. So yes, for at least one start, Shoemaker was legitimately ace-caliber.
But he still had an 8.49 ERA coming into that start. He still has a 4.96 ERA since that out-of-nowhere 2014. He's still owned in only 8 percent CBSSports.com leagues, which tells me the case against him is still much stronger than the case for him.
And I'm not denying that. I'm not even countering it. All I'm saying is you could make a case to add him or Fulmer, and that's how a pitcher like Wood goes overlooked. His dominant starts are lost in an ocean of similar starts for seemingly mediocre pitchers -- starts that are easier to overlook as we get closer to shore. If Shoemaker turned in this same start his second time through the rotation, it would have made him one of the hottest waiver wire pickups, but now, in late May, it's met with a resounding "meh." The same goes for Wood, to a lesser extent.
In other words, waiver wire fatigue is beginning to set in. Just last week, I published a list of 10 pitchers who I'd like to own in a standard mixed league but, more often than not, can't. All of them have had the kind of starts that get me excited, but that's a pretty big club at this point, with little to set each member apart.
And that's what gets me with Wood. It's not just one start for him, but five, more or less consecutively and directly coinciding with a mechanical adjustment he made the last time he faced the Padres.
Oh, right: the Padres. You'll find some detractors (not to be confused with tractors) who say, "Why is striking out 13 Padres a big deal? Jon Gray struck out 11. Vince Velasquez struck out 16. The Padres strike out a lot. It's on them, not Wood."
OK, fine. Let's assume those strikeouts were completely meaningless and Wood actually got zero in those six innings Saturday instead of 13. He'd still be right at a strikeout per inning over his last five starts, which tells you just how dominant he has been.
And it should remind you how dominant he has been in the past. Sure, he has underwhelmed in the last year-plus -- that's why it's taking some of us so long to buy in again -- but if you think Shoemaker's 2014 was good, check out Wood's:
He figured out how to get back to that level, and he has maintained it consistently for more than half the season so far. I understand passing up Fulmer and Shoemaker, as so many have, and we can wait on Nathan Eovaldi, Jon Gray and Tyler Duffey as well. Still plenty of questions for those five to answer. But Wood? That needs to happen before it's too late.
As if it needed reiterating. Yet here I am shouting into the meaningless void again. Get me back to the grocery store. This is exhausting.
