Welcome to the MLB Star Power Index -- a bi-weekly undertaking that determines with awful authority which players/baseball entities are dominating the current zeitgeist of the sport, at least according to the narrow perceptions of this miserable scribe. While one's presence on this list is often celebratory in nature, it can also be for purposes of lamentation or ridicule. The players/living baseball phenomena listed are in no particular order, just like the phone book. To this edition's honorees/dishonorees ...
An open secret in the world of baseball is that when a pitcher becomes a baserunner, the temperature plunges and atmospheric conditions become frigid enough to make the heartiest of Laplanders shiver and weep. Why else would pitchers wear warmth-giving jackets while teetering and lumbering around the bases? They simply cannot be left naked to the elements in such a manner.
While the arrival of the universal designated hitter is a good and welcome thing – no one, even the crabbiest and most salt-cured among you, truly misses seeing pitchers play a pretend game of "big, strong baseball man" at the plate – it has exacted a price. That price is no longer seeing pitchers put on jackets when they reach first base one out of every 12 tries.
In more upright times, those jackets were of nylon satin that made the moundsman glisten like an aurora that had wandered under the LED rope lights of the nearest roller rink, possibly during the last couple skate of the night. Later years, however, occasioned decline, and pitchers defaulted to less inspiring outerwear. But they still wore jackets, at least until the universal DH deprived us of these glimpses of pitcher-baserunner in captivity. One now imagines an array of lost jackets marooned on garment racks somewhere deep within the innards of an MLB storage bunker – a thousand palaces without a king to dwell in any of them.
As ever, though, Shohei Ohtani of the Angels is there for those with nowhere left to turn. Peel back thine afflicted eyelids and behold the last bastion:
On April 17 of this year, Ohtani, the starting pitcher in Boston, reached base as the DH ahead of a Hunter Renfroe circuit clout. While he awaited that outcome, he responded to the chill of a New England spring with a jacket. In the DH Era, no one else can soar to such heights. Genuflect before Shohei Ohtani, baseball's Jacket Omega.
Ohtani the pitcher and DH is of course the greatest two-way baseball performer in the annals of same, and not surprisingly he's the last hope for the imperiled tradition of bejacketed pitchers on the bases. When he steps away from This, Our Baseball – perish such a thought – he shall take with him the imperiled tradition of bejacketed pitchers on the bases. No doubt, teams will try to develop some simulacrum of a facsimile of Ohtani who attempts to pitch and hit, but such endeavors will surely fail.
So on those vanishingly rare occasions when Ohtani on the bases chooses the way of the Sleepytime Tea Bear and sets the controls for comfort, cherish the sight of him in his jacket. There will come a time, sooner than we dare to imagine, when such visions will be beyond us.
The MLB Anagram Playoffs
To no end but a higher word count, this foul-smelling author recently finished ranking the teams of each of MLB's six divisions based on the anagram that he bothered to figure for each team's name. For the uninitiated, an anagram is formed when you take the letters of a word or words and form other words with those letters. Yes, it's dumb, but, well, so is my face.
We began with the AL East version of this, and then came the much stronger AL Central installment. Then the AL West was subjected to this indignity, and soon after the NL East assumed the position. Thereupon, the NL Central took a break from losing games to have this inflicted upon it, and then we concluded our tour with the NL West Anagram Standings. Now the time has come to crystallize this endeavor with the MLB Anagram Postseason Bracket.
The constituents of the forthcoming postseason bracket will be anagram teams plucked directly from the aforementioned anagram standings. Yes, this provides narrative continuity, but more importantly it prioritizes the copy-paste function over actual work. Without further ado, the anagram playoff bracket:
American League
Byes: No. 1 seed *Reinserts Tamale* (AL West champions), No. 2 seed A Blotto's Journey (AL East champions)
Wild Card Series: A Cadaver's Lined Lung (AL Central champions) vs. Dot's Ox Boners (Wild Card No. 3); Tiniest Snowman (Wild Card No. 1) vs. A Stinky Soy Rascal (Wild Card No. 2)
National League
Byes: No. 1 seed Mr. Mini Salami (NL East champions), No. 2 seed Bagpiper Sh*t Strut (NL Central champions)
Wild Card Series: A Doorman's Banzai D*ck (NL West champions) vs. Dead Logger Lessons (Wild Card No. 3); Silicon Turd Salsa (Wild Card No. 1) vs. My Town Reeks (Wild Card No. 2)
And now there's nothing left to do but pretend the Anagram World Series happened. Congratulations, *Reinserts Tamale*, for your triumph over the senior circuit representative Mr. Mini Salami. We'll say it went the full seven games. An anagram for "full seven games" is "Vegans! Mules! Elf!"
