Game 60: Get Up Jake

Now that we've reached the stage of the season where clubs can promote minor leaguers without having to worry about them being eligible for Super Two status, this year has really begun tp produce a bumper crop of top prospect debuts in the MLB.

Jason Heyward began his career as an Atlanta Brave with a bang at the beginning of the season and Ike Davis was called up when the Mets were struggling in mid-April. More recently, we've seen the debuts of Steven Strasburg, former Yankee farmhand Jose Tabata, fellow Pirate Brad Lincoln, and Mike Stanton (who is not related to the former Yankee reliever) to name a few. Still on the horizon are promising youngsters like the awesomely-named Carlos Santana - a catcher in the Indians' system, outfielders Domonic Brown of the Phillies and Desmond Jennings of the Rays, Scott Boras' Pittsburgh's Pedro Alvarez and Kyle Drabek - now property of the Blue Jays - who was the centerpiece of the Roy Halladay deal. Even these players experience a higher than expected rate of attrition, there's a good chance that we'll look back at this class of rookies as one of the best in the ten or fifteen years surrounding it.

Tonight, a highly-regarded Baltimore prospect will make his debut, but given the performance that happened just two days ago and forty miles down I-95, this one will seem considerably more subdued.

Jake Arietta was a fifth round pick in the 2007 draft but didn't begin his ascent through the minor leagues until the 2008 season. He debuted at High-A ball and struck out 120 batters in 113 1/3 innings while maintaining an ERA of 2.87. Last season, started with the AA Bowie Baysox, pitched 59 strong innings over 11 starts there and was promoted to AAA. While in Norfolk, Arrieta's strikeout rate dropped and his ERA rose, but was still respectable in his 92 innings there, tallying an ERA of 3.92 and a K/BB ratio comfortably over 2.

The twenty four year old right hander broke camp with the Triple-A squad this year and got off to a great start. Although his strikeout and walk rates aren't as strong as they were in the lower levels of the minors, they are better than they were at the same level last year and Arrieta has an ERA of just 1.85 through 11 starts. He has been more or less unhittable so far, surrendering fewer than six hits per nine innings and allowing only three homers in 73 IP.

In the past two years, the Orioles have seen more than their fair share of pitching prospects make their Major League debuts. Brad Bergesen first appeared in the Big Leagues April 21st of 2009, the less-celebrated-but-still-young David Hernandez joined the club May 28th, last night's pitcher Chris Tillman was called up at the end of last July, Brain Matusz made his debut six days later. Tonight, Arrieta will get his shot.

When we talked to Orioles fan and blogger Daniel Moroz before the season began, he surmised that barring a number of injuries, Arrieta wouldn't see more than a cup of coffee this season. Koji Uehara, who began the rotation, is on the DL and Hernandez, who has been ineffective in his eight starts, has been relegated to the bullpen. Those two moves, along with Arrieta's dominance and the O's futility, created Jake's chance to be called up.

It might not be occurring under the greatest of circumstances and it might not pay dividends immediately, but tonight should be a bit of a silver lining for Orioles fans, if such a thing can be found in one of their worst stretches in one of their worst seasons in franchise history.

Get up Jake, it's late in the mornin',
The rain is pourin' and we got work to do.
Get up Jake, there's no need a-lyin',
You tell me that you're dyin', but I know it's not true.

Now, me and Jake, we work down on the river,
on the ferry "Baltimore".
And when Jake don't rise up in the mornin',

People lined up along the shore.

[Song Notes: I've been a fan of this tune for a long time and it was the first thing I thought of when I heard Arrieta was going to be starting tonight. The lyrics don't line up perfectly, but the kid's name is Jake, "Baltimore" and "lined up" are in the song and that's good enough for our purposes. If only there was someone named Dan from Savannah on the Yankees, it would have really sealed the deal.

I had to upload the version from To Kingdom Come because the only "video" on YouTube kind of sucks.]

-Lineups-

Yankees:

Brett Gardner is once again out of the lineup; Marcus Thames gets the start in left field tonight. Pray for lots of groundballs and strike outs. Francisco Cervelli gets the finale off, with Chad Moeller getting the start against his former team.

Derek Jeter SS
Nick Swisher RF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Robinson Cano 2B
Jorge Posada DH
Curtis Granderson CF
Marcus Thames LF
Chad Moeller C

RHP A.J. Burnett

Orioles:

Corey Patterson LF
Miguel Tejada 3B
Nick Markakis RF
Ty Wigginton 1B
Luke Scott LF
Adam Jones CF
Matt Wieters C
Scott Moore 2B
Cesar Izturis SS

RHP Jake Arrieta

A Tale Of Two Hæywards

It's been said plenty of times, but one of the reasons that sports are so compelling is that they are unscripted. They aren't like a movie or play or TV show or even a documentary that has been produced, edited, watched and re-watched countless times before you get to find out what happens.

Sure, we put up with plenty of boring games where nothing particularly incredible happens, but every so often, one of them is so good that you would have thought it was too unrealistic had it been written, acted and played out for you in a movie theater. On the opposite end of the continuum, once in a while you watch something so close to perfect almost happen and wish that someone had the power to go back and change the script.

Yesterday, two 20 year old kids with homophonic last names found themselves on opposite ends of that spectrum.

This spring, the front office of the Atlanta Braves decided that über-rookie Jason Heyward was so good, they couldn't afford to stall his arbitration clock by keeping him in the minors to begin the season. They may have sacrificed a year of team control and millions of dollars in the process because of it, but the phenom broke camp with the Big League club.

Yesterday afternoon in Atlanta, Heyward stepped in the box against the Cubs' Carlos Zambrano for his first Major League plate appearance. With his parents in the stands and the crowd chanting his name in between pitches, the level of excitement in Turner Field was tangible. The game was being broadcast on ESPN2, so plenty of eyes around the baseball world were focused in on the at bat.

Heyward took two 4-seam fastballs high for balls before connecting with a two-seamer low in the zone. The ball exploded off the bat and carried deep into the Braves bullpen in right field, good for a three run homer that put the Braves up 6-3. There was little doubt throughout the baseball community that Heyward was going to be a useful player right out of the gate, but as it so rarely does, the hype was justified immediately. It's not to say that this guarantees Heyward is going to have a great career, but that the fans in Atlanta didn't need to wait to see a glimpse of his considerable potential. Sometimes suspense is thrilling, but in this case it was the lack thereof that created the drama.

About 8 hours after Heyward's fairytale beginning, the best player on the Butler Bulldogs, Gordon Hayward, looked to complete a storybook ending to what was already a fantastic National Championship in his hometown of Indianapolis. It was one of just four times that the title game had taken place in the city that one of the schools called home and improbably, Bulter was keeping pace with Duke.

Hayward had struggled throughout the night, shooting just 2-9 from the floor in front of a very vocal and supportive crowd, but the Bulldogs hung in there. The game was neck and neck for the entire 40 minutes; the difference between the two teams never greater than 6 points. Since the battle was so tight, the end of it wasn't broken up by copious amounts of timeouts taken and fouls committed by a team trying to fight its way back into it.

With 13 seconds left on the clock in and Butler trailing by one point, Hayward started at the top of the key and began driving towards the basket, dribbling to the right. With about 6 ticks remaining, he planted his feet and pushed off parallel to the baseline, and lifted a high, soft 12 foot fadeaway. It wasn't a high percentage shot, but Hayward make a crisp release. As it began to descend from its apex, the ball was still perfectly on line with the hoop. However, it struck the inside of the back of the rim and ricocheted directly back towards the spot that Hayward took off from.

If the ball had carried just an inch less, Duke would have been down one with about five seconds to go. Instead, Duke's center Brian Zoubek pulled down the rebound and was fouled immediately, sending him to the free throw line with 3.6 seconds left. He made the first and after intentionally missing the second, the ball fell into Hayward's hands once again. The baby-faced sophomore only had time for a few dribbles and released the ball from half court just as the clock was expiring. It hit the backboard, deflected off the near side of the rim and fell to the ground as Duke became the National Champions.

Hayward came impossibly close, twice, to winning the game for a school that only shameless homer and alumni would have picked to be in the Final Four, let alone the Championship Game. The difference between those two shots going in or bouncing out is so small that no human being, no matter how skilled, could expect to control it. Concerning the last shot in particular, the disparity between hitting one of the greatest buzzer-beaters on the biggest stage possible in college basketball and going home empty-handed was the way that his neurons and synapses subconsciously fired over the course over several milliseconds.

Right or wrong, that's what we remember. We distill sports down to their most incredible moments, but don't often bother to think about the alternate outcomes and how close - literally fractions of an inch and hundredths of a second - they came to occurring.

Gordon Hayward is just a sophomore at Butler, so if he chooses, this doesn't have to be the end of his college career. But the odds against him leading a team that far into the NCAA Tournament let alone coming just thatclose to winning it are so long that they might as well not exist. Jason Heyward is likely just at the beginning of a long and successful career, but 5, 10, 20, 50 years from now, both of these athletes are going to be able to recall those two remarkable moments in incredible detail. Only one of them is going to bother to wonder what might have happened if it had turned out another way.