Mormon Baseball

Posts Tagged ‘Kyle Farnsworth’

With the first month of the season drawing to a close, many ballplayers seem to be settling into their habtis, performing at a normal level instead of unexpectedly high or low. Darwin Barney, two weeks back from the DL, might be an example. His first week back, Barney hit an anemic .059, but this past week he’s back closer to his career norm—.240 with a home run and just one strike out in 25 at bats.

Barney isn’t the only one. After causing a stir with his great start, Mets catcher John Buck had another off week last week, which brought his stats down to normal for his career (.250, 17 ks in 80 at bats). Still, the rbis he rang up in the first two weeks of the season have left him in 5th place in MLB (and far ahead of pace for his best season ever, 2010, when he had 66 rbis) and his 8 home runs put him tied for 4th.

Buck isn’t the only Mormon ballplayer among the leaders in the stats race. Jacoby Ellsbury’s 11 stolen bases leads the majors. And, of course, Bryce Harper is near the top in multiple categories. His 9 homers put him tied for 2nd; he is 5th in batting average, leading the majors in ops, 4th in obp, and tied for 2nd in slugging. And in Harper’s case its not hard to imagine him keeping up this level of performance.

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For fans of Mormon players in baseball, the place to be this past weekend was CitiField in Queens, New York, where 20-year-old phenom Bryce Harper and the Washington Nationals lost two games to John Buck and the New York Mets. Buck hit a home run and earned an rbi in each of the three games, giving him the major league lead in rbis and putting him in a multi-way tie for 2nd place (along with Bryce Harper) in home runs.

How much longer can Buck keep doing this?

That has to be the question on the minds of the Mets brass as they enjoy results of John Buck’s surprising early performance. Buck, currently having the best start of his nearly decade long career will be looking to improve his contract prospects, since he is up for renewal this year. He is also making a case that at 32 he should keep his place as the Mets’ every day catcher. His performance would delay the arrival of the Mets’ heralded prospect Travis d’Arnaud, whose arrival in the majors was delayedthis past week anyway due to a foot fracture that will take 8 weeks to heal. In any case, the Mets, and fans of Mormons in baseball, should enjoy this performance while it lasts.

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I’ve neglected following the transactions and changing status of the Mormon players for the past several months — a bit of a vacation, I suppose. But with spring training rapidly approaching, I thought I should get the status up to date and start following where everyone is. Today’s update only includes the players who played in the Majors last year.

There are still a couple of players who have played in the majors in previous years whose status is uncertain—Kyle Farnsworth and Brandon Lyon both had strong enough years in 2012 that I think they are likely to be picked up by someone.

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The Mormon domain—that part of the Western U.S. where Mormons are a significant portion of the population—first gained a major league team in 1998 when the expansion Arizona Diamondbacks started playing. Since then several Mormons have played on the team, but recently there hasn’t been a Mormon for local fans to cheer. That changed again Sunday when the Diamondbacks traded for Matt Lindstrom.
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The first weekend of April is a time when we look for information, for an understanding of the changes that have happened in the last six months and how that will help us prepare for the next six months.

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