The Houston Astros are providing furnished apartments to minor-league players across all levels this season, a meaningful gesture that has quickly become a topic of conversation in other minor-league clubhouses.
With host families unable to be used this season due to COVID-19 restrictions, many players have been left to secure housing on their own. While clubs never pay for home housing in the minor leagues, the combination of host families and the ability for minor leaguers to fill a one or two-bedroom apartment beyond capacity has —in the past— helped many players get by. This year there are also strict restrictions on roommates, meaning the days of having six players share a one-bedroom apartment are over.
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This season, players are put into various pods — which can be as small as just one other player — and they can only live with players in their pods. (They are also forbidden from giving rides to the ballpark to teammates who are not in their pod.) Wives and families are allowed to travel on the road, but there are obstacles. In at least two instances described to The Athletic, wives and children of coaches and players were told to pay for separate housing on the road.
While a few other clubs offer a small stipend at certain levels to help with housing, Houston’s setup is believed to be unprecedented among the 30 big-league clubs. The Astros have four affiliates —the Sugar Land Skeeters, Corpus Christi Hooks, Fayetteville Woodpeckers and Asheville Tourists — along with a Gulf Coast League team. With the team taking care of housing, their minor-league players will be able to use their salaries on other living expenses.
While Major League Baseball cut 40 affiliates, it did raise minor-league salaries for the 2021 season. Rookie and short-season levels pay went from $290 to $400 and players at Class A went from $290 to $500 per week. Double-A salaries went from $350 to $600 while Triple-A pay increased from $502 to $700. Minor-league players are not paid in the offseason or, in past years, for spring training, although this year they will receive pay for the usual five-month season despite playing only four months in 2021.
Former big-league pitcher Chris Tillman is attempting a comeback, throwing under the watchful eye of longtime pitching coach Dave Wallace at Cressey Sports Performance.
“He’s committed. He came over for a couple days in February and hasn’t left,” said Wallace, who lives in Jupiter, Fla. and has coached with six different organizations starting with the Dodgers in 1995.
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Tillman had some of his most successful years under Wallace in Baltimore, following up an All-Star campaign in 2013 with a 13-6 record, 3.34 ERA and 1.230 WHIP in a career-high 34 starts in ’14. He pitched 10 years in the majors; his last season with an ERA under 4.00 was 2016, which was also Wallace’s final year as Orioles pitching coach. Tillman last pitched in the Majors in May 2018 and underwent shoulder surgery in June the following year. He attempted a comeback last spring before COVID-19 shut the sport down.
The 73-year-old Wallace, after spending the past three years as a pitching consultant to the Braves, mutually parted ways with the organization in February. Since then, he’s been at Cressey’s working with young pitchers and learning from the training staff. Wallace, who was named Team USA’s pitching coach this summer, said he’s not ready to retire and still has a passion for helping young pitchers.
“There’s five ex-pros here who found out I’m here with Chris Tillman and they are coming over and it’s just talking pitching,” he said. “It’s been wonderful.”
As bat flips and on-field gestures bring on more exciting, heated rivalries and fewer fastballs in the ribs, does the sport owe one of its most well-known bat flippers — José Bautista — an apology?
The former Toronto Blue Jays star laughed and insists that’s not the case.
“The game has changed in a lot of ways,” Bautista said from his Florida home, “but one of the best ways is how celebrations are not so taboo and people are allowed to enjoy them.”
Bautista’s iconic bat flip after hitting the winning home run in the 2015 American League Division Series against the Texas Rangers came with much criticism around the game for being “unsportsmanlike.” That sentiment carried over into the following season, leading to a memorable on-field fight with then-Ranger Rougned Odor.
5 years ago today, @JoeyBats19 unleashed the Bat Flip heard 'round the world! pic.twitter.com/0t7s8WRIjf
— Toronto Blue Jays (@BlueJays) October 14, 2020
“I hate to talk about bat flips like some important thing you spend time working on,” Bautista said. “Sometimes the moment just takes you there, that’s how it happened for me. It was raw emotion and that’s how it played out. With these young players, I enjoy watching them play, more than anything (they do after that). But would I rather they celebrate than golf clap? Yeah.”
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Earlier this season, Dodgers pitcher Trevor Bauer made headlines for saying he liked the way Padres’ shortstop Fernando Tatis, Jr. reacted to hitting two home runs off of him, strutting around and mimicking Bauer at one point.
“I think that pitchers that have that done to them and react by throwing at people — I think it’s pretty soft,” Bauer said. “If you give up a homer, a guy should celebrate it. It’s hard to hit in the big leagues. So I’m all for it, and I think that it’s important that the game moves in that direction and that we stop throwing at people because they celebrated having some success on the field.”
Remember when y’all hated on @JoeyBats19 for a bat-flip in one of the biggest moments in sports history? Clowns. Players bat-flipping on broken bat singles in the first inning nowadays. Lol I still wish he would have thrown the bat much further! LEGEND. HAPPY JOEY BATS DAY! 🇨🇦 pic.twitter.com/gpAxKj3dQk
— Marcus Stroman (@STR0) October 14, 2020
Bautista said he loved Bauer’s comments and hopes he’s part of a trend, where showing emotion and celebrating publicly with the fans doesn’t equate to a fastball in the ribs or a firestorm of discussion about the game’s ethics. Rather, it’s an acknowledgment of a big moment or a big hit, and the release of emotion that goes with it.
“We are on display for people’s entertainment, so let’s go all-out and discover the edges of talent and performance. Let’s not hold back,” Bautista said.
“Sometimes, the baseball season is so long that you have to dig deeper and find new places to get that drive. This game can get emotional and tough and whatever you can get to keep driving you, you hang on to that and use you it.”
The Kansas City Royals were one of April’s feel-good stories, jumping out in front of a crowded AL Central. As of Wednesday morning, it’s the Chicago White Sox on top, followed by Cleveland, Kansas City and Minnesota.
Maybe most surprising, the fourth-place Twins are off to a sluggish 12-21 start with a run differential of -8 entering Wednesday’s games. That differential suggests their record should be better and is one of several reasons you can call them “unlucky,” which is what GM Thad Levine told the team’s radio network recently.
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“We also are looking at [batted] velocity off of our bats, we have one of the best expected weighted-on-base percentages in the league (xwOBA),” Levine said on Twins Radio. “Offensively we are one of the teams hitting the ball harder than most. And all of those things are markers that are very positive. Our strikeout-to-walk rate has been very good from our pitching standpoint; [but] we’ve given up more solid contact. Some things are unsustainable on the pitching side, at least we hope they’re unsustainable, the rate at which we’re giving up home runs per fly ball, the rate at which our inherited runners are scoring.”
Levine did acknowledge that even if some of those aforementioned trends reversed, the Twins would be closer to a .500 team, which is still a ways off from what looked like a legitimate contending club.
Memorial Day is the season’s quarter mark, a time when clubs start to look at the stats and performance less as outliers and more as indicative of the kind of team assembled. It’s still early, but several people in baseball have pegged the Twins as the most surprising underachiever in baseball. Injuries, of course, are a factor, chief among them the absence of Byron Buxton, who put together an MVP-esque first month. But there’s real concern in Twins territory.
(Top photo of Tatis Jr.: Harry How / Getty Images)
