I don’t think there’s anything to compare it to.
The way the ball leaves Will Middlebrooks’ bat after he hits a home run is something special. Like being launched from a cannon, as if the baseball was a tiny piece of metal rocketing towards some sort of super magnet looming above the Green Monster, a laser, a bullet, a sling shot from home plate. None of these are just right.
It’s rare that almost every time a player hits a home run, you know it’s gone from the instant it leaves the bat. It’s even more rare that a home run is still rising when it hits the seats. Almost every one of Middlebrooks’ is.
In a season that has become increasingly harder and harder to watch as the weeks roll by, Middlebrooks was a bright spot, a player whose plate appearances became a reason to tune into games.
Called up to replace an injured Kevin Youkilis, Middlebrooks made his surprising major league debut on May 2nd. Surprising in the sense that, even though the third baseman was putting up solid numbers in Pawtucket, most experts and scouts declared that he wouldn’t be ready to assume a starting position in the majors until he had one more full season in the minors. Instead, Middlebrooks took a month and a few days before adopting the hot corner in Fenway and eventually pushing Kevin Youkilis out of town.
His numbers in the majors aren’t surprising. Scouts knew he would hit for power, that he would strike out a little too much, and that he would never take too many walks. The fact that his average has floated around .300 is perhaps the only unexpected result of his first 286 plate appearances.
Experts would point to his .335 BABIP and 21.4% HR/FB ratio as indication for an inevitable decline in Middlebrooks’ performance this season.
Of course, that became rather irrelevant after Friday night in Cleveland.
Middlebrooks won’t get the chance to decline, or continue on the red-hot power pace he was on. Because his season is over; his right wrist broken by a fastball from Esmil Rogers.
I don’t know who Esmil Rogers is either.
For a season so filled with injuries and frustrating losses, so many shrugs of the shoulders, and so many “So it goes..” as the television flicks off, this one hurt in particular.
Middlebrooks brought energy, brought excitement, to a team that had been missing it since last September.
Of course, as they have done all season, Boston will continue on without one of their most valuable pieces. It seems fitting that we can already declare that by the time the calendar runs empty on the year 2012, Jacoby Ellsbury, Dustin Pedroia, Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford, David Ortiz, and Will Middlebrooks will never have been penciled into the same lineup. If anything speaks to what a lost season 2012 has become, it must be that.
But at the same time, if there’s any reason to be optimistic about 2013 (and yes, we’ve already reached the point where we’re talking about next year), it’s for the very same reason.
The lineup that Boston could never field this year will most likely be the lineup that trots out on Opening Day next April. The team that has already scored the second most runs in baseball, stands to be even better, perhaps significantly so.
As Tim Britton of the Providence Journal pointed out this morning, on August 13th of last year, the Red Sox had a 99% of making the playoffs. We all know how that turned out. So the fact that they have a 10% chance of postseason play this year doesn’t make a late season run all that improbable. I hate to say it, but a sweep in Baltimore and… well, I’ll stop there. The point is, any run the Sox do or do not make, the same gaping hole at third will be apparent. Whether they’re in need of a clutch homer, or just some entertainment as they slog along at the same pace they’ve set since Opening Day, the Red Sox will have to do it without Will Middlebrooks.
And that’s still tough to hear.