An interview with a Twins play-by-play guy, an insane walk-off and a Sung-bum Na scouting report
And, as usual, we've got plenty of gifs of the nastiest pitches from the week that was
Rich People Conversations is (we think) the world’s only Brewers-and-Twins newsletter. Written by three friends who spend far too much time watching MLB.tv, it takes a look at the quirky side of baseball while also delivering plenty of analysis and #takes. You can subscribe—for free—below.
Happy Monday, fellow rich people.
The baseball (five Twins losses in a row; have you seen the Brewers play?) has not been good, but we’ve still got a newsletter anyway. We’re going to go ahead and put the blame for this one on Jake, who was gone for a few days camping. Somehow the other two authors of this here newsletter have managed to go camping this summer without the baseball world fully falling apart in our absence.
As recompense, we have worked out a compromise in which Jake must sit and watch every pitch from here on out the rest of the way. Puppy needs to go outside? Too bad, Caleb Thielbar is pitching in a 7-1 ballgame. Brewers have a 10-0 lead in the ninth? Better not turn it off or bad things will happen.
It’s this kind of bipartisanship that the rest of the country needs.
Let’s converse.
A quick chat with former Twins play-by-play announcer John Gordon
~ Tom
Like many of our thousands of loyal subscribers, I grew up listening to 830 WCCO on the AM dial late into the Minnesota summer nights, falling asleep as visions of Luis Rivas winning batting titles danced in my head.
The guiding voice to those memories was always John “Gordo” Gordon, the play-by-play radio announcer for the Twins. I’d place my transistor radio underneath my pillow and listen to Gordon call the baseball game. And then afterwards, I’d stay up even later to listen to the late Dark Star break down the game afterwards.
Man, the memories.
Anyway, I’m working on a big #SecretProject for the ole 9-5 gig that I am very excited about, and I had the chance to speak with Gordon earlier this week for it. I snuck in a few questions that I had always wondered about Gordon and figured I’d share with you all.
***
Gordon started his broadcasting career calling baseball, football and basketball games at Indiana University, and he later broke into professional ball in the mid-1960s with a Single-A team in the Philadelphia Phillies organization.
But not before he was forced to change his name on the air. Born into the world as John Gordon Gutowsky, “Gordo” walked into his first day of work at a small radio station in Saginaw, Mich., to a surprise -- the name John Gutowsky wasn’t going to fly on the air.
“The program director didn’t even say hello to me,” Gordon said. “He said, ‘what’s your radio name going to be?’”
Gordon made the decision on the spot.
“My mother always wanted me to be ‘Johnny G,’ which is kind of a disc jockey name. So I said, ‘well, John Gordon.’ And he said, ‘ok, you're John Gordon.’”
And from there, it stuck.
Gordon bounced around the broadcasting world for the next 15 years, slowly working his way up the ranks until he landed a gig with the New York Yankees in 1982, and later, the Twins in 1987.
That’s right, Gordon’s first season on the mic in Minnesota was the team’s first world championship. Now that’s what I call job security.
Aside from playing the character Wally Holland in “Little Big League,” Gordon is best known for calling home runs with the phrase “Touch ‘Em All!”
“It wasn’t original,” Gordon said of the call. “It wasn’t a trademark by any means.”
Dick Enberg, who was inducted into the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame in 2009, was the main play-by-play voice for athletics at Indiana when Gordon was there as a student in the early 1960s. He met Enberg after switching his focus in college to sports broadcasting and quickly learned the ropes.
Whenever an Indiana player would mash a homer, Enberg would use the phrase “touch all the bases.”
“I just picked it up from there,” Gordon said. “I can’t tell you it was something that I felt like I needed to have a home run call, or what have you. It just fell into place. I just happened to use it.”
Gordon packed the phrase along with him to Minnesota, where fans got a full dose right away as Kent Hrbek, Tom Brunansky and Gary Gaetti all clobbered 30+ bombs in 1987. Kirby Puckett wasn’t far behind with 28.
“They were hitting home run after home run after home run,” Gordon said. “I was very fortunate that it caught on.”
And boy, did it ever.
***
I’ve gotta say, the “touch ‘em all” call is great, but still not as memorable as the time I completely stepped on Jake’s call of a walk-off home run during our college days at St. John’s.
Honestly, some nights I wake up in a cold sweat just cringing at that moment.
I don’t know why I’m bringing it into the light on this newsletter, but would it really be Rich People Conversations without a bit of self deprecation?
Now, since Jake is off this week, I have come prepared to defend myself with a couple of points:
It was my second or third broadcast ever and I didn’t know what I was doing (I still don’t)
I believe it was the morning following Case Day at St. John’s, which, yes Mom, is the day we have a mock court trial and definitely doesn’t involve 24 lukewarm Coors Lights.
This piece started as sappy tribute to AM radio, morphed into a semi-journalistic feature about a former Twins announcer and ended with #ProductPlacement of some blue mountains on a beer can.
I guess that’s why you subscribe. Right?
The sweet swing of Sung-bum
~Curt
You may have forgotten that this is a KBO newsletter. (The fact that we haven’t written about our sweet, sweet Korean baseball in, like, six weeks is probably one reason why).
But I didn’t spend hours researching how KBO hitters’ and pitchers’ numbers translated over to MLB for no reason, and haven’t slogged through all of these early mornings to not continue our wonderful tradition as a KBO newsletter.
As a brief catch-up, the NC Dinos are still in first place, as they have been all season, but a difficult month-long stretch starting in mid-July helped get the Kiwoom Heroes back in contention for first place, which comes with a bye straight to the KBO Series. My team is fending off Tom’s. It’s riveting stuff.
The primary reason for the Dinos’ struggles during the stretch that allowed the rest of the league to catch back up was its pitching. With ace Chang-mo Koo out with an injury, things fell apart, with the bullpen as a typical culprit. But that’s just how life is in the KBO; your ‘pen is gonna stink.
The offense, though, has still been dynamic. Some would call it Dyno-mite (I’m so sorry) (I’m really not). NC still leads the league in runs by 17 and homers by 16 despite playing fewer games than any team but Samsung.
And the key to the offense has been hitter extraordinaire, Sung Bum Na.
The reason this is compelling, other than he’s a very good hitter in a professional baseball league, is that it’s well documented that Na is a Scott Boras client and has plans to be posted and come over to MLB this off-season. (I’m pretty sure if you’ve tuned into any Dinos game on ESPN this year for at least 10 minutes, you’ve heard the commentators bring up this point).
Na is scorched earth right now. Since August 5, a stretch of 21 games, Na is batting .391/.439/.770 with nine homers and 25 runs scored in that stretch. Over a four-game stretch last week, he socked five dingers, including at least one in each game.
It’s a hot streak that has elevated Na’s season line to .324/.397/1.031 with 27 homers through 402 PA. KBO Fancy Stats has his wRC+ as 156 (second in KBO) and WAR 3.9, which is third among position players in the league and first among non-foreign players.
And it’s all coming at a dandy time for Na.
So, what could we expect from Na in a big league uniform?
Using the data we gathered from our past studies on how KBO hitters translate to MLB, here are a couple of projections for what would be his ages 31-33 seasons.
K%: 30.3%
BB%: 6.0%
ISO: .194
This obviously isn’t a complete picture, but it hits on strikeouts, walks and straight power, which are three of the most critical elements to any hitter’s profile. Add in a batted ball profile that has been well above-average in the KBO and we’ll eyeball to .310.
Using those four numbers, and then projected a decline from a 4.8 HR/PA% in KBO for his career down (5.4% the last three years) down to 4.2% (I’m worried that this might be over generous by a couple thousandths of a point, but we digress) and you get the following three-year slash line in the bigs: .247/.301/.441 for a .742 OPS.
Now, there are some run environment factors like ballparks/how juiced the ball is that could sway those projections some way here or there, but it’s not like he’s playing at Coors (on one extreme) or Comerica (on the other).
League-average OPS this year? .741.
Na, then, projects to be around a league-average hitter. The strikeouts are obviously the big concern, as he is among the biggest whiffers in Korea right now and that would only get worse against better pitching.
What’s enticing, though, is the power. Na has real 65-grade raw power on a big league scale that could land anywhere from 55 to 60 in game situations.
Na is a fastball crusher and there shouldn’t be too many concerns about his bat speed catching up to big league pitching. He’s rarely overpowered by high velocity in the KBO. He destroys the most commonly-thrown pitch in baseball. That’s a big plus.
Where he’s struggled, however, is with breaking pitches. His OPS against curveballs is just .712 this year and it was .729 in 2018 (he was injured for nearly all of last season). He doesn’t seem to pick them up all that well sometimes.
But during his hot stretch, Na has shown more comfortability against breaking stuff. See two recent homers below.
Could it be a sign of him getting better in an area where he has struggled? We’ll see.
All things told, I would peg Na to receive somewhere in the two-year, $9 million guaranteed range. He’s on the wrong side of 30 and is not going to be getting any younger. There are also questions about him defensively based on his mobility and range in right field, but you can’t exactly be sure that he’s going to hit enough to be a full-time DH in MLB.
But that power is intriguing and it’s something and he’s seemingly still at his peak in that area.
Recently speaking, Eric Thames got three years and $16 million from Milwaukee. Kwang-hyun Kim got two and $8 million from St. Louis. Na hasn’t been as dominant as Thames was and has had a career path relatively similar to Kim’s (just as a hitter instead of a pitcher). MLB teams have also never seen Na against any other pitching beside KBO, so there could be a front office that is intrigued by what they see and how they think they could improve him in some areas.
Let the Sung-bum Na games commence.
Eric Sogard hit a walk-off homer…
...wait what
~Curt
The Brewers have played a lot of uninspiring baseball over the last couple of weeks. (Aand I cannot place enough of an emphasis on the ‘uninspiring’ in that sentence).
But theyThey have, however, snuck some fun moments into that period, such as Saturday night’s Eric Sogard walk-off homer, Jacob Nottingham hitting a bomb in his first game of the year and /checks notes/ yep, that’s about it! So let’s talk about one of those good moments.
By this point, you almost assuredly have seen Sogard’s game-winner, which came with nobody out and Jace Peterson on first in the ninth and the Brewers trailing by one. It gave Milwaukee a win in a wild, wild game that saw Josh Hader pitch as poorly as he ever has.
You have probably also seen Luis Urias’ failed attempt to douse Sogard in Gatorade after the game.
Deciding which one of the two events is funnier is a tough call. On one hand,*ERIC SOGARD* hit a walk-off home run. On the other hand, watching people completely eat it is objectively funny. But, again, ERIC SOGARD. I feel like Kevin in “The Office” right now.
As much as I enjoyed the Urias biff, Sogard hitting a walk-off has to be funnier to me. The absurdity of it happening is just too much. Sogard has made a lengthy career out of being a guy who walks and plays solid infield defense and wears glasses. Him socking a walk-off dinger feels too ridiculous to be true.
Is it the most unlikely Brewers walk-off homer in recent memory? Let’s investigate, going back to my very arbitrary “recent memory” dateline of 2000.
Damian Miller vs. Houston, 2007
This was one of the cooler Brewers walk-offs, as the La Crosse native won the game on La Crosse Day at Miller Park. It also moved that Milwaukee team to 46-32. Let’s not discuss what happened after that.
This is a pretty obscure one. Miller had 87 career homers in 11 seasons, which isn’t bad for a catcher who played 100-120 games a year, but the power really tailed off in his final seasons. Miller had a .149 career isolated power, but that mark was .113 in 2007, his final big league season.
Caleb Gindl vs. Miami, 2013
No lie here, I had no idea Caleb Gindl hit a walk-off homer in the majors. This one seems incredibly unlikely because, well, Caleb Gindl, but he did have a decent track record as a power hitter. Gindl hit 105 homers in 1,104 minor league games, then had a career .172 ISO in 178 big league plate appearances.
Also, he’s still only 31.
Gabe Kapler vs. Washington, 2008
Back before he was making questionable bullpen moves as a shredded manager, Gabe Kapler was a shredded ballplayer. Even though he was as ripped as baseball players get, Kapler wasn’t a big power hitter. Outside of a three-year power surge from 1999-2001, Kapler didn’t hit for much power at all (hmmm, makes you think).
In 2008, though, he had eight homers in 245 PA, so the power stroke had returned to a degree, making it a little less unlikely.
Norichika Aoki vs. Chicago, 2012
Aoki only had 33 homers in 759 MLB games and his career ISO was just .144. His offensive profile was perfectly matched with the fact that you could say “Aoki pokey” whenever he got a hit.
Nori 4 Ever
Sean Halton vs. Cincinnati, 2013.
This happened.
Sean Halton, who was a real baseball player, only played one season in the bigs and hit four dongs in 111 PA. Including one that won a ballgame.
Similar to Gindl, Halton wasn’t much of a major league player, but he did have some power. He hit 17 homers in 119 minor league games in 2012, the year before his call-up.
Also, bring back the bile-colored uniforms. This is one of my strongest-held beliefs.
Eric Sogard vs. Pittsburgh, Saturday night
Outside of a wacky, juiced-ball 13-homer year in 2019 that he used to somehow get $5 million guaranteed from the Brewers, fewer guys have played as long as Sogard with as little pop. His career .093 ISO is the sixth-lowest of anyone active with at least 2,000 PA. His career high single-season dinger total outside of that crazy 2019 year is three. He had no homers and two doubles in 2020 before winning the game Saturday night.
Baseball is wild.
The answer:
Eric Sogard’s walk-off homer, from a pure unlikeliness standpoint, is the craziest Brewers walk-off homer since 2000. It doesn’t top Sean Halton or Caleb Gindl’s in terms of pure randomness, but it, by all the laws of baseball, never should have happened in the first place. And that’s worth something.
Here, watch some filth
~Curt
Let’s kick off our weekly look at the nastiest pitches thrown with what was the filthiest offering I saw from the Brewers or Twins: D. Mountain’s curveball.
Good gravy.
Next up is Corbin Burnes with a disgusting 94 mph backfoot cutter for a strikeout. I could’ve put together 1,000 words on his magnificent outing Friday night, but you already knew this was a Corbin Burnes Newsletter.
Next, let’s go to a couple of lefties who have never made an appearance yet on HWSF.
Caleb Thielbar’s nasty hook:
And….Brett Anderson?!?!?!
Brandon Woodruff, however, is a staple of this here section. He’s sort of been making a habit of being really nasty, especially with his fastball, and still managing to give up three-to-five runs but that’s neither here nor there.
This here change to Castellanos just dies. RIP changeup.
Now for some more Twins goodies. Jorge Alcala, another favorite of this section, drops a slider at 89 and, yes, that will play.
Speaking of Twins sliders that I love, enjoy some Matt Wisler putridness.
This Tyler Clippard changeup doesn’t strike the eyeballs as pure filth right away, but it’s great pitching. With the arm action and the way he throws his body at the hitter, it looks like it’s coming in at 60 mph and progressively getting slower as it inches toward the plate. And it dots the bottom of the zone, so even if McBroom, who’s clearly geared up for the heat before realizing he’s in trouble, laid off, it’s a strike.
To close us off, let’s roll with another HWSF fave: Fred Peralta. We didn’t see a ton of Peralta this week and he wasn’t at his nastiest, either. But this curve, which is the exact location where you don’t want to leave it, moves so much that Jose Osuna swings way under it. Not the world’s best-executed pitch, but it’s still lovely to look at.
