Jon Heyman, the national baseball voice of The Score, probably needs a hug.
My friend and longtime colleague, who also works for MLB Network and the New York Post, has firmly established himself as the loudest voice on anti-WAR sentiment in the MVP battle between Los Angeles Dodgers unicorn Shohei Ohtani and Chicago Cubs center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong.
Heyman wasn’t discrediting Crow-Armstrong’s brilliant season but simply pointing out that the two players’ offensive numbers are similar, yet the WAR metric favors PCA because of his fielding and baserunning. Ohtani also has the second-lowest ERA of any pitcher with 85 or more innings, which doesn’t seem to move the WAR needle like the other intangibles do for Crow-Armstrong.
It’s a fascinating race that could go down to the wire.
There’s a ways to go, and four-time MVP Ohtani is starting to get his arm back into pitching mode, likely to get ready for the postseason because the Dodgers don’t really need him to win the National League West.
Crow-Armstrong has 30 stolen bases, and with 26 home runs he’s likely to repeat his 30-30 season from 2025, with better all-around numbers due to his newfound respect for taking a walk, which wasn’t previously part of his game. Another Gold Glove is a lock, and it should be his third straight had he not been robbed in 2024, when current Chicago White Sox outfielder Brenton Doyle won it playing for the Colorado Rockies.
Ohtani fatigue could factor in with BBWAA voters, just as three-time NBA MVP Nikola Jokić of the Denver Nuggets was allegedly penalized in voting for winning too much and making excellence look too easy.
Whoever wins, the debate is good for baseball, for the Cubs and Dodgers and for both players, whose MVP duel in the sunshine Wednesday at Wrigley Field was one for the ages.
We can be popes, just for one day
Pope Hat Day at White Sox Park arrives Tuesday night, and the Sox are pulling out all the stops, including inviting former reliever “The Pope” Donn Pall to the pregame ceremonies. Seats are sold out, but standing-room tickets were available Monday — or kneeling room, if you’re so inclined.
The Sox are even taking a page from the Catholic Mass and asking fans to say, “Peace be with you,” to each other during the fifth inning, calling it “a playful nod to the Catholic Mass tradition.” I’m not sure what they’re referring to, but a “playful nod” during Mass usually led to five Hail Marys and two Our Fathers in confession back when I was in grade school.
The Sox also got the timing wrong. Any Catholic grade school student can tell you the “Peace be with you” part is basically the seventh-inning stretch of Mass, signaling it’s almost over and time to go play.
Buehrle being Buehrle
Former Sox left-hander Mark Buehrle had 14 straight seasons of 200 or more innings and missed that yardstick in his final season of 2015 with 198 2/3. He never has come close to getting in on the Hall of Fame ballot, though I keep picking him anyway, hoping his career numbers grow in appreciation along with his two no-hitters, including a perfect game.
In comparison, Miami Marlins starter Sandy Alcantara might be the only starter this season with 200 or more innings, though a handful of others might get over the line with strong finishes. This continues the trend toward fewer innings for elite starters, fueled by stricter pitch counts. Buehrle always wanted to go seven innings or more and throw 120 or so pitches, which is crazy talk now.
When I saw Buehrle on Saturday at the Ozzie Guillén number retirement ceremony, I asked if the current trend might help his candidacy with Hall of Fame voters, knowing what he did never will happen again.
Not surprisingly, his answer was “no.”
“You look at 20 years before I played, and it was different than what it is now,” he said. “Like, 200 innings, 20 years before I played, was (crap). If you didn’t throw 400 innings …
“So it’s just the way the game is changing. I’ve said it before, if I was playing right now, I wouldn’t survive this game. I don’t even think I would’ve gotten drafted.”
That seemed a little harsh to me.
“A lefty throwing 85 miles an hour?” he replied. “I’m just saying you wouldn’t be scouted, you wouldn’t be drafted. It’s just the way the game has changed. If you aren’t throwing 90-something, you don’t get looked at.”
It’s sad to realize he’s probably right. And it’s very Buehrle-ish to downplay his own candidacy in this Trumpian age of self-congratulations for the slightest accomplishment.
Happy ending
I learned how to write at the University of Missouri and how to write a newspaper column from my former Tribune boss, Mike Royko. The legendary columnist always stressed the importance of a strong ending to his columns and had the ability and confidence to write backward, meaning he often came up with the ending first before going back to the lede. No one did it better.
I mention that to point out my column on Guillén’s number retirement ended badly in Sunday’s print editions with an incomplete sentence: “Guillén has no filter, which often got him into hot water and made him some enemies along the”
To make a long story short, a production snafu inadvertently lopped off several paragraphs.
The Chicago Tribune regrets the error.
The complete column on the Guillén tribute is available on the Tribune’s website and was in the Sunday print edition of the Daily Herald — the world’s greatest suburban newspaper — which our hedge fund overlords recently acquired.
So apologies if you already read it, but as Paul Harvey would say, here’s the rest of the story …
Guillén has no filter, which often got him in hot water and made him some enemies along the way. But he was made-for-Chicago, always laughing, arguing, trading insults and hugging it out afterwards.
“He fit the fan base here,” former Sox catcher A.J. Pierzynski told me. “A player, manager and broadcaster all in the same city for the same team. That’s the ultimate dream of any player. He just fit. The fans got him, and they understood him. White Sox fans are hardworking fans that expect the same out of their players. What Ozzie brought here, he talked a little trash, made some jokes. That’s all you need.”
No reporter could walk away from Guillén’s pregame sessions, which often lasted a half-hour or more, for fear that he might say something controversial the minute you walked away. He loved to argue with us as much as with the umpires.
Former Tribune baseball writer Dave Van Dyck covered him more than anyone in Chicago — from Guillén’s first spring training in Sarasota, Fla., in 1985 to his exit in ’97 to his hiring as Sox manager in 2003 to the championship in ’05 to the drama-filled exit in the final days of the 2011 season.
“Of course, he went out the same way he went in — talking nonstop,” Van Dyck wrote after Guillén’s final game. “Some making perfect sense, and some of it just the ramblings of a mind that never lingered on any subject for more than a few seconds. Guillén was always cursed, and blessed, with short attention. It is a simple complexity that made him loved and hated.”
But Guillén was beloved in Chicago, even by Cubs fans who enjoyed hearing him rant about the Wrigley Field rats. The Cubs-Sox rivalry was never as alive as it was when Guillén and Lou Piniella were in opposing dugouts. His gift of talking made him a media favorite, and the feeling was mutual.
“I respect the media more than anything,” he said. “You guys know. I never carried no water for no one. I was so honest with you, I got in trouble a lot of times with my honesty. But on my first day I walked to the old ballpark, this city has always been behind me, the good, the bad and the ugly.”
There was never a day Guillén didn’t love what he was doing, no matter the job.
The city of Chicago adopted him 41 years ago, and he’s been our native son ever since.
