(with apologies to Ogden Nash)

Hi, everyone! And welcome to Write-Up For Yesterday, BttP’s guide to what the heck happened yesterday in baseball. We’re not gonna just hand you some scores here, because we trust you know how to type the letters E-S-P-N into your internet machine. Instead, we hope to give you a fuller and richer understanding of important goings on from yesterday in baseball. The big stories, and the noteworthy performances-good and bad.

STORY LINES AND NEWS CYCLE EPHEMERA

Cardinals fan Alex Crisafulli was all ready to tell you how St. Louis is the best (and he kinda still did), but it’s not quite so simple after an Achilles injury abruptly ended Adam Wainwright’s season. Wainwright hurt himself stumbling out of the box during his at-bat in the fifth inning on Saturday, leading fellow NL ace and hot take machine Max Scherzer to ask whether people would rather watch him or David Ortiz hit. If the Nationals are only letting Scherzer use a wet newspaper at the plate, it seems a little unfair, but there’s no doubt that the DH-in-the-NL movement is using this as another point in favour of their cause.

The Angels are close to a deal to send Josh Hamilton back to Texas. Calling it a deal is probably a stretch, as it appears this is basically just saving $15 million of the total $83 million still owed to Hamilton with no other players or considerations involved. The front office has made it clear they don’t want Hamilton in Anaheim after his offseason relapse and have been offensively unsupportive of the outfielder who has battled addiction for years, making every effort to express their displeasure at his lack of suspension and claiming this relapse somehow violated the terms of his contract.

Speaking of teams trying anything to get out of massively oversized contracts, some guy called Alex Rodriguez is apparently pretty close to tying Willie Mays on 660 home runs, after number 659 last night helped the Yankees to take the Subway Series from the hitherto unstoppable, likely NL East-winning  Mets. The Yankees, on the hook for an extra $6 million each time he catches another hitter on the homers list and therefore pretending that A-Rod home runs don’t really count, will presumably mark 660 with a celebration of Brian McCann passing Spud Chandler for 240th on the list of players with most plate appearances for the team. Whether they will pay up if Rodriguez hits enough ‘clean’ home runs remains to be seen.

The Mets and Yankees also starred in the latest episode of Team Twitter Feud, as their respective accounts waged war at a level of intensity not seen since the last time two teams decided to tweet slightly snarky things at each other. MLB.com awarded the social media win – presumably based on the fact that they managed to tweet a picture including Sunday’s box score – to the Yankees, but they had really lost before the series started thanks to this failure to consider the effects of photo cropping.

We finally got to see Billy Hamilton vs Jon Lester on Friday, and Hamilton stole three bases. Of course, it won’t be the last time Hamilton steals three bases in a game, no-one else stole any and the Cubs won (eventually), so the fact that Lester can only get the ball to first base when it’s still in his glove still doesn’t seem to matter all that much.

Hanley Ramirez’s son is ready to follow in his father’s footsteps.

Alex Gordon made an absurd catch that required a remarkable leap into the stands – none of this catching the ball before you get to the fence nonsense.

And finally, going aaaaaaall the way to the other end of the left fielder spectrum, Michael Cuddyer made a throw almost as bad as Gordon’s catch was good. Hey, at least it reached the infield eventually. 

TWEETS WE LIKED

How’s it going Alex Gordon? Just made a sweet catch flying by me in the stands pic.twitter.com/9E0dH3W2eW — Ethan Routzahn (@EthanRoutzahn) April 26, 2015

10 percent confident the Cubs could just start calling it bush-league to run on Lester and teams would have to stop — Sam Miller (@SamMillerBP) April 24, 2015

Adrian Beltre sent Garrett Richards a $300 invoice for the three bats he broke yesterday. Richards loved it. He sent him back a bat. — Pedro Moura (@pedromoura) April 25, 2015

Tired of @THEREAL_DV saying how slow he is on air, Adrian Gonzalez challenged him to a race pic.twitter.com/SWWKqepMuo — Mark Saxon (@markasaxon) April 24, 2015

ARTICLES WE LIKED

Beyond the Box Score’s Scott Lindholm examined whether making fewer mistakes leads to more success.

Baron of All Baseball Podcasts Ryan Sullivan spoke to prospect expert Jim Callis about the upcoming draft, while Brandon Lee, Alec Denton and Stephen Shaw discussed topics ranging from Statcast to Joe Nathan on this week’s BttP podcast.

BttP’s Ben Suissa highlighted the exceptional versatility of Brock Holt.

Former Banished star Matt Trueblood explained why a rebuild might be more painful for the Brewers than most.

TODAY’S BEST PITCHING MATCHUPS

Cole Hamels (PHI) vs. John Lackey (STL) (8:15 ET)

The Phillies have scored the fewest runs in the league and Jeff Francoeur is batting cleanup (these two facts may or may not be related) but at least they still have Hamels. The Cards need 200 reliable innings from veteran Lackey more than ever and the Phillies might be a nice gentle series to cushion the blow of losing Wainwright. Naturally, this will finish 9-8.

Collin McHugh (HOU) vs. James Shields (SDP) (10:10 ET)

McHugh is certainly going the right way about proving that 2014 was not a fluke, striking out a batter per inning through his first three starts this season after his 9.1 K/9 mark last year.

Jason Vargas (KC) vs. Corey Kluber (CLE) (6:10 ET)

The reigning Cy Young and a guy with…uh…some fly ball tendencies and really, really good outfield defence. It was hard to find three good matchups today, okay?