Welcome to The Pregame Lineup, a weekday newsletter that gets you up to speed on everything you need to know for today's games, while catching you up on fun and interesting stories you might have missed. Thanks for being here. The human body has its limits. Anybody who has ever grunted when they rise from a chair, or started to feel that dull pain in the lower back knows this all too well. But there's a Division II reliever out there who is pushing those limits further than they've been pushed before. You might need some ibuprofen just from watching him.
His name is Ethan Getting of Wayne State University, and he has taken the type of exaggerated over-the-top delivery you might remember best from two-time Cy Young winner Tim Lincecum and put it, uh, over the top. Our "weird baseball" expert Matt Monagan spoke with Getting about how he came to find this funky form, but it's the type of thing you need to see to truly wrap your head around.
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Just admire (or cringe at) the almost fully horizontal contortion of his torso above, and notice where the ball ultimately comes out of his skyward-pointing hand (top photo), forming an almost perfect 90-degree angle. It's no wonder, as Getting says, that "everybody just looks at each other in the other team's dugout and says, 'What is that?'" We don't actually have a good answer to that question, but the motion is completely natural for Getting and it happens to be working. His coaches are rolling with it and letting the kid do his thing. That's led to his velocity ticking up almost 10 mph, and he's struck out 27 batters over 19 2/3 innings, in large part because they "can't see it at all." And as my high school coach used to bark every time I stepped in the bucket, you cannot hit what you cannot see. While Getting hopes this isn't the peak of his pitching career, he has most likely reached the apex of his delivery. Any more, the reliever joked, and "I think I might fall over." There have been plenty of quirky windups in MLB (test your knowledge of them here), but the closest comparisons to Getting's electric elasticity are probably Lincecum or former Guardians reliever James Karinchak. |
Both of those guys had incredible nicknames -- "The Freak" for Lincecum and "Wild Thing" for Karinchak -- so a moniker might be the next step for Getting. May we suggest "Mr. Fantastic"? -- Scott Chiusano |
TWO HANDS ARE BETTER THAN ONE |
In keeping with the theme of pitchers doing mind-boggling things, we bring you Mariners prospect Jurrangelo Cijntje. The ambidextrous hurler has been featured in this space before, but each time he takes the mound it's a spectacle, and you can watch his start for High-A Everett tomorrow at 9:30 p.m. ET, FREE on MLB.TV. And if you're wondering how soon you might see this 21-year-old who throws upper 90s with both arms in the bigs, Daniel Kramer spoke to Mariners president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto about that very topic. |
• Marlins @ Phillies (6:45 p.m. ET, MLB.TV): Miami was just swept by the D-backs, but Sandy Alcantara did not pitch in that series. He does, however, pitch tonight, and the Marlins are undefeated in all three of his starts. On the other side is Phillies ace Zack Wheeler, looking to right the ship after consecutive rough outings. |
• Dodgers @ Rangers (8:05 p.m. ET, MLB.TV, MLB Network): Not only is this a matchup between the two most recent World Series winners, but the opener features a must-see battle on the mound: Yoshinobu Yamamoto vs. Jacob deGrom. While deGrom has the hardware, it's Yamamoto who has looked like the better pitcher early on, with a 1.23 ERA that is second best in the NL. |
• Padres @ Astros (8:10 p.m. ET, MLB.TV): The Padres are off to their best start since the 1998 team that went to the World Series, and they open a set against a team that knows a little something about playing in and winning the World Series. This is also a (Kyle) Hart vs. (Ryan) Gusto pitching matchup, so we're assuming the Padres will play with a lot of heart and the Astros will play with much gusto. Which should make for a competitive game. |
SPIDEY SENSES INVADE THE PARK |
Baseball has entered the Spider-Verse. Rangers starter Patrick Corbin channeled his inner Peter Parker on Wednesday, when he took the mound after suffering a (spider?) bite that had him struggling to walk one day prior. But the real Spider-Man may have been the college center fielder who scaled the wall on Thursday for a gravity-defying home run robbery (a real web gem, if you will) that was straight out of a comic book. |
THE HUMAN PITCHING MACHINE |
Can you Beat the Streak? Try to top Joe DiMaggio's record hitting streak of 56 games by selecting a player each day to record a hit. If you get to 57, you can win $5.6 million. Who's hot right now: Corey Seager has been on fire, with 10 knocks during his current five-game hitting streak. He'll be facing his old Dodgers mates, against whom he's gone 3-for-6 with two homers and a double. |
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