Welcome to Sliders, a weekly in-season MLB column that focuses on both the timely and timeless elements of baseball.
The tour is on again for Brenton Doyle, an encore after so many stirring performances last season that there ought to be a T-shirt listing all the venues: Boston, Tampa Bay, San Francisco…
“And that was just me,” said Austin Gomber, a Colorado Rockies pitcher, still amazed this spring at how often Doyle saved him in center field last summer. “I know he made another catch in the right-center field gap in St. Louis that was unbelievable. There’s a reason he won the Gold Glove.”
Doyle, 25, is like an indie band with a cult following that just hit it big. It’s hard to get noticed when your team finishes 41 games out of first place, as the Rockies did last season while enduring a franchise-worst 59-103 record. But when it was time to recognize defensive excellence, Doyle was impossible to miss.
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The Gold Glove winners are determined by sabermetric data and votes from managers and coaches. However you look at it — as the refrain from “Billy Madison” (sort of) goes — Doyle rules.
“With all the data and the metrics that are out there now, he was far and away the winner,” said Rockies manager Bud Black. “And based on the data, what we see in person, what we see on TV when we’re watching games and highlights — with Doyle, it was clear cut. Best center fielder in the game.”
Doyle hit only .203 last season, with a .250 on-base percentage and 10 home runs. But he also stole 22 bases, flashing the speed that helped make him the first rookie outfielder to win a National League Gold Glove — an award that dates to 1957.
Doyle said he’s eager to display the trophy in his home office with the others he’s won, at Shepherd University in West Virginia and Class A Spokane. He’s been a natural in center since he outgrew shortstop at Kettle Run High School in Nolesville, Va.
“My freshman to sophomore year, I probably grew from 5’9” to 6’2”, and then I grew one more inch from sophomore to junior year,” Doyle said. “You see a lot of tall shortstops — Corey Seager’s as big as me and he plays short — but I come from a pretty small town, and in high school they wanted the bigger guys in the outfield. So that’s where I moved, and it worked for the best.”
It worked so well last season that Doyle essentially broke the metrics. In the first 20 seasons that Sports Info Solutions tracked defensive runs saved (2003 to 2022), no Rockies center fielder ever amassed more than six in a year — then Doyle had 19. Fangraphs gave him an Ultimate Zone Rating of 24.5, nearly three times better than the next-best center fielder, the Blue Jays’ Daulton Varsho (9.2).
But folks don’t think about numbers when they watch Doyle work. Even a guy like Charlie Blackmon, who has logged more than 5,000 innings at center for the Rockies, is awestruck.
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“You watch him and you start taking note of how many plays where, just off the bat, you’re like, ‘Oh that’s 100 percent a double if it stays in the park’ — and then it turns into an out,” Blackmon said. “He’s not taking away singles. These are run-scoring, extra-base hits he’s taking away. It’s really impactful.”
Last spring, Doyle said, Blackmon reminded him never to coast at Coors Field, where balls tend to stay airborne much longer than you’d think. But really, Blackmon said, there was nothing he could teach a player with Doyle’s instincts and attitude.
“The thing about great defenders is that they want to make plays, so he’s not afraid to dive, and he doesn’t shy from the wall,” said Black, the manager. “You cross your fingers when you see outfielders crash into a wall; you’re always saying, ‘Get up, get up.’ But that’s how they’re wired.”
When he was a boy, Doyle said, he would tag along to his sister’s tennis practice and scramble around the court, snaring balls with his bare hands. These days, it’s best to leave him alone during batting practice.
“A lot of guys can take shagging BP as time to just hang out, relax and wait till it’s your turn to hit, but I take those reps very seriously,” Doyle said. “And the pitchers here know that, too. Whenever there’s a ball hit near center field, they get out of the way because they know I’m going full speed to catch it.”
Rockies pitchers had little margin for error last season, with an MLB-high 5.67 ERA, so they were especially grateful for Doyle. Gomber, a fly-ball pitcher, was the beneficiary of his superhero catches at Fenway Park and Tropicana Field, and a double play in San Francisco that cut down the go-ahead run at the plate.
There’s a reason, perhaps, that Doyle’s best plays came away from the Rockies’ mile-high home. For outfielders, Coors Field is like New York City: if you can make it there, you’ll make it anywhere.
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“If you can handle Coors Field, it just makes your game so much better because you go to these other outfields and it seems like they’re half the size,” he said. “So you’re able to cover a lot more ground in a short amount of time.”
Doyle did make his mark at home: in a September game against Toronto, he held Davis Schneider at third with a throw measured at 105.7 mph, the hardest ever by an outfielder in nine seasons of Trackman data.
“On that ball, Vlad Guerrero Jr. hit it deep enough that the runner normally would take off at third,” Doyle said. “He took a couple of hard steps and shut it down pretty immediately. So I mean, it’s cool, but at the same time, I still like my putouts. I don’t want ’em to be too passive against me.”
It’s too late for that. The secret is out on Doyle, and in his field — like another — there’s only one level higher than gold: platinum.
Feats of Strength
The story behind an unusual skill or style
Seattle’s Logan Gilbert
For hitters, a confrontation with Seattle’s Logan Gilbert is one of the most stressful in the game.
“He’s got like seven and a half feet of extension,” the Mariners’ new designated hitter, Mitch Garver, said accurately this spring. “That gives you less time to react, so you’re recognizing pitches and shapes a little bit later than normal. It means the ball is closer to you, so you don’t have time to get your ‘A’ swing off. A lot of times you’re taking a defensive swing.”
Gilbert is 6 foot 6, and his average stride is a full foot longer. That ranks in the 99th percentile of major-league pitchers, a level only one other starter, the Dodgers’ Tyler Glasnow, reached last season. Gilbert averaged 95.7 mph with his fastball last season — ninth among qualified pitchers — and the hitter perceives the pitch as even harder than that.
“I don’t consciously try to do it,” said Gilbert, who had 189 strikeouts and just 36 walks last season, while going 13-7 with a 3.73 ERA. “I wasn’t aware of how far out it was until towards the end of college. I think it’s a product of some of the things I do train, but I’m not necessarily training the extension.
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“I’m training using my legs correctly and the way my arm unravels at release, and I think that kind of translates into extension. That’s kind of the last piece. I guess it naturally happens, but I think of it like dominoes almost in a row, hitting each other. I train the first two or three dominoes, which leads to that actually happening.”
One thing he does consciously try to do, Gilbert said, is reach as far as he can with his hand.
“Everything works way better when my hand’s out front,” he said. “And that’s one of the only things I ever try to actually do on the mound is just take my hand out front — because of the perceived velocity, but also the action of the pitch, I think, breaks later when I’m working out front farther. Hopefully, it’s not moving till it’s like, 10 feet away from them, and that makes it tougher.”
Gimme Five
Five bits of ballpark wisdom
David Robertson ranks his favorite MLB bullpens
David Robertson enters this season with 793 career appearances, second only to Boston’s Kenley Jansen (817) among active pitchers. That’s a lot of time spent in bullpens, and Robertson, who signed with Texas in January, has sat in dozens of them. The Rangers’ home ballpark, Globe Life Field, will be the 36th in which he has pitched.
We caught up with Robertson this month in Surprise, Ariz., to ask about his favorite bullpens. He hates sitting behind chain-link fences — “it’s like you’re an animal in a cage,” he says — so Anaheim, Kansas City and Los Angeles are out. So are side-view bullpens, like in Oakland and Tampa Bay, and the indoor bullpen under the bleachers at Wrigley Field. But a few stand out.
1. Seattle: “I put Seattle up on the very top. I love how you can sit there and it’s one of the few bullpens where we can see the whole field. That’s a big deal for me. The fans are vicious, especially when you’re with the Yankees. But you’re low, and it’s nice because you’re so close, you feel like you can actually see what’s happening.”
2. Baltimore: “It’s rough in a day game — you’re out there baking in that heat — and you can’t really see all of left field anymore. But it’s a great view and a really scenic park.”
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3. Atlanta: “Atlanta’s a fun park. When you’re sitting on the perch, you’ve got a great view — especially when you’re watching (fans race with) The Freeze. You get to see them all lining up right next to you in the tunnel, and they’re so nervous. You can see their heart rate by watching their neck. You can just tell, like, ‘You’re gonna lose, you’ve got no shot.’”
4. Colorado: “We’re a long ways off, but it’s beautiful. You can look to your right and see out of the stadium, and they’ve got all those trees and a little pond out there for us.”
5. Boston: “As much as I hate it — there’s nowhere to go and you’re kinda stir crazy — it’s good for about five innings. When you actually have to throw, the bullpen feels so short, and you turn around and look and the fans are right there. But it’s a really cool view.”
Off the Grid
A historical detour from the Immaculate Grid
Bo Diaz, All-Star catcher
The first week of the season brings back a memory of an “Ultimate Grand Slam” — a walk-off homer with the bases loaded to win the game by a run. The two-out variety has happened only 16 times in major-league history, making it rarer than a perfect game.
The first known occurrence: Roger Connor for Troy in 1881. The most recent: David Bote for the Cubs in 2018. The Phillies’ Bo Diaz did it in the seventh game of the 1983 season, capping a 10-9 victory at Veterans Stadium.
Diaz — a catcher who qualified for last Saturday’s Grid with two career All-Star nods — joined Harry Kalas as the star of the game after his slam. Kalas’ euphoric radio call, which does not include his signature “Outta here!”, comes in at the 1:25 mark in the audio clip below:
Rick Ownbey sparked the Phillies’ rally by walking the bases loaded, and after Jesse Orosco walked in a run, Neil Allen served up the winning blast. It was the kind of sequence that can be hazardous to a manager’s health.
“A few more like that,” said the Mets’ George Bamberger, who’d had heart surgery a few years earlier, “and I’ll need another bypass.”
Two months later, at least, the Mets would get something for their suffering: they dealt Ownbey and Allen to St. Louis for Keith Hernandez.
Matchup to Watch
St. Louis Cardinals at San Diego Padres (April 1-3)
The Padres host their former manager this weekend, with Bob Melvin in town to guide the Giants. Next comes another rematch as Melvin’s replacement, Mike Shildt, faces his former team. The Cardinals fired Shildt in October 2021, after his third playoff season in a row, citing “philosophical differences” with the front office and replacing him with Oli Marmol.
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The Cardinals are so aligned with Marmol that they gave him a two-year extension this month — but the team finished last in the NL Central in 2023. With new ace Sonny Gray on the injured list (hamstring), the Cardinals’ contact-heavy pitching staff gets an early test on the West Coast against two explosive lineups at Dodger Stadium and Petco Park.
Classic Clips
Hits and errors from far afield
Tom and Nancy Seaver, 1970
In honor of the new season, here’s a salute to the great Tom Seaver, who made a record 16 career opening-day starts for the Mets, Reds and White Sox.
Seaver won the first of his three Cy Young Awards in 1969, the year of the Miracle Mets’ championship. After the team slipped to third place the next year, Seaver and his wife, Nancy, decided to get away from it all. They loaded their poodle (“Slider”) and Irish setter (“Casey O’Stengel”) into a mobile home for a 29-day, 8,000-mile road trip, visiting Niagara Falls, the Baseball Hall of Fame, Lambeau Field, Mount Rushmore, Yellowstone National Park, Disneyland and more. The New York Times’ Joseph Durso recapped it here.
The Seavers surely needed a lot of fuel to cover all those miles — and wouldn’t you know it, they’d just made this commercial for Phillips 66 gasoline, looking every bit like the All-American couple. They were married for more than 54 years, until his death in 2020.
(Top photo of Brenton Doyle: Douglas P. DeFelice / Getty Images)
