Mike Moustakas and the meaninglessness of spring training - MLB

Every year lots of people act like spring training numbers mean something and every year they don’t. I guess there’s really no way of avoiding it, since everyone is so excited to have any kind of baseball to watch again after a long winter that they latch onto some random 20-game sample against varying degrees of competition.

Anyway, no one has exhibited the lack of spring training significance more than Royals third baseman Mike Moustakas.

He was on fire all spring, hitting .429 with four homers, seven doubles, more walks (11) than strikeouts (8), and a 1.290 OPS in 24 games. And now that the games actually count, Moustakas has hit .111 with zero line drives (yes, zero line drives) in 10 games.

And here’s the thing: It was the exact same story last season. Moustakas hit .444 with 11 total extra-base hits in 22 spring training games … and then hit .195 in April and .171 in May on the way to a horrible season.

I posted this mostly just to say “hey, let’s stop paying attention spring training numbers” rather than to specifically mock Moustakas, although at age 25 and with more than 1,500 very underwhelming plate appearances as a major leaguer the one-time top prospect could be running out of time in Kansas City.

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CINCINNATI — The Los Angeles Dodgers placed pitcher Noah Syndergaard on the 15-day injured list Thursday with a blister on the index finger of his right throwing hand.

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said the timetable for Syndergaard’s return is unknown despite the 15-day designation.

“The physical, the mental, the emotional part, as he’s talked about, has taken a toll on him,” Roberts said. “So, the ability to get him away from this. He left today to go back to Los Angeles to kind of get back to normalcy.”

Syndergaard allowed six runs and seven hits in three innings against the Cincinnati Reds on Tuesday night, raising his ERA to 7.16.

Syndergaard (1-4) has surrendered at least five runs in three straight starts.

Syndergaard has been trying to return to the player he was before Tommy John surgery sidelined him for the better part of the 2020 and 2021 seasons.

Roberts said Syndergaard will need at least “a few weeks” to both heal and get away from baseball and “reset.”

“I think searching and not being comfortable with where he was at in the moment is certainly evident in performance,” Roberts said. “So hopefully this time away will provide more clarity on who he is right now as a pitcher.

“Trying to perform when you’re searching at this level is extremely difficult. I applaud him from not running from it, but it’s still very difficult. Hopefully it can be a tale of two stories, two halves when he does come back.”