Holaday plans.
Stephen Strasburg gave up five home runs in his three seasons at San Diego State.
He’s allowed two homers this spring for the Nationals.
[Editor’s note: Please don’t assume you’ve subscribed to the wrong report. At least not yet.]
In 2009, Strasburg’s junior year at SDSU, he was taken deep four times in 109 dominant innings (195 strikeouts, 19 walks, 65 hits, 1.32 ERA) en route to one of the most unsurprising 1.1 selections in MLB Draft history.
One of those four times was on April 24 that spring, when, heading into the seventh inning, he’d blanked TCU at home on one hit (an infield single), punching out a dozen as his Aztec teammates had staked him to a seemingly insurmountable 4-0 lead.
Strasburg, as he’d done all season, was flat dealing.
Top of the seventh:
Single.
Single.
Failed sacrifice bunt attempt.
Three-run home run, junior catcher Bryan Holaday, cutting San Diego State’s lead to 4-3, a score that would hold up.
Fast-forward nearly seven years, to March 5, 2016, a few weeks ago.
Strasburg, in his first start of the spring, struck out the side in the first, setting Tigers hitters Jose Igelsias, Victor Martinez, and J.D. Martinez down swinging around a Mike Aviles single. He threw 10 pitches that inning — and you can figure out exactly how that went, from the previous sentence.
Dealing.
Top of the second inning:
Strasburg strikes Nick Castellanos out — again on three pitches.
Walks Tyler Collins.
Strikes out John Mayberry looking — on three pitches.
Two-run home run, Detroit catcher Bryan Holaday (who would add another two-run homer in his next at-bat, this time off of A.J. Cole).
Holaday and Strasburg have never faced each other in an official pro game. Not when they both played in the AA Eastern League in 2011 or the AAA International League in 2015, and not during the 2012 or 2013 or 2014 or 2015 big league seasons in which they both played. They won’t face off in 2016, either, assuming neither one changes teams, unless it’s in very late October, in which case a link to this report will be found in the most obnoxious ICYMI tweet I’ve ever tweeted.
In an interview he did after the April 2009 bomb off the man considered the greatest college pitcher in years, Holaday said: “Turns out I made 'Baseball Tonight’ with that one. Andrew Cashner called and said I made ‘Baseball Tonight,’ so that was pretty fun.”
Cashner was a first-round pick out of TCU (1.19) in 2008, the year before Strasburg went first overall (1.1), which was a year before Holaday went on Day Two to Detroit (6.193), days before he would tie an all-time College World Series record by homering four times in Omaha (matching, among others, J.D. Drew, former Rangers farmhand Tommy Mendonca, and former unsigned Rangers draftee Brad Ticehurst) — in what was TCU’s first-ever CWS appearance — and also received the 2010 Johnny Bench Award as the top Division I catcher in the nation.
I did some reading up on Holaday last night, and saw that Rangers pre/postgame host Jared Sandler heard from three Tigers pitchers who said they loved throwing to the 28-year-old and that, despite being a bench player, he was a “great clubhouse guy and a great leader.”
A player who suited up with Holiday at TCU told Sandler that he was “the best teammate I’ve ever had.”
I have no idea whether Cashner was the former Horned Frog that Sandler talked to, but given what appears a fairly consistent book on Holaday’s makeup let’s assume Cashner would embrace the same opinion of Holaday as a teammate.
Cashner is a free agent in seven months.
Now, you should attach no more present implications to the fact that Cashner picked up a phone from Daytona, Florida, calling his old college catcher about an ESPN highlight two days before making his own season debut against the High Class A Lakeland Tigers (which would ironically be Holaday’s first pro team a little more than a year later), than you would to the widely known story that Astros executive advisor Nolan Ryan was Cashner’s idol growing up in Conroe and that Ryan was a big fan of Cashner going into the 2008 draft in which Texas instead took Justin Smoak, the eventual piece that carried the Cliff Lee deal, and the fact that Astros president Reid Ryan pitched at TCU a decade and a half before Cashner doesn’t change the reality that, for baseball’s top free agents annually, business is business.
You should put no more stock in Cashner and Holaday’s background together than in Ken Rosenthal’s predictions today that Texas will return to the World Series this year (losing to the Cubs), led by American League MVP Rougned Odor, or in MLB Network Radio hosts Casey Stern and Steve Phillips making the Rangers the AL pennant winners as well, with Stern (whose extraordinary three-part “Deep in the Heart of Texas” series on the Rangers concluded today) elaborating to suggest Texas will down the Giants (it’s an even-numbered year, after all) to win the whole thing, or in the Rangers completing a five-game Cactus League sweep of the World Champion Royals with today’s 5-1 victory.
But it’s fun to think about, and Holaday being here, one would think, certainly can’t hurt.
Now, it’s possible that Holaday (who hit .438/.455/.969 in 32 Tiger spring training at-bats, fanning just twice, and cutting down three of five would-be basestealers) isn’t even here when the Rangers season ends (though he’s going to be here when it begins, as Chris Gimenez is evidently headed to the disabled list). It’s perhaps probable that San Diego moves Cashner by July, maybe even to his hometown Astros for Francis Martes, Michael Feliz, and Colin Moran, and that Houston locks the righthander up long-term before he ever hits the market. It’s conceivable the Rangers have no interest in Cashner in the first place.
And, again, this sort of conjecture doesn’t even rise to the level of spitballing. It’s nothing more than a groovy little tie-in (well, you can be the judge of that) which springboards a far-too-long essay from a hobbled lawyer who would very much like for baseball games that count to go ahead and get here.
It’s kind of cool to imagine the conversation Holaday and Cashner might have had last night, seven years after they talked on the phone about “Baseball Tonight,” a discussion between a one-year Horned Frog whose catcher was also in his first year at TCU (after playing for North Central Texas College as a freshman), a 2008 season after which the closer was drafted for the fourth time, this time in the first round, and the sophomore catcher was named First-Team All-Conference at the position.
Wonder if they talked about this coming winter.
When Stephen Strasburg is also on track to be a free agent and may want to sign wherever Bryan Holaday is playing.
Because, you know.