Frank Schwindel has been a surprise. I was as supportive of the three pronged-plan with Schwindel as most: claim him, retain him, play him in Chicago. I’m as surprised as anyone that he has done this well. I’m not assuming even for a fragment of a second that this success will necessarily continue into 2022 and beyond. Nor am I predicting an imminent collapse. Schwindel is laying waste to two of my favorite assumptions about baseball, and they tend to take equal swings at “old baseball” and “new baseball.”
Yes, there are two baseballs, in my worldview. One baseball is the older-school one that relies heavily on familiarity.