D2 EZ M2 THE WASHINGTON POST.TUESDAY, OCTOBER 26 , 2021
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TENNIS
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MEN’S COLLEGE SOCCER
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COLLEGE GOLF
3 p.m. East Lake Cup, match play semifinals » Golf ChannelCOLLEGES
Timme, Cockburn lead
preseason all-America
Drew Timme could have left
for the NBA after leading
Gonzaga into last season’s
national title game. He probably
would have been drafted and
gone on to have a solid career.
But Timme wanted more: a
chance to finish off a
championship run and o ne more
season with Coach Mark Few.
There was an added benefit,
too: Timme was the lone
unanimous selection by a 63-
person media panel on the
Associated Press preseason all-
American team. He was joined by
Illinois big man Kofi Cockburn,
UCLA guard Johnny Juzang,
Villanova point guard Collin
Gillespie and Indiana forward
Trayce Jackson-Davis.
Cockburn faced a similar
decision before opting to return
to the Illini after weighing the
NBA for a second straight year.
The 7-foot center averaged 17.7
points and 9.5 rebounds as a
sophomore last season to earn a
second-team spot on the AP all-
American team.
He was projected to be taken
in the late first round or early
second round of the NBA draft
but came back to cement his
legacy at Illinois....
Baylor freshman guard
Langston Love tore his ACL in a
preseason scrimmage and will
miss the entire season for the
No. 8 Bears, who are the
defending national champions.
The school said the 6-foot-5,
210-pound Love will have surgery
to repair the injury and redshirt
this season. He is expected to
make a full recovery and make
his Bears debut next year....
Auburn football coach Bryan
Harsin declined to address his
vaccination status days after the
university imposed a mandate
requiring all employees to be
fully vaccinated against the
coronavirus.
The university mandate,
which went into effect Friday,
imposes a Dec. 8 deadline for
employees to be vaccinated or
face possible termination.
Harsin has declined to say
whether he’s vaccinated sincereporters first asked at SEC
media days in July....
Texas Tech fired football coach
Matt Wells two days after the
Red Raiders couldn’t hold a two-
touchdown halftime lead in a
home loss to Kansas State.
Wells had a shot at his first
winning record in his third
season with the Red Raiders, but
an inability to win Big 12 games
plagued him. Texas Tech didn’t
win consecutive conference
games with him as coach....
South Carolina’s graduate
assistant coach-turned-
quarterback Zeb Noland will
have surgery to repair a torn
meniscus in his right knee.
The team said in a statement
that Noland would have the
procedure Tuesday and be
available for the Gamecocks’
next contest against Florida on
Nov. 6....
A former Georgetown
University tennis coach is
expected to plead guilty in
Boston federal court in the
college admissions bribery case.
Gordon Ernst was accused of
accepting more than $2 million
to help the children of wealthyparents get into the school in
Washington....
A federal judge dismissed
more of the unsettled lawsuits
filed by men who say Ohio State
University failed to stop sexual
abuse decades ago by now-
deceased team doctor Richard
Strauss.TENNIS
Andy Murray earned his first
win against a top-10 opponent in
14 months by defeating Hubert
Hurkacz, 6-4, 6-7 (8 -6), 6-3, in
the opening round of the Erste
Bank Open in Vienna.
Third-seeded Matt eo
Berrettini advanced with a 7-6
(7-2), 6-3 win over Australian
qualifier Alexei Popyrin....
American Sebastian Korda
advanced to the second round of
the St. Petersburg Open with a 7-
6 (7 -2), 7-5 win over Nino
Serdarusi.
Also, Germany’s Jan-Lennard
Struff defeated James
Duckworth of Australia, 7-6 (7-
3), 6-3, to advance....
Anastasia Gasanova of Russia
saved two match points before
outlasting fourth-seeded JilTeichmann, 4-5, 6-0, 7-5, in the
first round of the Transylvania
Open in Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
No. 5 Ajla Tomljanovic also
came from 5-3 down in the final
set to win her match against
Anastasia Potapova of Russia, 6-
2, 5-7, 7-5....
Top-ranked Novak Djokovic
and U.S. Open champion Daniil
Medvedev headline the rostersannounced for the Davis Cup
Finals that begin next month.
Eighteen countries will
participate in group-stage
matches starting Nov. 25 on
indoor hard courts in Madrid;
Innsbruck, Austria; and Turin,
Italy. After quarterfinals in those
cities, the semifinals and final
will be held in Madrid.
— From news servicesDIGESTFROM NEWS SERVICES
AND STAFF REPORTSThe St. Louis Cardinals intro-
duced Oliver Marmol, 35, as their
new manager Monday, making
him the youngest in Major League
Baseball. Marmol, who had served
as the Cardinals’ bench coach
since 2019 and has been in the
organization for his entire profes-
sional career, replaces Mike
Shildt, whom the Cardinals sur-
prisingly parted ways with follow-
ing a loss in the National League
wild-card game.
Marmol is younger than two of
the Cardinals’ franchise corner-
stones, catcher Yadier Molina, 39,
and pitcher Adam Wainwright,
40, as well as St. Louis pitchers J.A.
Happ, 39, and Andrew Miller, 36.
But he said during his introducto-
ry virtual news conference Mon-
day that he doesn’t believe his age
will play a role in his impact on the
team.
For him, earning respect in the
clubhouse will come down to
building relationships and being
intentional with his players, he
said. If he can show that he cares
and wants to make players better,
he said, he believes they will listen
to him.
“Age isn’t an impediment; it’s
just a matter of preparation, or-
ganiz ation and making sure that
you’re intentional,” Marmol said,
“that, every time you have a con-
versation with one of them, that
you know exactly how you want
them to experience a conversation
and walk out of the room know-
ing.”
Marmol was drafted by the Car-
dinals in 2007 and played in their
minor league system until 2010,
when he transitioned into being a
coach. He joked Monday that he
knew he wanted to be a manager
after hitting about .190 for multi-
ple minor league seasons.
He started as a hitting coach for
the Gulf Coast League Cardinals in
2011 and managed two Cardinals
minor league teams from 2012 to
2017 before he was promoted to
the major league team as its first
base coach in 2017 and then shift-
ed to become Shildt’s bench coach.
The move comes after the team
parted ways with Shildt, with
team president of baseball opera-
tions John Mozeliak citing inter-
nal issues that th e team felt it
could not resolve.
— A ndrew Golden
l ASTROS: Lance McCullers Jr.
knew there was a “less than 1 per-
cent” chance that he would be able
to pitch in the World Series for
Houston because of a forearm
strain. The right-hander waited as
long as possible and didn’t beat
those odds.
“We remained hopeful,” Mc-
Cullers said Monday, when an-
nouncing the day before Game 1
against the Atlanta Braves th at he
wouldn’t be on the roster.
After a career-high 13 wins dur-
ing the regular season, when he
also had a 3 .16 ERA and 185 strike-
outs, McCullers got hurt in the
American League Division Series.
l MARINERS: Hall of Famer
Ken Griffey Jr. became the first
former Seattle pl ayer to purchase
a stake in the ballclub. Team chair-
man John Stanton said Griffey
purchased shares from another
minority owner who still retains a
stake in the club.
— Associated P ress
MLB NOTES
Cardinals
introduce
Marmol
as skipper
still believe Altuve was wearing a
buzzer under his jersey through
which he was alerted to the
incoming slider from Yankees
closer Aroldis Chapman.
Think about it: They cheated
and won in 2017. They then
stopped — v oluntarily — two
years later?
“Most people believe they
never found out everything,” one
of the executives said.
So it hangs over these players,
and it hangs over this series.
Maybe some people can root for
Baker, who has now managed for
five franchises and appeared in
the postseason for all five. Maybe
some people will root against the
Braves because their nickname
and logo are anachronistic and
their fans still insist on an
offensive “chop” chant.
The fallout from the steroid era
is that Barry Bonds and Mark
McGwire, et al., haven’t been
voted into the Hall of Fame.
Down the road, maybe the Astros’
sign-stealing trickery will prevent
Correa or Altuve from getting
into Cooperstown.
That’s for years from now. This
week, it’s the 2021 World Series —
a series that, even before it starts,
is haunted by the team that won
it four years ago and returns now,
its reputation preceding it.
Deservedly so.
[email protected]For mo re by Barry Svrluga, visit
washingtonpost.com/svrluga.free agent by current GM James
Click — but only after he was
signed as a free agent by Luhnow.
So in roster construction
alone, there is a tie to the stench
of the scandal. Luhnow’s
organization was the
organization that cheated and got
caught, so he’s out. But his players
remain employed — and thrive.
“I can’t forgive them,” one of
the team officials said. An
example: “I love the player
Correa. I can’t stand the person
Correa.”
It sticks, and not because the
players didn’t deserve second
chances but because there’s a
sense they got off free from their
first.
Even Baker, who has an almost
flawless touch with people, can
only spray so much deodorant on
the situation. When Altuve comes
to the plate Tuesday night,
leading off in the bottom of the
first, it ’ll be hard to separate the
moment from the past. MLB
concluded that the Astros had
stopped the trash-can-banging
scam by the time they reached
the 2019 World Series. Most
people in the game think that’s,
um, garbage.
The walk-off home run Altuve
hit to beat the New York Yankees
and clinch that pennant should
be the defining moment in the
career of the seven-time all-star
and 2017 MVP. Instead, it falls
somewhere between a curiosity
and conspiracy, because peoplesince hired and dismissed as the
New York Mets’ manager because
of his Houston transgressions —
will get another job in the game,
and soon. There is, at least in
some corners, forgiveness in
baseball.
Luhnow, though, probably will
never work in the sport again. He
set the tone for an organization
that had an outsize arrogance. He
was something between tolerated
and loathed by almost all of his
colleagues with other clubs. His
lack of institutional control cost
him his job. His reputation will
almost certainly prevent him
from getting another.
But Luhnow’s fingerprints are
all over this Houston roster.
Framber Valdez is the Game 1
starting pitcher. Luis Garcia is
likely to start Game 2. José
Urquidy is probable for Game 3.
That’s three-fifths of a rotation
signed as international free
agents by Luhnow’s scouting
department and brought to the
majors by Luhnow’s player
development operation.
Right fielder Kyle Tucker?
Drafted and developed under
Luhnow. Center fielders Jake
Meyers, who’s injured, and Chas
McCormick? Drafted and
developed under Luhnow.
Former ace Zack Greinke? Traded
for by Luhnow. Closer Ryan
Pressly? Traded for — and signed
to a contract extension — by
Luhnow. Officially, left fielder
Michael Brantley was signed as amade him an Astro for life.
Correa will be one of the sport’s
most coveted free agents this
offseason, nearly certain to
receive a nine-figure contract.
Their penance is — they’re
booed on the road? That’s it?
Looking back, it seems that’s
how MLB wanted it. In exchange
for information, it granted 23
Astros players immunity. It’s the
easiest way to figure out the
crime. It’s a l ousy way to levy the
punishment.
As the World Series plays out,
there will be a let’s-just-forget-
this crowd, and that crowd will
point to the fact that the beloved
Baker is now the manager and
the roster has turned over quite a
bit since 2017, the season MLB’s
investigation identified as the
height of the scam — when the
Astros happened to win the
World Series. But that crowd
can’t deny the importance of
those four starting infielders to
this team — not to mention
Luhnow’s imprint on this roster.
“It’s like Luhnow’s letter from
the grave,” one of the executives
said.
Hinch sat out for a year and
was then hired by the Detroit
Tigers. Alex Cora, Hinch’s bench
coach in Houston, was fired as
Boston’s manager following the
scandal, then returned to that
same perch a year later. And it
says here that Carlos Beltrán —
one of the masterminds behind
the plan when he was a player,This World Series isn’t tainted,
because it stretches credulity to
believe the Astros are still using
video to decipher the signs
between an opponent’s catcher
and pitcher, all so these very
talented hitters could have the
distinct advantage of knowing
what was coming. New protocols
were established. Jeff Luhnow
and AJ Hinch were suspended by
Major League Baseball as general
manager and manager,
respectively, then fired by the
Astros. The sport tried to move
on.
It can’t, though. It’s not yet two
years since those penalties were
announced, and it remains hard
to shake the stories of the lengths
those players went to and wonder
how it benefited them. The
phrase that nags at the brain
from MLB’s investigation,
sprinkled throughout the report:
“player-driven.”
That’s still relevant. Bregman
is playing on a five-year,
$100 million contract he agreed
to in the spring of 2019 — a
season that ended with the Astros
(mercifully, from MLB’s
perspective) losing to
Washington in the World Series
— and t hat kicked in to start
2020, by which point the Astros’
scheme had been uncovered.
Altuve just completed the fourth
season of a seven-year,
$163.5 million deal that all butSVRLUGA FROM D1BARRY SVRLUGAAstros are back in World Series, but the buzz is still about their past
ing to a hack Freeman took
against the Los Angeles Dodgers
in the NL Championship Series
that looked late but ended with a
ball pulled down into the corner.
“Takes away my ability to make
adjustments between pitches,” he
wrote. “Unorthodox.”
Seitzer called Freeman the best
hitter he has ever coached be-
cause he ca n hit almost anything.
In 2021, Freeman hit .339 against
four-seam fastballs, .319 against
sliders, .273 against curveballs
and .323 against change-ups. He
hit .306 against pitches on the
inner third, .319 against pitches in
the middle third and .270 against
pitches on the outer third.
“Doesn’t ma tter what pitch you
throw — i f you overexpose any one
of your pitches, he can hit it out of
the ballpark at will,” Scherzer said
during the NLCS. “Even if you
throw a p retty good location, you
locate it pretty good, that doesn’t
matter against him. He can still
hit it out of the ballpark.”
Since Freeman became an ev-
eryday player in 2011, just three
first basemen have a higher on-
base-plus-slugging percentage:
Joey Votto, Paul Goldschmidt and
Miguel Cabrera. Only Votto and
Goldschmidt have more Wins
Above Replacement, according to
FanGraphs.
Since the first of the Braves’
four consecutive division titles in
2018, as Freeman has watched a
fresh core of stars emerge around
him, no first baseman has been
better in either category. And
since June 5, no one in baseball hit
better than Freeman, who batted
.337 from that day until the end of
the season — and watched his
team rise with him.
“I knew it was just a matter of
time,” Seitzer said. “And once the
hits started coming, the confi-
dence got back to where it normal-
ly is. Then it was on.”
[email protected]“He gets concerned when
things aren’t going well,” Weiss
said. “You start to wonder what’s
wrong. And I think he went there
a little bit.”
Hitting coach Kevin Seitzer
said he told Freeman what every-
one else was telling him. He
looked at his ba tting average on
balls in play (.222 as of June 4),
saw his strikeouts weren’t climb-
ing, noticed the walk numbers
were right where they would nor-
mally be.
“He knows when he’s right, and
he knows when he’s off. And when
he’s off, well, he’s not normal —
put it that way,” Seitzer said. “But I
just told him to stay right where
he was at.”
Seitzer and Freeman have
worked together since the 2015
season, so Seitzer knows exactly
what drills to add to Freeman’s
dogged routine when issues
emerge. But Seitzer said that even
during his early-season slump,
they only turned to those drills —
such as the one they always do
when Freeman’s swing gets a little
too long — two or three times.
There was nothing to fix. Freeman
just had to wait for the game to
reward his talent, as it had for a
decade.
That talent, which will be on
display on the game’s biggest
stage for the first time, is almost
universally regarded as some of
the best baseball has to offer. Max
Scherzer called Freeman “the best
hitter I’ve had to face” and once
said there were times during his
Washington Nationals tenure
when he would tell his manager
before the seventh or eighth in-
ning that he had enough left for a
batter or two — but probably not
enough to get Freeman a fourth
time.
Former New York Mets le ft-
hander Jerry Blevins tweeted that
Freeman was hard to face because
“his swing is unreadable,” point-added. “We were just bad. He
wasn’t great, either, and it wears
on you. And it wore on him.”
Bench coach Walt Weiss tried to
keep the reigning MVP upbeat,
tried not to add any negativity to
whatever was spinning through
Freeman’s head.
“Jeez, Frederick, you should be
hitting .330,” Weiss would say
when the 32-year-old returned to
the dugout, trying to remind Free-
man that he was too good to be
that bad.failure influence it. But in that
early June stretch when nothing
was working, even Freeman
couldn’t hide his frustration.
“What did everyone else say?”
shortstop Dansby Swanson re-
plied when asked what he saw
from Freeman during those frus-
trating weeks, as if gauging how
honest he should be.
“He was miserable,” Swanson
offered.
“It wasn’t like a week. It wasn’t
like a ‘that’s baseball’ thing,” hefathe r, who recited numbers such
as exit velocity and expected bat-
ting average to try to convince his
son that the skid couldn’t last
forever.
“He was trying to give me all the
numbers to make me feel better,
being a d ad,” Freeman said then.
“I’m just staring at him on the
FaceTime, fuming through the
phone because I d on’t want to
hear that.”
What he wanted was to see a
three at the front of his batting
average. But day by da y, .300
seemed further and further from
the realm of possibility. At times,
even .250 seemed out of reach.
His Br aves were watching their
chances slip, too. Ace Mike Soroka
had yet to pitch and ended up
being out for the year. Catcher
Travis d’Arnaud was in a multi-
month injury absence. Ronald
Acu ña Jr. w as having an MVP
season that would soon end with a
heartbreaking torn ACL. That this
would be the year the Braves
would break through... well, un-
likely was an understatement.
By the last day of the regular
season, Freeman was hitting .300
on the dot, and his Braves were
National League East champions.
“Every single year, you come
into spring training expecting to
get to the World Series. That’s
been my goal every single year,”
Freeman said. “You never self-
doubt. You just see what this team
has done the last four years, and
you could see what was coming
through those rebuild years, too,
and you just get excited.”
Maybe Freeman always be-
lieved, but he certainly wasn’t
happy during his skid. Teammates
and coaches praise him as much
for his talent as for his demeanor.
They say he is as consistent as they
come, as unwilling to let success
change his approach as he is to letFREEMAN FROM D1Steady Freddie: Freeman chases his first crown
ASHLEY LANDIS/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Freddie Freeman’s Braves survived an injury-riddled season to stun
the defending champion Dodgers in the NL Championship Series.