THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 11 , 2021. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ SU D3
Beach, and his next innings felt
far away. He woke up at 6:30 a.m.
every day, was at the facility by 8
and later watched games he
couldn’t pitch in.
The sun felt a little hotter. The
days felt very long.
“I was basically trapped in
Florida, wondering if I’d ever
leave,” Henry said with a laugh. “I
never want that to happen again.
Not playing was the hardest part.
The whole thing was a total
grind.”
It took close to three months
for him to rejoin Wilmington. But
when he did, Henry was sharp
until the season ended in mid-
September: four scoreless in-
nings, back-to-back starts of five
scoreless frames and a five-inning
start in which he allowed a run
and struck out nine.
The Nationals started Henry,
Cavalli and Rutledge with Wilm-
ington before they sprayed in dif-
ferent directions. Rutledge made
13 starts among Wilmington, low
Class A Fredericksburg and the
Nationals’ complex league team.
Cavalli dominated in Wilming-
ton, dominated with Class AA
Harrisburg, then met his match
in a late-season stint with Class
AAA Rochester, showing room to
grow. Henry logged strong num-
bers with Wilmington and ap-
peared in two rehab games in
West Palm Beach.
This was the first professional
season for Henry and Cavalli. Rut-
ledge, similarly, has just 73^2 / 3 in-
nings to his name. The Nationals
are hoping each of them blooms
into a major league starter, fuel-
ing their next title chase. Henry’s
charge, in the interim, is to take
care of his arm, striking the right
balance of offseason training and
between-starts work next year.
He’s still figuring that out, too.
[email protected]BY JESSE DOUGHERTYglendale, ariz. — Cole Henry
has massive hands. It seemed
reasonable, then, to ask whether
that has helped him throw base-
ball after baseball past some of
the game’s top prospects.
“Maybe?” Henry said last week,
smiling. “I’m still figuring that
out.”
With that, he jogged to the left
field corner, toed the foul line and
ran a go route before a teammate
lobbed a football his way. P itchers
like to check their pregame condi-
tioning box by pretending to be
wide receivers. At the Arizona Fall
League, where Henry is pitching
for the Surprise Saguaros — a
team made up of minor leaguers
from the Washington Nationals,
New York Yankees, Cincinnati
Reds, Texas Rangers and Kansas
City Royals — this is a daily rou-
tine. Once caught, the football
looked normal on Henry’s finger-
tips. A baseball, on the other
hand, can appear more like an
oversize egg.
Whatever the case, the 22 -year-
old has thrived for Surprise, lead-
ing the league with 30 strikeouts
in 19 innings through Tuesday.
Elbow soreness limited the Na-
tionals prospect to 43 innings
with high Class A Wilmington in
- In t hem, though, he posted a
1.88 ERA, struck out 63 batters
and walked 11. The Nationals sent
Henry to the Fall League because
they wanted to see him pitch
more, plain and simple. And all he
has done is improve his spot in
the organization’s plans, even
landing a spot in the league’s Fall
Stars Game.
“The hitters here, man, these
are really good lineups,” Henry
said. “There are no easy outs,
really. But what’s working for me
is just both fastballs, four-seam
and two-seam, two-seams in and
four-seams up or away. Beyond
that, mixing in my c hange-up and
curveball. Just keeping it simple
and throwing strikes.”
Baseball America recently
ranked Henry, a second-round
pick in 2020, as the Nationals’
sixth-best prospect. Other arms
in the mix are Cade Cavalli
(ranked second), Andry Lara
(fifth), Joan Adon (seventh), Ge-
rardo Carrillo (eighth) and Jack-
son Rutledge (ninth). Then
there’s Josiah Gray, 23, who ar-
rived in the Max Scherzer-Tr ea
Turner trade and pitched for
Washington in August and Sep-
tember.
Two National League scouts at
the Fall League said Henry is
behind only Cavalli in “pure stuff”
among the Nationals’ young
pitchers. (The scouts spoke on the
condition of anonymity because
their employers do not allow
them to speak publicly about oth-
er teams’ players.) Rutledge, who
also is on Surprise’s s taff, i s in that
discussion, too, but he’s comingAt Arizona Fall League,
Henry’s stock is rising
Elbow soreness slowed the Nationals prospect
in his first pro season, but he’s in fine form nowASSOCIATED PRESSHouston Astros center fielder
Jake Meyers had surgery Wednes-
day to repair a torn labrum in his
left shoulder, an injury that could
delay h is 2 022 season.
The 25-year-old w as hurt O ct. 12
in Game 4 o f the A merican League
Division Series at the Chicago
White Sox when he tried to make a
leaping catch at the wall on Gavin
Sheets’s second-inning home r un.
Meyers had hoped to return
later i n the postseason but d id not
play again. He w as 3 for 8 with two
RBI against the White Sox.
Houston said Meyers is not ex-
pected to be ready for game com-
petition before O pening Day.
Meyers started the season at
Class AAA Sugar Land, made his
big league debut Aug. 1 and hit
.260 in 49 games with six homers
and 2 8 RBI.
l DODGERS: Free agent left-
hander Andrew Heaney and Los
Angeles finalized their one-year,
$8.5 million contract, filling a hole
in the t eam’s p itching staff.
The 30-year-old split 202 1 be-
tween the Los Angeles Angels and
New York Yankees, going 8-9 with
a 5.83 ERA. T he Angels traded him
to New York on July 30 for two
minor leaguers, and he was 2-2
with a 7. 32 ERA in 12 games, in-
cluding five s tarts, after the swap.
l YANKEES: Left-hander Joely
Rodríguez agreed to a one-year
contract, three days after New
York declined a $3 million option
in favor o f a $500, 000 buyout.
The 29-year-old Rodríguez was
acquired from Texas on July 29
with outfielder Joey Gallo for mi-
nor league right-hander Glenn
Otto and infielders Ezequiel Du-
ran, Tr evor Hauver and Josh
Smith. Frequently lined up
against o pponents’ best left-hand-
ed hitters, Rodríguez was 1-0 with
a 2.84 ERA in 21 games with the
Yankees.
l RANGERS: Texas named
Tim Hyers hitting coach after he
spent the past four seasons in the
same role for the B oston Red Sox.
Hyers and Rangers Manager
Chris Woodward worked t ogether
as assistants on Manager Dave
Roberts’s staff with the D odgers i n
20 16 a nd 20 17.
The Dodgers were National
League champions in 20 17 and
again in 2018, when Hyers was in
his first season with the Red Sox
when they beat Los Angeles for
their World Series title.
The Rangers are coming off a
102 -loss season and ranked 29th
in the majors with a .23 2 team
batting average. They were last
with a .670 on-base-plus-slugging
percentage and scored an AL-low
625 runs.
l MISC.: Liam Hendriks of the
White Sox earned his second
straight Mariano Rivera Award as
the AL reliever of the year, and
Milwaukee’s Josh Hader won his
third Tr evor Hoffman Award as
the N L reliever o f the y ear.
Hendriks had a n 8-3 record a nd
38 saves in 44 chances with a
2.5 4 ERA and 113 strikeouts in
71 innings during his first season
with the White Sox.
Hader was 4 -2 with a career-
best 1.2 3 ERA and 34 saves in
35 chances. He also won in 20 18
and 20 19.NOTESSurgery
to sideline
Houston’s
Meyers
BY SCOTT ALLENA game-used baseball from the
1924 World Series autographed
by Washington Senators legend
and Hall of Fame pitcher Walter
Johnson is available at auction
this month. How much the me-
mento sells for could depend in
part on what potential bidders
make of a black “X” inscribed on
the ball, w hich may o r may not be
the one Senators center fielder
Earl McNeely hit to deliver D.C.
its first World Series title.
The red- and black-stitched
Spalding baseball is one of three
balls Johnson kept from his re-
markable 21-year career that
spanned from 1907 to 192 7, ac-
cording to his grandson, Henry
Thomas, who originally sold the
keepsake at auction in 2007. It
features Johnson’s signature on
the sweet spot and “Worlds Se-
ries 192 4” in his cursive, along
with the distinctive “X,” a mark
perhaps made to indicate the
ball’s significance. Authenticator
Jimmy Spence once told Thomas
he had never seen a more gor-
geous autograph by “The Big
Tr ain.”
Thomas, a collector himself,
has always believed the ball is t he
one McNeely bounced over the
head of New York Giants third
baseman Freddie Lindstrom to
score Muddy Ruel from second
base in the 12th inning of Game 7
in 192 4, ending one of the great-
est games in World Series history
and touching off a raucous cel-
ebration at D.C.’s Griffith Sta-
dium. He wrote as much in a
letter of provenance, even if he
doesn’t know for sure, when he
and his late mother, Carolyn
Johnson Thomas, originally put
the ball up for auction 14 years
ago. It was sold to an anonymous
buyer for $90,000.
“I’ll be fascinated to see what
it does in this auction because
2007 was a lifetime ago in the
hobby,” Thomas said in a tele-
phone interview. “Everything’s
just exploded since then, so it
wouldn’t surprise me at all if it
went for two or three times as
much.”
As of Wednesday morning,
with nine days remaining in the
auction, the high bid was
$33,000.
Thomas has a few reasons to
believe the baseball is from Mc-
Neely’s walk-off hit, which would
make it more valuable than a
generic game-used ball, includ-
ing the fact that the only other
two balls Johnson kept werefrom his 100 th shutout (in 1923)
and his only no-hitter (in 1920).
Johnson started Games 1 a nd 5 of
the 1924 World Series and took
the loss in both contests, though
the Senators probably would
have won Game 1 if not for the
two solo home runs the Giants
hit into the temporary bleachers
installed in left field to accom-
modate more fans.
“He certainly wouldn’t be
keeping balls from those games,”
said Thomas, who published a
biography of his grandfather in
199 8. “He also wrote ‘192 4
Worlds Series’ on this ball, and if
it were a more ordinary ball, I
don’t know that he would’ve
gone to the trouble to do that. He
didn’t sign the other two balls he
kept.”
Johnson would have good rea-
son to keep a ball from the
title-clinching Game 7, especially
given that he earned the win by
pitching four scoreless innings ofrelief.
Since 200 1, Major League
Baseball has used an elaborate
authentication program to mark
and track game-used memorabil-
ia. The baseball that Nationals
catcher Yan Gomes caught for
the final out of the 2019 World
Series, for instance, was authen-
ticated after Game 7 and re-
turned to Gomes. Ken Goldin,
the founder of Goldin Auctions,
estimated its value at $500,000.
There’s no hologram sticker
with a unique alphanumeric
code affixed to the Johnson-
signed baseball in question, and
there’s no one who c an d efinitive-
ly say what happened to the ball
McNeely hit after Giants left
fielder Irish Meusel picked it up
as fans swarmed the field
97 years ago.
“Irish Meusel could’ve easily
been one of the players who went
into the Washington clubhouse
to congratulate Walter and said,
‘Oh, by the way, Walter, here’s the
ball that won the game,’ ” Thom-
as said. “And then maybe he
asked Freddy Baxter, the equip-
ment guy, to put that ‘X’ on there
so when he got home, he’d be
reminded. But it’s j ust as strong a
possibility that when the players
came in to get their World Series
checks, [Senators owner] Clark
Griffith had a bucket of balls
there and he said: ‘These are all
from the Series. Go ahead and
take one as a souvenir.’ Who
knows?”
“Everything lines up that this
is what it’s purported to be, but it
does require a leap of faith, alittle bit, from the ultimate win-
ning bidder,” said Chris Ivy of
Heritage Auctions, which is fea-
turing the baseball in its Fall
Sports Collectibles Catalog Auc-
tion. “Unless you were there, it’s
impossible to really know, but it
has everything you could want as
a collector. It’s an interesting
piece.”
Thomas, 75, worked with Heri-
tage in 20 13 t o auction off several
other items that were spread
among Johnson’s five adult chil-
dren after he died in 1946, in-
cluding his retirement paper-
work and his personal Hall of
Fame plaque from 1939. Thomas
has a modest personal collection
of Senators and Johnson memo-
rabilia on display in the office of
his Winchester, Va., home. Two of
his favorite items are a silk
pillowcase featuring his grandfa-
ther and a panoramic photo
taken at Griffith Stadium before
Game 7 of the 192 4 World Series,
with the Senators and Giants
flanking Calvin and Grace
Coolidge in the presidential box.
As for the baseball, Thomas
said he has no regrets about
auctioning it off in 2007 , and the
next owner should be thrilled.
“It’s a wonderful artifact in
and of its own,” Thomas said.
“You’re never going to find a
nicer autographed Walter John-
son baseball if you’re a rich guy
and that’s what you’re looking
for. With the strong possibility
that it’s the ball that won the
Series, you start multiplying, so
we’ll see what it’s worth.”
[email protected]Collectors hope ‘X’ marks spot of this treasure
Mystery surrounds a 1924 World Series ball signed by S enators’ J ohnson, making its value at auction this month hard to gauge
H ERITAGE AUCTIONS
Bidders will have to decide whether the “ X” m arks t his autographed
baseball as the one used on the final play of the 1924 World Series.off an injury-filled year. Henry’s
stock is rising fastest.
His four-seam fastball typically
sits in the mid- 90 s. Mark
S cialabba, the Nationals’ assis-
tant general manager in charge of
player development, called Hen-
ry’s change-up his “most consis-
tent off-speed pitch.” Scialabba
predicted Henry’s change-up
could be a swing-and-miss weap-
on against righties and lefties
down the line. Drew Millas, a
minor league catcher for the Na-
tionals, also has been impressed.
“Cole’s fastball command is al-
ways going to be there, and that’shuge,” Millas said. “That may fluc-
tuate with the two-seamer at
times just because it has so much
run to it. But he’s a r eally dynamic
pitcher.”
“With two fastballs, he can con-
sistently change eye levels,”
S cialabba said. “He controls both
pitches and can mirror well with
his change-up, keeping hitters
guessing. It allows him to throw
to all quadrants of the zone.”
In J une, Henry didn’t t hink any
of this was possible. Okay, maybe
that’s a bit of a stretch — but he
was rehabbing in Florida, at the
Nationals’ complex in West PalmJILL WEISLEDER/MLB PHOTOS/GETTY IMAGES
Pitching for the Surprise Saguaros, Cole Henry led the Arizona Fall
League with 30 strikeouts in 19 innings through Tuesday’s games.baseball
BY CHELSEA JANEScarlsbad, calif. — Scott Boras
began his annual November ad-
dress by placing blame.
With MLB and its players’ union
locked in negotiations about how
to rewrite the rules of the sport to
better position it for a healthy fu-
ture, Boras traced the ailments he
sees to the kind of rules that could
be altered in a new agreement. And
he argued that they must be.
He said he doesn’t blame the
Atlanta Braves for winning the
World Series with a roster that was
almost entirely remodeled with
losing teams’ midseason castoffs,
something he believes undermines
the sport’s integrity by shortening
the part of the season that matters.
He said he doesn’t blame losing
teams for selling off players in “a
race to the bottom,” deciding that
trading away top players and the
wins they yield is worth a few
dismal months because of the draft
picks awarded to MLB’s worst
teams.
No, Boras said he blames the
rules for creating a version of the
sport in which teams on the brink
have as much incentive to fold as
they do to raise their bets. More
specifically, the longtime agent
pointed to a 20 12 rule change that
instituted a cap on how much
teams could spend on bonuses for
draft picks. The 2011 Washington
Nationals, for example, spent
$16.5 million on their first five
picks.
A cap on spending, he argued
then and now, limits a team’s a bili-
ty to entice top-tier talent away
from college commitments, mak-
ing draft position more crucial.
Since draft order is determined by
record, with the worst record re-
ceiving the top pick, the incentive
to tank enters the equation.
Some of those teams, Boras ar-
gued, included the 2021 Kansas
City Royals, who offloaded eventu-
al World Series MVP Jorge Soler to
the Braves for very little. They in-
cluded the 2021 Cleveland soon-to-
be-Guardians, who offloaded
eventual NLCS MVP Eddie Rosa-
rio for very little, too.
“In effect, the integrity of the
2021 season changed because itwas a race to the bottom to get draft
picks for many, many teams to
unload payroll and not in any way
respecting the integrity of division-
al races and/or the dynamic of
what a world championship
should mean,” Boras said.
“You must make competitive re-
quirements of winning so every
team has a reason to win every
game,” he added. “We have seen a
noncompetitive cancer occur as a
result of a bargaining change. It’s
not good for the game. It’s n ot how
our game should be played.”
Boras suggested that teams
should not be able to add top-tier
players in the middle of the season
at the current rate — not because
in-season trades shouldn’t be al-
lowed but because teams should be
incentivized to keep key players to
keep their fans interested. He pro-
posed severing the ties between
won-loss record and draft position.
And throughout his meander-
ing hour of answers to a variety of
questions, Boras kept returning to
one key point: the need to incentiv-
ize winning for all teams, not just
those vying for the postseason.“Every team says, ‘I need to do
this because it’s my only option
knowing I can’t reach a divisional
crest, I can’t get to the playoffs, so
what do I do?’ ” Boras said. “I go to
try to get something out of it that is
best available. And if it was best
available for them to win 75 or
80 games and they knew they had
to strive to win draft picks, you
would not see this type of conduct
because there would be motivation
for them to say — and have owner-
ship have strong reasons to say —
I’m not giving you my core players
because I have to make sure I’m
winning.”
Normally, an agent’s opinions
on the state of the game’s competi-
tive integrity w ouldn’t b e any more
noteworthy than anyone else in the
industry who isn’t p art of the nego-
tiations. But most agents do not
hold an annual address in front of
cameras and dozens of reporters,
either.
His opinions matter because,
like it or not, Boras carries great
influence in the sport. His clients
are among the MLBPA’s most
prominent negotiators: Of theeight major leaguers voted to serve
on the union’s executive subcom-
mittee by their peers, five are Boras
clients.
Two of the more prominent and
vocal advocates on that executive
subcommittee, Max Scherzer and
Gerrit Cole, are Boras clients. So is
New York Yankees reliever Zack
Britton, who used Twitter to
crowdsource fan goals for the di-
rection of the sport.
Certainly, none of those players
lack the ability to form their own
opinions. But Boras’s investment
in the outcome of the negotiations
was evident Wednesday. At times
during his hour-long session, Bo-
ras used words like “we” to discuss
rights for which his players fought.
And while he may not be in the
negotiating room, he admitted
that often bits and pieces of his
arguments are.
“I talk to my players. I let the
players talk to the union officials
because they represent them in
collective bargaining. But we sit
down and we talk to our players all
the time and they share their opin-
ions and we offer our history,” Bo-ras said. “I let them decide what
they want to advocate specifically
to their union leadership.”
MLBPA Executive Director Tony
Clark has spoken in far broader
terms about the need to reinforce
“competitive integrity,” a blanket
term that seems to encompass ev-
erything from discouraging tank-
ing to eliminating service time ma-
nipulation. Clark, who addressed
reporters at the World Series, is
often reluctant to delve into specif-
ics. Boras, as a man outside the
negotiating room who benefits
when players benefit, can be more
candid about his perspective on
the sport. And he said he encourag-
es his clients, with whom he and
his staff are in regular contact, to
do the same.
“This is their rights, their fu-
tures they hold in their hands. Re-
ally, the collective bargaining
agreement in many ways guides
their future interests,” Boras said.
“Certainly, I think, participation is
mandatory for part of caring about
their careers as much as perform-
ance.”
[email protected]As MLB edges closer to work stoppage, Boras isn’t shy about holding court