SI:AM | The Baseball Player Who Doesn’t Love Baseball

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I didn’t watch a second of the NBA All-Star Game, and I feel perfectly content with that decision.

In today’s SI:AM:

⚾ Spring training preview

🏀 College hoops coaches on the hot seat

🏈 Way-too-early NFL power rankings

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“This is a job”

This is shaping up to be a pretty depressing season for the Los Angeles Angels. With Shohei Ohtani having moved 30 miles up I-5, the Angels are seriously lacking starpower and are projected by Fangraphs to be among the worst teams in baseball this year.

One thing that would help the Angels, though, is if third baseman Anthony Rendon is able to stay on the field. The Angels signed Rendon to a seven-year, $245 million contract before the 2020 season. He was coming off an All-Star season in ’19 in which he led the majors with 126 RBIs and posted an impressive 1.010 OPS. The Angels hoped adding him to a lineup that already included Ohtani and Mike Trout would lead to a long-awaited postseason berth.

Rendon played well in his first season with the club. In 52 games in the shortened 2020 season, he had an OPS+ of 150, the second best of his career. But then the wheels fell off. Rendon has been plagued by injuries in the past three seasons, playing just 148 games, and even when he has been on the field, he hasn’t been great. His OPS+ during that span is just 94, which is below the league average.

It would be one thing if Rendon was just having injury issues and struggling at the plate, but it’s his demeanor during those struggles that is particularly frustrating. “Beyond his health, the team has had concerns about his attitude,” The Athletic’s Sam Blum reported in December.

But Rendon is owed $38.5 million for each of the next three seasons, so the Angels have no choice but to move forward with him as their primary third baseman. Rendon turned heads yesterday when speaking with reporters at spring training.

Rendon said he was clearing out his email inbox recently when he came across a message he had sent to himself in 2014, shortly after his rookie season. It was a list of pros and cons about continuing to play baseball. Rendon was asked how that list compares to how he feels today, and whether the game remains a top priority for him.

“It’s never been a top priority for me,” Rendon replied. “This is a job. I do this to make a living. My faith, my family come first before this job.”

“Is it a priority?” a reporter followed up.

“Oh it’s a priority for sure,” Rendon answered. “Because it’s my job. I’m here, aren’t I?”

(Read the full transcript here.)

This isn’t the first time Rendon has expressed apathy for the game of baseball. “I don’t watch baseball—it’s too long and boring,” he told the Washington Post in 2014. When speaking with reporters last September, he was asked if he was considering retiring and replied, “I’ve been contemplating it the last 10 years.”

It’s remarkable that Rendon has been this successful without having the same passion that drives the vast majority of other players. In some ways, it’s healthy to not have a myopic focus on baseball or the overly intense competitive spirit that can rub people the wrong way (like Michael Jordan had). But it has to be frustrating for Angels fans. It’s only natural for them to wonder if he’s working as hard to recover from his injuries and to make adjustments at the plate as other players who are more driven by their passion for the game.

To be fair, though, there isn’t any reason to doubt Rendon’s professionalism. He said he worked with the team to develop a plan to try to stay healthy this season, and he has set some goals for his performance. If he’s able to play like he did before his injuries, no one will care whether he loves playing baseball. But if he continues to struggle, questions about his attitude will follow him wherever he goes.

The best of Sports Illustrated

• Tom Verducci breaks down the most important things to watch for as spring training gets underway.
• Pat Forde’s latest “Forde Minutes” column touches on Ohio State’s big upset over Purdue, which coaches should be on the hot seat and other college basketball notes.
• After a week to digest the Super Bowl, Conor Orr already has his first 2024 NFL power rankings.
• Alex Miceli isn’t convinced that Scottie Scheffler deserves to be No. 1 in the Official World Golf Rankings.
• The Nets, who are currently in 11th place in the East, fired coach Jacque Vaughn and replaced him with Kevin Ollie.
• Stephen Curry admitted that he does think about retirement, but he isn’t prepared to hang it up any time soon.

The top five...

… things I saw last night:

5. The drill the Reds ran for their catchers involving stuffed animals.

4. Nick Foligno’s spinning backhand goal (off a nice assist from Connor Bedard).

3. The enormous brawl at the end of the men’s basketball game between Texas A&M Commerce and Incarnate Word.

2. All 17 goals in the Wild’s 10–7 win over the Canucks.

1. The big crash with nine laps to go in the Daytona 500 that resulted in William Byron winning the race.

SIQ

Which former MLB player, born on this day in 1975, was the last pitcher to throw 150 pitches in a game?

• Freddy García
• Liván Hernández
• Sidney Ponson
• R.A. Dickey

Friday’s SIQ: On Feb. 16, 1972, Wilt Chamberlain became the first NBA player to reach the 30,000-point plateau. Who was the most recent player to reach that mark? (Hint: Only eight players in league history have scored at least 30,000 points.)

• Kevin Durant
• Carmelo Anthony
• LeBron James
• Dirk Nowitzki

Answer: LeBron James. He reached the 30,000-point mark on Jan. 23, 2018, becoming the youngest of the seven players in the club to do so. His achievement came about nine months after Nowitzki scored his 30,000th point.

The other members of the club are Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Karl Malone, Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan and Wilt Chamberlain. Julius Irving scored 30,026 points in his career, with 11,662 of them coming in his five seasons in the ABA.

Only one active player seems like a lock to reach the 30,000-point threshold. Kevin Durant currently has 28,245 points and should get there next season if he stays healthy. A couple other players are nearing 30,000 but are running out of time to get there, including James Harden, Russell Westbrook and Stephen Curry.