Opening Weekend

And exciting news from WTP!

Welcome to Warning Track Power, a weekly newsletter of baseball stories and analysis grounded in front office and scouting experiences and the personalities encountered along the way.

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Happy Opening Day(s), friends! It’s a day that I thought might never happen, and now it’s here and the fun begins.

This marks the second season for Warning Track Power, and over the past year the WTP community has grown and this space has taken shape.

When I started, I wasn’t sure what direction I’d be going in. My only promise to myself was that I’d publish weekly.

After a few weeks, that ambition became my unspoken pact with you.

Over the past year, many of you have communicated with me — either sharing your own stories or anecdotes or simply encouraging me to keep going. I began this project during the pandemic after several months of social distancing and more time away from baseball stadiums than I had ever spent.

From the beginning, you’ve made sure that my screams into the abyss have echoed. Sometimes those echoes resonated louder and longer than expected.

In my life, I’ve had two primary careers: one in journalism and one in baseball. Warning Track Power is the sweet spot, the nitro zone.

Today, I’m launching a subscription model for Warning Track Power. Beginning at $6 a month or $60 a year, you can support independent journalism and receive more of the writing that you’ve come to find, and hopefully love, here at least twice a week.

That’s at least nine newsletters a month for the cost of standing room admission at Petco Park — 17 years ago. And we don’t charge for parking.

Part of what initially brought me to my keyboard was what I deemed to be a gap in baseball reporting. An industry too often motivated by Twitter likes and being first to report a trade left worthy stories untold.

I always viewed my writing as the antithesis of that. We’re not breaking news here; we’re celebrating the game. Slow-sippin’ stuff. With your support as a paid subscriber, I can delve deeper into some of these stories and continue to evolve.

I live in San Diego, I worked in the NL West for 10 years, and between relationships and geography, I enjoy a nice perch for observing the teams out west (and in Texas).

My weekly column will remain free. After all, you gotta dance with the one that brought you. The paid newsletters will dig into different storylines in the AL West and NL West. Sometimes I might get perspective from a team official; other times I might report on what I saw on the field in the California League, where the eight non-Texas teams have their Low-A affiliates. I’m guessing there will be other stories to be determined. We can call those the WTPTBNL.

One story grabbed me recently. Bobby Miller, the first-round selection of the Dodgers in the abbreviated 2020 Draft, took the mound at Dodger Stadium on Tuesday in an exhibition game against the Angels.

The same question that I asked last week — What will derail the Dodgers? — came to mind again.

Miller was drafted 29th overall out of the University of Louisville. In the pandemic-shortened season of 2020, he made only four starts. The risk inherent in the amateur draft was intensified for teams that lacked the continuity that breeds familiarity with players and programs.

In How To Beat A Broken Game, Pedro Moura profiles longtime Dodgers area scout Marty Lamb.

Lamb covers Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. He signed Walker Buehler, who draws the Opening Day start for the Dodgers, and Will Smith, Buehler’s battery mate. Both of these players were taken late in the first round of their draft years.

Miller, on his 23rd birthday, toed the rubber on the Dodger Stadium pitcher’s mound to find Shohei Ohtani awaiting his first offering. This wasn’t a regular-season game, but it was still a top prospect facing one of the greatest players in the game in one of the most storied stadiums in North America.

The first three pitches — all fastballs — registered 100, 99, 100. Then came the nasty changeup at 88, followed by two more heaters, the second of which ended the at-bat. Ohtani was caught looking at 100.

Once again, the Dodgers appear to have struck gold late in the first round. Once again, it was scout Marty Lamb on the assignment.

So while Miller was pitching, former amateur scouting director Ray Montgomery was in uniform in the visitor’s dugout. Montgomery, a colleague of mine in Arizona, has ditched the polo shirt, khakis, and radar gun and is now Joe Maddon’s bench coach with the Angels.

I look forward to catching up with Montgomery and hearing about his new job, his new vantage point on the game, and leaving the scouting circuit to coach Mike Trout, Anthony Rendon, and Archie Bradley, who was a first-rounder of the D-backs (and Montgomery) in 2011. I look forward to hearing about what it’s like to go from scouting a player on a college field to facing him two years later in a Major League ballpark.

Stories like these keep the fan in me alive. I realize now that I gravitated towards them and the people around them during my days working in the game.

Of course, I look forward to sharing that with you as part of the WTP exclusive content.

When will this go into effect?

All posts will remain free for the next 2-3 weeks, and then certain newsletters will fall behind the paywall. Baseball is back! Now is a great time to sign up.

Thank you again for supporting WTP so that we could have even arrived at this point. Time to play ball.

Baseball season is upon us. Subscribe now to have WTP delivered to your inbox every week, and stick around to find out how many beers it will take to win the NL West.