Seattle Mariners' Taylor Trammell shows himself to be a bat flip pioneer

By Jake Mintz
FOX Sports MLB Writer

Welcome to Good Times.

Every Monday, we focus on three things from the previous week in baseball — fans, managers, players, teams, cities, fan bases or mascots — for which the times were good.

Here we go.

Taylor Trammell

Bat flips are OK now. Five or 10 years ago, it was a different story. Sure, there’s still the occasional crotchety geezer grumbling somewhere on the internet about "respecting the game," but for the most part, baseball culture has, thankfully, progressed to a point where exhibitions of joy are permitted and even encouraged.

What that means, to a certain extent, is that the creative limits of bat-flippage are just beginning to show themselves. Any joyous lumber heave is an entertaining display worth watching on repeat, but we’re starting to see the same style of flips again and again and again. The twirl, the chuck, the two-hand heave, the flick of the wrist; there are many flavors, many genres, but sometimes I lie awake at night worrying about how far the great showfolk of our sport can push their craft.

As a result, anytime a true revolutionary comes along and pushes the art into a new paradigm, we must all rise and bow our heads in reverence. Taylor Trammell, huzzah, my friend.

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I can honestly say I’ve never seen this before. Do you know how much baseball I watch? Like, at least two hours a day. On the weekends, I coach two separate Little League teams. I played mediocre travel, high school and college ball for a decade. Like so many, I still go out on the field sometimes with a Wiffle ball setup or even the full hardball stuff and let it loose.

And still, I’ve never seen this before. Honestly, I’d never even considered it.

Let’s watch it again.

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The beauty here is the simplicity. Taylor doesn’t turn the energy knob to 11. Really, he doesn’t even turn it past seven. All he does is perfectly, elegantly flip his bat from his left hand to his right hand, the wood taking a single backflip on its way to his palm. He then pauses for a moment, inhales the good vibrations and flicks that thing away like a silent film star would a cigarette.

I asked Taylor himself — yeah, humble brag, he responded to my text, pretty sick — and he said it was 100 percent spur-of-the-moment. He’s a fun-loving dude, and I’m sure he has ripped off some phenomenal flips in practice, with Wiffle bats on the beach, in Little League, but he claimed that this one was completely spontaneous.

There’s an alternate reality, somewhere out there in the multiverse, in which Trammell tries this exact schtick and drops the bat, and it’s the funniest thing ever. But in that scenario, he is seconds removed from a go-ahead bomb-shot dinger, so it’s kind of a win-win.

And that’s kind of my takeaway here: Home run hitters need to keep trying weirder stuff.

Listen, if you go for an absurd celebration, and it fails, you still just hit a home run. If it hits, you’re a legend forever. Now, please be sure that the ball is going over the fence, but if you really think you got it, give me a backflip or something. Let’s go full NFL Street here.

Either way, shouts out to Taylor Trammell for pushing boundaries and refusing to conform to bat-flip norms.

2. Grayson Rodriguez and Adley Rutschman

Grayson Rodriguez is, per Baseball America, the No. 1 pitching prospect in baseball. The Orioles' right-hander is a total monster and has catapulted himself to potential ace status with an outstanding 2021 thus far.

Rodriguez plays for the Orioles' Double-A affiliate, the Bowie Baysox. Also on that team is a gentleman named Adley Rutschman. Rutschman is, per Baseball America and anyone who has ever watched him play, the No. 1 catching prospect in baseball. And now that Wander Franco is in the bigs, Rutschman is most likely the minors' No. 1 overall prospect-in-waiting.

Orioles fans such as I are well aware that the best catcher and the best pitcher in the minor leagues are on the same team. We’re very excited about it. And now you should be, too, because look what happened with the Rodriguez-Rutschman battery last week.

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The video is even more bonkers.

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This situation is a prime combination of faulty equipment and a 99 mph fastball. If you and I went to the park with that exact glove pre-string snappage, this wouldn’t happen to us. Some piece of this phenomenon is driven by Rodriguez's throwing raw, uncut, stinky cheddar cheese.

I hope one of those two hangs on to that glove for their shared 2048 Cooperstown induction ceremony.

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3. The Dominican Republic

The baseball tournament for the Tokyo Olympics is all set. After multiple rounds of qualifiers across multiple continents both pre- and mid-pandemic, we finally know the six Tokyo-bound teams.

The hosts Japan, Mexico, Israel, Korea and the United States were already in, and this past weekend, the Dominican Republic secured the sixth and final spot by besting the Netherlands and Venezuela in a three-team, round-robin showdown in Mexico.

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It will be the second Olympics appearance for the Dominican national team, so the squad celebrated with the appropriate amount of verve and fervor.

The simultaneous champagne pop is so, so good.

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There aren’t too many familiar names on this Dominican roster because most of the nation’s top players are, you know, crushing it in the big leagues and won’t be given time off to play in Tokyo. Mariners uber-prospect Julio Rodríguez was on the roster for the past two qualifying tournaments, but it’s unclear whether he’ll be joining for Tokyo.

One player who will almost certainly be making the Olympic voyage is former MLB utilityman Emilio Bonifacio. I know he’s like the perfect flavor of memorable/forgettable longtime MLB non-All-Star, but he’s a huge deal in the Dominican Republic and the captain of this team.

He even knows how to rock a trumpet.

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There’s something incredibly cool about a bunch of longtime minor-league grinders and Mexican league veterans getting to go to Tokyo for the Olympics. Walking out underneath your flag, that’s the memory of a lifetime.

So even though there will be about 9,000,000 sports on once the Olympics get going in a month or so, make sure you tune in to watch some of the weirdest yet highest-intensity baseball you can get anywhere in the world.

Jake Mintz is the louder half of @CespedesBBQ and a baseball analyst for FOX Sports. He’s an Orioles fan living in New York City, and thus, he leads a lonely existence most Octobers. If he’s not watching baseball, he’s almost certainly riding his bike. You can follow him on Twitter @Jake_Mintz.