NASCAR set for summer stretch March Madness style. Will new tournament end summer schedule malaise?
LONG POND, Pa. — It's time to bust out the brackets, pick an upset or two, and follow winners on the road — a journey over city streets, concrete and bricks — to the final four and beyond.
Totally awesome, baby?
Forget all the upset specials in March.
NASCAR will find out soon enough if its attempt to snap out of a mid-summer malaise with its first in-season tournament is a success with drivers and fans as it strives to boost engagement and build buzz in the staid regular season.
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With Tyler Fitzgerald demoted, Casey Schmitt looks like the Giants everyday second baseman
Giving Tyler Fitzgerald the opening-day job at second base was always something of a Catch-22 for the Giants. There were obvious red flags with his surprising rookie season, yet it would have been organizational malpractice not to give him a chance to repeat his success. There was a safety net, too, as Fitzgerald's speed and defense gave him the chance to be valuable even if he wasn't hitting .280 with power. Advertisement The good news is that the safety net worked, in part. According to Baseball-Reference, Fitzgerald has still been worth a win over replacement this season, despite his .609 OPS. The bad news is that the Giants are desperate for more offensive production, not speed and defense. Fitzgerald was optioned to Triple A on Monday, with Justin Verlander returning from paternity leave. The second base job is wide open again. Except it's probably spoken for, at least for now. As Baggs noted on Sunday, Casey Schmitt isn't just surging at the plate because of some luck with the balls he's putting into play. He's surging because he's swinging the bat fast and hitting the ball hard. Both the bat speed and exit velocity are indicators that there might be something sustainable in this hot streak. He's taking far more pitches than he had been and drawing walks, too. There just wasn't going to be a place for him when Matt Chapman returned from the IL, unless a spot opened up somewhere else in the infield. It would appear that spot is at second base now. If it doesn't work out, the Giants will look for the Freddy Sánchez, Marco Scutaro or, uh, Dan Uggla of the 2025 trade deadline. But if it does work, it'll be an unexpected solution to a somewhat foreseeable problem. It's not difficult to get excited about a version of Schmitt who makes good swing decisions and hits the ball hard. His speed can't compare to Fitzgerald's, but the defense should, and the shinier batted-ball metrics from Schmitt will allow the team to have more confidence in him during his inevitable slumps. Schmitt and Fitzgerald have had strange, mirror-image careers to this point. Schmitt was the 2020 second-round pick who made Giants' top-10 prospect lists and even snuck on some top-100 overall lists when he was still in the minor leagues. He was the third baseman of the future until Chapman came along. Fitzgerald was a toolsy fourth-round pick in 2019 who struck out so much as a 24-year-old in Double A (33 percent K-rate) that it was hard to predict a future utility career for him, much less a steady everyday MLB job. Schmitt got to the majors quickly; Fitzgerald took longer (and had a missed 2020 development season during the pandemic). Advertisement Schmitt didn't hit in the majors before this season, though, and Fitzgerald did. It's the obvious reason why both players' stocks went in different directions prior to this season. One player was a big part of the offseason roster calculations, and another one was so buried behind a long-term fixture, he couldn't even get a passing mention in an entire article about options the Giants might have against left-handed pitching. At the risk of drawing too many conclusions from a three-month sample — and an even smaller sample when it comes to Schmitt's offensive production — this feels like a return to what the organization was probably expecting in 2021, 2022, 2023 and the first couple months of 2024. Schmitt was an unpolished player with the raw tools to be a regular; Fitzgerald was an unpolished player with the raw tools to be a regular … if a lot more fell into place. The main concerns with Schmitt have to do with plate discipline and swing decisions, and the solutions to both are trending in the right direction. The main concerns with Fitzgerald have to do with both contact and the quality of that contact, and they never stopped being concerns, even when he was hitting a home run in almost every other game last season. The good news for Fitzgerald is that he's looked like a proven major leaguer before, and it probably wouldn't take much to have him looking that way again. The Giants sending him to Triple A isn't a sign that the organization is giving up on him. It's a sign that they aren't giving up on him. They had the choice of getting him regular at-bats in Sacramento or limited at-bats in the Brett Wisley/Christian Koss role from the last couple years. If they didn't think he had a shot to be a regular one day, they'd probably opt for a no-fuss utility role, as he's already proven more than Wisley or Koss with a similar skill set. As is, Fitzgerald will see regular playing time with the River Cats and try to make loud, regular contact at the plate. The other options for second base are somewhere between far-fetched and completely absurd, at least until the trade deadline. Both Wisely and Koss have major-league skills everywhere other than at the plate, but their offensive struggles are pronounced enough to keep them far away from the starting lineup. There's a wacky idea that's sure to get kicked around somewhere, with Rafael Devers moving back to third base and Chapman moving to second, but it doesn't make a lick of sense. An even wackier idea would be Chapman sliding over to shortstop, with Devers at third and Willy Adames at second, but that's asking a lot for two guys just getting used to the organization. The Giants already have, perhaps, the best defender in the game at third base. He probably could play second base or shortstop, but that's like asking Jimi Hendrix to switch to mandolin. He wouldn't be lost, but it would sure be a waste. Especially when the other guy playing third in the analogy occasionally plays guitar like Fred Durst. No, it appears that Schmitt will get a chance at second base for the next month, at least, which is a development that would have made sense all along, if not for Fitzgerald's breakout performance last year. On Sunday's broadcast, both Dave Flemming and Mike Krukow were talking about the difference in the quality of Schmitt's at-bats lately. Advertisement FLEMMING: It's amazing with Casey, too. He was kind of laughing with me the other day when I was talking to him about his at-bats, and he said, 'I do have to admit, that when I first came up, I kind of swung at everything.' KRUKOW: Ya think??? The mock incredulousness in Krukow's voice was both hilarious and earned. All Schmitt needed to do was stop swinging at lousy pitches. So far, so good this season, and it's why he'll likely get the chance to be an everyday player over the next month. The Giants thought he'd get the chance a lot sooner than this, but there's no sense complaining about the detours everyone took along the way. He's now in prove-it mode, just like Fitzgerald was at the beginning of this season. Hopefully the results will be better for everyone this time around. (Top photo of Schmitt: Megan Briggs / Getty Images)
