“Be kind, because you never know what someone else is going through.” That’s one of those maddeningly ubiquitous yet untraceable quotes people love to put on the ‘gram over a picture of like, a rainstorm or something. Generally they prompt an eye roll as you keep scrolling. But the sentiment at the core of that hand-lettered cursive bromide is one worth remembering, if you think about people like Hemingway’s iceberg theory for fiction: what is visible on the surface is just a sliver of what lies underneath.
Pitchers like Marco Gonzales, or Kyle Hendricks, or any other soft-tosser you want to name, always seem to live under a shadow: looking at their sub-par stuff, people wonder when the league is going to catch up with them.