Posted: September 1st, 2010 | Filed under: Baseball | 29 Comments »
PHOENIX — This is the Padres moment. This exactly is why they are here, in first place, having the most startling season in what has been a pretty startling season all around in baseball. This is why they are here — up 2-1 Wednesday afternoon against the last-place Arizona Diamondbacks, seventh inning, their great defense and dominant bullpen about to put an end to this speed-bump of a six-game losing streak.
Moments like this are why, until the last few days, the Padres had been slump-proof. Do you know their long losing streak up to this one? Three games. That’s all. And it only happened once … they have not lost more than two in a row since mid-May. And this is the reason, because of situations like this, because all year long they have wrenched and jerked 1-0 and 2-1 and 3-2 victories away from the other guys. They have won 24 games when scoring three runs or fewer — no other team in baseball has won more than 18. This is their den. This is their show. How do you lead the National League West by four games when you are 12th — TWELFTH — in the league in runs. Right. You win these games you are leading 2-1 in the seventh inning.
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Posted: August 31st, 2010 | Filed under: Baseball | 102 Comments »
Here’s a baseball question I find myself dancing around all the time: How valuable is a good closer? This question, I think, might have the widest berth of any question in all of sports. What do I mean? Well, as you know, there are many people — 41% on this site — who would say the most valuable New York Yankees player of the last 15 years has been closer Mariano Rivera. Those people are saying that Rivera, as the greatest one-inning closer in baseball history, is more valuable than Derek Jeter, who has a fairly compelling case as the second-best shortstop of all time* (assuming A-Rod is not considered a shortstop — which the Yankees did not).
On the other hand, there’s the statistic WAR — which last year rated Rivera anywhere from 2.0 (Fangraphs) to 3.1 (Baseball Reference) wins above replacement. To give you an idea of where this places Rivera, Fangraphs had his somewhat less-celebrated teammate Melky Cabrera with a higher WAR. Baseball Reference had light-hitting Randy Winn and reliever George Sherrill as two of the 102 players with a higher WAR than Rivera.
That’s a a pretty big difference in value — all time legend or almost as valuable as Melky.
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Posted: August 26th, 2010 | Filed under: Baseball | 127 Comments »
This isn’t exactly original … but it’s always fun. We’re going to rank the playing talents of 32 baseball managers. Of course, you know that it’s not easy to rank 32 managers when there are only 30 teams, but we will throw in a couple of fired managers to get us to the best number in sports.
The takeaway from this, I think, is that big league managers, with very few exceptions, were not good players. No, wait, let me take that back. Everyone on this list — all the way down to No. 32 — was a GOOD player, in the normal way we would use that word. Twenty-four of the thirty-two got to the Major Leagues, which is a remarkable athletic achievement. The other eight all played in the minor leagues, which means they were star players in their own communities. They were all GOOD players.
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Posted: August 24th, 2010 | Filed under: Baseball | 126 Comments »
News of the day: WASHINGTON (AP) — Stephen Strasburg is headed back to the disabled list, and his prized right arm will undergo yet another examination that will largely determine whether he pitches again this season.
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Every scout has a story — every single scout. Stories come with the job. If you travel around for baseball, dusty town to dusty town, big city to small, and you watch young talents pitch baseballs for long enough, you are going to see a kid with the winning arsenal, a kid with the huge fastball, the devastating curve, the nasty slider, a kid who with the right breaks just might become the greatest pitcher in the history of baseball. And, if you’re an honest scout, you know they probably won’t get the right breaks. That’s the thing about pitching. The hard part is not the stuff. There are many, many, many pitchers with the stuff. The hard part is enduring.
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Posted: August 22nd, 2010 | Filed under: Baseball | 102 Comments »
There was a great trivia question in the comments of Baseball Primer the other day. The topic was Bob Feller’s recent treatment for anemia, and as things go in the awesome comments section, the topic ended up being players who hit home runs in their first at-bat. How did this happen? Did Bob Feller hit a homer in his first at-bat? No. At Primer, you have to follow the conversation closely.
1. Bob Feller is a Hall of Famer.
2. Bob Feller is 91 years old.
3. Someone points out Bob Feller is NOT the oldest Hall of Famer.
4. Jolly Old St. Neck Wound offers up one of the great unfair trivia questions of all time: Who is the oldest living Hall of Famer? The hint: He homered in his first at-bat.
5. Someone else asks which player who homered in his first at-bat hit the most big league homers?
6. And so on.
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Posted: August 22nd, 2010 | Filed under: Baseball | 82 Comments »
One of my all-time favorite baseball cards is this one of Pat Tabler in the 1986 Donruss set:
You can see it, blazing red in the lower right-hand corner, written in some sort of goofy cursive font: “Mr. Clutch.” I love this for so many reasons, not the least of which being that, as far as I remember, no other baseball card in the entire set got this sort of consideration. They didn’t scribble “Mr. Defense” on Ozzie Smith’s card, or “Dr. K” on Dwight Gooden’s card (he was still Dwight then) or “Mr. Stolen Base” on Vince Coleman’s card or “Mr. Mister” on Kyrie’s card. Tabler, alone, got the special “Let’s just put a nickname on his card” treatment.
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Posted: August 17th, 2010 | Filed under: Baseball | 127 Comments »
Bobby Thomson was a very good baseball player. Bill James a few years back ranked him as the 57th-best right fielder in baseball history, a couple of slots behind Jackie Jensen, a few places ahead of Dave Justice. Thomson could run (he once led the National League in triples) and he had some power, and in his four prime years — 1949-1952 — he averaged 26 home runs, 100 RBIs, posted a 126 OPS+ and walked more often than he struck out.
Bobby Thomson, of course, is not especially well remembered for being a very good baseball player. There have been a lot of very good players. He is — like Don Larsen, like Roger Maris, like Joe Carter, like Kirk Gibson and even like Vic Wertz and Mitch Williams and Ralph Branca — remembered for a moment. A feeling. A memory that has launched books and movies and songs and the most passionate radio call that ever was: “The Giants win the pennant!”
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Posted: August 16th, 2010 | Filed under: Baseball | 94 Comments »
Second guessing is fun. We all know that. It’s fun when it’s really a first guess (I said it at the time!), but just as much fun when it’s a second guess made hours later, fun, at least in part, because it is impossible to get the answer wrong when you second guess. In the second-guessing world, a Cardinals fan can believe that St. Louis would have won the 1985 World Series was it not for a bad call by Don Denkinger*. In the second-guessing world, the Red Sox win their World Series one year earlier because Pedro gets yanked from the game. In the second-guessing world Mike Martz doesn’t forget about Marshall Faulk, Phil Mickelson doesn’t try some crazy shot at the U.S. Open, Brian Sipe throws the ball away in the end zone, George Lucas doesn’t do prequels, and history changes, presumably for the better.
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Posted: August 11th, 2010 | Filed under: Baseball | 141 Comments »
Today, we’re going to talk at some length with John Dewan, owner of “Baseball Info Solutions,” and a man who has gone to greater lengths than just about anybody in America to study baseball defense. But before we get to John and some talk that is likely to start arguments, let me babble a little bit about my own thoughts about advanced defensive numbers.
Start with the obvious: For more than 100 years, the only true defensive measures anyone cared about involved “errors.” According to Alan Schwarz’s essential book “The Numbers Game” — great reading — the errors concept goes back, at least, to 1863. That year, a box score in the Sunday Mercury had a section called “Catches Missed.” This made some sense in 1863, when the game was entirely built around hitting and defense. Pitchers truly “pitched” the ball underhand, horseshoes style, to a hitters liking, much like a pitcher in kickball (“Bouncy or smooth?”). Catching the ball on the fly or on one bounce (only on the fly after 1864) or tagging a runner or the base were the only ways to get a hitter out, and so as a fan you wanted to know not only how many defensive plays were made but also how many were not.
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Posted: August 10th, 2010 | Filed under: Baseball | 91 Comments »
Comment from Brilliant Reader Jeff K: “Milton Bradley, Jose Lopez, and Chone Figgins all had super unexpected bad seasons. How could anyone put them on the numbers they’ve put up this year based on career stats? The M’s were an 85 win team if everyone played up to their career norms, not if they repeated career years.”
I have read a few comments and emails like this from Brilliant Readers, basically saying that the Mariners failure was NOT predictable, and that it’s about players having shockingly disappointing seasons. Maybe so. But I think this brings up a good question: What should you expect from players?
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