Posted: September 1st, 2010 | Filed under: Baseball | 30 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 30th, 2010 | Filed under: Baseball | 134 Comments »
I had one of my obviopiphanies the other day, an epiphany that is so obvious, everyone else figured it out many years ago. It’s sort of like the time I discovered that people in Florida are not great drivers. Well, it started like this: I threw out a Twitter question, just for fun. The question was simply this: Is one all-time great year good enough to put a player into the Hall of Fame. This isn’t the easiest concept to get through in 140 characters … and I did a pretty lousy job of it even considering the limitations.
Two things didn’t come through at all:
1. I don’t believe the answer is “yes.” I just think it can be an interesting question.
2. I don’t think the nuance of the question (if there IS any nuance in the question) was captured at all in the shorthand way of Twitter.
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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 19th, 2010 | Filed under: Baseball | 138 Comments »
“I appreciate the opportunity to tell this Committee and the public — under oath — what I have been saying all along.”
– Roger Clemens, February 13, 2008.
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The image that keeps coming back is one of Roger Clemens throwing that broken bat in the general direction of Mike Piazza. That was the 2000 World Series, of course. Clemens threw a hard inside fastball that busted Mike Piazza’s bat. The fat part of the bat skipped out to the mound. Clemens fielded the bat cleanly and, without even a second hesitation, he fired the bat into the path of Piazza, who was slowing up about three or four steps up the first-base line. Had Piazza kept running, I do believe the bat could have hit him. Had the bat taken a wicked hop, I do believe it could have hit him. As it was, the bat bounded past Piazza and had enough force to bounce for another 40 or 50 feet.
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Posted: August 18th, 2010 | Filed under: Baseball | 97 Comments »
On Twitter yesterday, I said I really didn’t want to get started on Josh Hamilton. But, of course, I did get started.
I’m going to try to pull off a little magic trick here, and I have absolutely no reason to believe that I can pull it off. I’m going to try, in one post, to both celebrate Texas outfielder Josh Hamilton (one of my favorite players in the game) AND point out the absurdity of calling him baseball’s best player. I’m going to try, in one post, to strongly disagree with Tom Verducci’s contention while making it very clear that I think Tom is a great baseball writer.
No, I don’t expect to pull it off. We deal with this stuff a lot in today’s world and in today’s sports. There’s less and less room for gray. Take the Baseball Hall of Fame. I think that Andre Dawson, for instance, was a fabulous player and a class act and I have tremendous admiration for the man as a player and as a person. I also think his .323 lifetime on-base percentage leaves him just below my Hall of Fame bar. I didn’t think the two opinions are inconsistent. But somehow, in certain circles, I became known as the guy who hated Andre Dawson. I heard from quite a few people who thought I would be enraged or depressed somehow when he got elected and inducted. And when I said that, no, quite the opposite, I was thrilled for the guy … you could tell they didn’t believe me.
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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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