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Beau Vine

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Posts posted by Beau Vine

  1. Really good from Stark:

    Quote

    It’s the 4th of July, and you know what that means.

    We’ve made it through the snow, and we’ve made it through the rain. We’ve made it through 103 degrees and we’ve made it through 23 degrees.

    We’ve made it through all the strikeouts. We’ve made it through all the shifts. We’ve made it through dozens of no-hit-alert vibrations on our phones. And above all, we’ve made it halfway through another baseball season, now that every team has finally played at least 81 games.

    So what should we take away from the last three months? Thanks for asking. Now here they come – 12 Things We Learned from the First Half.

    1. Whatever happened to the greatest free-agent class ever?

    Our first inclination, when we began working on this story, was to do some sort of mini-power rankings of the World’s Most Amazing, Colossal, Star-Studded, Franchise-Altering, Gazillion-Dollar Free Agent Class of 2018-19. And then reality set in.

    Outside of Manny Machado, which of these Amazing, Colossal, Star-Studded, Franchise-Altering, Gazillion-Dollar Free Agents has actually helped his marketability over these last few months? Not Bryce Harper. Not Clayton Kershaw. Not Josh Donaldson. Not Dallas Keuchel.

    Oh, there are Craig Kimbrel and Nelson Cruz, in their own select categories. And Nick Markakis, Michael Brantley and Patrick Corbin, in the not-quite-so-star-laden tier of this class. But those megastars who were supposed to drive this market? They’ve mostly been driving it into the repair shop.

    “We don’t really start our free-agent work until August,” said an executive of one club. “But when we do get to work on it, it could be so hard to value these guys – because when we look at most of these players, there’s a good chance we’re going to have to say, ‘Can he return to form?’ And the problem with that is, you know he’ll be asking for money as if he already has.”

    2. The American League has turned into the NBA

    Has there ever been a league quite like the American League in 2018? Why, of course there has. It’s called the NBA.

    You’ve got your official Super Teams – the Astros (on pace to win 104 games), the Yankees (on pace to win 107) and the Red Sox (on pace to win 108). You’ve got a fourth team – the Indians – that looks as if it might win its division by 20 games. And you’ve got the Mariners, A’s, Rays and Angels, who are good enough, or at least respectable enough, to fill out your playoff field. But then …

    There’s baseball’s dark hole, which is already ugly, with a chance to get uglier. You’ve got three teams – the Orioles, Royals and White Sox – plummeting toward minus-200 run differentials (or worse). And you’ve got at least three others – the Rangers, Blue Jays and Tigers – getting set to trade away a bunch of veteran players, which could set them on a course to lose 95 to 100 games.

    “I can’t ever remember a situation in any league like this,” said one AL exec. “Can you?”

    Of course not – because it’s never happened. Not in any sport LeBron James doesn’t play, anyway.

    3. The AL superpowers could be historically great

    The Yankees are built to mash. And they’re mashing. They’re on pace to hit more home runs in a season (275) than any team ever. And Giancarlo Stanton hasn’t even locked into his Bambino blue-heat phase yet. The record they’re chasing is 264, by Junior Griffey’s 1997 Mariners. That Mariners team had six players who thumped 20 or more. These Yankees could have six dudes who hit 30-plus. They’re a force of modern baseball.

    The Astros, meanwhile, just blow you out. Their plus-172 run differential is by far the largest we’ve seen on the 4th of July in the last 75 years. Only the ’98 Yankees (plus-155) are even within 20 of them, And if the ‘Stros keep this up, they’re heading for the biggest plus-minus by any team since Red Rolfe’s legendary 1939 Yankees put up a staggering plus-411. Yikes.

    Meanwhile, the Red Sox merely have a shot at the winningest season in the history of their franchise, complete with the greatest run differential in the history of their franchise. Both of those records are held by Tris Speaker’s 1912 Red Sox (105 wins, plus-255 differential). And this team is on pace to challenge them both.

    There has never been any league – ever – with three 100-win teams. But let’s remind you again that the reward for one of these three is probably going to be a fun-filled date with James Paxton in the Wild Card game, with nothing riding on it except their beautiful 106-win season. And that plot line is going to hover over the entire American League for the next three months. 

    4. The Cubs, Nationals and Dodgers didn’t get the memo

    Would you please remind us next spring never to make another prediction for the rest of our lives? Playing all-knowing psychic is just a messy line of work. And nothing proves that better than the current state of the National League.

    The only thing us know-it-all prediction geniuses knew for sure three months ago was that the Cubs, Nationals and Dodgers were pretty much locks to win their divisions. So naturally, they’ve spent a grand total of 16 days in first place combined. And almost half of them were by the Nationals, in the first week of the season.

    At least the Cubs (13 over, with a plus-101 run differential) and Dodgers (30-13, with a plus-76 run differential, since May 16) are trending in the right direction. But the Nationals are turning into our planet’s biggest mystery since the Bermuda Triangle.

    Here’s how they’ve fared since June 6: A 6-17 record (worst in their league) … zero streaks in which they’ve even won two games in a row … shut out six times … a 5.43 staff ERA, worst in the NL … and no wins by a starting pitcher other than (wait for it) Eric Fedde – who earned a “win” in a 17-7 game.

    “Everyone wants to get on board with that team because they’ve got this guy and that guy and this guy, and they’re all stars,” said one NL exec. “But they’re missing something. And they’ve been missing something for a while now. And it can’t be the manager, because they’ve had five of them (since 2010).”

    5. The race for the No. 1 pick could be epic

    Somewhere in Texas, Bobby Witt Jr. knows all about this. But over the next three months, the furious battle for the right to choose him – or someone just like him – with the first pick in the June 2019 draft has the makings of an all-time scramble for the baseball dungeon.

    The Orioles are on pace to lose 116 games. The Royals are on pace to lose 114.

    The Orioles just went over five weeks without winning a single game against a team from their own league. That’s 0-17 – including an incomprehensible 0-15 month of June – if your hard drive just exploded trying to calculate it. And not surprisingly, no team in the interleague era had ever done anything like that.

    The Royals, meanwhile, just lost 18 games in a row when they didn’t throw a shutout. No team had done something like that in 111 years.

    So here they are, on the 4th of July, careening toward triple-digit losses at a rate that no living human has ever seen. Want to guess the last time two different teams had winning percentages below .300 on Independence Day? That would be 1912 – when Hippo Vaughn’s pre-Ruthian Yankees started 19-46 (.292) and Curly Brown’s always-entertaining St. Louis Browns roared out of the gates at 19-47 (.288).

    Don’t go scrambling through the draft records to see what awesome No. 1 pick those juggernauts got out of that, because baseball forgot to invent the draft for another half-century. But this year, while a bunch of teams appeared to be chasing the No. 1 pick by consciously trying not to win, the Orioles and Royals weren’t one of them.

    “They weren’t tanking,” said one AL exec. “They were both semi-trying.”

    And shouldn’t that be a lesson to tankers everywhere!

    6. The Manny Machado Derby is about to consume us all 

    It’s the 4th of July, and Manny Machado has almost as many home runs (21) as the Orioles have wins (24). But we regret to announce there’s pretty much a zero-percent chance that Machado will become the first player in history with more homers than his team has wins. And that, obviously, is because a month from now, his jersey can’t possibly say “ORIOLES” on it. Can it?

    Anything is possible, we suppose, in Baltimore, where Dan Duquette keeps reminding his trade partners what the Cubs gave up for Aroldis Chapman (i.e., premium rental property) just two years ago. And those trade partners, of course, keep reminding the Orioles of how little the Tigers got back for J.D. Martinez just 12 months ago.

    But just as the Tigers decided eventually last July that they had no choice but to make the best deal they could for Martinez, the Orioles are in pretty much an identical position. So if they don’t get Machado moved – to (pick one) the Dodgers, Diamondbacks, Phillies, Braves, Indians, etc. – it “would be organizational malpractice,” said one rival exec.

    7. It’s the year the hits disappeared

    It’s only the first week of July. But this sport is about to break a record that nobody seems to have noticed except us.

    MOST STARTS IN HISTORY ALLOWING 1 HIT OR NONE*
    85 – 2015 (all season)
    81 – 2018 (through July 2)
    (* – starts of 5 IP or more)
    Source: Baseball-reference.com

    Now think about this for a moment. We’re about to see more starts of one hit or none by the all-star break than we’ve ever seen in any full season in the history of baseball? Um, is that good?

    Well, it’s a sign that pitching is more unhittable than ever, for one thing. Check out the trend in how the league has hit against starting pitchers over the last couple of decades:

    YEAR             AVG    OPS
    2018                .248     .730
    2017                .261     .767
    2008               .269     .760
    2000               .274     .790

    But clearly, that’s not all that’s going on here. Starting pitchers also get the hook earlier now (5.48 innings per start) than at any point in history. So 40 years ago, if Tom Seaver had a one-hitter through five innings, guess what? There was a nada-percent chance he was coming out.

    Nowadays, though, as you might have noticed, nobody thinks that way. Defenses are better deployed. Every reliever on earth throws about 98 miles an hour. So the plan – every night – is to get those starters out of the game before they start to fade. And the bottom line is, it’s harder to hit than it has been in nearly 50 years.

    Hits per game are at their lowest level (8.38) than at any point since 1972. So here comes that next no-hitter alert on your phone, in 3…2…1.

    8. It’s the end of the four-times-through-the-lineup era

    In a related development, how many games do you think we’ve seen all season in which starting pitchers navigated their way through the lineup four times (meaning they faced at least 36 hitters)?

    The correct answer would be (yep) none. And if that keeps up, this would be the first season ever in which not a single starter made it through the opposing order four times.

    The closest anyone has come: 34 hitters, by the Padres’ Clayton Richard just last Friday in Texas.

    As recently as the 2000 season, 55 pitchers made it through the lineup four times. But that number has been steadily declining, and had shrunk to six or fewer in each of the last six seasons.

    So who was the last big-league starter to pull this off? It was – who else? – America’s favorite 44-year-old strike-throwing machine, Bartolo Colon! He did it in a 106-pitch complete game for the Twins last Aug. 4. That was nearly 4,000 games ago. But the question is, will any pitcher ever do it again?

    “The only way,” said one exec quoted earlier, “is maybe at the end of the year, if someone like a (Chris) Sale or (Justin) Verlander gets into a huge game and says to the manager, ‘I’m not going home Oct. 1, so I’m not leaving this game.’ But that’s the only way it’s going to happen.”

    9. It’s the year of the boy band

    Juan Soto is 19 years old. He has a .978 OPS for the Nationals. He has a chance to have the greatest season in history by a teenager.

    Gleyber Torres is 21. He has a .913 OPS. He has a higher OPS than any player on the Yankees except Aaron Judge.

    Ozzie Albies and Ronald Acuña Jr. are teammates on the Braves. Albies is 21 and leads the National League in extra-base hits. Acuña is 20 – with an .818 OPS.

    So how many seasons in modern baseball history have given us four hitters this young who had an OPS of .800 or better (and 400 plate appearances or more)? That answer is zilch.

    have been 15 seasons with two young stars that good – from Mike Trout/Bryce Harper to Hank Aaron/Al Kaline to Jimmie Foxx/Mel Ott. But the only season that even brought us three young hitters who fit that description was 1969 (Johnny Bench, Richie Hebner, Carlos May).

    But this year, if this group stays healthy and keeps doing what it’s done so far, they are going to make history – together.

    “That’s where this game is going,” said an AL exec. “The young players in this game are really good – and they’re good sooner than they’ve ever been.”

    10. Edwin Díaz could save 60 games

    The closer for those Seattle Mariners might be baseball’s best-kept secret. The only kind of game his team ever seems to play is one-run games. There might be one reason, above all others, that the Mariners seem to win them all. That reason is named Edwin Díaz.

    No one has ever saved 40 games before the all-star break. But don’t put it past him. He has 33 saves already. He’s on pace to save 62. Only one reliever has ever saved that many. That was Francisco Rodríguez (62) in 2008.

    But don’t measure Díaz by his saves. This, said one AL exec, “feels like utter domination.”

    Díaz’s numbers in those 33 saves: 0.27 ERA, 54 strikeouts, 11 hits. And the league is hitting an absurd .130 against him in save situations, with two extra-base hits.

    He leads all AL closers in WHIP and strikeouts. And if he sat down next to you on a bus, you’d probably have no idea who the heck he is. But this might just be the year when Díaz goes from anonymity to massive stardom.

    11. Mike Trout has gotten downright Ruthian

    One AL exec we interviewed for this piece objected strenuously when we tried comparing the greatness of Mike Trout with the legend of Babe Ruth.

    “He’s the best player in baseball,” the exec said. “And he’s the best player ever.”

    Ever? The logic here is actually tough to dispute. There’s no way we should ever find ourselves comparing baseball in the 1920s to baseball in the 21stcentury. In the Bambino’s day, there were no African-Americans playing baseball and no Latinos playing baseball. There were no airplanes and no light bulbs. And there was no science behind anything. So the athletes are indisputably better now. And the game is way more difficult to excel in now.

    So with that as context, let’s remind you that Trout is on pace for 45 homers, 24 steals, 141 walks, 324 times on base and an OPS close to 1.100. He’s also on pace to rack up nearly 13 Wins Above Replacement. That’s a number reached by just one position player since 1900. Right you are. That would be the Babe, in 1923.

    But if Trout doesn’t get to 13 Wins Above Replacement this year, just give him a few months.

    “This is his best year ever, and that’s the scary thing,” the same exec said. “He’s still making adjustments. He got wise to us. He figured out that we’d found some holes and occasionally we exploited them. And now those holes are closed. And that’s what he does every year. He figures out what he’s not great at, and then he gets better.”

    Best. Player. Ever. Who wants to argue?

    12. Jacob deGrom is the unluckiest pitcher ever

    Baseball seasons just don’t get any more bizarre than Jacob deGrom’s season. Do they?

    In 10 of his 17 starts, he has allowed one run or none. He has been the winning pitcher in two of those starts. But that’s not even the bizarre part.

    The bizarre part is that his team has only been the winner in three of those starts.

    We keep re-reading those stats over and over, but they don’t change. The Mets are 3-7 when their best pitcher allows one run or no runs.

    The Elias Sports Bureau checked back all the way to 1893, the year the mound was set at 60 feet, 6 inches from home plate. They found that no pitcher in the last 126 seasons has been through more games like that in any of those seasons – meaning no pitcher’s team has ever lost  more than seven starts in which he gave up no more than one run.

    There are others who are tied with deGrom at seven. But remember, this guy still has half a season left to go. No telling how many more great starts his team might lose.

    This is not a commentary on “pitcher wins,” by the way, because this isn’t even about pitcher wins. This is about team wins. Or lack thereof. And nothing explains that, except, possibly, for this: They’re the Mets.

    “All this is,” said one of the execs quoted earlier, “is just an interesting, Jayson Stark-type tidbit. But no one in baseball is judging him any different because of it. Every five days, I’ll look at his latest game, and I’ll shake my head and say, ‘That poor bastard.’ And then I’ll move on, because what else can I say? It’s crazy.”

     

    • Like 3
  2. 7 hours ago, ImissWallyPryor said:

    Glancing at this thread, I didn’t notice these:

    • The misuse of the reflexive pronouns like himself, herself and (especially) myself in place of personal pronouns.  It’s a fucking epidemic out there  

    • General personsl pronoun confusion. “Me and Reveille....” 

    • Not using the ly suffix on adverbs. “That aggy speaks slow.”

    That's you're fucking epidemic.  I seriously think that over 50% of the people on TV screw that up.  

    Lolly, lolly, lolly, get your adverbs here...

     

  3. On 6/27/2018 at 12:01 PM, tfoolry said:

    Realator

     

    On 6/27/2018 at 3:42 PM, Hate said:

    Anyone that says wersh for wash needs to be eliminated from the gene pool.

    My mother-in-law does both of these.

    She also says ahn-chill-ah-da.

  4. 34 minutes ago, closetojumping said:

    I've never seriously considered what I'm about to type, but after looking at all of the existing data and the trends, why is it absurd to think that perhaps the Arizona schools would join the Big 12?

    Because Arizona is functionally a suburb of southern California.

  5. 41 minutes ago, Tommy Nobis said:


    Learn how to use the quote feature dipshit

    Why are you posting here again?  You should really go back to jerking off to this:

     

    768x768.jpg

    • Like 1
    • Fuck You 1
  6. 13 hours ago, CooterBrown said:

    The other 3 only watch Arsenal and no other sports.

     

    I don't understand these kind of people at all.  I suspect they really don't even like Arsenal/soccer; they're just following them to have an identity.

    You see this kind of stuff most with the sport of soccer.  And aggy.

    • Like 1
  7. 53 minutes ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

    There's something kind of....... ewwwwwwwww about a guy who doesn't like sports.

    My daughter's boyfriend.  He's from NYC, so it could be worse -- he could be a Yankee fan.

    We have nothing to talk about.  When she goes to hockey games, she goes with his roommate.

     

  8. 12 hours ago, Huckleberry said:

    112t. Iowa Preflight - 0.42 (1 Football, 0 Basketball, 0 Hockey, 0 Baseball)

    112t. Randolph Field - 0.42 (1 Football, 0 Basketball, 0 Hockey, 0 Baseball)

    112t. Texas A&M - 0.42 (1 Football, 0 Basketball, 0 Hockey, 0 Baseball)

    I know your ties are listed in alphabetical order, but you couldn't have ordered this better if you tried.

  9. On ‎6‎/‎15‎/‎2018 at 4:27 PM, Mojo Hand said:

    But seriously, the answer is Rush. 

    My wife and her best friend went to see Rush a couple of years ago.  I declined to join them.  

  10. Stark:

    Quote

    A relief pitcher plays first base… A catcher pitches – for the 10th time!… All the Reds’ pitchers do is hit home runs….And the Royals string together the most bizarre losing streak of modern times.

    But more on that later – because first, the Useless Information Department has this to say about a guy named Mike Trout….

    THE ALL-OLDER-THAN-TROUT TEAM

    Mike Trout is 26 years old. This important announcement is brought to you by the Useless Information Department’s Time Marches On Division – because it has noticed that rest of us seem to act as if Trout has been around forever.

    Trout has passed Harmon Killebrew, Mike Piazza and Vladimir Guerrero in career Wins Above Replacement this month – and he’s 26 years old. He has already had more top-two MVP finishes (four) than Hank Aaron, Mike Schmidt or Ken Griffey Jr. – and he’s 26 years old.

    So let’s put that in perspective. We now present a bunch of players who feel like they’re just starting out in this game – but every single one of them is older than the best player in the game. No kidding. So here it comes – the All-Older-Than-Mike-Trout team!

    1B – Jesus Aguilar (27)
    2B – Joey Wendle (28)
    SS – Marcus Semien (27)
    3B – Christian Villanueva (27)
    OF – Mitch Haniger (27)
    OF – Scott Schebler (27)
    OF – Mac Williamson (27)
    C – Christian Vázquez (27)
    DH – Max Muncy (27)
    BENCH – José Martínez (27), José Pirela (28), Aaron Altherr (27), Michael A. Taylor (27) and Matt Duffy (27).
    SP – Ross Stripling (28)
    RP – Raisel Iglesias (28)

    And we could easily make a whole ’nother team just like it. But you get the idea, right? What we actually should be asking ourselves what Mike Trout wants to be when he grows up – because maybe this whole best-player-in-baseball thing is just his warm-up act.

    STREAKERS OF THE WEEK

    What we have here is the most innovative losing streak of the last century. Presenting your 2018 Kansas City Royals.

    Starting with their game of June 3 and ending with their 5-4 win in Milwaukee on Wednesday, the Royals went a messy 3-18. But that’s not the big news here.

    The big news is that you can break those 21 games into two fascinating categories:

    Record when they threw a shutout: 3-0.
     Record when they gave up a run (or also lots of runs): 0-18.

    Yes, you read that correctly. The Royals managed to lose 18 games in a row when they made the mistake of letting the other team cross home plate.

    So how bizarre is that? Allow the Useless Info Department to fill you in.

    — Last team to lose at least 18 straight games in which they gave up a run? That would be Runelvys Hernandez’s 2005 Royals, who lost 19 in a row like that. But wait! That wasn’t the same thing at all. That team lost 19 in a row, period.

    — So in fact, the Elias Sports Bureau tells us, the Royals were just the third team ever to pull off a streak like this. (Or is it two streaks?) And to find the other two, you have to travel all the way back to the Roosevelt administration.

    By which we mean the Teddy Roosevelt administration. That was back in 1907!

    That year, Stoney McGlynn’s 101-loss Cardinals went through a stretch in June and July in which they lost seven in a row, threw a shutout, lost three in a row, threw a second shutout, won one before throwing a third shutout, then ripped off eight more losses in a row. So that’s a 19-game losing streak in games where they allowed a run (or 11).

    But even that didn’t measure up to the exploits of Bill Bergen’s 1907 Brooklyn Superbas. The not-so-Superbas made it all the way from Opening Day (April 12) to May 18 before they finally won a game in which they gave up a run. They were 3-20 at that point (and 0-20 when they coughed up a run). But they did have a 1-1 tie along the way where they did, in fact, allow a run. So that’s a little shaky.

    However, if you’ll recall the baseball history lesson we learned from the Indians’ 22-game winning streak last year, ties don’t count in either winning or losing streaks. So they get to be part of this list!

    And then, a mere 111 years later, along came these Royals. Their season definitely isn’t bound for glory. But at least it’s produced the weirdest, most historic 18-game “losing streak” of our lifetimes. And perhaps it’s taught us all a valuable lesson.

    Kids, just be sure not to give up any runs and everything will turn out fine.

    TRAVELING MAN OF THE WEEK

    If Edwin Jackson hasn’t pitched for your favorite team over these last 15 years, just grab a bin of popcorn and wait a while. He should show up any minute now.

    And if Edwin Jackson hasn’t pitched for your favorite team, well, clearly, they’re not even trying – because Edwin Jackson has pitched for every team.

    Oh, all right. Not every team. He’s missed 17 of them, if you want to get technical. But now that he’s a proud member of the Oakland A’s (this week), he’s officially one of baseball’s most historic figures.

    He has worn the uniform of 13 teams now – tied with the great Octavio Dotel for most in history. So let’s review this spectacular feat:

      By adding a bunch of A’s, Jackson has played with the incredible total of 763 teammates, believed to be the second-most in history (behind Terry Mulholland!). That’s 109 more for Jackson than Dotel by the way, in case you stopped counting in 2013.

    And Jackson is one of just six men known to have played with more than 700 teammates. The other five we could find, with the help of MLB Network’s awesome research team, are these guys:

    Terry Mulholland 791 (11 teams)
    Matt Stairs 725 (12 teams)
    Rickey Henderson 725 (9 teams, not counting the A’s four times)
    Carlos Beltrán 719 (7 teams)
    LaTroy Hawkins 703 (11 teams)

    Shocking footnote: Of those five, just one also played with Jackson (or Dotel). That was Henderson – who happens to be the only Hall of Famer on either of their teammate lists!

      Jackson once played with Fred McGriff – who retired so long ago, he only has one year left on the Hall of Fame ballot.

     Jackson played with Ron Coomer – who retired 15 years ago.

    Jackson once played with Robin Ventura, Alex Cora and Dave Roberts, who have all since managed in the big leagues.

    Jackson has started a game for 11 different teams. That ties him with – guess who? – Bartolo Colon for the most among active players. Only Mike Morgan (12) has started a game for more teams than either of them. But let’s just predict right here that record is not safe.

    Jackson’s new home stadium is the O.Co. Coliseum. Believe it or not, he has only pitched there for two different teams. But he has pitched at Wrigley Field and Petco Park for six different teams. And he’s twirled at PNC Park, Citizens Bank Park, the new Busch Stadium and the Trop for five teams. He gets around, this dude.

    In Jackson’s first game with the A’s, he got to pitch against Victor Martinez – whom he has now faced with four different teams. Sadly, he missed the injured Miguel Cabrera – whom he has faced with six different teams. But coming up in a couple of weeks, unless Jackson is on team No. 14 by then, is his most epic matchup of all, when the A’s play the Giants. If he pitches to Andrew McCutchen in that series, Jackson will be battling him in his eighth different uniform. Talk about crazy eights.

    So how does a guy get to play for 13 teams anyway? He books a lot of plane tickets! That’s how. In Jackson’s case, he has been traded six times – three times at the trading deadline and three times in the offseason. That includes deals that brought his old team Max Scherzer, Matt Joyce and Danys Báez – but also includes deals that brought his old team David Holmberg, Zach Stewart and P.J. Walters.

    In other news, Jackson also has been released three times. In a related development, he has been a free agent nine times. And counting the minor leagues, he has played in 24 different towns. His baseball-reference page looks more like a list of flight departures at the airport than a baseball career. But that’s a good thing, actually – for minutiae-seeking columns like, say, this one.

    But you know what’s really amazing about all this? Edwin Jackson has played for 13 teams while never getting a Cy Young vote, while winning just one postseason game, while compiling an ERA of 5.00 or higher for seven different teams, while (as my pal Tim Kurkjian reminds us) never winning 20 games for any of his 13 employers.

    But there he was this week at Comerica Park, starting a big-league baseball game for the A’s, his seventh team just since 2015, and even hitting 96.8 miles per hour on the Statcast meter.

    Asked, by the San Francisco Chronicle’s Susan Slusser, where that 96.8-mph heater came from, Edwin Jackson quipped: “I try to be young once a week.”

    MYSTERY PITCHER OF THE WEEK

    It isn’t true that Chris Gimenez has pitched more games these last two years than Clayton Kershaw. But he has pitched more times (seven) than, say, Hisashi Iwakuma (six), Nathan Eovaldi (six) or Shelby Miller (five).

    In the major leagues. In real life.

    And you know what? That’s kinda fun. And definitely kinda quirky.

    But the heck with quirky – because now Chris Gimenez has made history. OK, so it’s only position-player-pitching history. But that’s actually one of my favorite kinds of history.

    Last Saturday, Joe Maddon pointed him back toward the mound, to finish off the Cubs’ 11-2 loss in Cincinnati. Incredibly, it was the 10th outing – the 10th!!! – of Gimenez’s distinguished pitching career. (And by distinguished, I definitely mean we’re going to totally ignore his 9.90 ERA.) So now it’s time to put that in perspective. You’re welcome!

    GETTING FOXXY – OK, how many position players in history, you ask, have ever pitched 10 times in the big leagues?

    That’s actually a tougher question to research than you’d think, because once you get back to the 1950s and ‘60s, you discover there were a lot more Shohei Ohtani wanna-be’s than you might expect. (And yes, I’m talking about you, Willie Smith.)

    So I disqualified any position player who ever pitched in at least 10 games in any season. And here’s what I found. (Cue the percussion section.)

    Chris Gimenez is the first position player to visit the mound at least 10 times in his career (without appearing in 10+ games in any season) since …

    Jimmie Foxx!

    “Jimmie Foxx?” gulped Cubs analyst/humorist Jim Deshaies, when Useless Info passed along that little tidbit. “He doesn’t exactly fit your stereotypical emergency pitcher.”

    Yeah, you think? When he wasn’t busy whomping 534 homers, Foxx also pitched 10 times between 1939 and 1945. And his 534 homers are the most of anyone in history who A) pitched and B) wasn’t named Babe Ruth.

    THE POPEYE FACTOR – Gimenez threw 19 pitches in his outing Saturday. All 19 were categorized by Statcast as “fastballs.” As opposed to “not-so-fastballs,” since 14 of them were clocked at 64-69 miles per hour – until, sneakily, Gimenez got to a 1-2 count on fellow catcher Tucker Barnhart. Then – ta-daaaa! – he pulled an 85-mph smokeball out of his bag of tricks, for a (gasp) swinging strikeout.

    “He didn’t just reach back for an extra one mile per hour or two,” Deshaies said, admiringly. “He said, ‘I need to get 20.’ It was like one of those Popeye cartoons, where Popeye is getting beat up by Bluto and then he finally gets the can of spinach open. It was almost like Gimenez didn’t have his spinach. Then he gave up a couple of rockets and said, ‘OK, it’s time for some spinach.’”

    WATCH OUT, OHTANI! – So with Ohtani out of the pitching circuit for at least another couple of weeks, does this make Chris Gimenez the closest thing to Ohtani we’ve got in the game? Hey, why the heck not?

    “They’re calling Ohtani ‘The Japanese Babe Ruth,’ right?” Deshaies said. “So now we can call Gimenez ‘The American Ohtani.’”

    Well, that has a cool little ring to it, but it does leave one question: If Gimenez is the American Ohtani, then what, we asked, does that make Babe Ruth?

    “What does that make Babe Ruth?” Deshaies pondered. “Dead.”

    USELESS INFO OF THE WEEK

    WHO’S ON FIRST – So how long had it been since anyone had seen a box-score entry like the one attached to Rays reliever José Alvarado’s name Tuesday?

    Alvarado P-1B-P

    Almost 30 years. That’s how long.

    According to baseball-reference.com’s awesome Play Index, it was only the third time in the 50-season division-play era that any pitcher had a game in which he both pitched and wore a first-base mitt in a nine-inning game. Here are the other two:

    June 6, 1989 – The Brewers shuttle Chuck Crim to first for one hitter, then bring him back for a save (and double-switch Terry Francona into the game to play first!)

    Sept. 2, 1970 – The Indians move Sam McDowell to first – in the sixth inning – so Dean Chance can get two outs. Whereupon McDowell returns and finishes the game.

    Amazingly, none of those three (Alvarado, Crim or McDowell) recorded a putout at first base while they were over there. Believe it or not, just one pitcher in the last 90 years has done that in this scenario: Billy Pierce, for the White Sox, on June 25, 1953 (on a 5-3 from Gil McDougall). Hard to believe!

    WHO NEEDS THE DH – On Saturday in Cincinnati, sweet-swinging Reds pitcher Anthony DeSclafani whacked a grand slam – the first by a Reds pitcher in nearly six decades, since Bob Purkey went slamming on Aug. 1, 1959.

    Then on Sunday in Cincinnati, yet another hot-hitting Reds hurler, Michael Lorenzen, stalked to the plate to pinch-hit – and did something that no Reds pinch-hitter had done all season. He hit a pinch homer, which made him A) the only active pitcher with two career pinch bombs and B) just the second pitcher in the DH era (along with Micah Owings) to hit two.

    But that isn’t even the highlight of this note!

    How many teams have ever had one pitcher hit a slam and a second hit a pinch-homer in back-to-back games? Right you are. That would be none, according to Elias. And no team had even done that in the same season since the 1995 Phillies (slam by Jeff Juden, pinch homer by Omar Olivares).

    COUNTDOWN – Hits allowed by impressive Cardinals rookie Jack Flaherty in three consecutive starts this month:

    3…2…1

    (On June 11-17-23).

    That seemed like a trend … until he gave up six hits in four innings Wednesday. But he’s still just the third pitcher in this millennium to run off a 3-2-1 streak in successive starts of five innings or more. The other two to do that, according to Elias: Johan Santana (2004) and Josh Beckett (2009). Both of those guys eventually threw no-hitters by the way – just not in their next start!

    EXTRA! EXTRA! – Until this season, a mere three active players (Christian Yelich, Paul Goldschmidt and Robinson Cano) had ever had a four-extra-base-hit game and a three-extra-base-hit game in back-to-back games.

    So now all of a sudden, naturally, three hitters have done it just in the last 49 days (Willson Contreras, Goldschmidt and, most recently, Alex Bregman on Tuesday and Wednesday).

    It’s the first time three players have done this in the same season since 1969 (Reggie Jackson, Tony Oliva and, of course, Ed Kirkpatrick). But even cooler, Goldschmidt is the first player to have two streaks like that in the entire live-ball era.

    NAME DROPPERS – Here’s the latest from our hard-working Name Game Department:

    Last Friday, the White Sox had two Garcias (Avisail and Leury) come off the disabled list on the same day. Where the heck is Willy Garcia when you need him anyway?

    And Monday in Atlanta, Ozzie Albies thumped a walkoff homer to beat the Reds. But not just his first walkoff homer. As NBC Sports Chicago’s ever-observant Christopher Kamka reports, it was the first walkoff homer by any Ozzie since Ozzie Smith’s epic “Go crazy folks, go crazy” walkoff versus Tom Niedenfuer in Game 5 of the 1985 NLCS.

    And Sunday in Kansas City, we had the latest chapter in this ongoing series:

    June 7 – Cole (Gerritt) beats Hamels (Cole).
    June 19 – Cole (Hamels) beats Hammel (Jason).
    Sunday – Cole (Gerrit) beats Hammel (Jason).

    Paging A.J. Cole!

    STRANGEST BUT TRUEST FEATS OF THE WEEK

    HARD O’DAY’S NIGHT – We always did consider Orioles reliever Darren O’Day to be one of the most creative men in baseball. But he outdid himself Monday – by walking just his fourth hitter of the season (Nelson Cruz) while sitting in the clubhouse!

    So how’d that happen? It took some crazy stuff going down, all right. O’Day got called for a balk on a 3-2 pitch, then got ejected for the first time in his 11-year, 576-appearance career, then had long since headed up the tunnel by the time Zach Britton marched in and finished off the walk – which was charged to a man who wasn’t even on the field.

    Baseball!

    MADBUM ABOUT YOU – Raise your hand if you saw this coming:

    That 367 pitchers would win a game this year before Madison Bumgarner … that the Giants would go 48 games (and nearly two full months) without winning a game started by either Bumgarner or Johnny Cueto … and that they would still have a winning record halfway through their season.

    DODGEBALL – OK, raise your hand if you saw this coming:

    That the Dodgers would go 10 weeks without winning a game started by Clayton Kershaw … and would still go from four games under .500 to five games over .500 in the meantime.

    ON WALDING POND – The good news for Phillies rookie Mitch Walding – after he’d started his career by going 0 for 7, with 7 strikeouts – was: He finally had an at-bat Sunday in which he put a ball in play.

    The bad news: He hit into a double play. Making him 0 for 8, with more outs (9) than at-bats (8).

    Here’s hoping he returns and gets a hit, because he’d be just the sixth position player in history to get to the plate that many times, emerge with zero hits and join the More Outs than AB Club!

    WELCOME TO OHIO – Does anyone put the O back in Ohio like the Tigers?

    Halfway through the season, they’re still 0 for Ohio. As in 0-7 in Cleveland and 0-3 in Cincinnati.

    Just so they know this before those three games they have left in Cleveland in September: No NL Central or AL Central team, according to Elias, has ever gone winless in Ohio since interleague play made that a thing 21 years ago.

    HAPPY HOLADAYS – Thanks to dulcet Marlins broadcaster Glenn Geffner for alerting us to this Strange But True series of events:

     April 5 – The Phillies steal four bases against Marlins catcher Bryan Holaday, who finally ends that track meet by throwing out César Hernández trying to pilfer third.

    — Holaday then goes 2 ½ months without having anyone steal a base on him. (He nails 9 for 9, starting with that CS of Hernández.)

    — Thursday in Miami – Holaday’s streak finally ends, on a steal by … um, Zack Greinke! Who steals second with two outs and Paul Goldschmidt hitting. And then scores on a Goldschmidt single.

     Oh, and one more thing: That makes Greinke 7-for-7 in his base-swiping career. And how many other pitchers since World War 2 have stolen that many bases in their career without being caught? Yup. None.

    JERRY-MANDERING – Finally, what were the odds of this:

    After 12 peaceful seasons spent hanging out blissfully in bullpens across our land as the ultimate situational left-hander, the Mets decided to drag Jerry Blevins out of hiding last Sunday for the first “start” of his career.

    And how’d that go? The first hitter homered (Enrique Hernández). The second hitter homered (Max Muncy). And Blevins had just joined Don Hendrickson (1945 Braves) as the only two pitchers since 1900 to serve up home runs to the first two hitters of their first major league start.

    But guess how many times – in 532 relief appearances – Blevins had ever allowed home runs to the first two hitters he faced (or any two hitters he faced) in the same relief outing? Yessiree. That would be none. In a career in which he faced 1,846 hitters out of the pen.

    Baseball!

     

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  11. Had a 6am flight out of ABIA last Sunday.  Walked up to the main security checkpoint and they had it for TSA Precheck passengers only.  Walked down to checkpoint 3, and there was a TSA person out front yelling that it was closed.  So they had every passenger who wasn't Precheck going through checkpoint 1. 

  12. Also, happy anniversary to the biggest regular season game in my life:

    Quote

    June 28, 1976: The Bird captivates the nation

    This article was written by Scott Ferkovich

    FidrychMark.jpg

    Baseball fans throughout the country in 1976 had been hearing the scattered chatter, ever since mid-May. Talk of something new and exciting happening in Detroit. Some rookie pitcher with long hair. Didn’t they say he talked to the baseball? Got on his knees before each inning and groomed the mound? Stomped around the field like a hyperactive kid? Kind of a flake? He certainly hadn’t been pitching like one. He’d started eight games, winning seven of them. Of his seven complete games, two were 11-inning affairs. His only loss was a complete-game six-hitter in which he’d given up only two runs, while the Tigers had been shut out. His ERA was hovering in the low 2’s. “I don’t think even Walter Johnson even started this fast,” said his manager, Ralph Houk.1

    And he was drawing crowds. Big crowds. The year before, the Tigers had lost 102 games, an awful team with no identity, which had given their fans no reason to want to come out to Tiger Stadium. But suddenly here was this gregarious 21-year-old kid, who came out of nowhere to mow down hitters and wow the fans, who were packing the ballpark. He was from Worcester, Massachusetts, and his name was Mark Fidrych. But they called him The Bird because his curly golden locks made him look like Big Bird, one of the signature Muppet characters from “Sesame Street.” And June 28, 1976 was the night that greatness was thrust upon him, as the rest of the nation finally found out what all the fuss was about.

    Here were the Tigers, an otherwise ordinary team, facing the Yankees, who had been making mincemeat of the rest of the American League. New York was in first place by a wide margin, with stars like Thurman Munson, Chris Chambliss, Graig Nettles and Mickey Rivers. New York’s manager was Billy Martin, who had guided Detroit to a division title just a few years before. The ABC television network was featuring the game on “Monday Night Baseball,” to be broadcast coast to coast (except in Detroit itself, where the game was blacked out). Tiger Stadium was rocking from the get-go, with 47,855 Birdwatchers. Thousands, according to various estimates, were turned away when the box office ran out of tickets. Things hadn’t been this exciting at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull since the Tigers won the World Series in 1968. “My phone started ringing at eight in the morning and didn’t stop all day,” noted Detroit’s Bill Freehan, who had starred on that ’68 team, and was now in his final year. “Everyone wanted tickets to see The Bird pitch.”2

    Reporters wanting to learn more about Fidrych peppered him with questions before the game. Surely he must feel some sense of awe to face the Yankees? Had he ever heard of Mickey Mantle? “Sure,” he said, “he was a ballplayer, but now he’s retired.” What about Roger Maris? “No,” chirped The Bird, “never heard of him.” OK, maybe that’s going back a ways, but what about the 1968 Tigers? He must have heard of them, since he would have been 12 years old at the time. “I was only 11, but I never heard of them, either. I was too busy working trying to make a living. Carry groceries, carry golf clubs — anything to make a buck. I had to go out once in a while, you know.”3

    Game time neared. The fans stood up and cheered as Fidrych bolted out of the dugout and headed for the bullpen for his pregame warm-up. Once the contest started, the Bengals jumped out in front in the first inning on a two-run homer by Rusty Staub. That was all they needed in a 5-1 win. In yet another complete game, Fidrych clowned the Yankees, scattering seven hits with zero walks, the only New York tally being a home run by Elrod Hendricks. The radar gun had him clocked as high as 93 miles an hour, both in the first inning and in the ninth. Working quickly, he talked to the ball (or to himself) the whole time. But it was his excellent control, hard slider, and fearlessness that gave the Yanks fits all evening. The game lasted only an hour and 51 minutes. The Bird was now 8-1. All the while, he was, in the words of Detroit Free Press writer Charlie Vincent, “a perpetual motion machine on the mound.”4

    Near the end, Bob Uecker, one of the announcers on the ABC broadcast, raved, “I gotta tell you. ... I’ve seen a lot of ball games played, and I’ve caught a few. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a pitcher this keyed up, in the ninth inning of a ball game, or all through the ball game. You’d think this guy’d be running out of gas by now ...but he is just starting to heat it up.”5 Not to be outdone, his broadcast partner, Bob Prince, marveled, “He’s giving me duck bumps and I’ve watched over 8,000 ballgames!”6 The crowd kept chanting “Let’s Go Mark!” Elrod Hendricks grounded out to end the game, but the drama was just beginning. Also in the ABC booth was Warner Wolf. As Fidrych dashed off the mound to hug backstop Bruce Kimm — who caught all of Fidrych’s starts that season — as well as other teammates, Wolf cried, “And the Tigers act like Fidrych has just won the seventh game of the World Series!”7 Prince added, “He is some kind of unbelievable!”8 The Bird hopped around, shaking hands with teammates, with the umpires, with anybody in his path, much to Wolf’s utter amazement. “Young Mark Fidrych, thanking his teammates! Look at that, he’s thanking his teammates! He’s thanking the umpires ... everybody ... the ground crew!”9 Then The Bird ducked into the dugout and disappeared down the runway.

    But nobody left. Nobody went home. The fans stood chanting “We want Mark! We want Mark!” “He’s gotta come back,” Wolf declared. “Come on, Mark! Nobody has left the ballpark!”10 The clubhouse attendant had to go back and find Fidrych to tell him to get himself back out there. Finally, after about two minutes, a dazed Bird popped back up out of the dugout, doffing his cap with a boyish grin. Tiger Stadium erupted again. He reached over the top of the dugout, shaking fans’ hands (including those of a policeman). Overcome with emotion, Fidrych covered his head in his arms, and tried to escape into the dugout, but his teammates urged him back onto the field.

    Uecker corralled Fidrych in front of the Detroit dugout for an interview. “Mark,” he noted, “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life, and I know it’s a very emotional moment for you.”11 “Hell, yeah,” said Fidrych.12 The Bird’s youthful innocence was on full display, as he claimed that “everything is just so new to me.” He referred to Hendricks, who had hit the home run, as “that one guy.” “Damn,” he said at one point, “I couldn’t ask for anything more!” Uecker asked him what he was doing when he was grooming the mound. “I want to dig my own hole,” The Bird clarified. The camera got a close-up of Fidrych’s oversized feet as he stood there, sans shoes, in stirrups and dirty stockings. “I never played before this many people before. In the minor leagues, sometimes they had 2,000 people there. And when the place is packed, you want to do good.”13 The national television audience ate up The Bird. On a warm June night in Detroit, his legend had been born.

    His teammates were enthusiastic in their praise of the rookie. “The best part about this game,” said Freehan, “was that with all of its ballyhoo, Fidrych didn’t disappoint them. Lots of times in these situations the game turns into a dud. ... It takes a lot of courage, ability, and concentration to do what he did.”14

    “Every person can see the enthusiasm in Mark,” gushed Staub. “He brings out exuberance and an inner youth in everybody. It’s contagious.”15

    “[Denny] McLain didn’t draw that many people,” said John Hiller, a teammate of McLain’s on the 1968 championship squad. “I even watched the game. I don’t usually do that.”16

    “It was fun as hell,” noted Mickey Stanley, another ’68 hero. “It was like a World Series game.”17

    The Yankees won the American League pennant in 1976. The Tigers finished fifth. Mark Fidrych numbered 19 wins, led the AL in complete games with 24, and ERA at 2.34. After the season, he became the first baseball player ever to get his picture on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. But arm problems cut short his career seemingly before it had even started. At age 26, his time in the big leagues was finished. But the memories lasted forever. “One word doesn’t describe it,” Fidrych said of that exciting summer of ‘76. “It was the ultimate.”

    Anyone else remember this?  I was 9 years old.  I had heard about him, read about him, but this was the first time he pitched on national TV...  and he fucking delivered, big time.  Crowd was going nuts, and he was talking to the ball before every pitch, getting down on his knees and playing with the dirt on the mound.  I vividly remember him coming out of the dugout to give the post-game interview.

    I wanted to be Mark Fidrych after seeing that..  

    • Like 2
  13. I've been gone for 10 days and no one posted this?

    Quote

     

    Move over, Bobby Bonilla: The Braves have been paying Bruce Sutter for 30 years thanks to a ludicrous contract

    bruce-sutter-1024x683.jpg
    By Dan Lewis Jun 25, 2018 comment-icon@2x.png 61 save-icon@2x.png

    It was the winter of 1984. The Atlanta Braves, fresh off an 80-82 season, decided to strike while the iron was mostly lukewarm, if you’re being charitable. Anchoring their bullpen was the perfectly suitable committee of Gene Garber, Steve Bedrosian, and Donnie Moore; each registered 28 or more Games Finished and had double-digit save totals. But for some reason, the Braves wanted more. They wanted Bruce Sutter.​>

    Sutter was a closer in an era when the role was still emerging. He spent the 1984 season anchoring the bullpen of the St. Louis Cardinals, leading the league in Games Finished with 63 and amassing a then-record-tying 45 saves while pitching a now unheard of 122.2 IP. He finished sixth in MVP voting and third in Cy Young balloting. He was paid handsomely for his services, too — his $975,000 salary made him one of the highest paid players at the time. As he entered free agency that offseason, he expected to cash in even bigger. And the Braves were willing to meet his demands.

    When the ink dried on the contract, the basic terms gave Sutter $9.1 million over six years, entering his age-32 season for, again, a team which failed to win half its games the year prior. The length of the contract was absurd at the time, but so was the amount, given the context. His salary — not accounting for some interesting structuring which we’ll get to — was the 10th highest in the Majors in 1985, behind guys like George Foster, Gary Carter, and Keith Hernandez. (Remember when the Mets spent money?) He was the second-highest paid pitcher in the game, only behind José DeLeón (really). Even if things had gone as planned, it would’ve been a crazy, terrible signing by the Braves.

    Things didn’t go as planned. But that wasn’t even the worst part.

    Over the course of his six-year deal, Sutter collected 40 saves, total, while sporting a 4.55 ERA. He was worth, collectively, -0.3 bWAR, and at no point during his Braves career did he turn in an above-replacement-level season as a pitcher. He was, shockingly, worth more as a batter: he put up a 0.0 bWAR line as a Brave, turning in a career-high 0.1 bWAR in 1988, when he went 0-for-1 with a walk and a strikeout. Injuries cost him his 1987 season and he was so bad in 1988 that he just hung them up. As contracts go, Sutter’s Braves deal was historically bad. The Braves destiny suffered a similar fate — over the six years of Sutter’s contract, the Braves’ best season (1986) ended with a 72-89 record. The other five seasons were all ones with 90 or more losses — one of 92, two of 96, one of 97, and a laughably bad 54-106 in 1988. Sutter, perhaps, retired out of embarrassment.

    And again, that wasn’t the worst part.

    The worst part was that Sutter decided to use his big free agency contract as a financial planning opportunity. Rather than get all of that $9.1 million paid out in relatively even amounts per year, Sutter insisted that his money be deferred. Both the Braves and the Cardinals agreed to the demands of the former Cy Young winner and future Hall of Famer. In the end, the Braves were the ones who offered more money — about $9 million over 6 to the Cardinals’ $7 million over 5, per The New York Times — and an absolutely whackadoo structure that could only be attributed to irrational exuberance.

    First, Sutter was only paid about $750,000 per year while under the Braves’ control. For the thirty years after he retired — 30!!! — the Braves agreed to pay him no less than $1.12 million per year, and potentially more if interest rates spiked above a negotiated floor of 12.3 percent. (They haven’t.) That ends in 2021, and it’s only 2018, so Bruce Sutter, at some point this year, received or will receive a check for $1.12 million for his 112 games of sub-replacement baseball as an Atlanta Brave. On July 1, the New York Mets will pay Bobby Bonilla about $1 million to not play for them. As that date approaches, the Mets become a punchline — and punching bag — for beat writers near and far. And yet, at some point during this same calendar year, the Atlanta Braves will pay Bruce Sutter about the same amount.

    But wait: there’s more.

    Typically, when a player signs a multiyear contract, the total is paid out over the course of that contract in the form of annual salaries. That’s the case even when money is deferred; until the money is earned, there’s nothing to defer. In the case of Sutter, that means he shouldn’t have gotten the full $9.1 million (plus interest); he retired four years into the six year contact. But Sutter’s contract wasn’t typical.

    For some reason, the Braves agreed to pay Sutter the full $9.1 million up front — think of it as a signing bonus of sorts — but then deferred the whole amount. If you do a little bit of math, you’ll realize that 12.3 percent of $9.1 million is $1.12 million, which makes sense. But what about the $750,000 he got during the six years of the contract? Those, too, were interest payments — the Braves agreed to pay him approximately 8 percent of the deferred amount during the first six years. As a pretty funny, and obviously unintended side effect, Sutter ended up getting his negotiated “salary” in both 1989 and 1990, even though he was retired.

    And because all of the money he’s earned to date (and will earn through 2021) is interest, that $9.1 million in principal has, to date, gone unpaid. That’s right: it was deferred until 2022. Four years from now, Bruce Sutter will be a 69-year-old Hall of Fame pitcher who last pitched in 1988 who, unlike Bobby Bonilla, will be on the receiving end of a $9.1 million check from the Atlanta Braves.

    In total, Sutter will earn north of $45 million for his three years being terrible as a member of the Atlanta Braves. Bobby Bonilla, eat your heart out.

     

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