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Netzer

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If only statcast had the technology to measure the launch angle and exit velocity of yankee balls that have been hit off of your chin.

Goo Punch
Goo Punch
Hank Chinaski
Hank Chinaski

Good fucking riddance. 

Beau Vine

Beau Vine 53625

Posted
Posted

Stark:

Quote

My mother used to tell me all the time I should write a book and call it, I Never Saw That Before.

Well, I never did write that book. But you know what I did do this week? I mined through the strange but true, the weird, the wacky and, most importantly, the Ohtani. And I’m ready to present another edition of the Useless Inf-oh Department!

THE OHTANI WATCH

All right, what do you say we review Shohei Ohtani’s first two weeks in the big leagues:

—Threw four pitches clocked at 100 miles per hour.

— Went 34 straight hitters over two starts without allowing a single freaking hit (0-for-33, with one walk).

— Got 25 swings and misses in one game – 16 of them against one pitch (his killer splitter).

— Hit a home run off a reigning Cy Young winner (Corey Kluber).

— Hit a home run in three straight games in which he got to swing a bat.

—  Still owns as many home runs (three) as the Tigers (all of them) despite a slight disparity in plate appearances – 24 for Ohtani, 427 for the Tigers.

OK, this is nuts. But fun! (Unless you’re a Tiger, in which case you were already battling frostbite before that embarrassing note reared its ugly head.)

Well, here at the Useless Inf-Oh Department, we love fun. So here come a lot more fun Ohtani tidbits which you may not know …

—The 3-2 club: This dude hit three home runs as a hitter and won two games as a pitcher in the same week? Really. He’s the only active player who has ever even done that in the same calendar month.

In fact, in the DH era, just four men have ever had a month like that:

Mike Hampton: June 2001 (3 HR, 2 wins)
Walt Terrell: August 1983 (3 HR, 3 wins)
Rick Wise: August 1973 (3 HR, 3 wins)
Ken Brett: June 1973 (4 HR, 4 wins)

(MadBum Fan Club note: Yeah, I was shocked Madison Bumgarner had never done this, too.)

—Paging Mr. Babe: And while we’re on this topic … here’s the latest, greatest Elias Sports Bureau Bambin-Oh note from last week:

Ohtani is the first player to hit at least three home runs in between games started on the mound since – yes, here comes that name again, and not for the last time this year, we’re guessing – Mr. Babe Ruth, in 1919.

The Babe’s three homers, by the way, came off Jim Shaw, Win Noyes and Hank Thormahlen. We list those names just because, well, face it – Win Noyes doesn’t get enough attention these days.

Oh-for-33-tani mania: Then there’s that streak of 34 straight hitters without allowing a hit.

The last 15 hitters of his first start of the season (0-for-14, one walk). Then the first 19 hitters of his next start (19 up, 19 down). Is it OK to mention that those were merely the first two starts of his whole U.S. career? Amazing. And that’s because …

—The Elias Sports Bureau tells us he’s the first rookie to run off a streak of at least 33 straight hitless at-bats, starting in April, since Steve Busby – 45 years ago! Busby actually ripped through a stretch of 50 in a row in April/May 1973 without a hit. But there were eight walks and a sac bunt in there, along with an 0-for-41.

(They were the 10th and 11th starts of Busby’s career, however, since he’d been called up the year before.)

—So to find the last rookie with a streak as long as this, starting within his first month in the big leagues, you have to go back to Bob McClure, who did it in relief for the Royals in September of 1975. McClure faced 47 hitters in between hits, but also mixed in nine walks and a hitter reaching on an error.

—And one more we should mention that kind of fits: In 1989, Wilson Alvarez got called up to the big leagues for one start but never got an out. He then headed back to the minors for two years – but in his first start after he returned in 1991, he threw a no-hitter. That kicked off a streak of 34 consecutive hitless at-bats.

Have you noticed that all that happened a long time ago? Right. Us, too.

—By the dozen: Think about this. In the second game he’d ever pitched in the big leagues (last Sunday against Oakland), Shohei Ohtani struck out 12 hitters. And gave up one hit.

He did that over seven innings (the first six of which were hitless, by the way). But let’s leave the innings out of this.  I thought you’d enjoy seeing this list of active pitchers who have never made a start in which they struck out at least 12 hitters and allowed no more than one hit. Some of these names may look vaguely familiar:

Zack Greinke
David Price
Johnny Cueto
Adam Wainwright
Chris Archer
Jacob deGrom
Masahiro Tanaka
Gerritt Cole
And two Cy Young winners: Dallas Keuchel and Rick Porcello.

Heard of them? Thought so. Now here come three more Ohtani tidbits we had to mention:

— Ohtani leads the Angels in OPS (1.189) and ERA (2.08). Granted, we have to manipulate all standards of minimum playing time to tell you that. But we’re going with 20+ PA and 10+ IP. And we’re making that work because … Ruth never led his team in both of those categories in any season when he pitched at least twice. You can look it up.

— As a hitter, Ohtani has come to the plate 24 times – and has reached base in 10 of them. But when he heads for the mound, opposing hitters have come to the plate 55 times – and reached base in six of them. So his OBP is .417. Their OBP is .133. Ridiculous, isn’t it?

— And, finally, perhaps you’re wondering: How many other pitchers have hit a home run off a Cy Young winner and thrown a pitch 100+ miles per hour over the last 10 seasons? Ho-ho-ho-ho-ho. That would be none. Of course.

This is all happening. In real life. In the major leagues. Mind-blowing.

WALK-OFF OF THE WEEK

Andrew McCutchen knows how to make an entrance. Even more importantly, for the Giants, he also seems to know how to make an exit.

In his third game in San Francisco as a Giant, last Saturday night, here’s how that went:

He hit a 14th-inning walk-off three-run home run… with his team trailing… against the Dodgers… for his sixth hit of the night… on the 12th pitch of the at-bat.

Pretty good evening at the yard!

GettyImages-944756290-1024x691.jpg
 
(Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images)

— As Baseball Savant’s Daren Willman reported, that walk-off came in the 5,861st plate appearance of McCutchen’s career. You know what the first 5,860 had in common? He’d never seen as many as 12 pitches in any of them.

— The great Dave Smith, founder of Retrosheet, checked every extra-inning walk-off homer for the last 30 years, by everyone. Not one of those walk-offs came on an at-bat as long as 10 pitches, let alone 12!

‘—  So how many other National League players – since RBIs became an official stat in 1920 – have ever gotten six hits in a game and had the sixth end the game with a homer? Yep. That would be none. Only Jim Northrup, (for the Tigers, on Aug. 28, 1969) has ever even done it in the AL, according to Elias.

— McCutchen was the first player to hit a walk-off home run with his team trailing, in the 14th inning or later, since… Andrew McCutchen did it as a Pirate on July 11, 2015. (H/t Doug “Kernels” Kern)

— And how many other players – in this or any other “recent” era – have hit two walk-off home runs like that (team trailing in the 14th or later)? Dave Smith went all the way back to 1940. And the answer is… zero.

—But since 14 innings is a lot of innings, we should report that Smith did find two other active players who have hit two walk-off bombs like that in any extra inning: Asdrubal Cabrera (11th and 10th) in 2016 and 2012, and Alex Avila (10th and 11th) in 2017 and 2012.

— Oh, and one more thing. McCutchen then had another walk-off hit (a single) three days later. Want to guess how many times, in all those years in Pittsburgh, he got two walk-off hits in the same month? How’d you guess? Never. Naturally.

NOT MR. WALK-OFF OF THE WEEK

But of course, the best part about walk-offs is that they come in all shapes and sizes. They just never come like this!

Saturday night. Tenth inning. A 0-0 game between the Astros and Padres.

Alex Bregman lifts quite the big-league pop-up into the Houston ozone. A flurry of chaos ensues. The baseball drops to earth, not caught. Derek Fisher roars in from second to score. Walk-off.

Ah, but not just any walk-off. A walk-off that traveled exactly 38 feet on the fly!

Our amigos from Sports Info Solutions (@SportsInfo_SIS) looked into that one. And found …

It’s the shortest walk-off hit, at least in the air, in their database in the 15 seasons they’ve been tracking stuff like this. Should there maybe be a cutoff for how many feet you have to hit a baseball for it to count as a “walk-off” — or even a “hit?” Just asking!

TWENTY WAS PLENTY GAME OF THE WEEK

Not sure what the heck was going on in baseball Saturday. But it was by far the zaniest day of the year so far. And here’s one more reason:

The Phillies whomped on the Marlins that night, 20-1. Twenty to one. It was just the fifth 20-1 game since 1924. But here are two things that made it even wackier:

—  Jake Thompson got a save for the Phillies. In a 20-1 game.

He was the first pitcher to save a game his team won by 19 runs or more since Texas’ Wes Littleton “saved” the legendary 30-3 game in Baltimore on Aug. 22, 2007. Thompson was so delighted to learn of that development (by reading my tweet about it, actually) that he then tweeted himself:

 

—  Meanwhile, the Phillies scored 20 unanswered runs – after actually trailing, 1-0. According to Dave Smith, it’s only the seventh game since 1908 in which any team scored at least 20 runs in a row after falling behind!

The only other 20-1 game in the group: Marlins over Braves, July 1, 2003.

The most amazing of the bunch has to be that 30-3 game. The Orioles led, 3-0. And then gave up 30 runs in a row! Kids, don’t try that at home.

FIVE STRANGE BUT TRUE FEATS OF THE WEEK

— Next time you hit against the Royals, keep an ice pack handy. In back-to-back games this week, their starting pitchers – Jakob Junis and Eric Skoglund – hit three Mariners apiece.

So when was the last time you saw that? How about never.

According to Baseball-Reference.com’s handy-dandy Play Index, it’s the first time in the last 110 years that any team had its two starting pitchers plunk at least three hitters in back-to-back games. Ouch! Literally.

— Will anyone ever pitch a complete-game no-hitter again? It’s only April 12. And we’ve already had three starting pitchers (Kyle Gibson, Trevor Williams, Jarlin García) yanked from games before they’d given up a hit.

That has never happened this early in any season in the last 100 years. And we could only find two times it’s happened in the same calendar month, period:

May 2007 – Phil Hughes (6.1 IP), Shawn Hill (5 IP), Shaun Marcum (6.1 IP)
April 2017 – Wei-Yin Chen (7 IP), Dan Straily (5.1 IP), Sean Manaea (5 IP)

There were two games like this in all 10 seasons of the 1950s, by the way.

— Doug (Kernels) Kern extravaganza: The Indians got four hits or fewer in three games in a row – and won all of them! Only two other teams have pulled that off in the live-ball era – Oddibe McDowell’s 1986 Rangers and Willie Mays’ 1963 Giants.

— It was memorable enough that Jameson Taillon threw a complete-game one-hitter for the Pirates on Sunday. What really made it memorable was this: The only hit was by the Reds’ pitcher (Tyler Mahle).

Last time the Reds got one-hit in a game in which none of the position players got hits:

Sept. 19, 1914 – when pitcher Earl Yingling got the only hit (as a pinch hitter) in the sixth inning of a Jeff Pfeffer one-hitter, for those beloved Brooklyn Robins. Fill in your own Earl Yingling lager punch lines here.

— And somehow or other, on the same afternoon (Monday) in the same city (that winter wonderland known as Chicago), the Cubs got snowed out but the White Sox played a full nine-inning game. Watch out for that lake effect!

AND FINALLY…

Here’s to Max Scherzer. We love Max Scherzer. Here’s what he did Monday night:

Threw a two-hit shutout… and struck out 10… and then, just because he loves to entertain us, he also stole the first base of his career in the seventh inning.

According to the MLB Stat of the Day Twitter feed, he’s the first guy to steal a base while pitching a shutout with double-digit strikeouts, since (who else?) Nolan Ryan. Who did it on May 16, 1984 against the Pirates.

But wait. This gets even more entertaining. Scherzer said afterward that he’s been trying to convince his managers for years to give him the green light. Finally, manager No. 3 in Washington, Davey Martinez, gave in. After which Scherzer said the other reason was this:

“If [Jayson Werth] can steal a base, so can I,” he said.

Most folks who heard or read that line found it quite amusing. One person who didn’t find it quite so amusing was, well, Jayson Werth himself. Who checked in with this retort:

“I don’t know why he’s so excited about a defensive indifference,” Werth told Useless Info correspondents. “The official scorer must have been a fan, throwing him a charity SB. [Freddie] Freeman wasn’t even holding him on. I think he’s still bitter about the pickup basketball game from this winter when I used him to mop the floor.”

Werth then requested that we mention that he’s merely one of the most successful base-stealers of all time! And the only reason we’re doing that is, um, he’s right. Your top three in history, with 100 or more steals:

Chase Utley 87.9%
Carlos Beltran 86.4%
Jayson Werth 85.2%

To which Scherzer would respond, we’d guess:

Max Scherzer 100.0%

 

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UTexasFight

UTexasFight 9288

Posted
Posted (edited)
37 minutes ago, TheFlagship said:
2000 hits for Joe Mauer. 10th active player to reach that mark

Name the other 9.

 

 

 

spoiler alert......

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1 Ichiro

2 Beltre

3 Pujols

4 Miggy

5 Cano

6 Reyes

7 Markakis

8 V. Martinez

9 A. Gonzalez

 

I got 6. all but 6, 7, and 8 above. shame on me for missing 6 and 8 but 7 I never would have guessed.

 

 

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BigOrange1

BigOrange1 6352

Posted
Posted
3 minutes ago, BigOrange1 said:

i'll try.

  1. pujols
  2. miguel cabrera
  3. beltre
  4. robbie cano ?
  5. joe mauer ?
  6. nick markakis ?
  7. adam jones ?
  8. curtis granderson ?
  9. some old spare like josh reddick 

pujols = 2983

cabrera = 2645

beltre = 3062

cano = 2389

mauer = 2000

markakis = 2065 (i only know this because i'm a braves fan and remember it being talked about last year)

jones = 1663

granderson = 1671

reddick = 839.  lulz.  he's also not as old as i thought he was.

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Beau Vine

Beau Vine 53625

Posted
Posted

This is pretty interesting:

https://www.mlb.com/video/semiens-ground-rule-double/c-1939332483?tid=63817564

Semien drives in runner from first, but tries to score when the ball bounces away and gets tagged for the third out.  Mariners lead 3-1, middle of 3rd.

Except... The Mariners challenge that it should have been a ground rule double.  Replay confirms, the run comes off the board, but so does the third out, and the runners are put at 2nd and 3rd with two outs.

It's the right call numerically by the run expectancy charts. 

But the next two guys get hits, and the A's get three runs.

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UTexasFight

UTexasFight 9288

Posted
Posted
Maybe I just have short term memory, but i can’t remember a year where MLB has had so many games postponed at this point in the season. 

Was thinking the same
Part of it is due to the season starting a few days earlier than it ever has in the past, but does seem the weather has been worse than usual the first two weeks of April

Have they announced a makeup for the Tigers/yankees doubleheader?
That could become interesting late in the year
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Helobious

Helobious 9393

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, UTexasFight said:


Was thinking the same
Part of it is due to the season starting a few days earlier than it ever has in the past, but does seem the weather has been worse than usual the first two weeks of April

Have they announced a makeup for the Tigers/yankees doubleheader?
That could become interesting late in the year

It'll be made up on June 4th. 

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Beau Vine

Beau Vine 53625

Posted
Posted
Quote

Sunday night’s tense battle between Bartolo Colon and Justin Verlander climaxed a historic day in the majors, one in which fans saw an average of 21.8 strikeouts per game over the 10 games played. That stands as the highest average on any day in MLB history, excluding days on which only one game was played. The previous high of 20.8 strikeouts per game was set in the 11 contests played on April 20, 2017.

Consider the dominance of Sunday’s pitchers as reflected in these totals: There were 218 strikeouts in the day’s 10 games, compared to only 131 hits. We checked: that’s 87 more strikeouts than hits! On no other day in major league history had there been that many more strikeouts than hits. The largest previous disparity of that sort came last April 20, when there were 229 strikeouts and 151 hits, a difference of 78, over 11 games.

 

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Beau Vine

Beau Vine 53625

Posted
Posted

I loved this, from theathletic.com:

Quote

A good friend who is a Red Sox fan messaged me the other day to call my attention to this tweet:

 

The Red Sox and Mets having the two best records in baseball, even at this early date, can’t help but make their loyalists think about the possibility of a rematch of the 1986 World Series, and about that miraculous or tragic — depending on your allegiance — Mookie Wilson/Bill Buckner Game 6 in which the Red Sox never got the one final out they needed to win the Series.

Having been born in Flushing, not far from the site of the old Shea Stadium, and grown up a Mets fan, it doesn’t take much to bring the memory of that classic Game 6 to my mind. But lately, it’s not just the fast starts of the Mets and Red Sox that have done it. Other, non-baseball stories, like the two African-American men arrested at a Starbucks in Philadelphia while merely waiting for a friend, and the 14-year-old African-American boy who was shot at when he knocked on a door asking for directions, have reminded me of where I was when I witnessed that amazing ending.

On Oct. 25, 1986, I was in Tuscaloosa, Ala., a young sports writer at the Miami Herald covering one of the biggest games in college football that afternoon, sixth-ranked Penn State at No. 2 Alabama. (As hard as it is to believe now, there was a time when newspapers had the budget to routinely send reporters to important games that weren’t even in their market.) I don’t remember much about the game, which the Nittany Lions won 23-3, although I do recall being in a group of writers who talked to Penn State's defensive coordinator about how his unit had shut down the Crimson Tide’s offense. (You may have heard of the guy. His name was Jerry Sandusky.)

I was distracted by thoughts of Game 6 that night, a must-win game for the Mets, who were trailing 3-2 in the Series. It took me well into the evening to do all the postgame interviews, then write and file my story, by which time the Mets and Sox were in the sixth inning, tied 2-2. My hotel was more than an hour’s drive away — try getting a room on a few days’ notice in Tuscaloosa on an Alabama football weekend — so I decided to find a nearby bar to watch the rest of the game. I came across one not far from the stadium, and though I’ll never remember the name of it, I’ll never forget the feeling I had when I walked in. I was the only black person in the place, and the decor was about a 50/50 split between college football and the Confederacy.

This, I thought, might have been a mistake.

Even more disconcerting, the TV behind the bar was tuned to football — Auburn vs. Mississippi State. But the pull of watching the Mets in a do-or-die Series game was stronger than my urge to get back in my car, so on a Saturday night in the deep South, in bar full of white customers who were watching SEC football, I sat down, nodded toward the television and asked the bartender, “Any chance you could flip that to the World Series?”

The bartender put the question to the dozen or so patrons sitting at the bar and received no objection. In fact, there wasn’t much reaction at all, as most of them seemed either to stare straight ahead or check me out from the corner of their eye. So he changed the channel and the voice of Vin Scully came from the television as the Mets and Red Sox headed into the late innings.

What happened next was what tends to happen when people watch a compelling sporting event together — the game gradually connected us. We talked about managers’ decisions — should the Red Sox have stayed with Roger Clemens longer? Should the Mets use one of their starters in relief in this do-or-die game? As we all became more comfortable with each other, the bartender encouraged me to drop my business card in the fishbowl full of them on the bar, explaining that they pulled one every week and gave the winner a free lunch. I did it, even though I knew I’d never visit the place again.

Other customers asked how a guy who was clearly not from around those parts happened to walk in to watch this game, and I explained why I was there. Since I was the only one in the place with a rooting interest, by the time the game headed into extra innings tied 3-3, almost everyone gathered around the bar had decided to become a temporary Mets fan.

“Who we pulling for?” I heard one woman ask her husband.

“New York,” he said with a drawl.

“New York?”

“It’s not the Yankees.”

“Oh, OK.”

When the Red Sox scored a pair of runs in the top of the 10th, all those customers I had been eyeing warily earlier were now my buddies, consoling me as what appeared to be the inevitable drew nearer. Keith Hernandez made the second out for the Mets in the bottom of the 10th, putting Boston one out away from the title, and a fresh beer appeared in front of me. On the house.

And then, of course, magic happened. Gary Carter singled. Kevin Mitchell singled. Ray Knight singled to make it 5-4. Calvin Schiraldi’s wild pitch brought Mitchell home to tie the game, 5-5. That left Mookie Wilson at the plate with a man on third, and you know the rest: Ground ball. Buckner. Through the legs. Mets win.

 

There was bedlam in Shea Stadium and a pretty fair amount of noise at the best little Mets bar in Tuscaloosa. My new friends clapped me on the back and slapped me five and offered to buy me drinks, partly, I think, out of gratitude for being the reason they had seen one of the most memorable sports endings of all-time. By the time I left the bar, I couldn’t believe what I had just experienced, and I don’t mean the baseball.

Flash forward two nights later. I’m back home in Florida and after a rainout the previous night, the Mets win Game 7 to take the Series. Shortly after the end of the game, my phone rings. I don’t recognize the voice on the other end until he identifies himself. It’s the bartender from Tuscaloosa, calling to congratulate me. He explains that he pulled my business card from the fishbowl.

You can draw your own conclusions about what this story says about the power of sports to unite people, about the importance of pushing past our preconceived notions about others, and about how far we have or have not come in this country in the way we relate to those who don’t look like us.

It makes me think about all of those things, and about how I wish I could have gone back for that free lunch. 

 

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Goo Punch

Goo Punch 4275

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Posted

This PPD shit is absurd at this point. Despite the MLB’s efforts the season is going to somehow be even more crammed in for pretty much every team that lives anywhere where snow exists. Not to mention the bevy of games which have already been played in 35 degree rain. Clunky, disappointing start to the season thus far.

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