For many baseball fans, last night wasn't a great night to watch baseball, as blowouts predominated early on. But, because of the beautiful game that is baseball, only three of them continued in their lopsided fashion, with the best of them highlighted by a homer from Micah Owings, the best-hitting pitcher in baseball, whom teammate Conor Jackson said had the "best pop" of anyone on the team. And all of them showed something about the winning and losing teams, proving that any baseball game is worth watching, even when it doesn't seem exciting.

The biggest and boringest of them all was the Cubs-Brewers game--and before irate Chicago fans tell me how much they love to see their team rack up the runs, is it really all that much fun? Seems to me these affairs are like Mike Tyson fights of yore: exciting for a minute or two, but then all over. The Cubbies pounced on Jeff "Soup" Suppan, scoring six runs on him in the first, and licking their spoons for more. Soup managed to stagger through two more innings before getting yanked in the fourth, giving up 11 runs in the process. Hope he wasn't on your fantasy team. The next few pitchers managed to stanch the bleeding, until Derek Turnbow (when he's good, he's very very good, but when he's bad he's horrible), who coughed up six more runs in a mere two-thirds of an inning. Geovany Soto, a rising star among NL catchers, was the offensive monster here, with two three-run jacks. Final score: Cubs 19, Brew Crew 5.

Continue reading "The Night of the Blowouts"

Living in Portland, I've adopted the Mariners as my team. They're generally fun to root for, play at a good park, and succeed just enough for fans to feel like This Year Might Be The Year. But is it?

Seattle is a mid-market city, but the franchise thinks it's big-market, throwing out big contracts to guys like Richie Sexson, Adrian Beltre and Jarrod Washburn, all of them fair-to-middling players. Beltre signed his deal right after a season that just screamed "fluke!" and his numbers have shown as much. Sexson never was much good at anything but hitting the ball a country mile now and again. Both Sexson and Beltre are hard swingers with good power when they do make contact, but big K numbers when they don't.

But Safeco Field is a pitcher's park, and sluggers like these just don't belong. Give me a guy with Beltre's glove and solid gap power and a high average instead. And give me a first-baseman with plate discipline, a good glove, and occasional power. Don't overpay for power; this is a market and a ballpark that begs to be built around pitching and defense, but none of these three guys fit that model.

Continue reading "Season Prospects for the Mariners"

Mussina is on the hill today for the Yanks and, while I admire him and think he's a very good pitcher and a modest, intelligent, generally good fellow, I wonder about his Hall of Fame credentials. Dave Niehaus, the mellow-toned broadcaster, has repeatedly called him a shoo-in or a lock for the Hall during the game today, and it's made me wonder. To me, a player in the HOF represents someone who was genuinely and consistently feared (on the field, not off) during his career, the kind of pitcher that batters hated to face (and vice versa). And not for one year, but for several; you can be Sandy Koufax and be unhittable for four or five seasons (and merely outstanding for a handful more) or Nolan Ryan and be unhittable for twenty years.

But you can't be just really good for many years and make it into the Hall, and to me, Mussina fits this definition. He's got some strong career numbers, to be sure, 2600+ strikeouts and 250+ wins, one of a handful of pitchers to win ten or more games for fifteen straight years. Much of these stats, however, are due to his longevity and durability, a guy who's eaten innings with no major injuries for seventeen seasons. He played for some good teams, from the O's of the mid-nineties to the Yanks of the early oughties (those hard-to-name years in the first decade of this century/millennium), which have helped his win totals. His career WHIP, a measure of a pitcher's ability to throw strikes while missing bats, is 1.17, a very solid number. His five Gold Gloves are a good measure of his defensive excellence, and he's a five-time All Star (both awards, however, are often measures of popularity and/or tradition as much as merit)

Continue reading "Mike Mussina for the HOF?"

On the other site I write for, I got into it with a Phillies fan over the way Phils fans ride players right out of town. After defending Dick Allen, the irascible 60s slugger who earned nothing but scorn from Philly fans in spite of his powerful numbers, I offered some more modern examples of guys who have earned the scorn of Phillies fans. First was Abreu, a nice enough guy with a good eye and little pop and whose biggest flaw seems to be his tendency to take a walk, rather than swing at a pitch outside the zone. Phillies fans ran him out of town on a rail.

Then there's Burrell, who has often been booed but my Phillies counterpart insisted was now being roundly cheered. I expressed surprise, as IMHO Burrell was someone more deserving of a lusty boo than Abreu, as his production was lower. I was invited to compare the production of the two of them over the past three years, and was surprised at the result. Here's what I found: 

Continue reading "Pat Burrell vs. Bobby Abreu"

I've been a Yankees fan since the early nineties, pre-Showalter, pre-Torre, pre-post-seventies-World-Series-victories days, and it seems to me they're as vulnerable as they've ever been. I like Girardi, I like the New Steinbrenner regime that doesn't look to scour out every single prospect for the possibility of Winning Right Now--but I think they are (dare I say?) approaching those dreaded Rebuilding Years.

Look at the facts: their best players, from Jeter to Giambi to Damon and Rivera, are all at the tail ends of their careers. Other players--Matsui, Abreu, Posada, Pettitte--are certainly in their declining years. The core around which they have to rebuild include the league's best player (ARod, of course), one of its best pitchers (Wang), a passable center fielder (Melky Cabrera), a hack-and-slash second baseman (Cano) and a passel of young arms who are still maturing. Two of their best hitters--ARod and Posada--are on the DL, along with several pitchers and Superutilityman Wilson Betemit, gutting their offense just when guys like Cano and Damon are finding their stroke.  

Continue reading "Rebuilding the Yankees--A Good Thing?"

As the hurricane of destruction that is Roger Clemens' personal and professional life gathers strength like a tropical storm reaching the balmy waters of the Gulf of Mexico, the storm has enveloped its latest victim: country star Mindy McCready. The Daily News reported last week that Clemens had carried on a decade-long affair with McCready, a family friend, ever since she was fifteen and he twenty-eight. (I should add that I'm following the media designation of McCready as a "star," even though I couldn't pick her out of a lineup of McSteamy, Matthew McConaghey, and the McDonald's McRib. Then again, I don't really follow country music--more to the point, I run far, far away from it at every opportunity).

Clemens denied this affair, as he has denied everything else thrown at him in the past few weeks, hitting the metaphorical dirt more often since retiring than opposing batters did in dodging his deadly high-and-tight fastballs. While I don't believe everything that's said about hm is false, neither do I think that everything about him is true. In part because of his amazing career, especially in what were supposed to be his waning years, and in part because of his own inability to seem recalcitrant or even reasonable in the face of accusations that any neutral observer would find at least plausible, Clemens has become the whipping-boy for the entire Steroid Era. Much as McGwire received the bulk of the blame--and "bulk" is the appropriate word for the hulking redhead--for the sins of baseball players innumerable after his refusal to discuss his past in Congressional testimony, Clemens has become the latest guy for the media, Congress and the public to wag their collective fingers at.

Continue reading "Defending Clemens--Sort of"

I'm not one to tinker too much with the game, but if I were commish, czar, and supreme baseball deity all rolled up into one, I'd mandate the following changes:

1. Eliminate the fake-to-third-turn-to-first move by the pitcher. I've seen this work once, though it's done thousands of times and elicits boos every time from home fans (even if it's the home pitcher doing it). It's a stupid play, it should be a balk (its intention is to deceive the runner, which is the definition of "balk") and it looks plain foolish.

2. Eliminate the endless at-bat preparation. Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Willie Mays, Ty Cobb, and any of the other great hitters worked their magic without endless twitches and preparations before each at-bat. The Poster Child for this disorder, of course, is Nomar Garciaparra, and I wouldn't be surprised to find out that his fragility was due to a repetitive-motion disorder caused by his Rainman-like regime before each pitch. Get in the box and hit, man.

Continue reading "How I'd Change Baseball"

The Reds went all homer-happy over the Cubs last night, and Edinson Volquez twirled a gem on the mound, leading the Reds commentators and Steve Phillips on ESPN to go all gushy on them, proclaiming the future is now and they're gonna take the NL Central. Is this the case?

I was raised a Reds fan, and have a soft spot for guys like Griffey and Dunn (he of the Three True Outcomes--K, BB, or HR--at each at-bat) and like the scrappiness of Ryan Freel (whose dirty uniform covers up his light hitting and whose wall-crashing ways hurt him more often than they help the team) and Brandon Phillips, he of the revived career. Their starting pitchers do seem to be formidable, and Francisco Cordero should shut down the game, if they can get through the shaky bullpen in between.

Are they for real? Joey Votto is hitting out of his skull right now, and one wonders if his power will disappear as pitchers get a better handle on him. At least he's got the starting 1B job free and clear, after Dusty Baker's torrid love affair with Scott Hatteberg finally went sour (shortly after I dumped Votto from my fantasy squad, I should add). Griffey's had a slow start, but he should heat up as the weather does, in homer-friendly Great American Ballpark.

Continue reading "Here Come the Reds! (Really?)"

Baseball purists--and my brother in particular--may have freaked out when I suggested in my post of May 7 that all leagues adopt the DH. This is one of the Great Debates of the Modern Game, and I enter it whenever possible. Nobody seems on the fence on this issue; everyone either loves it or hates it. Me, I love it.

I think the DH argument ultimately comes down to a philosophical disagreement as to what baseball is "about"--is it really "about nine players who take their turns both in the field and at the bat," or is it really about watching a game that's as exciting and interesting as possible, one in which anything may truly happen, instead of a rigidly followed set of circumstances sometimes mistakenly called "strategy"?

Whether one accepts the DH comes down to whether one is a strict-constructionist, sticking passionately to some mythical original intention of Cartwright and his fellow early "base-ball" players (hey, we've eliminated the hyphen! Sacrilege!), or whether one is willing to offer some flexibility in order to recognize the changes that have occurred in the game, and react accordingly. In its substance, as well as its polarizing nature, the disagreement is akin to Constitutional debates about the supposed intention of our Founding Fathers, who had no notion of the internet, automobiles, space travel, or even a country where women could vote and nonwhite people were free from chattel slavery.

Continue reading "Defending the Designated Hitter"

Like half a million Americans, I subscribe to MLB's Extra Innings package, that wonderful addition to my basic package that allows me to watch more baseball than anyone ever thought possible. I call it "Baseball Heroin," as it's all too easy to sit for hours flipping between games, immobile, helpless to the draw of constant, and constantly changing, baseball.

This year has the added bonus of being able to watch either the home or away feed for a game, so I can tailor my watching to the team I like, or switch between the two to get a different perspective on a game. This somewhat ameliorates some of the problems DirecTV has been having this year with feeds--I'm one of the many, many people who woke up at 3AM on Opening Day in Japan . . . only to find that DirecTV's satellite problems were blacking out the broadcast. A handful of games later on in the season experienced this same problem, but these problems have been by and large small ones.

Continue reading "Saturday: The Black Hole of Baseball"

Two interesting things happened at the end of the Reds-Mets game today. Well, really it was only one thing, but it told me two interesting things. In the top of the ninth inning, trailing 8-3, the eighth spot of the Reds order was due up, and Dave Ross, who had entered the game as part of a double-switch in the bottom of the sixth inning, came to bat. He flied out to right, and Corey Patterson, who had entered in a double-switch in the bottom of the eighth inning, stepped up to the plate.

That's when things got interesting. Mets bench coach Jerry Manuel hopped up on the bench to get the ump's attention. When Ross entered the game in the sixth, he was in the ninth spot;as is typical in a double-switch, the pitcher moved into the spot vacated by the catcher Ross was replacing, which was also the eighth spot. Patterson had hit for the pitcher, which meant he was hitting in the eighth spot.

Continue reading "This Whole Team's Out of Order!"

I'm a Ryan Braun fan, and it's not hard to see why. He homered tonight for the fourth time in two games--two two-HR games in a row. Ever since he was brought up early last season, that's what he's done: hit the heck out of the ball. Doubles (he was second in the league last year with 13), home runs (his 34 last season put him in fifth place in the NL, and his 43 through the past two seasons is the fastest pace ever), both of these in spite of fewer than 500 ABs last year.

He has his detractors, and with a handful of good reasons.He's a streaky hitter, with the kind of K:BB ratio to support this. In 2007, he racked up 119 strikeouts against only 29 walks, a ratio approaching 4:1, about twice the acceptable level. This year, he's got 31 Ks and just 7 walks, a ratio above 4:1. His selection as last year's Rookie of the Year was tempered by his horrible defense at the hot corner, with 26 errors in only 112 games. This was the big reason why he was shifted to the OF this year, where he has yet to boot a ball.

Continue reading "The Brawn of Braun"

Much exuberant ink has been spilled over Asdrubal Cabrera's unassisted triple play in yesterday's Indians-Blue Jays game, only the fourteenth in MLB history. That rarity makes it memorable, but I'm not sure there's a ton of athleticism involved--the Unassisted Triple Play (or UTP for short) is more luck of circumstance than anything.

To set the stage: the Blue Jays had men on first and second, with nobody out in the fifth, the count 1-0. With both runners taking off on the pitch, Lyle Overbay (an excellent contact hitter) hit a sinking liner to Cabrera, who was racing towards second to cover the steal (or, perhaps, reacting to the ball). He scooped up the pitch off the dirt, then (instead of flipping the ball to Peralta, who was standing at short) he got up to tag the bag, then the runner. Unassisted triple play. 

Continue reading "The Not-So-Unassisted Triple Play"

One of the talked-about items in two of my fave teams (Reds and Mariners) is the possible return of Griffey to the place where he got his start. Seattle's been scouting him, and there's a bit of a buzz, but it's not much more than idle talk at this point, but it's an interesting feel-good possibility that could help out both teams. Let's look at the pros and cons and possible stumbling blocks:

Pros (Reds):

They get out from under Griffey. Whether it's a curse, bad luck, or some combination thereof, Griffey's stay in Cincinatti have taken him from sure-thing HOFer and Home Run King to injury-riddled Mr. What Might Have Been. He's still going to make the Hall and the 600 HR club, but his seven-plus seasons with the Reds have been a disappointment. His peak year was his first, where he appeared in 145 games and racked up 40 dingers, 118 RBI and 100 R, but it was a slight downtick. It was also his last fully healthy season with the Reds.

Continue reading "Junior Back in Seattle?"

Major League, one of the funniest baseball movies around, told the tale of the woeful Cleveland franchise, so mired in mediocrity that their owner sought to cash in on them finishing in the cellar. It seemed like a good bet. The hapless Cleveland franchise hadn't tasted the postseason since 1954, and hadn't won a world title since 1948, one of the longest pennantless streaks in baseball. But ever since that 1989 movie--wherein, of course, the built-to-fail Indians defied their owner's devious plans--their consistent failure hasn't been a good bet. 

A string of five straight postseason appearances through the nineties, including a World Series defeat at the hands of the Braves, has led to a more winning attitude. They reached the playoffs in 2001, only to lose to the Mariners, and then fell one out short of the World Series in last year's AL championship. 

Continue reading "Those Amazing Indians"

The Yankees have had many World Series champs, and many more All-Star players and all-time lineups. The 1927 Yankees pretty much set the bar for everyone else to follow, but there were some other memorable ones, too. The '36 Yanks, the first year of Joltin' Joe, and the last great one from Lou Gehrig, along with typically solid contributions by Bill Dickey, Tony Lazzeri and the usual cast of star Yankees.

Modern fans will point to the '98 squad, the quintessential working-man's team, with solid contributions up and down the lineup, and Jeter and Williams at their peaks, last hurrahs from Paui O'Neill and Daryl Strawberry and unusual contributions from Scott Brosius, plus the new addition of Knoblauch, before he was doomed by the Yankee Yips that ended his career.

Sometimes lost in the shuffle were the 1961 Yankees, probably because most people recall Maris and Mantle battling to overtake the Babe. But the rest of that team was equally solid--Elston Howard behind the dish, Yogi Berra in one of his last, best seasons, Whitey Ford and Ralph Terry twirling brilliant seasons on the mound. But dig a little deeper and you get to the infield. Can you name them? 

Continue reading "The Unsung Heroes of the 1961 Yankees"

When a guy gets named "Moose," you generally figure it's because he's a knucklehead or looks like he should be one. Bill Skowron had the lumpy face of a prizefighter, but he was generally known as a gentle giant with a smooth, opposite-field stroke. His nickname came from his Polish grandfather, who thought his haircut at one point reminded him of dictator Benito Mussolini. But Skowron wasn't any sort of dictator, just a good guy who could drive ball into the gaps.

Moose Skowron could play football and baseball--he was a punter at Purdue, but hit .500 his sophomore year, which both caught the attention of Yankee scouts and set a Big Ten record that wouldn't be broken for a decade. New York signed him in 1950, and he started playing as a platoon player in 1954, mostly at first base, with the occasional start across the diamond, or even two games at second. That first season, he showed his stuff by hitting .340/.392/.577. In time, he'd become a full-time first-sacker, never hitting more than 28 bombs in a season, but always good for a batting average around .300 and 80-90 RBIs.

Continue reading "Around The Horn With The '61 Yankees: 1B"

It's a well-known fact among baseball fans that your superstars can get you to the postseason, but winning it often requires production from unexpected places. Pitchers can pitch around your superstars, then relax on the lesser lights--who then proceed to knock the cover off the ball. Think Billy Hatcher of the surprising 1990 Cincinnati Reds, with his 7 straight hits to start their sweep of the heavily favored As. Or Jim Leyritz's massive blast to tie up Game 4 of the 1996 World Series and help the Yanks to "sweep back" the Atlanta Braves, winning four straight after dropping the first two. 

The 1961 Yankees, like their World Championship teams before and after, relied on second baseman Bobby Richardson, a defensive stalwart but light-hitting leadoff man. He formed an awesome double-play tandem with Yankees shortstop, and the 1961 infield was among the best ever, defensively speaking.

Continue reading "Around The Horn With The '61 Yankees: 2B"

I will pause my 'Round the Horn of the 61 Yanks to acknowledge yesterday's big story, and to contemplate what the Real Lead should be on the story.

Obviously, there's Jon Lester, two years removed from cancer, pitching not only the clinching Game 4 of last year's World Series sweep, but tossing a no-no, the first of this season. Lester struggled early this season and struggled in the bullpen before this start. He acknowledged feeling during warmups that he'd be lucky to get out of the first inning. Clearly, he got stronger as the game went along. Amazingly, it was the first complete game of his career.

Lester's no-no was the first by a Red Sox lefty in 52 years, but the eighteenth overall by Sox hurlers, second only to the Dodgers. Given the cozy dimensions of Fenway, as well as the more pitcher-friendly Chavez Ravine (where Los Angeles plays), that's a surprise. Half of the Boston no-nos have been at home, so perhaps it's time to reassess Fenway as a hitter's park. Of course, when you've got guys in your history like Smoky Joe Wood (one no-hitter), Cy Young (he threw two of Boston's clean-slaters and the team's only perfect game) and Dutch Leonard (who also tossed two), it's not hard to see how the no-nos can stack up.

Continue reading "No-no? Yes Yes!"

Yes, as tradition (and position numbering) dictates, I'm skipping SS to go to 3B first. The Yanks third sacker in that magical year of 1961 may have the most memorable name to Yankees fans (or at least to this one). Clete Boyer wasn't your modern third baseman, where the bat can so often outweigh the glove--general managers tend to look for guys to play the hot corner as if they're looking for a mirror-image third baseman, with perhaps a little less pop and a little more glove. Look at Ryan Braun, one of my fave players, and one of the best sluggers in the game. If he hadn't been hitting the commish's name off the ball last year, he'd have been sent down to the minors for his stone glove. Instead, he was voted Rookie of the Year.

Boyer would have scoffed at such poor defense at the hot corner. Along with Red Rolfe and Graig Nettles, Clete is among the best of Yankees third-sackers. Some would even say the best. Part of his problem was playing in the shadow of Brooks Robinson, the Hall of Famer, who won Gold Gloves even in years (like 1962) when Boyer led the league in assists. Then as now, Gold Gloves went to the better-known players, which means they go more often to those who can hit as well as field.

Continue reading "Around The Horn With The '61 Yankees: 3B"

Sorry for the Blog Pause--went out of town to the wedding of a friend of mine, but now I'm back and back strong, to conclude my review of the unsung heroes of the 1961 Yankees infield. We're finishing with that all-important position of shortstop, Tony Kubek, who was an anchor for that 1961 team, both in the field and at the plate. He's also one of the great woulda-coulda-shoulda players, someone that many argue would have been one of the greatest Yankee shortstops ever, had his career not been cut short by injury.

Kubek burst onto the scene in 1957, playing wherever manager Casey Stengel chose to put him--which was practically anywhere. The multitalented Kubek logged fifty games in the outfield, 38 at third, one at 2B, and 44 at his eventual position at short. He was voted Rookie of the Year in 1957, and proved his value by swatting two dingers in the third game of that year's World Series (one of only four rookies to ever do so), one which the Yanks would drop to Hank Aaron's Braves. 

Continue reading "Around The Horn With The '61 Yankees: SS"

It's been difficult to blog about the Ms this season, as I hate to add my voice (and bad-fan juju) to all the naysayers out there bemoaning Seattle's poor start (if one can call nearly two months of 14-games-under-.500, 11.5-games-out-of-first baseball a "start"). I'm not ready to write their season off just yet, nor am I calling for the head of John McLaren, but they have had me worried, scouring the dank bottomland of the weak AL East like a scrawny catfish on his last . . . er, fins.

But things look a little better after last night's dazzling performance by Erik Bedard, however, his first really dominating performance since April 26, when he shut down the Yankees in his first start since coming off the DL. Both of these wins were good news, as it's great to see a guy dominate two franchises like the Sox and Yanks (back when the New Yorkers were still playing good ball, anyway). Maybe it's time for a bit of excitement, the kind you get when you come home from work to find there's actually a message on your machine, and you're hoping it's from that hot babe you called last night, and not another robo-sales call from that carpet cleaning company.

Continue reading "Bedard is Back!"

Easily the biggest news anywhere in baseball this past week was the long-anticipated callup of Jay Bruce, savior-in-waiting for Cincinnati and #1 prospect by most of the writers in the Baseball America Prospect Handbook. With Cincy wallowing in last place in a revitalized NL Central that offers not only the surprising Cardinals, but also the resurgent Astros and the overachieving Bucs, it seems that Reds management is ready to bring out the big guns--or at least begin the rebuilding process. As further signal of the latter possibility, they called up Andy Phillips and sent down Corey Patterson, someone only a vet-lover like Dusty Baker still considered a serviceable outfielder.

While everyone's ready to anoint Bruce as this year's Ryan Braun, one of the many questions about bringing up Bruce now is how he will fare under Dusty Baker, not a manager known for nurturing youngsters. It was like pulling teeth for him to finally grant Joey Votto--the Reds' other uberprospect--the first-base job at the start of the season, and all Joey's done is hit .294/.362/.544 since then. Still, even the stubborn Baker had to see that a centerfield consisting of Corey "At Least I Run Fast" Patterson and Ryan "Demolition Derby" Freel wasn't going to cut it. (About the only nice thing about putting Freel in center is that it gives him fewer walls to smack into).

Continue reading "Cincinnati's Youth Movement"

With the strangehold that FOX has on Saturday afternoon baseball (see my earlier rant on this), I get the distinct pleasure today of watching the 23-31 Tigers muddle around the diamond with the 20-35 Mariners, a matchup with all the excitement of watching two toddlers tussle in the sandbox over a broken Tonka truck. I'm sure this looked like a good game during the preseason FOX schedule-making, but now it's barely enough to hold my interest.

But Seattle's my team, and I've got a soft spot for Jim Leyland's Tigers, so I'll make do with what I'm given, and see what develops. For starters, Mariners manager John McLaren has seen the light as far as Richie Sexson goes, and the lanky righty power hitter is getting well-deserved splinters in his butt for the fourth straight day. Sexson is hitting a moribund .200/.277/.413 with 17 walks against 53 strikeouts, a number exceeding his total of hits (31) and RBIs (21) for the season. Those are awful numbers for any player, let alone your cleanup hitter, let alone the second-highest paid guy on your roster.

Continue reading "Weak Saturday Baseball: Mariners vs. Tigers"