Reply With QuoteMy friend Dale, a big White Sox fan who lives in Central Washington, made it to see the game (he usually sees most of the games when the White Sox come to Seattle) so suffice it to say he was super happy.
--- Alan
Nice catch! The more you know!Originally Posted by nKoan
My friend Dale, a big White Sox fan who lives in Central Washington, made it to see the game (he usually sees most of the games when the White Sox come to Seattle) so suffice it to say he was super happy.
--- Alan
I only know cause I caught a side comment from a beat writer. I didn't remember it on my own.
If Brendan Ryan hadn't wanted to argue strike three (and yes, he's got a really good argument there, no denying that) and if he'd just run to first, he'd have likely been safe and broken up the perfect game.
That was hilarous.
And to answer your question, no. I'm a Tigers fan so, even discounting Valverde's perfect season last year, having been through Rodney, Jones, Urbina and Anderson, late inning situations are pretty calm and mild these days in comparison.
Helloooo, 9-game skid and worst record in MLB! You haven't left us!
Nice to see even with the fruits of MLB's "best farm system in years", we can still hang with the 2004-2006 KC squads. It needs more comedic flavor, though. Like cutoff men getting hit in the back with relay throws, outfielders leaping at the wall to try and rob fly balls that land on the warning track in front of them, and a manager sagely telling us "It can always get worse". That's how a pimpin' 100+ loss team rolls! The 2,3, & 4 hitters grounding into 4 DPs tonight was nice, but we really need to botch things more spectacularly. Yuni sometimes tries, what with his spine-splint-and-waders second baseman's kit, but he's currently also the team's best hitter. Gotta try a lot less harder than that. I won't be satisfied until I at least see someone tripping over the chalk line!
On a side note, it's a good thing for the writers at Leno, Letterman, etc. that the Red Sox have been almost as awful as us. Now when Jay or Dave make sports teams jokes normally befitting the Royals, they can instead use a team most of their audience knows of.
"Our time."
Having just watched one of the hottest former prospects in baseball more or less bust, I think front offices and fans are over rating the value of prospects right now. Background, Indians are out of playoff contention and have CC Sabathia for one more year before he hits the open market and they cannot afford him. So, the Milwaukee Brewers send the Indians their super slugging prospect Matt LaPorta and the usual handful of lesser prospects. Some commentators thought the Indians had robbed Milwaukee with jedi mind tricks in the trade. Now, several years later its clear while LaPorta can hit for power, he can't really hit, especially at the major league level. He finished 2011 with a wRC+ of 95 (which means he generated 5% less offense than an average MLB). That might be acceptable if he didn't play first base (and not that well). He actually does just fine in AAA, but for some reason just can't make that final leap.
Anyways, trading prospects for proven talent still under friendly contracts is probably the winning move right now. I mean, every major league player goes through the minor league system, including superstars, so there is always that chance that a team is giving away the next superstar, but more likely a promising prospect is just another average MLB player. Also, KC seriously needs some pitching improvements.
Exactly my thought. Oh well, not like Humber will get an asterisk next to his entry in the record books for it.
You just never know till the guy is called up and in the Show. Brandon Belt, whom is suppose to be the next Giants superstar first baseman is still having a really tough time. He was a monster this spring and has been so in AAA but also just can't seem to make the transition. It also doesn't help he gets yanked in and out of the lineup constantly but he also hasn't proven he deserves it full time either.
Watching the highlights of the perfect game on MLB.com:
http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/gameday/index...b_1&mode=video
You can see that Humber, after throwing the final strike, urges Brendan Ryan to run for first. Or it might just be him urging the catcher on to throw it to first. I think it looks like the former, though.
But it was against the Mariners!
He's definitely urging the catcher. There's no particular reason why you'd want to urge the batter to do anything in this situation except go back to his own dugout like a puppy that got smacked like a rolled-up newspaper.
--- Alan
I got immersed in the hockey playoffs yesterday, so I didn't even know about the perfect game, and stopped caring about the Yankees / Red Sox game at 9-0 Bosox. So I missed the Yankees scoring 7 in the 7th, and 7 in the 8th, and a lot of shots of Bobby Valentine thinking "man, what did I get myself into here?" in the dugout.
Hey, Texas is playing really well, surprise!
Beyond that, the White Sox being higher than Detroit is a bit of a surprise, but the White Sox haven't run into the absolutely rampaging Texans yet. Houston being ranked 5th is also unsustainable. Right now, the list in general suffers from a to small sample size. I think the most games any team has is 17. Something I find interesting: 17 games while being completely inadequate to quantify the true skill level of MLB teams, is more than the entire NFL regular season. Admittedly, the NFL is a different sport with less randomness and parity, but not that different. Something to keep in mind when you hear these week by week truisms like player Smith has no confidence, or team City is bonding, etc.
Code:Rank TEAM TSWP PE_EFW 01 TEX 78.3% 131.6 02 STL 66.4% 119.0 03 ATL 64.6% 107.2 04 CHW 64.5% 97.9 05 HOU 60.8% 89.0 06 WAS 59.8% 100.5 07 DET 57.2% 88.0 08 FLA 53.4% 85.2 09 NYY 52.7% 97.5 10 LOS 52.2% 95.4 11 TOR 49.1% 90.1 12 NYM 49.0% 71.5 13 BAL 48.3% 79.1 14 CLE 48.1% 84.0 15 MIL 48.1% 73.5 16 SEA 47.7% 67.8 17 TAM 46.4% 80.2 18 CIN 46.4% 63.1 19 COL 45.1% 76.8 20 ARI 44.1% 75.0 21 SFO 44.1% 81.0 22 PHI 42.8% 76.0 23 OAK 42.0% 76.0 24 ANA 41.5% 75.1 25 BOS 41.1% 55.9 26 CHC 41.1% 55.9 27 SDG 40.8% 66.7 28 MIN 37.8% 53.0 29 PIT 37.0% 58.0 30 KAN 35.2% 55.3
Actually the first series Texas played was against the White Sox.
For the Rangers this week, it's been a fairly decent week. We couldn't eek out a win against Verlander in the doubleheader on Saturday, though they made him work a bit and I think the perception that they just want to swing away all the time might have deceived them in this game. The Rangers can work the count as good as anyone, but the opponent is throwing first ball strikes just to get the hitters in a hole, why not swing then?
First major injury happened with Beltre; he knows his hammys pretty well and he doesn't think it's too serious, but he'll probably miss a week or so I figure (just blue skying) and will be sorely missed against the Yankees starting tomorrow. Gonzalez has been an interesting replacement, but he's no Beltre. I expect some infield movement throughout the week with Young playing third on occasion. Hamilton continues to hit well in the daytime and powered a 460+ foot home run against Minnesota earlier this week. Murphy has cooled off a bit, but Cruz seems to be hitting better and Napoli caught some serious fire. They're running the bases a bit more now, though at times perhaps over-aggressively (got thrown out twice today, saw Gentry get waaay too greedy and tried to go to third on an errant run-down throw, got gunned down easy).
Starting pitching has been decent. Darvish is still struggling with command and it's going to get him into trouble before too long. 5-6 walks per game is not going to go over well if the other team can hit you (they haven't been thankfully but that will change). He's showing some stamina early on (he and Feliz have gone over 100+ pitches this week) and the theme of the week has seemed to be one really bad inning for everyone, and after that it's good. The bullpen has been decent, except Uehara yet again gave up runs (I swear can we please get rid of him), Ross proved he's vulnerable (yet won again today in relief) at least, and friggin' Nathan.. argh. He's a time bomb. I know it. Can this guy just not have a 1-2-3 inning? He nearly had a disaster today and was a few feet from giving up a walk-off home run.
Speaking of today, that game was... yikes. I wish we hadn't won the game in that fashion, and it was pretty unfortunate it happened the way it did. Of course it's impossible to say what would have happened after they had ruled the ball dead, which is what should have happened... perhaps he would have hit a sac fly or gotten a hit, and the whole point would be moot anyway. It does leave kind of a sour taste since it was such an excellent game.
--- Alan
Years ago, my wife walked in on me watching an epic Phillies pen meltdown. They called Jose Mesa in to try to close it out, and she started at the TV in open-mouthed horror. "That's Joe Table. Why are they putting in Joe Table? What did the other reliever do wrong? It couldn't have been that bad, could it?"
Was Pete Happy playing third base?
Worse. Tomas Perez.
http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2...010PHI2003.htm
Mind you, I was doped out of my mind on pain pills the entire game, which was probably the best way to watch that particular contest.
Before Pete Happy's "time".
Wow, that's underselling it quite a bit. They went 8-1 to have their best road trip ever, taking 3 out of 4 from one of the top teams in the AL. They put up 10+ runs 3 times against Boston and Detroit and also won some really low scoring, close games. Their bullpen outside of Uehara is unhittable and their starters are currently the best in the league. Their team ERA is 2.48 and their starters are 10-1. Right now, they're the best team in the league by a wide margin with no real weaknesses.
It's early season and I hate overselling my team. I mean yeah it's been great so far. Hard to really complain about most things.
This will be a big 19 games coming up--they'll go through the rest of the AL East sans Boston starting with the Yankees tonight and then Tampa Bay, Toronto and Baltimore before the first series of the year against LAA.
--- Alan
Oh and Pudge Rodriguez is retiring today, and as a Ranger, which I'm completely happy about. I remember him coming up, super-young, and everyone that saw him even previously could tell he had amazing potential for someone so youthful. He was one of those great touted prospects in a farm system that actually came up and fulfilled pretty much every expectation and more. Great offensively and superb defensively. There aren't many catchers who could get away with doing snap throws to first as on target and effortlessly as he could. And he was great throwing out runners as well.
--- Alan
Looks like the Yankees "problem" of "too many starting pitchers" is working itself out quickly, heh. Pineda looks like he's gone for a while, Garcia's been horrible, Hughes has been shaky, and CC is off to a slow start. Pettitte can't come back fast enough, and you might even see the Yankees dip into their farm system for starting help.
That's how you celebrate a sweep that goes against you.
Long-time Royals blogger and BP alum Rany Jayzerli just pretty much ragequit the Royals. If memory serves, Joe Posnanski and Rob Neyer and Bill James have all done the same at various points. It's astonishing how much writing talent has been driven over the edge by that team.
I remember when I was like 7 or 8, my parents wanted to take me to my first Sacramento Kings game. In complete earnest, I asked if I should bring a book in case I got bored.
I totally sympathize with that guy. I know how it feels.
Teams that lose 100+ games are the best. Every fan gets his own beer man.
I was hearing on the radio today that the Mets had all of a thousand people turn out for the beginning of their afternoon game the other day.
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