Padres 5, @Mariners 4: Hang on, I’ll think o’ something….
- Everth Cabrera had the 13th known game with at least 3 steals and a triple, but no more than 1 run scored, and just the 2nd such game since 1991. Of the others, special mention goes to Tony Scott, who did it with 5 hits, including a double (1979-05-09); and to Vince Coleman, who had 2 hits, a walk and four steals, but never scored in a shutout loss to the Mets (1986-06-30).
- Among Padres with at least 20 games, Cabrera’s .278/.352/.468 ranks 1st in BA, 2nd in OBP and SLG.
- In 8 games, Logan Forsythe has reached safely 14 times, with a HR, 2 triples and a double — and scored just twice.
- Streaky: That’s a 6.37 ERA in the last 6 starts by Felix Hernandez, with almost 2 baserunners per inning. In his first 7 games, he had a 1.89 ERA and sub-1 WHIP.
- Last dozen games for Michael Saunders: 23 for 51, 3 HRs, 7 doubles, lifting his OPS+ to 134 in 60 games.
- In their past 6 years, the Mariners have been last (4 times) or next-to-last in AL walks. They’re up to 10th this year, with a 12% improvement over last year. Every little bit helps.
@Dodgers 5, Angels 2: Through 2 outs in the home 8th, it was all about Jerome Williams. He’d held LA to a run on 4 singles, while contributing to both of his own team’s runs. But he put the noose around his own neck with a 4-pitch walk to A.J. Ellis (his 35th in 50 games). His 101st pitch became a tying single by Andre Ethier; his next and last was a chest-high fastball to Juan Rivera, who apparently likes that sort of thing. And the Dodgers became the first team with 40 wins.
- It’s the 2nd time since 1983 that they’ve had 40 wins this quickly. The last 9 times they had 40+ wins by game 63, they made the playoffs.
- LA’s 6 hits, 5 Runs and 5 RBI all came from the top 4 in their lineup.
- The team from Anaheim still leads this rivalry, 51-37.
Athletics 8, @Rockies 5: Colorado has dropped 6 straight and all 7 against AL foes this year.
- Jeremy Guthrie (5 IP, 7 R, 3 HR) has allowed 9 HRs in 28.1 IP in Coors Field, and has yielded 48 runs in 56 IP over all. If only there were some way to identify HR-prone pitchers before importing them to Denver….
- The Brandon Brigade (Inge & Moss) batted 5th & 6th and accounted for 3 of Oakland’s 4 HRs, including Moss’s first 2-HR game.
- He finally hit a solo HR, but Brandon Inge is still having a “Mark McGwire” season: More RBI (28) than hits (25). There have been 18 prior seasons with 25+ hits and more RBI than hits; McGwire had 4, including the only such year with 100+ RBI, while nobody else had more than one.
- Put that in your humidor and smoke it: Rockies hurlers have allowed 47 HRs in 34 home games, tops in the NL. Stir in a .310 BA and the league’s 2nd-highest walk total, and bake until you’ve allowed 6.4 runs per game.
@Giants 6, Astros 3: Madison Bumgarner became the first pitcher to hit a home run while striking out 12 or more since Sept. 29, 2000, when Chan Ho Park tossed his first shutout (2 hits, 13 Ks) and hit his 2nd HR of the year the 2nd run of a 3-0 win. Bumgarner himself put the ball in play in all 3 ABs.
- Cheap Save Alert! Santiago Casilla got 1 out with the tying run kneeling on deck. Give him another million bucks! It’s the 2nd such cheapie in 4 days for Casilla, who owns 4 of the 13 lowest WPA saves this year.
- Or maybe the tying run was standing on deck, not kneeling. It’s hard to be sure, with Jose Altuve….
- But I guess Bochy had a schedule to keep: That makes 4 straight years that the Giants’ closer had exactly 17 saves through 62 team games. Brian Wilson did it from 2009-11. (Wilson had just 16 in 2008, the bum. Rod Beck holds the franchise mark with 19 saves through 62 games in 1997, though it proved to be more than half his total for that season. He and Wilson share the club season record of 48 saves.)
- The Panda is just 1 for 11 since his return. But as long as Melky is for them, who can ever be against them? The MelkMan’s 89 hits through 62 team games (he missed the previous 3) are the most by a Giant since 1958 (Willie Mays).
- For the 22-and-under set, Bumgarner is the active leader in IP by 413 to 150, in Starts by 65 to 25, and in Wins by 28 to 7.
_______________
Nationals 4, @Blue Jays 2: Jose Bautista homered, doubled, and reached in all 4 trips — but the rest of the Jays got just 3 singles, none with RISP. Starter Chien-Ming Wang allowed 10 runners in 5 IP, but his backup band retired 12 of 13.
- I don’t know if Wang or southpaw Ross Detwiler (first out of the ‘pen tonight) is the better option for Washington’s #5 starter, but it’s a luxury to be able to start one and use the other in long relief. Detwiler has yet to spend a full year in the majors, but he has a 101 career ERA+ in 227 IP (116 since 2011). Used mostly as a starter this year, he’s held lefties to 7 hits in 53 ABs, making a smart followup to Wang, whose career OPS split skews 130 points towards lefties. Tonight he retired all 5 batters, 3 of them lefties, then gave way to Craig Stammen when Bautista came up (notwithstanding JB’s abnormal struggles with southpaws this year).
- Henderson Alvarez began the night with better-than-normal results when batters put the first pitch in play: his .293 BA was 32 points below the AL mark, with just 1 HR and a .707 OPS that’s 152 points below the league. This is what you might expect of a pitcher with decent success despite the world’s lowest K rate. But tonight, he gave up first-pitch HRs to Bryce Harper and Danny Espinosa in consecutive innings, both with 2 out. The 3rd HR off Alvarez came on an 0-2 pitch; he’s allowed 16 HRs in 86 IP, 5 of them with 2 strikes. But those 16 HRs have plated just 20 runs, partly because he never walks anybody (1.9 BB/9).
- Harper (4-1-3-1) now at .307/.390/.553. And this shot was juicy; it even sounded long gone.
@Orioles 8, Pirates 6: Like the first game these clubs ever played, the Bucs struck first, but the O’s came back with a 3-HR fusillade and won by 2.
- Adam Jones (5-2-4-2) had his first 4-hit game this year along with his 18th HR.
- Pittsburgh scored 6+ runs for just the 8th time, last in MLB and 10 below the median.
Mets 11, @Rays 2: What a difference an off day makes. Against the AL’s ERA-leading team, New York bagged a season high in runs. Their 6-run 7th, their biggest inning this year, started with 2 out and none on, and it began with a walk to a non-HR hitter. Then came Jordany Valdespin‘s double inside of 1st, his second 2-out RBI hit; an IBB to David Wright to set up a left-on-left matchup; a crazy massé cue shot to load the bases; a 2-run bloop by Daniel Murphy, who’d fanned in his first 3 trips and hitting .192 in his last 22 games; and for the capper, a full-count, 3-run blast by Ike Davis, his first circuit clout since May 11 and just his second 3-and-2 hit in 26 ABs this year.
- In his first trip, Davis dropped a bunt single against the shift — his first bunt of any kind in almost 1,000 big-league PAs, according to B-R.
- Valdespin has just 7 hits, but 10 RBI.
- Five Mets relievers totaled 3.2 IP, and none allowed a hit or run. Their previous high in this regard was 3.
- The only down side: the Mets’ win gave the Yanks a solo grip on first place.
Yankees 6, @Braves 4: Speaking of big innings … Mike Minor had his best game of a rocky season and turned over a 4-0 lead with 1 out and a man on in the 8th. But Jonny Venters fell behind all 4 batters, retiring none — single, walk, grand slam by A-Rod, single — and Nick Swisher broke the tie with a 1-and-0 HR off the new reliever.
- You see, Venters is the 8th-inning guy — so it doesn’t matter that he began the night with a .339 BA/.438 OBP against righties, or that the untouchable Craig Kimbrel (2 hits in his last 12 IP) hadn’t pitched in 2 days. Anyway, the rules don’t allow your closer to pitch more than one inning — Kimbrel has gotten exactly 3 outs in all 23 games this year, and hasn’t gone more than an inning in his last 95 games — so what’s a manager to do?
- CC Sabathia gave up all 10 hits and all 4 runs, but he kept the ball in the yard and rewarded his manager’s faith by retiring Jason Heyward and Chipper Jones with men aboard to end the 7th, and so he caught the win. It was the 10th time in 13 starts that the Yanks scored at least 5 runs for him, putting him once again in the top 10 in run support. He’s 8-3, 3.80 this year, and 67-26, 3.25 in 114 Yankee starts. And he’s 21-8 in 42 career interleague starts.
- Win #184 tied Sabathia with Greg Maddux for the 10th-most wins through age 31 in the live-ball era (15th since 1901).
- That’s 23 salamis for A-Rod, in 232 ABs. Seems like that number rings a bell.
@Reds 7, Indians 1: Johnny Cueto pitched the Redlegs back into sole possession of first place with his 2nd CG this year, both without a walk. He threw 81 strikes and lowered his walk rate to 1.95 BB/9, a career best. After a leadoff double by Shin-Soo Choo, Cueto allowed just 5 singles the rest of the way, only one of whom reached 2nd base.
- Last year, Joey Votto reached just 6 times in 6 games against the Tribe, 5 of them losses. Tonight he got aboard in 3 of 5 trips, including a 2-run HR on a 2-0 count that opened up a 4-1 lead in the 7th. He was ahead in the count each time up. When ahead this year, he’s hitting .427 and slugging well over .800. Just as important is the frequency: Votto has been ahead in more than half his PAs, compared to an AL average (to weed out most pitchers) of under 35%. The HR gave him the MLB lead with 37 extra-base hits.
- Votto’s career .358 BA on balls in play is tops among the 218 active players with at least 2,000 PAs.
@Royals 2, Brewers 1: Holding a 1-0 lead since Alex Gordon’s 1st-inning HR off Zack Greinke, KC gave up the tying run in the 7th on an odd sequence: Ryan Braun led off with a single to deep 3B, Milwaukee’s first hit, and reached 3rd on 2 throwing errors on the same play. After a walk, Braun challenged Gordon’s arm on a fly to left — perhaps thinking of Rickie Weeks on deck (.158, 72 Ks) — and was cut down at the plate. (Does AL news not reach Milwaukee? Gordon led the majors with 20 OF assists last year.) But Weeks came through anyway, tying the game with an RBI single. Top of the 9th, enter “K-Rod” (quotes ironic): Double, sacrifice, single, lead restored.
- The Crew got the tying to 3rd with 1 out in their half, but Jonathan Broxton came up with a clutch (and increasingly rare) strikeout, then a groundout to end it. Broxton has had no Ks in 10 of his 17 save chances; through last year, just 25 of his 117 career save opps had been strikeout-free.
- Francisco Rodriguez (291 career saves) was the youngest ever to 100 saves (age 24), 150 (26), 200 (ditto), and 250 (28). Will he reach 300? He has just 1 in 61 games since joining Milwaukee last year, and it’s hard to see him getting another closing chance with his current 1.54 WHIP and 4.50 ERA.
@Rangers 9, Diamondbacks 1: Held to a run on 4 hits through 5 innings, Texas erupted for 8 and 10 in their last 3 at-bats. Colby Lewis went the distance, allowing a solo HR; his 15 HRs allowed have scored just 19 runs, as he’s held foes to a .179 BA with RISP.
- Craig Gentry (3-1-1-2) is hitting .340 with a .413 OBP in 110 PAs. Adding fine CF defense, often as a late replacement, he’s around 2 WAR in roughly half-time play — 6th in MLB among players with 50 games or less.
- It was the 11th time Texas scored 9 runs or more, tied with Atlanta for the most in MLB. The Rangers are 16-6 in blowouts (margin of 5+), 20-20 otherwise.
@Twins 11, Phillies 7: Minnesota matched their season high in runs, scoring in 6 of their 8 times up, with at least 1 hit in every inning. They’ve won 10 of 13, while the Phils’ slide reached 9 out of 10, dropping them 9 games behind the Nationals … but only 5 behind the second wild card.
- In his return to Target Field, Jim Thome went 4-1-2-2 with a walk. He had a .955 OPS there in over 300 PAs there in the past 2 years. He still owns the season and career HR records there, with 15 and 22; no current Twin has more than 14 career or 9 in a season (both by Danny Valencia).
@Cubs 4, Tigers 3: Chicago’s game-winner scored on consecutive throwing errors by SS Jhonny Peralta, who had made just 2 errors all year. Darwin Barney drove in the first 3 runs, then drew a walk from Phil Coke to set up the game-winner. Starlin Castro was 0-for-5 with 3 Ks, but his grounder brought home the winning run. Carlos Marmol got the win. Max Scherzer (88 Ks in 70.1 IP) has a 5.76 ERA. Just an all-around nightmare for your humble narrator.
Regarding Braves-Yanks……..are we EVER again going to see a multi-out save that isn’t some sort of blowout game?
OVER-managing at its finest as usual.
But wait — what about after the slam? Would you really rather see Kimbrel pitch in a tie game than Cory (7.08 career ERA) Gearrin? You’re gonna have to break it down for me. I know tie games have something called high leverage, but….
Those righty splits for Venters are in 73 PA.
His career righty splits are:
.218 .327 .267 .594
His career era+ before that homer was 193.
I’m on board with the point you’re making about the stupid way that relievers are used nowadays, but Atlanta has got two good relievers and Venters is one of them.
But yeah, I have no idea what they were doing bringing in Gearrin.
It’s fun to be a Yankee fan this week, I’ll tell you that.
We were writing the same thing at the same time. See my #5.
I’m still not 100% convinced that Venters’s troubles this year are just a small sample size. He’s already yielded 4 HRs, which is more than his first 2 years combined. He’s thrown 4 wild pitches, as many as either of his first 2 years. And his troubles started last year down the stretch, allowing 9 runs and a 1.81 WHIP in his last 15 games, with at least 1 run in 7 of those games.
But yeah, it’s at least arguable.
Venters had actually had a good stretch before last night’s game(0 ER and only 2 hits in his last 6 appearances)—and Eric O’Flaherty was unavailable due to minor injury last night. So I don’t mind Venters coming in right there, although it was pretty obvious he didn’t know where the plate was right off the bat. Get him out of there quickly when he’s that off.
As for Gearrin coming in after that, that decision cannot be defended. If you can’t bring in Kimbrel after Minor, certainly you should try him after Venters has coughed up the lead. Or bring in Christhian Martinez. Or Chad Durbin, who’s essentially become the ROOGY out of the Braves bullpen. But a rookie who had pitched two innings the night before???? Come on.
My point is…….pitchers are babied. Why can’t a guy who, obviously is the best late-inning guy a team has, since he is a team’s closer, pitch more then one inning anymore? Drives me crazy when a team plays a loooong game and runs out of pitchers, because Mr. Over-Manager (pick any of them) has to bring them all in for ONE INNING, which generally consists of no more then 14-17 pitches. And HEAVEN FORBID something like a first-pitch bases-loaded double play ball. THAT’S IT, HOLY HELL THE GUY IS GASSED!!!!!
I’m not basing my post on THAT PARTICULAR GAME…..I am basing it on just about ALL of them.
After Sabathia’s final inning of work he was losing 4-0… and got the win.
Since 1901, there are 30 pitchers with at least 50 career wins and wins in at least half their games. CC is the 15th to do that with the Yankees.
I take nothing away from CC, who has earned the right to finish that inning and snarf up the cheap win. And he did get out of the bases-loaded, one out jam about as effectively as a reliever might have (1 run on a groundout).
But yeah, sometimes it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.
Getting back to that Yankee rally, though: Even though I leveled the sarcastic criticism of letting Venters face A-Rod, I can at least see the argument that Venters was great against RHBs the last 2 years, with just 1 HR combined.
But once the game was tied, with the go-ahead run on base, how can you go with Cory Gearrin? Yeah, he was great at AAA this year — but he was great there last year, too, yet he stunk it up in the majors. He’s pitched one game with the big club this year — and it was the day before, throwing 32 pitches in 2 innings against the Yanks, allowing 3 hits and a walk. He faced Swisher then, and walked him on 5 pitches. Tonight he fell behind Swish, then got tatered.
I don’t get it at all.
The Braves fans’ growing lynch mob to fire Frediot Gonzalez heartily agrees with you. I haven’t lit my torch yet, but I’m strongly considering it after the Gearrin decision last night and seeing Livan Hernandez in a similar high-leverage tie game lose a game less than a week ago.
Yeah, seeing Kimbrel come in and try to get 5 outs there would have been a blast to watch, AND it was the right move.
The problem is locking relievers into certain innings. I own’t pick on Gonzalez since it’s basically all managers who do this. An argument can be made that any chance the Yankees had to win the game was in the 8th and Kimbrel should have been brought in to lock snuff out any opportunity, and to face A-Rod. Venters might have been the better choice pitching all or part of the 9th after the 8th was shut down.
*won’t*
Although own’t looks like it could be a real word/contraction.
Here down South, it is a word.
“You own’t a pick on Fredi Gonzalez, MikeD, since basically all managers do this.”
So, will the game be stopped, a plaque presented, etc. on A-Rod’s next grannie? Especially if at home.
Or, will it be like Maris and 61 HR – more a feeling of loss than anything else?
And will he start using a special commemorative bat in every bases-loaded AB?
Never mind that, what’s with this crazy trend of fans giving back historic HR balls to the players that hit them? Okay, it’s only two, which isn’t quite a trend, but there was the guy who caught Jeter’s HR ball for hit #3,000 last year, and tonight there was some Yankee fan (all of 15 years-old) who caught A-Rod’s grandslam ball in his cap, and then returned it to Rodriguez. Stop it. Stop it now.
I have no idea what that ball is worth. Certainly less than Jeter’s ball, which was valued in excess of 150K, but let’s guess and say maybe it’s worth 20K. I could be way off in either direction. But the ball belongs to the fan. This young fan should not be giving away something that could help pay for his college education.
Don’t give away your property to players making millions upon millions of dollars.
Stop.The.Insanity.
It’s ridiculous.
Besides the “this will pay for my education” aspect, there’s the “I have a piece of baseball history here at home.” Sorry Jetes, you wouldn’t have gotten the ball back from me. Maybe Cooperstown can buy it and put it on display…
IIRC this started with McGwire in 1998. There was a glowing encomium in SI (probably written by Rick Reilly, he was long their go-to guy for florid say-nothing krep) about “the giant who swatted pearls into the heavens” or some-such bunkum. The story described the mere mortals who caught the more notable pearls as being touched by some magical sense of nobility and simply giving them back to the man who’d hit them. “It would have burned a hole in my heart to keep it,” the story quotes one of the men saying.
Horseradish. Those “pearls” are gifts to the fan who catches them. If it truly makes them happiest to return them, well, I won’t object to their generosity – but to make it expected and treat it as the only decent thing to do is too much for me.
I seem to remember the guy who caught #62 was brought onto the field at some point and got to say a few words into a microphone. I was so hoping he would do Rodney Dangerfield at the end of Caddyshack and say “We’re all gonna get laid!”
A guy named Sal Durante caught Roger Maris’ 61st home run. He offered to return it to Maris for free but it turned out that Sam Gordon, a Sacramento restaurant owner, had made a public offer to pay $5,000 to the person who caught the ball. Gordon flew to NY to present the check to Durante on a CBS-TV program. He, Gordon, promised to then give the ball to Maris in the near future. I don’t know if he did. Durante was also presented with two season passes for 1962 by Yankee owner Dan Topping. He also received a free round-trip to the 1962 World’s Fair in Seattle.
I’m not sure where Maris’ HR-61 ball is. I do see a few references that suggests Gordon gave the ball to Maris years later after he was finished displaying it at his restaurant, and that Maris then gave it to the HOF, but it’s not entirely clear. Anyone been to the HOF and remember seeing the ball there? I don’t.
I can tell you for a fact that it’s not at the Roger Maris Museum in Fargo, ND. There are many balls that he hit, including several home run balls from the ’61 season but not the actual 61st home run ball.
In honor (or not) of you-know-who:
The morning was used for nutrition. It was tedious but important in his profession.
He rose from the table and peered out the floor-to-ceiling window. The view was expansive. Bridges. Boroughs. The sweep of a world capital. The weather was good. They would definitely play tonight. How many citizens in the heaving, ravenous city below would be on hand? A sell-out, a full house expecting him to perform, to put on a show. He would leave them all rapt, in thrall, mesmerized. Today belongs to crowds.
It was time. He called down for his car. The elevator opened at the base of his own visage in the marble Mt. Rushmore of pinstriped immortals he’d had carved in his foyer. He descended from his pennanthouse.
As he entered the lobby he thought about his image – the projected one, the pixilated portrait that appeared on the Jumbotron before every at-bat. He was dissatisfied with it. Could Warhol redo it? No, Warhol was dead. A foul-up in the hospital, he recalled. Basquiat? Dead too. He’d have to find someone new. Someone who could also do the monument, later.
The stretch was out front. His head of security greeted him.
“You will face traffic. Of biblical proportions. The pope is in town.”
He nodded and bent down into the car. Screens streamed a loop of last night’s at-bats and the deliveries of today’s opposing pitcher. His sports psychologist was on a video link-up from Kyoto. The car crawled forward. At 70th St. his physician climbed in. The procedure was painful but it was needed. Spinal taps. Probings. Injections. A cocktail twenty times the potency of anabolics. It promised a reversal. His pace had slowed. Not long ago he had seemed to break a record, pass a fellow immortal, nightly. But there was decline. A slowing down. A contact in Switzerland had made the arrangements. Untraceable in his blood and urine. And guaranteed to remain so for twenty years. He had been told – his sources were solid – that by then baseball would be no more. The records: they would all be his. And the balls, their emblems: they would be wanted. His operatives…he would have them.
His head of security knocked on the tinted window.
“We have a situation…reports of…a threat.”
There was a pause. “Credible?”
“Not to be dismissed. From Seattle.”
He was pleased. Hasn’t he always been a target? Of envy, speculation, high heat. That mustn’t stop. The car inched forward. He hopped out at a hotel. She was a fan. His biggest. He liked to meet her before games. She pillow-talked advanced statistics. OPS+. WAR. ISO. Afterward he looked at his watch. It calculated his lifetime average out to twelve digits beyond the decimal point. He returned to the car.
In Harlem his head of Jeterology jumped in.
“The Captain. I’m thinking, mmm, the connotations. Of the term itself. Leadership. Command. The appeal of – America. Courageous. Kangaroo. But, too, the others. Ahab. Bligh.”
“The Titanic guy.”
“Yes, the Titanic guy. Sinking. Going down with the ship. It’s…”
The rocks came suddenly then at the windshield. A fusillade of stones, bricks, baseball bats, Swiss Army knives. The limo was smashed. The roof torn open like a tin can. It hit him in the head. Something solid. Steel. A rod.
Words fail me. I feel like the character B.D. in a very early Doonesbury strip, asking Mike:
“What’s the topic of your biology term paper?”
— “Juxtabranchial Secretions in the Higher Mollusks. What’s yours?”
“Our Friend, the Beaver.”
John,
You flatter me, but it’s just a goof on DeLillo (mostly Cosmopolis, but with bits of Mao II and Pafko at the Wall thrown in). I wanted to work in Gleason and J. Edgar somehow, but I didn’t have the time – I knocked this off in between phone conferences – and didn’t want to try all of your guys’ patience too much.
By the way, the early Doonesbury reference is much appreciated, and the particular one you quoted remains deathlessly funny.
tag:
Re A-Rod, the term narcissistic, auto-eroticizing fool comes to mind. When NY played the Phillies in the WS in 2009, A-Rod “foul-taps” a pitch in the vicinity of the plate, 10 feet up the 3rd base line. While the umpire throws the pitcher a new ball, A-Rod checks out his “visage” on the jumbo-tron as he trots to the abandoned ball. Still viewing himself on the jumbo-tron, he watches his own golf swing as he taps the ball to the bat boy: “Asshole in One”….(sorry)
No need for the co-op/condo lobby to have an A-Rod statue in pinstripes, he already has the “Alex as the Centaur” oil on canvas above his bed.
Not for anything, I have yet to see Swishalicious not check himself out on available “big screens” on every pitch on each AB
Paul E,
I missed that sequence but I can fully imagine it. Somebody who used to rub me the same way but has changed enormously, and all for the better, is Andre Agassi. Maybe there’s hope for ARod after all.
Though, if that centaur picture really exists, probably not. I always thought the story was apocryphal. Man, I doubt even DeLillo could do justice to that.
Great stuff, tag! Why do I have the feeling that it’s fiction based on fact?
Andy R:
I believe it’s fact based on the fictitious character “Alex of the Bronx”. In the words of Cleveland native Donald King, “only in America”
How about Madison Bumgarner? 7.2 innings, 1 earned run allowed, 12 strikeouts AND he breaks SF’s 16 game home home-run drought for his first career dinger. Figures that a pitcher would do it.
How ’bout him, indeed! He now leads off the updated post.
Cool. That’s remarkable, no other 22 year old pitcher has more than 7 wins? And Casilla’s saves may be cheap, but you can’t deny a 253 ERA+. I’ll take that any day.
From Baseball-Reference HR Log – each of both Gehrig and A-Rod’s 23 Grand Slam victims:
http://phungo.blogspot.com/2012/06/sus-shut-up-stats-grand-slams-for.html
Gehrig’s 20th slam was hit off 18-year old Randy Gumpert who later gave up Mickey Mantle’s first ML home run.
ARod has some nerve, selfishly padding his glory-boy stats with that game-tying grand slam in the late innings. He’s screwing up the unclutchy narrative!
Couldn’t help but notice, Brett Lawrie leads the AL in dWAR and Caught Stealing. Has this combination ever happened before (or since CS has been tracked)?
Good question, Paul. But that would be extra-hard to research considering that since B-Ref doesn’t give “black ink” to a league-leading dWAR total, it makes eyeballing specific players’ dWAR totals a little harder.
We talked about this at length about a month ago on this site, but Brett Lawrie’s high dWAR totals looks like they will lead to a historic WAR season. Lawrie currently has 3.4 in 62 Jays games with a 92 OPS+, which would pro-rate to 8.9 WAR for a full season. No one in MLB history has an 8+ WAR season and an OPS+ less than 100, and there are only 4 seasons of 6+ WAR and an OPS+ less than 100:
1. Ozzie Smith 1989 7.1 WAR/97 OPS+
2. Ozzie Smith 1988 6.3 WAR/98 OPS+
3. Darin Erstad 2002 6.1 WAR/86 OPS+
4. Devon White 1992 6.0 WAR/92 OPS+
What if Lawrie improves his offense a little and ends in the 100-120 OPS+ range? Well, for one thing that would probably bump his WAR total over 9, assuming good health by Brett. There have only been two seasons since 1901 with an OPS+ in the 100-120 range and 8+ WAR:
1. Willie Wilson 1980 8.3 WAR/113 OPS+
2. Bobby Grich 1973 8.0 WAR/116 OPS+
So Lawrie, if he can remain healthy, will not only shatter the all-time dWAR record but should also put up a historic WAR total to boot.
bstar & Richard Chester:
Thanks for the research. Lawrie, apparently, makes Brooks Robinson look like an old Dodger 3B named Steve Garvey
I have to rush out now but George Stirnweiss led in CS and dWAR in 1945.
That A-Rod Grand Slam somewhat nullifies one of my favorite baseball cards.
http://www.checkoutmycards.com/Cards/Baseball/1973/Topps/472/Lou_GehrigAll-Time_Grand_Slam_Leader/1844880
Here are stats shown by the 9 cards depicting the All-Time Leaders (as of the end of the 1972 season).
HR – Ruth(714)/Aaron(673)/Mays(654) – Top 3 all shown [nullified, Bonds/Aaron(increased to 755)/Ruth]
H – Cobb(4191) [nullified, Rose]
GS – Gehrig(23) [1/2 nullified, tied by A-Rod]
TB – Aaron(6172) [1/2 nullified, Aaron(increased to 6856)]
RBI – Ruth(2209) [nullified, Aaron]
AVG – Cobb(.367) [still valid, untouchable?]
SHO – W.Johnson(113) [1/2 nullified, BB-Ref has W.Johnson’s SHO Total as “only” 110]
W – Young(511) [still valid, untouchable]
K – W.Johnson(3508) [nullified, Ryan and 7 others even though W.Johnson’s K Total went up by 1 to 3509]
The .367 is also 1/2 nullified – one of Cobb’s games was counted twice, so he actually hit .366 (and with “only” 4189 hits).
Oops…thanks. That leaves us with the Cy Young 511 wins as the only card still 100% valid (front of card at least…the back shows the top 10 as of the end of 1972 and that has definitely changed over the years).
http://www.checkoutmycards.com/Cards/Baseball/1973/Topps/477/Cy_YoungAll-Time_Victory_Leader/1844885
And even then the change in the top 10 is minimal:
-Walter Johnson and Kid Nichols both pick up a win, giving them 417 and 361 respectively
-People start including National Association wins, giving Pud Galvin 365 and moving him into the top five.
-Tim Keefe loses a win, giving him only 342.
-Greg Maddux and Roger Clemens move into the 8 and 9 spots with 355 and 354 wins, pushing Clarkson and Plank off the list. Too bad for them.
And I just found out that the sortable stats on MLB.com no longer count stats for the outlaw Players League from 1890, dropping Galvin go 349, Keefe to 325, and Old Hoss Radbourn out of the 300-win club entirely. I hope he tears into them a new one on Twitter for this.
Has anyone informed Reggie Patterson that he actually gave up Rose’s record hit?
Too bad Eric Show isn’t alive
I suppose we can say Cobb’s AVG is slightly nullified, although really more just altered. It was lowered to .366 when they discovered one of his games was double counted. Lost one of his batting titles, too. The slacker will have to get by with only eleven titles instead of twelve.
Yet I have some problem (minor) with removing batting titles after the fact. Cobb was such a driven man and I’m not unconvinced he wouldn’t have dropped down bunts or done whatever he needed to do to get a couple more hits to ensure he won the title. That’s exactly what Lajoie did in the season’s final doubleheader, bunting for six hits with the 3B’man sat way back all game, basically giving Lajoie free hits to win the title. Cobb obviously was not a well-liked man.
If forced to pick between Cobb’s AVG record and Young’s win record, then I’d say there’s a much better chance Cobb’s AVG record could be broken. It would require some changes that resulted in a very high offense BA period in the game, coupled with the arrival of an extremely gifted BA hitter, and one whose career ended maybe in ten years due to a catastrophic injury before he hit his decline phase. It still would be almost impossible, but I atleast can see it happening, where I can’t see anyone touching 511.
BTW Your card is more valuable the more records that are broken. It speaks to it’s vintage nature.
Hm. So a Boggsian sort of character hitting in a spacious park, where he’s not concerned with trying to reach the fences, only exploiting all that extra acreage with dinks, dunks, and liners… and speed (which Boggs never really had) to add in a few rollers and bunts every year. Yeah, I could see that.
And 511 career wins might as well be a Nintendo record. It’s hard enough just getting 511 career STARTS.
Exactly. I’m thinking of a Carew-like hitter, perhaps playing in Coors, which is very spacious, he’s not trying to hit homers, and pitchers really can’t consistently throw effective breaking balls.
Carew from ’69-’78 hit .344 in a lower offense time. Move him to a high offense time in a place like Coors, and have his career end suddenly, ala Kirby Puckett or Sandy Koufax, before the decline years start number decay, and maybe it’s possible. Likely? No. But I can build a case. Can’t for anyone challenging Young!
John,
Don’t begrudge the Cubs a win, even if it comes against your Tigers. Lord knows Cub W’s come so infrequently, especially with Carlos Marmol on the mound.
Here’s something to cheer you – especially if you have a preteen daughter or ever spent time in buses when you were younger heading to athletic events. My younger daughter and I have been listening to the song for months now, goofing to it in various ways. Evidently so do a lot of other people, including the Harvard baseball team:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEWVwgDnuzE
(Don’t know how to embed the link. You might have to copy it into your browser.)
tag, that’s a funny coincidence — my 15-year-old stepdaughter has been singing that song at every opportunity for months now!
And thanks for the “positivity” reminder. I’ve been a Cubs fan — summers of 1976-77, by accident of location — so I’m no hater. But I do have deep aesthetic objections to Marmol and Castro: throw an occasional strike, and pay attention to the goldang game.
I remember the Cubs in that summer of 77. After the games
of June 28 they were 47-22 with an 8.5gm lead.
They went 40-15 in May and June.
I always thought a 70 game sample was good, I guess not.
After June 28 they went 34-59 while the Phillies went
62-30. The Cubs went from the best team, record wise,
to one of the very worst. With June 28 as the line of
demarcation.
That must have been a dreadful summer on the Northside after such a wonderful spring.
Do you recall???
Both the Northside and the Southside. Veeck’s rent-a-player concept was working wonders for the White Sox until the injuries (and Kansas City) overtook them.
The Chisox were actually tied for first as late
as August 19.
George Brett was no Eric Soderholm.
Jason:
In 1977 they finished at .500. Between 1947 and 2000 the team won half or more of its games only 13 times, 6 in a row in the Santo-Jenkins-Williams era, and seven singletons. So 1977 was a pretty good year, actually—for the Cubs.
They’ve had six .500 or better seasons in the new millennium, including 3 division titles. So is the current downswing temporary? Or back to the futility of the previous half century?
The current downswing remains until Bartman throws out the first pitch to a billygoat.
Actually, that was one of the greatest summers in modern Chicago baseball history. Of course the Cubs nosedived. With that offense – I mean, Steve Ontiveros may have been their best hitter, though Murcer wasn’t horrible either – they were living on borrowed time, but Big Daddy was awesome and Sutter was unhittable.
And over on the Southside, the Rent-A-Team was one of the most fun teams ever to watch. If you could have given Reuschel and Sutter to the White Sox, or Zisk and Gamble and Spencer and Soderhomer to the Cubs, then you would have a genuine pennant contender.
But Chicago baseball at that time was sublime because it was still about the urban experience. I used to get off work in the steel mills of Gary, IN and head to a Sox night game. It cost a couple bucks to sit in the bleachers, and Veeck even let you bring in a small cooler. You could drink, smoke some rope, watch the Sox score runs and yell a few “Hey Harry”s without planning days/weeks ahead or breaking the bank.
And Wrigley Field was equally awesome. This was before ballparks branded the air that you breathe / tried to monetize every experience you have inside them.
I mean, cheering for laundry is overrated, and investing yourself too much in vicarious winning is…just something I try to avoid. The game is the thing, and when it’s cheap to attend, when the parks are as awesome as Wrigley or crumbling Comiskey, when the beer is cold and also affordable, when the sun is shining or Harry is out there with you in the bleachers drinking Falstaffs, and when the players try hard and are entertaining, when they pitch like the young Sutter, hit like Zisk, or are simply Oscar Gamble, man, winning a pennant becomes waaay secondary, at least for me.
Falstaff: “The Choicest Product Of The Brewers’ Art.” They sold it at Busch Stadium, too. Two-dollar bleacher seats in the mid-seventies.
Fine memories, tag, and you really bring them alive. I expect everyone here can relate, though the contrast between the Gary mills and that choice of old and different parks takes it to a very high level.
Great as the ballpark can be, for me there was something about just driving down a country road in a warm summer sunset, listening to Ernie Harwell call a Tigers game. . . .
Wow, Steven, Falstaff at Busch Stadium! What Bud marketing exec was asleep the day that was allowed to happen?
And, epm, my stepfather would certainly second your appreciation of Harwell. Country lanes and sunsets are just icing on the cake. I think Ernie’s voice and play-by-play could probably have made a prison cell bearable.
Falstaff had a minority ownership in the football Cardinals in the 1960s-early seventies. That may have been a reason it was sold at Busch; although, that doesn’t explain why Stag Beer was also available.
You guys, especially tag and his well-written piece about being in the stands at Comiskey, have me jones-ing for a Falstaff. Being from the South, I’ve never had the pleasure.
I do recall Jerry Morales hitting the shit out of the ball, maybe even leading the league in hitting at the All Star break. For years people maintained hot summers in Chicago put the day-game-playing Cubbies at a disadvantage….that, or the billy goat
You’re right, Paul. I think he even made the All Star team as a result, though he subsequently went on a swoon with the rest of the team. What I remember most about Morales was what an atrocious fielder he was. No matter where the Cubs put him – left, center, right – he stunk the place up.
Plus, both Wang Chien-Ming and Chen Wei-Yin got the wins on Tuesday. The last time that two pitchers from Taiwan got the win in the same day was when Wang and Kuo Hong-Chih both got the win on June 12, 2007…exactly five years ago.
Man, can’t believe it’s been five years since Kuo’s bat flip.
I heard Wang owns real estate near the great wall, on the good side.
Golf courses are the biggest waste of prime real estate.
I think this place is exclusive, Wang, so don’t tell them you’re Jewish, OK?
Bless this ship and all who sail on her.
I christen thee the Flying WASP.
There’s a relief pitcher in the minors from Laos. I think he’s pitching for the Aberdeen Pheasants and his name is Won Hung-Lo.
I should have yelled two.
B-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-uy Bushwood?
Gambling is illegal at Bushwood, sir, and I never slice.
Elihu, will you come loofah my stretch marks.
I don’t know how I knew where all those lines came from. Although I am at this very moment wearing a T-shirt that says, “Big hitter, the Lama,” I remain the only male over 40 who has never seen Caddyshack.
I’m sure I’ll get around to it, eventually.
This is completely unacceptable.
Here, at least watch that scene 🙂
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8x-nQ-vPw5k