Monthly Archives: May 2014

COG 1924 Round Results: Started Great, Closed Great, Smoltz In

John Smoltz started here at the Circle of Greats voting by appearing on exactly 50% of the ballots in his very first round (which was also just the second round of COG voting as a whole). Then, for the next 57 (!) rounds, John never appeared on nearly that high a percentage of the ballots again. Until, that is, he received a stunning level of very late support in the 1924 round of voting to tie Duke Snider, and closed things out with a 50.8% showing in a runoff against the Duke, making Smoltz the 58th inductee into the High Heat Stats Circle of Greats. More on John and the voting after the jump Continue reading

Monday Game Notes: Ryu that was close

Reds 3, @Dodgers 4 -Dodger left-hander Hyun-jin Ryu flirted with perfection for 7 innings, one day after teammate Josh Beckett had tossed a no-hitter in Philadelphia. Whether it was the 30 minute-plus Dodger ABs in the bottom of the 7th or something else, Ryu was off the mark in the 8th and barely escaped with the lead, much less a no-hit game. Brian Wilson got the second out of the inning but then allowed a two-run double and two walks, leaving the bases loaded for closer Kenley Jansen, who struck out Brandon Phillips to end the threat.

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Game Notes – Weekend Edition

Rangers 12, @Tigers 2, Rangers 12, @Tigers 4 – Texas took the four game set 3-1 with these two weekend shellackings of Rick Porcello and Justin Verlander. It was the just the 9th time since at least 1914 that Detroit has surrendered 12+ runs to the same opponent in consecutive games at home. For Verlander, it was only the second start of his career surrendering 9 runs in under 6 innings. His 14 game score is a career low.

More after the jump.

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Josh Beckett: “Waiting for No-No” no more

With apologies to Samuel Beckett, and congratulations to Josh!

Dodger right-hander Josh Beckett has authored the first no-hit, no-run game of his career, and of this season, as the Dodgers took the rubber match of a weekend set in Philadelphia. Beckett walked three and struck out six, including Chase Utley for the game’s final out.

Backett threw 128 pitches, 80 of them for strikes. After going to a 3-0 count on the leadoff hitters in both the first and second innings, Beckett hit his stride and retired 23 Phillies in a row, throwing a first pitch strike to all but two of them. The Phillies helped out by putting 5 first pitches in play, four of them in the last 3 innings.

More after the jump.

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Friday Game Notes – NL Edition

Looking at the NL slate today.

Rockies 2, @Braves 3 – Gerald Laird‘s two-out single in the 8th inning scored Ramiro Pena from second to break a 2-2 tie and Craig Kimbrel did the rest, striking out the side in the 9th for his 13th save. For Kimbrel, it was his 21st time facing 3 batters and striking out all of them, tying him with Armando Benitez for the second highest career total, trailing only Billy Wagner‘s record 32 games.

More after the jump.

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Circle of Greats 1924 Runoff: Snider vs. Smoltz

Quite an amazing comeback by John Smoltz to tie the 1924 round of the Circle of Greats voting. Smoltz appeared on all of the final six ballots of the round, while Duke Snider appeared on only one of those ballots. A five-vote lead with hours to go is generally an insurmountable lead, but is not, apparently, always so.

Smoltz and Snider played entirely different roles during widely separated eras. But they each played on the dominant National League team of their time, with several Hall of Fame quality teammates, while falling short of the number of World Series championships that playing on such dominant teams might have been expected to produce.

Let’s do a relatively short runoff vote, though I want to give a chance both to those who access the site on weekends and those who log on during the week. So let’s say all runoff votes are due in by 11PM EDT on Wednesday, May 28.

Runoff votes must show just one name, Smoltz’s or Snider’s. You also need to add some sort of additional verbiage though, because as I remember the comment function here at HHS won’t work with just one-word comments.

I’m out of town this weekend and don’t have easy access to the spreadsheets, so I’m not posting a counting spreadsheet right now. For the moment, volunteer commenters are welcome to periodically post a running tally of the votes within the comments themselves.