Introducing the Reno Aces

“After receiving all the nominations, Reno Aces stood out because of its obvious association to the area and the connection it will create with the fans from the beginning,” said Stuart Katzoff, managing partner of the Aces.  “It has a nice ring to it.”

There were more than 50 submissions for the Reno Aces.

The team is the Triple A affiliate of the Arizona Diamondbacks and will start playing in Reno for the 2009 season. 

Meanwhile, the new downtown Reno stadium, still

Now, somebody will have to write about the “Ace of the Aces” or the “Aces’ Ace”. Thanks a bunch.

ESPN: Sources: Mets GM gets vote of confidence, 4-year extension

Why not wait until the end of the season?

RFT: Schafer: Tony La Russa’s Message to Cardinal Fans

There’s not a single no-kill facility on the entire Planet Münsterländfill!

I was a Tony La Russa fan once. As the years have gone by, though, I’ve become very disillusioned with many of the things he does. Even so, I’ve always maintained that the Cardinals could do much worse, that the man still has many good points. Now, though, I’m done. I’m done defending him in any way, shape, or form.

Tony La Russa is disrespecting the game of baseball. He’s putting his own nasty little vendetta and his own desires over the good of the team, of the organization. By running these players out there in these farcical lineups night after night, Tony is essentially telling us all that he’s just flat out more important. The fans who come out to see the game don’t matter. Hell, he would probably tell you he’s doing it for your own good. Albert Pujols’ MVP chances are slipping away day by day as the losses mount, but screw him. This is much more important.

So the next time you hear a local writer or sports personality talking about Tony wanting to send a message, just remember what that message really is. None of this matters. Tony is bigger than all of it. Screw the Cardinals, screw the fans, screw the game.

Now that’s a message.

ESPN: Jackson: Manny being … MVP?

Scoop, enter the ESPN Aaron Boulding Building, go down the hall, make a left, hop over the babbling Corso torso...and the door on the right will read Mr. Keri. Knock on it.

You can’t see it, can you? It’s there. It’s that invisible, impossible-to-define-or-determine number that represents the intangible. That invisible number that changes the culture of a team inside a clubhouse and spreads itself over an entire city. It’s that number that helps makes major league baseball better and so interesting. Look at the All-Stars Ryan Howard has on his roster; look at the superstars Carlos Delgado has on the Mets; true, Pujols has carried the Cards, but they are in fourth place and the unwritten rule in sports is that the MVP award usually goes to a player on a playoff contender. But Manny Ramirez, in two months, resurrected one of the most important and storied franchises in baseball.

For that unseeable, intangible number, Manny Ramirez deserves the NL MVP. Will it happen? It doesn’t help his case when even he doesn’t believe it will happen. Or that he doesn’t feel he deserves it.

At the beginning of the season, all Manny Ramirez said he wanted was to win a Gold Glove. That was just MBM: Manny Being Manny, again. Little did he—or rest of us—know that this year there’d be something so much bigger in store for him.

Hank Steinbrenner rips divisional playoff system in Sporting News

Or as Jon-Kevin Elster’s book goes..."Sour Grapes: Studies in the Subversion of Rationality for Obvious Thickheads”

“The biggest problem is the divisional setup in major league baseball. I didn’t like it in the 1970s, and I hate it now,” Steinbrenner wrote. “Baseball went to a multidivision setup to create more races, rivalries and excitement. But it isn’t fair. You see it this season, with plenty of people in the media pointing out that Joe Torre and the Dodgers are going to the playoffs while we’re not.

“This is by no means a knock on Torre - let me make that clear-but look at the division they’re in. If L.A. were in the AL East, it wouldn’t be in the playoff discussion. The AL East is never weak.”

..."I’m happy for Joe, but you have to compare the divisions and the competition,” Steinbrenner wrote. “What if the Yankees finish the season with more wins than the Dodgers but the Dodgers make the playoffs? Does that make the Dodgers a better team? No.”

Steinbrenner also questioned the legitimacy of the Cardinals’ 2006 title, noting that their 83 regular-season victories were two less than the Phillies’ total, but because of the system, St. Louis reached the playoffs as NL Central champs while Philadelphia lost the wild card race to the Dodgers, who had 88 wins.

“People will say the Cardinals were the best team because they won the World Series,” Steinbrenner wrote. “Well, no, they weren’t. They just got hot at the right time. They didn’t even belong in the playoffs. And neither does a team from the N.L. West this season.”

ajc: Moore: Aaron recalls making call on Chipper (RR)

This reminds me of Michael Burke and George Steinbrenner haggling over The Stadium frieze idea.

Cox looked perplexed when informed of Aaron’s remarks, saying, “Well, we had a lot of people see (Van Poppel), and they liked him. Some other [Braves scouts] went to see Chipper, and they liked him a lot. I can’t remember if I had Hank talk to Van Poppel’s father or not, but [Van Poppel] was unsignable. And we needed to know that beforehand. So that’s why it really was an easy decision to take Chipper. He wanted to sign. He wasn’t playing games with the college thing. It was simple. I mean, Chipper was the guy.”

Was he?

Aaron forced a chuckle. He mentioned how Poppel was taken 13 picks after Jones, played for six different teams and retired with a 40-52 record and 5.58 ERA. “The kid never did anything, and that’s who Bobby wanted,” Aaron said. “But every time you listen, it’s always like, ‘Oh, yeah. We always wanted to sign Chipper Jones.’ The only reason they didn’t take Van Poppel was because of what I told them about what his daddy told me.”

If this sounds like a conflict between Aaron, now the Braves senior vice president, and Cox, now the Braves field manager, well, you make the call. Said Aaron of his relationship with Cox, “I just talk to him, you know. What bothers me is that when he became general manager [in 1985], there absolutely was no connection between the two of us.

“Here I am the farm director, and we have a bad ball club, and it seems like he would talk to me about the kids we have in the minor leagues. It didn’t happen.”

Red Sox to retire Johnny Pesky’s number

OH, NO!...This paveskovichs the way for the Red Sox to be more like the Yankees!

The Red Sox are about to break with their longstanding policy regarding the retirement of uniform numbers. And longtime club fixture Johnny Pesky will be the first beneficiary.

According to a team source, meetings were held last night and again this morning to address how and when a player’s number should be retired. The team plans to hold a press conference today or tomorrow to announce the change in policy, with all signs pointing to the dramatic news that Pesky’s uniform No. 6 will be retired before the end of the regular season.

The timing is perfect: Given that Pesky’s 89th birthday is Saturday, it’s likely the ceremony will take place before the Sox’ nationally televised game against the New York Yankees.

No beer in Wrigleyville: A seventh inning stretch?

Bars and restaurants around Wrigley Field will be asked to stop serving alcohol after the seventh-inning stretch—just as they do inside the ballpark—to prevent Cubs playoff celebrations from turning ugly.

Ray Orozco, executive director of the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications, said the proposed seventh-inning cutoff—discussed at a playoff security meeting Monday—would occur “only if it’s a clinch game.” Liquor sales could resume once the game is over, he said.

Yeah, like this is gonna happen. If it does, Al Capone will probably rise from the grave and run a Wrigleyville Speak-Easy.

You can be Stomper the Elephant

Yes, it is true. You can be the mascot of the A’s.

Requirements:

• Due to costume restrictions, candidate must be at least 5 feet 7 inches and no more than 6 feet 2 inches and weighs between 165 lbs and 225 lbs
• Punctuality is mandatory and availability to work nights, weekends and holidays
• Must have own, reliable transportation
• Must be highly energetic and fit

ESPN: Keri: Albert Pujols, underappreciated superstar

And Pujols is butt one slashing tater behind George Brett. Ouch.

As amazing as that kind of high-level consistency is, it doesn’t pop. Carlos Delgado’s back-from-the-dead comeback? That pops. Josh Hamilton, a former No. 1 overall pick who washed out of the game on a wave of drug abuse and erratic behavior, then returned to hit a bunch of homers and light up the Home Run Derby? Pops. Manny Ramirez, linchpin of the most famous World Series-winning team in decades, a malcontent with dreads, baggy pants and an attitude who gets himself traded from one behemoth media market to another, then lights up the league? That definitely pops.

Not everyone is bored with Pujols’ greatness. Cardinals fans get it. Students of the game get it. In fact, Pujols getting overlooked may simply be a function of the headline-obsessed media, eager to jump on the next, big thing, ignoring the bigger thing that’s been staring them in the face all along.

For Albert Pujols, excellence is not an act, but a habit. Give him his due.

Salon: Kaufman: The pro-Derek Jeter backlash

Double-Breaking News!...Rockabilly slap bass slaps King silly!

Ichiro, the guy you want me to write about instead of Jeter because Jeter’s just a singles hitter, is a singles hitter. He gets more hits, but fewer extra-base hits, than Jeter, and he also makes more outs. Ichiro’s also a superb base-stealer, while Jeter’s only very good.

Ichiro’s a very good fielder, though he’s only spent a little time at a premium position. Jeter is below average, but at a premium position. That can’t be discounted. Jeter has been adequate at shortstop while hitting like a third baseman or corner outfielder. That’s huge, and it blows a guy like Omar Vizquel—great fielder, useless hitter, and mentioned by you in a part of the letter I didn’t quote—out of the water.

Jeter is a slam-dunk Hall of Famer. Not quite inner-circle, but solidly qualified, not at all borderline, and he’s probably got five years to add to his counting totals. He’s easily a top 15 shortstop all-time, maybe top 10.

The pro-Jeter backlash starts here.

MarketWatch: Too much nostalgia, not enough skepticism

if the buyout doesn’t go through, who’s going to buy all those suites??

To be blunt, the team owners are shutting this Yankee Stadium because they can make a lot more money by opening a state-of-the-art baseball stadium/cum amusement park for fans who probably care more about being entertained than watching nine innings of baseball. The team’s executives can charge much higher ticket prices.

The Yankees would love to see Fortune 500 corporations become even more conspicuous in the new stadium. Millionaire lawyers, doctors and small-business owners are welcome as well. The people in the category of the infamous “bleacher creatures,” who can only afford to sit in the cheap(est) seats? Not so much.

The Ledger: Scanlon: Bartlett Named Rays MVP

So I hear this cat Bartlett’s one scrappy mother-

SHUT YOUR MOUTH!

Just talkin’ ‘bout Barlett.

The Rays improved dramatically on defense this season, and the biggest single reason was shortstop Jason Bartlett.

Consequently, Bartlett has been voted the team’s most valuable player by the Tampa Bay chapter of the Baseball Writers Association of America.

Rookie third baseman Evan Longoria finished a strong second in the voting and Carlos Pena, last year’s MVP, was third.
...........
Cliff Floyd won the Paul C. Smith Champion Award for ``the player who best exemplifies the spirit of true professionalism on and off the field,’’ and Longoria was voted unanimously as the outstanding rookie.

Ten reasons why Lidge has been more valuable than K-Rod

As we’ve started to hear Brad Lidge’s name whispered more and more frequently as a dark horse candidate for the Cy Young Award, we thought we’d serve up 10 reasons why Lidge has been the most valuable closer in baseball this season—even though Francisco Rodriguez’s record-smashing campaign has garnered more national pub.

. . .

1. The hard-throwing righty converted a pair of tough saves over the weekend to improve to 40-for-40 in save opportunities this season. While K-Rod has earned an MLB-record 60 saves (and counting), he’s also blown seven opportunities.

2. With a 1.87 ERA in 70 appearances, Lidge is staking his claim to one of the greatest statistical seasons for a closer in history. (Rodriguez has a relatiely human 2.34 ERA in 73 appearances.)

CLEMENS ‘HEARTBROKEN’ BY VIDEO SNUB (RR)

Good. Get pissed and make another comeback with the Red Sox!

Estranged former Yankee Roger Clemens was “heartbroken” when his former team left him out of Sunday night’s Stadium-farewell festivities, which included a video montage honoring the Bronx Bombers’ greatest pitchers - but not him, a relative told The Post yesterday.

Clemens was sitting at home in hurricane-ravaged Texas, in front of a battery-operated television on his living room couch, when the team delivered a final crushing blow to its former star.

Clutching wife Debbie’s hand on one side and mother-in-law Jan Wild’s on the other, Clemens tuned in to his final team’s last home game hoping for some recognition for helping win two World Series titles, Wild said.

But that Rocket never launched.

When the team played the video celebrating its greatest players at every position, the steroid-scandal-scarred Clemens was nowhere to be seen.

“Debbie and I held his hand while we watched the game, and he was heartbroken,” said Wild, 70. “Not mad. He still loves baseball and the Yankees, but it was sad what they did to him.”

Boston Globe: O’Brien: Latino Sox fans lost in lineup shuffle

“There’ll be no ballplayers getting their goofy haircuts at a scurvy dump called Fernandez Barbershop on this ball club as long as I have anything to say about it”....Thank you, Pinky Higgins from Hell.

When asked recently whether he had noticed fewer Latinos in the clubhouse, Mike Lowell, the team’s third baseman, replied, “I would say yes, because we have less Latinos.” But that doesn’t bother him. What matters, Lowell said, is if the team is built to win.

“I really throw race and heritage and background out the window,” he said, sitting in front of his locker. “It’s hard for everyone to get to this level, and I don’t think it’s worth getting distracted over ‘This team has more Latinos’ or ‘This team has more African-Americans’ or ‘This team has more white people.’ I think you might be distracting yourself over something that’s pretty trivial.”

Ortiz agrees. “Things change,” he said. “This is a business.” And Cora, from Puerto Rico, believes that fans understand that, whether they’re rooting for the Red Sox or for, say, the New York Mets, a team laden with Latino stars, including Pedro Martínez.

“I think people care about the Red Sox,” Cora said. “And it’s the same in New York with the Mets. I don’t think people go and say, ‘Carlos Delgado, he’s Puerto Rican.’ No. Carlos Delgado is a Met. ‘Jose Reyes, he’s Dominican.’ No. Jose Reyes is a Met. Here, David Ortiz - he’s a Red Sox. Jason Bay? He’s not Canadian. He’s a Red Sox.”

September 23, 1908—Big Boost to Cubs’ Pennant Chances

I revere this date in history and didn’t want the centennial anniversary missed - is it an omen for the Cubbies and their fans?

WBC to be on ESPN and the MLB Network

Major League Baseball (MLB) has almost finalised plans to split television coverage of the 2009 World Baseball Classic between US network ESPN and the new MLB Network, Sport Business Journal reports.

From next year ESPN will show the semi-finals and final, scheduled for March at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, as well as select other games domestically, whilst the MLB Network will broadcast much of the action from the first and second rounds.

I’m guessing that “select other games domestically” = games with the USA, as well as a game or two of the Dominican Republic.

MBB: Angus: Bruce Jenkins, The Duke of Moral Hazard & His Young Pitcher Slaughterhouse

Screaming like a barbituraterized Lynn Baggett trapped under a foldaway bed sans food or water...Jeff Angus takes on Bruce Jenkins and pitch counts!

Every line of work has its own cargo cults, a set of energetically-pursued methods based on a mass delusion. When they get institutionalised as S.O.P., they can be really scary. When San Francisco Chronicle sports columnist Bruce Jenkins campaigns for Baseball’s most resilient Cargo Cult, it’s downright Resident Evil: Apocalypse scary (truly heart-pounding but at the same time so patently ridiculous you can’t believe anyone would bother wasting their craft on it).

...I see no clear pattern within Jenkins’ cited heroes. A couple of freaks of nature (durability outliers), a couple of guys whose careers crapped out pretty soon after their heroics, and one guy who seemed as middling after as before.

Jenkins certainly can’t use the data as a convincing support for his Prescription as a standard approach. Look, what if you were paying Tim Lincecum, and you wanted the maximum value out of him. What if you could have 32 starts limited to 100-105 pitches a year but with an alternative; what if you could have him for 40 starts a year, but there was one in five chance he’d break down as a result and have a Leon Cadore career? Or what if it was a one in ten chance or a one in three chance. Knowing that Lincecum is an outlier in many respects (his mechanics, his power-to-size ratios, his intellect, his past training), perhaps he’s an outlier in durability, as well. At what odds do you take the chance of having him be the next Kerry Wood or Mark Prior (outliers who didn’t transcend fatigue and whose starting careers imploded like neutron bombs, leaving no survivors to mourn)?

Good question, and one I leave to you to answer.

But this just addresses Injury and Moral Rectitude issues. What about the Team Performance issue – how much better off is a team leaving in the great starter?

NYC cops arrest 18 for stealing pieces of Yankee Stadium

This article is sort of useless without us being told what they were trying to steal.

Oh to step down at end of season

Japanese baseball great Sadaharu Oh will step down as manager of the Softbank Hawks at the end of the 2008 season.

The 68-year-old Oh, who hit a record 868 home runs over 22 seasons when he played for the Yomiuri Giants, cited health concerns Tuesday as his reason for leaving the team.

“I want to thank everyone for their support over the years,” Oh said. “I think it is best for the team if changes are made.”

Oh was sidelined for the second half of the 2006 season due to stomach cancer. He had his stomach removed in a successful operation in July 2006.

USA Today: Maddon’s unorthodox thinking pays off with playoffs for Rays

Thin-slicing at Casamatos Famiglia Ristorante with Joe Maddon.

“Free thinker” is how Los Angeles Angels manager Mike Scioscia describes his former bench coach of six years, with whom he won a World Series in 2002.

“If Joe wasn’t in baseball, he would have been an incredible engineer,” Scioscia says. “He’s always looking at things from the perspective of, ‘Let me break it down and see if there’s a better way to do it.’ “

That could mean positioning five players in the outfield against the Red Sox’s David Ortiz or intentionally walking the Texas Rangers’ Josh Hamilton with the bases loaded. It could mean daring Rays pitcher Scott Kazmir to try to hang a slider. It could mean trying to persuade players and coaches to read Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking.

“I thought I was doing stuff by the seat of my pants,” Maddon says of how Blink changed him. “All that stuff I thought about on bike rides gets all stirred up in a vat. That’s what instinct is.”

Perhaps Maddon’s greatest skill is his ability to feed players the heavy stuff and not lose them. “He’s a genius and a good guy,” designated hitter Cliff Floyd says.

Newsday: Best: YES’ John Filippelli saw Stadium empty, and full

Yankee Stadium...as empty as the Bob Lorenz Doll doing play by play.

For John Filippelli, YES’ president of production and programming, Sunday’s Stadium party resonated professionally and personally.

His first real job was as a Stadium vendor in 1966, including the September game against the White Sox that drew 413.

That was the day Red Barber famously insisted on discussing the attendance on the air, and soon thereafter was fired.

“I sold six bags of peanuts and got seven foul balls,” he said. “That’s what I remember. I had more balls than I sold peanuts. There was no one here. You could almost give them out, one per customer . . . It was very spooky and surreal and strange.”

TFBG: Podhorzer: What Happened to Troy Tulowitzki?

Uhh...he blew up my fantasy team like we used to blow up Chatty Cathy dolls with strategically placed M-80’s?

Pro-rating his current season numbers to 600 ABs for easier comparison with last year, Troy has put up this line: .252-12-70-73-2. What’s interesting is that this looks very similar to what I, and I’m sure many others, had projected for him in 2007. What many people might not know is that except for the 7 ABs he had at Triple-A during a rehab assignment this year, he has never played at that level. In fact, he’s only had more than 100 ABs at one minor league level! That came at Double-A when he had 423 ABs with an .838 OPS and 13 home runs, while hitting .291. Although these are decent totals, they certainly didn’t suggest the kind of season he ended up having for the Rockies in 2007.

Looking back at last year versus this year, there are many more similarities than differences. Actually, besides the decline in power, one could actually make a legitimate argument that Tulo has been a better hitter this year. His walk rate has inched slightly higher and his contact rate has dramatically improved, rising from 79% to 86%. His batted ball profile is almost identical to last year, yet his BABIP has fallen from .336 to .278. Hitting line drives at a 20% rate means the .336 BABIP from last year was very reasonable and so this year’s .278 seems to be just bad luck.

Primer Dugout 9-23-08 (and random link of the day)

In the dugot, you can remember your name
Cause there aint no one for to give you no pain

N.Y. Sun: Goldman: Boston’s Better Prepared For Future Than Yankees

And so are those Morenz at Shea!

Nor will things be getting better in the near future. The Red Sox signed their first 14 draft selections this year. The Yankees, who intentionally picked an injured pitcher with their first-round selection in 2007, were flatly turned down by their first overall pick this year and decided they weren’t interested in their second-round pick. That meant that first-round supplemental pick Jeremy Bleich, a lefty with no great stuff and injury problems of his own, becomes the team’s standard-bearer for this draft, which shows all the signs of being a historic bust. No, the question isn’t when the Red Sox have to rebuild, it’s when the Yankees will finally start.

Henning: Numbers show where Tigers failed

Law & Rany? on the Tigers?

The Tigers had the best “defensive efficiency” of any American League team in 2006, based upon numbers analyzed by the respected think-tank Baseball Prospectus. This year, they are 11th in the 14-team American League and 22nd among the 30 Major League Baseball teams. The statistic reflects the percentage of balls hit into play that are converted into put-outs. And there rests another weakness apparent to those who study the Tigers compared with opposing teams.

Their defensive range has diminished significantly.

“Defense was a highly underrated factor in that 2006 team’s success,” said Rany Jazayerli, a longtime Baseball Prospectus analyst. “The team’s defense has deteriorated greatly in the last two years.”

Keith Law, the director of ESPN’s Scouts, Inc., uses sophisticated metrics to complement his own observations, which in his case are one and the same: Detroit’s fielding is sub-par. But he draws a line between disciplines.

“I agree that their team defense is bad,” he said of the Tigers, “with just two guys, Polanco and Curtis Granderson, I’d call above-average at their positions. But the statistical evidence we have available to us doesn’t really indict them for the team’s run-prevention woes.”

As Law suggests, the peril in blaming defense for any part of Detroit’s pitching mishaps in 2008 is that it can distract from the simple reality that Tigers pitching has been so bad, so regularly.

In L.A., Dodger blue turns Angel red invisible

The best team in baseball isn’t even the biggest story in its own city. Right now, Los Angeles is all caught up in the Dodgers’ magic number and only casually interested in the Angels’ magic team.

The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim adopted a city, and the city it adopted mostly shrugs in return.

We are all Dodgers, all the time, 24/7 Blue Heaven. What if they were a really good team? What if they win another playoff game? Will we offer our firstborn in celebration?

Methinks that someone is jealous that his favorite team is barely going to limp into the playoffs. Unlike some Angels fans I have no problems with the Dodgers. But this article is just plain wrong. The amount of Angel red sprouting up in the LA area begs to differ with Bill Dwyre’s “opinion.”

And I thought Plaschke and Simers were bad…

Gary Sheffield suspended four games, still vows revenge vs. Indians

And here Cleveland thought the Waterworks Tunnel Vision Explosion days were long gone…

Moments after he learned that he’d been suspended, Sheffield vowed revenge against the Indians whom he believes punched him from behind in the fracas.

“I’ve been in a lot of brawls ... where I have been the peacemaker,” Sheffield said. “When you get into brawls—when somebody’s back is toward you—you pull each other apart. That is what you’re supposed to do. But when guys take cheap shots, I take that personal. “When I find out who they are, they are going to have to deal with me.”

In what form?

“Don’t worry. You’ll see. I’m not one of those guys to sit there and talk about what I’m going to do. I’m just going to do what I’m going to do.”

..."I don’t care (anything) about what the league thinks or what they do,” Sheffield said. “I’ve got enough money to cover any fine they’ve got, trust me.”

He said that if anyone messes with him, “It’s on. It will never end until I get you. I told you from Day One. I don’t mess with (anybody). I don’t bother anybody. But when you bother me, it’s on. Trust me.”

The Biz of Baseball: Interview - Tracy Ringolsby - Writer, Rocky Mountain News

Ringolsby...as entertaining as ever.

Bizball: Every year we hear it, and this year is certainly no exception with C.C. Sabathia making a very successful jump from the AL to NL. Do you foresee a day when the BBWAA selects another pitcher as a league MVP?

Ringolsby: It’s happened before (editor’s note: the last was Dennis Eckersley in 1992). And I see no reason why it shouldn’t happen again. I do think for a pitcher to get serious consideration it does mean that there isn’t a bona fide offensive player. Voters normally will lean toward someone who plays everyday. To be honest, I think a relief pitcher has a better chance of getting serious MVP consideration than he does Cy Young. This year is an example. I am giving strong consideration to Brad Lidge for the NL MVP. From a standpoint of consistency and impact on the mental aspect of a team, I don’t know if many have ever done the job Lidge has done, and he has not been affected by the threat of his home park in Philadelphia.