For those not going to the SABR Convention in Atlanta…like me!
On Saturday, August 7th, FanGraphs and River Avenue Blues are hosting their first ever Live Discussion. The event will consist of three hours of conversation about baseball, analysis of the sport, and how the game is covered.
Hosting the event will be David Appelman and Dave Cameron of FanGraphs along with Joe Pawlikowski, Benjamin Kabek, and Mike Axisa of River Ave Blues. Notable guests include former Deadspin editor and author Will Leitch, baseball consultant and analyst Mitchel Lichtman, Wall Street Journal contributor David Biderman, as well as other writers from FanGraphs and around the web.
...Additionally, we’re going to host a game-watching party for attendees to gather at a local watering hole and view that afternoon’s Boston-New York match-up together. Those who make it to the event will be invited to join us for several more hours of fun later in the afternoon.
MINNEAPOLIS—The Twins have acquired closer Matt Capps and cash from the Nationals in exchange for catching prospect Wilson Ramos and left-handed pitching prospect Joe Testa.
“Alex Rodriguez filed an objection to aspects of next week’s auction of the Texas Rangers, saying he and other former players may not get the millions owed them.
Rodriguez is due $24.9 million in deferred compensation six years after he was traded to the New York Yankees, and he tops the list of the unsecured creditors in the Rangers’ bankruptcy case.”
White Sox pitching coach Don Cooper compared the Nationals right-hander to Kerry Wood and Mark Prior, who both endured shoulder troubles that plagued their entire careers after arriving to the big leagues with hype similar to Strasburg’s.
“(With Strasburg) The real concern is what I call an upside-down arm action,” Cooper told MLB Network Radio on SIRIUS XM today.
“I am not wishing this guy bad, but for him to be having problems right now when they are really, really watching him what are they going to see when they are trying to get 220 innings from him? He does something with his arm action that is difficult, in my mind, to pitch a whole lot of innings on.”
The Nationals placed Strasburg on the DL retroactive to July 22, but Washington manager Jim Riggleman said he was almost certain Strasburg would start more major-league games this year.
“It reminds me a little bit of Kerry Wood, a little bit of Mark Prior. I hope I’m wrong about this,” said Cooper, whose White Sox were held to one run over seven innings by Strasburg in his third major-league start. “When you throw with the kind of talent and force that he can throw, you can break easier than let’s say a Mark Buehrle type.”
Cooper also said, “It’s very difficult to change arm action, so no I don’t think you can do that.”
Baltimore Orioles infielder Miguel Tejada has been scratched from today’s lineup. According to Dan Connolly of the Baltimore-Sun, it is believed that Tejada is being dealt to the San Diego Padres pending league approval.
Connolly adds, “#Orioles Money must be exchanging hands for league approval. Josh Bell has been removed from [Baltimore Orioles’ Triple-A] AAA lineup and is heading to KC for Os game”
Tejada, 36, is hitting .269 with 7 home runs and 39 RBIs in 97 games for the Orioles this season. He’s primarily been playing third base, but the Padres think he can return to his shortstop roots. Earlier today, we heard from Scott Miller of CBSSports.com that Tejada is owed about $2 million for the rest of the 2010 season, and he will likely cost the Padres a mid-level prospect.
Ken Rosenthal of FOXSports.com reports that the Rangers and Marlins have reached agreement on the players that will be sent to south Florida in their deal for infielder Jorge Cantu.
The Marlins will get minor league right-handers Evan Reed and Omar Poveda. Reed, 24, has posted a 1.76 ERA and 1.20 WHIP over 41 innings this season between Double-A and Triple-A. Poveda, 27, is on the disabled list currently, recovering from Tommy John reconstructive elbow surgery. Cantu will give the Rangers a much-needed right-handed bat for the stretch run.
The move to the DL is retroactive to July 22, a day after Strasburg made his last appearance. He was scratched minutes before he was to make his 10th major league start Tuesday, because his right shoulder felt stiff while he was warming up in the bullpen.
The book is closed on Ron Gardenhire, perhaps never to be opened again except for viewing and appreciation; closed without evidence of his brief audience with Mickey Mantle and his meeting with “The Rifleman,” closed without a Tim Lincecum, a Mariano Rivera or even a Joe Mauer. Gardenhire’s baseball encyclopedia is signed, sealed and designated to go to his son.
Even now, when someone younger, stronger and lower on the totem pole totes his baseball luggage, the Twins manager keeps his old MacMillan Baseball Encyclopedia, the 1982 edition, at home, making his bags some seven pounds lighter and his practice of collecting autographs in it personally passé.
“The book’s on vacation,” Gardenhire says now.
...A baseball generation has passed since the last entry in the old book. “Now all the guys I missed are retired or coaches,” he said. “If I want to go back and get them, I’ll have to get an updated version.”
There isn’t one, though. And the Internet can’t be signed.
After much deliberation and sweating from the fans, the Orioles finally made the decision on Buck Showalter as the new manager of the team. Showalter is expected to be in uniform August 3, says multiple sources close to the situation.
Baltimore will be the fourth big league stop for Showalter who compiled a career 882-833 record (.514) during 11 seasons with the New York Yankees, Arizona Diamondbacks and Texas Rangers. He was named the 1994 and 2004 AL Manager of the Year.
Showalter has not managed a game at any level since he was fired by the Rangers, Oct. 4, 2006. He served as senior baseball advisor for the Cleveland Indians for the 2007 season before returning to the commentating side as a baseball analyst for ESPN.
Roy Oswalt plans to accept his proposed trade to the Philadelphia Phillies, a baseball source who has spoken with Oswalt’s camp told ESPN.com Thursday.
Oswalt hasn’t officially waived his no-trade clause to OK the deal, the source said. But after considering his options and speaking with friends familiar with the Phillies’ situation, the source said the Houston Astros staff ace is prepared to go to Philadelphia.
It was not immediately clear if the Phillies or Astros offered any financial incentives for Oswalt to drop his trade veto rights. The Astros will pay $11 million of the approximately $23 million that the 32-year-old right-hander has guaranteed through 2011, sources said.
In return for Oswalt, the Astros would get back left-handed starter J.A. Happ and two prospects, according to sources.
While the Phillies prospects have not been identified, sources said the Astros have pressed hard for first baseman Jonathan Singleton, considered the team’s best minor league hitting prospect.
This gives the Phillies quite the rotation. It’s not Halladay-Lee-Hamels, but it’s still something else.
According to a major league source, Lee vetoed the trade seven to 10 days ago. The Angels then turned their sights to Kansas City, acquiring Royals third baseman Alberto Callespo for two minor league pitchers on July 22.
Anything to keep Mike Napoli from playing every day.
Finally…a chance to use the Other Bert Parks Corrector (OBPC)!
Predictably, after Miguel Batista joked that his subbing for an injured Stephen Strasburg was like fans showing up to see Miss Universe only to get Miss Iowa instead, the actual Miss Iowa has responded.
Her name is Katherine Connors, she looks just a tad better in a two-piece than Batista, and she issued the following statement:
I know I can throw a pitch or two! The question is, can Miguel Batista walk the runway in a swimsuit?
Batista naturally backtracked from his comments a bit, framing them more as a compliment than an insult, and said Connors is “gorgeous.” He also sent her some flowers to smooth things over.
And just for the record: I’m in favor of more baseball players getting into public feuds with beauty pageant contestants, if only for the excuse to post pictures of women who look like Connors instead of dudes who look like Batista.
David Price, the kid with a chance, stands at his locker, imagining the possibilities. Yes, he says, 20 games is a lot. Yes, he says, winning one game is a chore.
“You’re talking about winning 67 percent of your starts,’’ said Price, who pitches today when the Rays finish a four-game series against the Tigers. “That’s tough to do. You can go out there and have your best stuff, and you still might not get a decision.”
That said, Price has a shot. He’s going for his 14th victory today, and he has roughly a dozen starts thereafter. Yes, it’s possible. No, it isn’t probable. These days, the odds are always against a pitcher breaking a 20.
...Blame pitch counts, if you want. Blame closers and setup men and left-handed specialists. Blame bullpen matchups, because sheer numbers suggest the more relievers a team uses, the more likely one of them is to have an off night. Blame five-man rotations. Blame the big money, and front offices intent on protecting their investments. Blame a livelier ball. Blame the shrinking strike zone. Blame smaller parks. Blame the evolution of the game.
Originally I wanted to celebrate the leak/release of the trailer for what I believe is Corey Hart’s life story with a picture of him, but sadly flickr didn’t have any pictures of him in full Odinson beard under creative commons. So instead, check out this image of a game from a outfield seat, where you can see Hart, Prince Fielder, and *squints to make out Cardinals’ numbers* Albert Pujols and… Colby Rasmus.
Weeee! More righteous than an all out Throgs/Throggs Neck Bridge dispute!
In 1996, Nelson pitched in a team-leading 73 games, Rivera became the best reliever in baseball, and the Yankees won their first World Series in 18 years. And Wetteland won his Rolaids Relief Man Award.
But Wetteland left New York, and here’s where the story gets interesting.
Jeff pitched his plan to Joe.
Step 1: Assemble the best group of position players and starting pitchers in baseball so that the bullpen doesn’t really matter.
Step 2: Install Rivera as closer, ensuring a dominant bullpen.
Step 3: Build a ####### bridge.
And so it was. Joe Torre commissioned the building of a bridge. The Bridge to Mariano. Jeff was the architect, but he recruited his childhood friend Mike Stanton to help him build. Together, alternating shifts, they built the bridge. And what a bridge it was. It had aqueducts and arches and triangles and suspensions and all that stuff that makes bridges not spectacularly collapse. Quieter than the Bridge on the River Kwai. More flip than the Flipper Bridge. It was the most important bridge in the history of bridges. From 1997-2000, Stanton pitched to a 4.17 ERA and Nelson pitched to a 3.08. Their pitching was fine, and not much was made of it at the time. But what a bridge! How can you blame them for being pedestrian relievers when they were so busy building a ####### bridge?!?
Rivers of his memory…ever Gentile on Couch’s mind. (BTW…great idea here!)
So I called Jim Gentile to hear his story and to congratulate him on winning the American League RBI title this week.
“Yeah, I saw that,” he said. “My son called me this morning and told me. It caught me off-guard. But it’ll be something my kids and grandkids can look back on and see I did something.
...After that, he negotiated a new deal with Baltimore general manager Lee MacPhail, doubling his salary to $30,000.
“We argued over the contract,” Gentile said. “I remember MacPhail, at the time I signed the contract, said that if I had led the league in RBIs, it would have been worth $5,000 more.”
...I would like to make a suggestion here: How about if the Orioles hold a day to honor their new RBI king, a guy who did have a role in a major moment in baseball history, but one that was lost for nearly half a century.
How about they give him that $5,000 while they’re at it? Or use it to set up a college fund for his grandkids? Or maybe just give a $5,000 donation in his name to a charity of his choice?
Leaving ducks on the pond and wishing you were faraway
That’s entertainment!
The Mets have hung around in the NL East because journeyman knuckleballer R.A. Dickey started the season 6-0 and first-year regular Angel Pagan is hitting over .300 and rookie call-up Ike Davis has been a pleasant surprise. Wright’s fast start (since faded) temporarily covered for how badly Jason Bay has struggled to hit and all the games Carlos Beltran and Jose Reyes missed.
The unexpected—the good and the bad—has been the only real constant of the Mets’ season. Quite often, it’s been the surprises in their lineup who have carried them and their expected stars who have most often disappointed them.
So you can blame the job Manuel has done—and he’ll pay by getting fired at the end of this season—but the Mets’ front office and ownership deserve it more. The Mets should have known better than to think they could contend with Oliver Perez and John Maine in the starting rotation; enough critics screamed it wouldn’t be good enough way back in spring training. And sure enough, it wasn’t.
...The Mets are what they are. An incredibly game team. And a flawed team. And the long season exposes both.
“Any time you’re not pitching well, your confidence isn’t great,” he said. “But if you look at me, I’m the same guy. It’s just my fly-ball and home-run ratio is up. “It’s like flipping a coin. Everyone knows that you got a 50-50 chance of heads or tails. But maybe during the course of a baseball season, you flip it and it comes up heads seven or eight times. But over a million times, it’s going to come back to about a 50-50 ratio.”
Bannister also believes that he’s in a stretch in which he hasn’t had much luck.
“A guy that worked at JP Morgan was doing a project on sports and the stock market and games in general, and what had more influence, skill or luck,” Bannister said. “He had this huge timeline. The most skill was chess where luck had the least influence. Then it was running, golf and tennis, and then you get to baseball right in the middle.
“At the other end is Vegas casino games and the stock market. Really interesting.
“In terms of baseball, even the best teams need some luck. You have to have skill but you have to have luck, too.”
That’s the Springfield Cardinals. (found at the wicked No-Future Redbirds site)
Recent Springfield Cardinals pitcher Shaun Garceau is facing at least three years in prison after being charged in an alleged Florida drug trafficking scheme involving the painkiller oxycodone.
Garceau is charged with conspiracy to traffic oxycodone and then trafficking the drug, according to the Palm Beach County, Fla., Clerk and Comptrollers office.
The felony charges carry a minimum mandatory sentence of three years in prison and a $50,000 fine, office spokeswoman Susan Lugar said Wednesday.
Garceau posted a $15,000 bond last month and a case disposition is scheduled Aug. 31, although sentencing may not take place at that time.
According to the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, Garceau was among seven individuals who filled prescriptions at local pharmacies and then sold the drugs.
So 2002 is the cutoff point. Gee, I wonder what happened after that…
McGriff is a victim here. If all those players who took performance-enhancing drugs while he played were cheating baseball, McGriff may have lost the most. Together, all those crooks with the cartoon biceps and inflated statistics made his numbers look ordinary by comparison. They made 30 home runs look tiny. They made 100 RBIs look pedestrian. Their counterfeit accomplishments diminished McGriff, making him look less dangerous, less special. They stole from McGriff like an Internet swindler with your bank account number.
For many of us, it was impossible to watch the Hall of Fame inductions over the weekend without thinking of McGriff. Even now, you wonder: Had the steroid era never happened, if so many had not taken such shortcuts for so long, how would we think of McGriff today?
As a Hall of Famer? Maybe.
As a greater star than most remember? Almost certainly.
...You wonder: How much difference could performance-enhancers have made on a slender slugger such as McGriff?
“Maybe 100 home runs,” McGriff guessed. “I probably hit 100 balls to the warning track.”
Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Bunning mocked the manhood of rookie Washington Nationals pitcher Stephen Strasburg after the 22-year-old phenom was scratched from his scheduled start Tuesday night because of shoulder soreness.
“Five-hundred twenty starts, I never refused the ball,” Bunning, a Kentucky senator who hurled a perfect game in 1964 and struck out 2,855 batters in his Major League career, told POLITICO. “What a joke!”
Bunning had taken an interest in Strasburg, who like the Kentucky senator is a fire-ball hurling right-hander. The senator has seen the Nationals ace four times and was at the ballpark Tuesday night, he said.
But he clearly didn’t like what he saw – or rather didn’t see – when the youngster didn’t take the mound.
“My arm!” Bunning sarcastically cried as he pretended to clutch his shoulder in the Capitol’s Statuary Hall.
He said Strasburg’s fallen greatly in his estimation. “He was in the top one percentile,” Bunning said, pinching his thumb and forefinger together. Now, Bunning said, he’s closer to the 50th percentile.
In baseball and in politics, Bunning’s been known as a tough guy with a mile-wide mean streak.
Not quite as big of a move as the Dodgers made earlier today, but it looks like the Phillies and Houston might have finally worked something out…
Houston - Major League baseball sources told FOX 26 Sports the Houston Astros have a deal in place to trade pitcher Roy Oswalt to the Philadelphia Phillies if Oswalt agrees to waive his no-trade clause.
Sources told FOX 26 the Astros have approached Oswalt. He is aware of the deal that is on the table and the club is waiting for his response.
MLB sources told FOX 26 the Astros and Phillies have agreed on the amount of money Houston will take back in the deal and the two teams have agreed on the players Philadelphia will be sending.
A man wearing a LeBron James Miami Heat jersey was escorted from the Progressive Field bleachers during the sixth inning of the Yankees’ 8-0 win over the Indians Wednesday night.
The fan evidently was heckling fans while wearing the jersey, and when he did it in the bleachers the Cleveland fans responded.
A chant of “Throw him out” rose from the bleachers, with several Cleveland fans spewing verbal venom toward the fan wearing the Heat jersey. When police arrived to escort the fan out of the stands, the crowd cheered. Several Indians fans threw verbal barbs at the fan and his girlfriend, others threw a more liquid form of insult.
The fan seemed unbothered. As he was escorted out by police, he continued to turn and show his Heat jersey to the crowd.
The Dodgers have agreed to a deal that will bring Kansas City Royals outfielder Scott Podsednik to Los Angeles, a baseball source told ESPN.com’s Jayson Stark on Wednesday.
The Royals would receive two minor leaguers.
Podsednik is having a solid year in his only season in Kansas City, batting .309 with 30 steals.
Minutes ago, closer Brian Wilson was sitting by his locker using a black marker to color half of the orange shoes he wore in the All-Star Game and in saving last night’s win. The league fined Wilson $1,000 for wearing non-conforming shoes and was told that half of each shoe had to be black.
...
The American League did not complain about the shoes at the All-Star Game, but Marlins manager Edwin Rodriguez did. He called them “too flashy.”
Wilson’s response was pointed and hilarious. “Too flashy. I didn’t know that’s in the rulebook. Oh it’s not in the rulebook. The fact that he thinks these shoes throw 97 to 100 with cut might be a little far fetched. I guess we should have these checked as performance-enhancing shoes.”
And something else has caught up to Ben Sheets. Damn.
It’s been an awakening of sorts for Beane, whose market-IQ was once the exception. Now it’s the norm. Every club is run by geniuses and numbers-geeks, all of whom are obsessed with holding down payroll.
“There’s definitely a lot of bright people running the game and they’ve all been impacted by the economy,” Beane said by telephone the other day. “Some of the trades that were made 10-12 years ago could never happen now. That’s because teams value players in the same way. There’s much more efficiency (among general managers) than before.”
...One rival GM who once admitted he dreaded competing against Beane, now says he feels “sorry” for the forefather of the Money Ball era, who “has to keep turning over his team every two years.”
Collect the talent, develop it, export it. Repeat cycle. That’s the business plan Beane has to live with. You wouldn’t blame him for feeling burned out by the constant money-saving churn.
“Jahn, I still remember Billy Traber’s one-hitter against the Yankees in his debut.” Isn’t that amazing that it was his 23 ML appearance, Suzyn.
Caveat No. 1: SMALL SAMPLE SIZE. All those rookie starters who have fared so well against the Yankees? There are 11 of them.*
* Or 10. Kansas City’s immortal Eduardo Villacis, in his first and only major league appearance, got hammered. None of the other 10 guys gave up more than three earned runs in their debut.
I’m sorry, but 11 outings (and 66 innings) in 11 seasons simply isn’t enough outings to merit more than a sideways glance. I mean, seriously ... We’re going to draw some grand conclusions based on 66 innings? On seven innings per season? You can. I won’t.
Caveat No. 2: They didn’t pitch as well as you think. The data’s in the chart, but the Captain’s Blog ignored it. In those 66 innings, the rookies gave up only 46 hits, while walking 26 batters and striking out 34. They gave up two home runs. You know what I think? I think they were (naturally) afraid to throw the ball over the plate and were hit-lucky and were homer-lucky and probably strand-lucky. In six of the 10 non-Villacis games, the rookie struck out two or fewer Yankees.
Is that really good or really lucky?
It would be a lot of fun if the Yankees’ $100 million lineup really was vulnerable to the fuzzy-cheeked kid just up from the Lickskillet League. But the numbers—not to mention every ounce of common sense I can summon—suggest that they’re not, really.
(7 - 11:59pm, Jul 29)
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