Thank you for taking on the challenge of bringing the Royals back to a contending team. Knowing we’re not there yet, what do you see as our three greatest needs and, more important, do you see any way of fulfilling those needs from within the organization?
Hillman: Number one would be the consistency of starting pitching. Number two would be the depth of starting pitching. Number three would be an accelerated understanding of the importance of on-base percentage of our offensive players until we can trade for or promote from within more slug and power in our position players. Yes, it can be developed to what we are doing in our system, but it will not happen overnight. It will take a few years.
Is anything going to be done to improve the amounts of walks the young Royals hitters draw?
Hillman: More continuing education, but we continue to work on all the right things. It is a maturation process that takes several years at the highest level before the plan holistically takes effect.
Shoot...holeism has already taken effect of John Buck’s swing.
Unlike other Japanese imports, Kuroda doesn’t seem to pitch backwards much. Many pitchers from Japan like to throw off-speed pitches in fastball counts and fastballs in off-speed counts, but Kuroda prefers his fastball on the first pitch and when he falls behind. He throws either his four-seamer or sinker more than 70 percent of the time 1-0, 2-0, 2-1 and 3-1. This may be a testament to his belief in his fastball, which is a very solid pitch with plus velocity. This conventional style of pitching may be the reason he didn’t see a spike in his walk rates this year. If so, this could be an important indicator of future success of other Japanese pitchers.
Kuroda’s best off-speed pitch is his splitter. It acts like a change-up, and Kuroda uses it more to left-handed batters, as you would expect. That said, the pitch mechanically works the opposite of a straight change-up. Generally, a straight change-up is thrown with the same spin as a fastball, but around 10 mph slower. The hitter is fooled because he sees the same spin, thinks fastball, and swings way too early for a ball thrown much more slowly. The “drop” you see from the straight change is produced by gravity, not the spin of the ball. Because the the ball is thrown more slowly, it is in the air long and gravity has more time to work its magic.
Kuroda’s splitter produces the downward movement with spin and not gravity. Kuroda throws his splitter at about 88 mph, so it is in the air for a shorter time than an 83 mph change-up would be. The downward movement comes from the spin and you can see the difference in vertical movement compared to his fastball. For comparison look at Tom Glavine’s straight change. So here the batter sees a velocity that matches up with a fastball velocity but still swings over the pitch because of the lesser vertical movement. This will be an important pitch for Kuroda going against the Phillies in the NLCS, so keep an eye out for it.
2. Was Ron Santo the best, or among the best, third basemen of his era?
Yes. Santo’s best years were 1963-1968 and during that time he was either the best third baseman in the game, if you buy the argument that he was better than Robinson, or second best if you don’t. From 1964-1967 only Dick Allen was a better offensive third baseman (as measured by VORP), but Santo was clearly superior in the field. If we use Wins Above Replacement Player (WARP), which includes offensive and defensive contributions, Santo was worth about 52 wins over these four years and Allen was worth 43 wins. Of course, after these four years Allen’s behavior overwhelmed his performance on the field and his career went into decline. Tony Perez is a close second to Santo in WARP in 1968 and then surpasses him thereafter. Brooks Robinson? From 1963-1968 he was 49 wins above replacement. Santo was 72 wins above. For the six years from 1963-1968 Ron Santo was the best third baseman in the majors. For two or his remaining four years he was in the top five.
Bonds, honorary chair of this year’s lighting, did not talk to reporters and left quickly after giving a brief speech during the 30-minute ceremony. Lights adorning the large tree in Union Square are sold to benefit the UCSF Children’s Hospital palliative care program, and nearly $700,000 has been raised during the past five years.
Bonds was questioned by a young patient about potentially returning to baseball.
“I had fun,” Bonds said. “But I like my freedom.”
Bonds has donated time and money to the program, hosting golf tournaments and visiting patients and their families. He passed out autographed baseball cards of himself and politely chatted with several patients, many confined to wheelchairs.
The Mets may not have a Papelbon coming up the pike, but they might consider fishing for someone like J.J. Putz of the Mariners, who is coming off an injury-marred, mediocre season by his standards but was a dominant closer in 2006 and 2007. Bobby Howry, Brandon Lyon and Juan Rincon are all coming off uninspiring seasons but all have several good ones in their past and could be worth a shot. Or they could scour the Japanese market for a low-cost contributor like Okajima or Saito. Hard-throwing youngsters Eddie Kunz and Bobby Parnell should get a look as well.
That’s not to say any or all of these guys is the answer for the 2009 Mets or that even one of them should be on the team’s Opening Day roster. I mean merely to suggest that the seemingly obvious solution—K-Rod—might not be the most efficient one. If the Mets can grow and patch together a bullpen like the Red Sox, Rays, Phillies and Dodgers did, they can save their money for a bat to put games out of reach long before the bullpen is needed.
Looks like Camden Depot is still churning out an article here or there. They start up with catchers. This is what they say about Matt:
Wieters is a special player that profiles as a game changer on both sides of the field. Defensively, Wieters is a plus-defender with a quick transfer and release to go with his accurate fringe plus-plus arm . . . Offensively, Wieters is a switch-hitter that profiles as an impact middle-of-the-order bat. He has a Major League approach at the plate, and has shown the ability to drive the ball out of the park to all fields. . . His 2008 Major League Equivalence was a line of 292/365/473, which would make him one of the best hitting catchers in the Majors. It should be noted that MLEs of players below AAA are notorious for inflating projections as pitch quality increases exponentially at each level and is poorly incorporated in the formula.
ESPN also acquired the English and Spanish radio broadcast rights, as well as digital rights, including the live-streaming of games on ESPN360.com. It will show 23 games, including the semifinal and championship, on ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPN Deportes.
The World Baseball Classic, running from March 5 to March 23, will have 16 countries playing in seven venues in five nations.
“ESPN looks forward to working with the World Baseball Classic to build on what we started in 2006,” said Len DeLuca, ESPN senior vice president for programming and acquisitions. “We look forward to collaborating to make this the best global championship in March.”
ESPN televised the inaugural 2006 World Baseball Classic, which was watched by more than 24 million.
“It was a simple calculus that produced our agreement with ESPN to broadcast once again the World Baseball Classic,” said Gene Orza, Major League Baseball Players Association chief operating officer.
MLB Network, which will debut on Jan. 1, 2009, will broadcast 16 games, and will put on a nightly highlight show beginning in late February.
The first round of the 2009 tournament will be played entirely outside of the United States. ESPN will show the Tokyo pool, three games from the Toronto pool, and four games from the San Juan pool.
MLB Network will televise the Mexico City pool, three games from the Toronto pool, and two games from the San Juan pool.
SEE! The Dominican embarrass Panama!
HEAR! Orestes Destrade translate Japanese!
WITNESS! The Skydome in March!
Wait until someone checks FLECKGLOB-BAXTIMER in the year 2440 and reads..."forward thinkers at Baseball Think Factory”
In January 2001, Google was just a baby, with a mere 1.3 billion Web pages waiting to be perused. To celebrate its 10th anniversary, the Internet search juggernaut has brought back its oldest available index.
You know what that means: Time to find out how wrong we all were! Baseball, basketball, football, the economy … going back in time helps remind us how unpredictable sports are, and always will be. Life too, for that matter.
With a hat tip to the backward-looking forward thinkers at Baseball Think Factory, here are some of our favorite search terms from January 2001. Feel free to punch in your own here.
“Yankees Dynasty”
The Bombers had won four World Series in the past five years at that point. With a veteran core of Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, Jorge Posada and Mariano Rivera, experts were already smitten by the Yankees’ chances for more championships. The signing of Mike Mussina a few weeks after the 2000 win only cemented the Yanks’ dynasty status in the eyes of the media.
Choice headline: “Yankees Dynasty Might Have Even Brighter Future”
Result: The Yankees went on to add Jason Giambi, Bobby Abreu, Randy Johnson, Alex Rodriguez … pretty much every free agent in existence. Eight seasons later, they’re still looking for their next ring.
Not long after crossing the plate Monday night, Jason Bay — 5-for-14 with five RBIs in the ALDS — was asked how he had ever gotten himself ready for the series, what with the utter lack of postseason experience.
“I can’t prepare for it,” he said.
No one can. Being there before hasn’t helped A-Rod. I don’t care what the sabermetric geeks do with their calculators; the heroically clutch athlete — the one who elevates his game under pressure — is the foundation of all sportswriting. Therefore, I’m bound to insist that players who distinguish themselves in October are born, not made. That’s the difference between an Alfonso Soriano and a B.J. Upton, who homered twice Monday afternoon, between a Francisco Rodriguez — whose record 62 regular-season saves didn’t stop him from taking a loss in Game 2 of the ALDS, and a Jonathan Papelbon, whose career postseason ERA remains 0.00.
It became something of a joke, a joke that John Lackey of the Angels apparently never got.
“We lost to a team that’s not better than us. We are a better team than they are. The last two days, we shouldn’t have given up anything. Sunday night they scored three runs on a pop fly that was called a hit, which was a joke. Monday night they scored on a broken-bat ground ball and a fly ball that anywhere else in America is an out, and he’s fist-pumping on second base like he did something great.”
I didn’t realize that the world’s smallest violin provided musical accompaniment to the Angels locker room. The Angels won more games than the Red Sox over the first 162 but the last four provided little compelling evidence of their superiority.
There’s not even much evidence that they were better over the first 162. The Sox scored 151 more runs than they allowed in 2008, playing in a division that was far better than the one the Angels called home. A glance at Baseball Prospectus’s adjusted standings (which takes strength of schedule into account) finds them with 102 third order wins, which is both two more than the Angels actual wins and 18 more than their total by this metric. Stats aren’t perfect, but they are illustrative.
In the Internet voting, the three broadcasters finishing ahead of King were Cincinnati’s Joe Nuxhall (19,547 votes), Montreal’s Jacques Doucet (10,282) and Toronto’s Tom Cheek (8,992).
The other seven candidates, selected by a Hall of Fame research committee, are Billy Berroa, Ken Coleman, Dizzy Dean, Lanny Frattare, Tony Kubek, Graham McNamee and Dave Van Horne.
2. Teixeira has a mixed reputation. He has much in common with A-Rod. He is diligent about staying in shape year-round, is durable and works hard on all facets of his game. But his detractors - and there are more than a few - say that, like A-Rod, Teixeira is an accumulator who feasts on bad pitching, does his best work when his team is way ahead or behind, and is a corporation unto himself who does not mesh seamlessly with the clubhouse culture. Essentially the overall numbers are better than the total package.
“The statistics will be there, but this is not a player who will make anyone else on the team better,” said a former teammate of Teixeira’s. “The numbers indicate an elite player, but if you watch him every day you will realize he is a very good player, not elite.”
THIS is the Australian face at the centre of the sporting fairytale that has taken Major League Baseball and American sports fans by storm.
...
“It was awesome to get the win and be mobbed by the players. I haven’t had players form a huddle around me like that since I represented Australia in the Intercontinental Cup in 1999.”
And, baseball fans, all the Frank fun continues during the World Series on FOX, when he joins five other celebs - along with the animated Stewie from “Family Guy” - as part of the MLB’s “There’s Only One October” campaign.
Where have you gone, Dane Cook?
“I think I have to go into hiding soon,” laughed Caliendo, who appears on the TV spots as a blogging President Bush and NFL loud mouth John Madden. (BTW, Frank fans, he’ll be at the Wilbur Theatre on Feb. 14.)
TRAPPED BEHIND ENEMY LINES...THEY PASSED THE WORD ALONG TO—ATTACK! (And Michael Kay as Capt. Erskine Cooney is just swell!)
I heard something fairly disturbing during a YES broadcast. Michael Kay said that Joe Girardi commented on a question about being more patient at the plate by saying that he thinks the game has changed, that pitchers now attack the strike zone more aggressively, and being patient just gets hitters in the hole 0-1 or 0-2. The implication was that Girardi was of the opinion that hitters should not try to be as patient as they may have been in the past. Clearly, given his comments at his press conference, this doesn’t appear to be a position Brian Cashman takes. Is there any reason to believe that the team’s lack of discipline at the plate this year had to do with managerial philosophy as opposed to some guys having bad years, and some guys getting hurt? If so, that could spell a more long-term problem for the team.
Answer: I don’t think the manager has a direct impact on plate discipline. I would doubt (at least I hope not) that Girardi instructed his players to swing at pitches earlier in the count. I do think that once the likes of Ponson and Rasner were in the rotation, the hitters started to press and some guys got out of what they would normally do. Girardi probably could have done a better job of calming everybody down in June instead of holding a team meeting every 20 minutes. I can’t imagine being patient and working counts will ever not be the right approach. I’ve not heard Girardi espouse that.
An executive committee representing Japan’s 12 professional baseball teams have agreed to introduce a ban on players returning to Japanese baseball after turning down rookie draft nominations in Japan and signing with overseas pro teams.
The committee decided to ban players who had graduated from high school from entering professional Japanese teams for three years after returning to Japan from overseas stints, and introduce a two-year ban for such players who had been in university or company teams.
Justice? Hunsickness? A stack of Bibles?.....What am I stuck inside of Reinhard Bonnke’s tent?
Drayton McLane’s most serious mistake as an owner was showing Gerry Hunsicker the door after the 2004 season. I still don’t know whether his departure was an outright firing or if it was as mutual as they tried to make it appear.
I believe McLane was jealous of Hunsicker and that he couldn’t wait for him to leave. I also believe McLane would emphatically deny this to be true.
Based on conversations with array of people that worked around both men, they’d gotten to the point where neither could even stand being in the same room with the other. Neither man covered himself in glory as the relationship came undone in the final months of the 2004 season.
I’ve heard that McLane believed every negative article about him came from Hunsicker. This wasn’t true. I’ll put my hand on a stack of Bibles about that point. McLane apparently stewed about articles that painted a picture of a front office in which competent baseball men were constantly trying to overcome incompetent ownership. I know this to be true because I wrote some of those articles.
To this transplant, the notion that Philadelphia was not a baseball town was always overhyped twaddle. It was, and remains, a place of wonderful baseball history and tradition that had had that portion of its personality driven into hibernation by the unrelenting aura of futility that surrounded the Phillies.
Hamels was onto something, though. These two organizations don’t have the warm and fuzzies for each other. It appears that the bad feelings began when the Phillies felt the Eagles weren’t doing their fair share to maintain Veterans Stadium. The Eagles were unhappy that the Phillies weren’t as prepared as they were when state and city funds became available to build new parks, delaying the openings by a year. There have been reports of petty jealousies over which team has gotten the better play in the newspapers on a given day.
The thing is that it’s never taken much to fire up the Philadelphia baseball fan.
Damn...teams will be lining up around the bloody sock.
Red Sox righthander Curt Schilling told Sporting News that he won’t come back and pitch a full season, but he hasn’t ruled out pitching for part of next season.
“If I do decide to come back, I would work to the point I was ready and somewhere around May 1 let the teams know I wanted to pitch the second half. I’d obviously need to spend June in the minor leagues building it all back up and then hopefully come back and help a team in contention win a World Series,” Schilling said. “All of this is predicated with the fact that I am completely healthy and able to pitch like I did prior to breaking my shoulder early in 2007.”
..."This final year, if you can call it that, so much happened that left a bad-to-bitter taste in my mouth that I just am not sure. So much was and has been said about me by people that have no idea what has transpired over the past 12 months, and that bothers me. What I do know is in the past 23 years I’ve never gone through a winter and not had specific dates where I began to get ready for camp. I am wondering if that will be a change or if like much of the rest of this, I’ll hit those dates and feel no different.”
Hell, let the players sponsor it, say...The Stephen Drew Bath Water or Bonifacio’s Shrinkage, something like that.
The slowing economy has the Arizona Diamondbacks looking for a new sponsor for its right field pool after Riviera Pools filed for bankruptcy protection.
Ron Ostlund, Riviera’s president, said Monday the company couldn’t justify keeping its five-year, $1 million sponsorship that began this season. Riviera filed for Chapter 11 protection last week as a softening economy has put a handful of Valley pool companies out of business.
“The best thing we ever did was our tie-in with the Diamondbacks, and it more than paid for itself the first year,” Ostlund said. “But we can’t justify that expense. We are going through reorganization, and we will be much smaller when we come out. We can’t afford to do it.”
Word, however, is that the Dodgers realize he doesn’t fit their long-term needs. A defensive liability in a ballpark that puts an emphasis on defense doesn’t compute over the long-term, and Ramirez is looking for a five-year deal. Owner Frank McCourt already has an expensive education on the problems of signing free agents with the likes of Jason Schmidt, Andruw Jones and Juan Pierre, and will be hesitant to go overboard again.
Agent Scott Boras has let it be known through his media outlets that the expectation is for at least five years and $85 million in a deal for Ramirez.
OK, I have to admit it. I did enjoy Craig Sager’s orange suit getting ripped by Jonathan Papelbon with a good stream or three of postgame bubbly a little too much.
...Seriously, how does one not see this coming with Papelbon? Give a guy a bottle of bubbly, and he’s going to look for the best target possible. It’s science.
On another note, it’s good to know that blockhead Charlie Brown was wrong about the Great Pumpkin. It appears he’s still alive and kickin’, bringing sideline reports in bad hair to the air for Mr. Ted Turner.
Sui caedere, caedere
Whatever will be, will be
The future’s not ours, you see
I’m not just saying this to rile up unhappy Angel fans. That’s a bonus.
...Erick Aybar had nine bunt singles this year, twelfth-most in the Major Leagues despite appearing in fewer than 100 games. He knows how to bunt, and ahead 2-0, with a buntable fastball almost certainly on the way, Mike Scioscia had to believe that his shortstop would be able to get the ball down. Instead Aybar stabbed at the ball and missed it, leaving the runner out to dry and ending Anaheim’s threat. Their win expectancy dropped well below 50% and never recovered, as it wasn’t long before their season would end.
Scioscia, though, shouldn’t be blamed, at least not for this. I think he made the right decision. Scoring that run was of vital importance, and Erick Aybar sucks, so rather than cross his fingers and hope for a miracle, Scioscia got burned for siding with probability. #### happens, but a bad result doesn’t automatically mean it was a bad idea.
Sensational Secrets of Infamous Mets Mad-house EXPOSED!
And if the Mets try to sign him on the free-agent market this winter, they’re nuts.
They, along with every other team in baseball, had their shot at Manny in July, when the increasingly tense relationship between him and the Red Sox finally reached its breaking point. Things had gotten so bad that the Red Sox were happy to pay the remaining $7 million on his contract just to be rid of him. They probably would have thrown in a ride to the airport.
That was the time for the Mets to go after him. Not now.
Manny’s been great for the Dodgers, a morale-booster, a sparkplug and a ticket-seller. But you suspect he’s been on his best behavior, this being a walk year and all, and that once he gets that fat new contract, he will go back to being what he always was.
A head case, a sometime malcontent, an all-day flake. You know, everything’s going along fine, then one day he decides to strangle the traveling secretary. Just Manny being Manny.
Steve Yeager, a former Los Angeles Dodgers catcher who was named the most valuable player of the 1981 World Series, has sued two film companies for failing to pay him $10,000 for helping an actor improve his baseball skills.
Yeager, the nephew of legendary test pilot Chuck Yeager, contends that Guardian Pictures and Whitelight Entertainment agreed to pay him $50,000 to serve as a technical adviser on the film Playing with the Enemy: A Baseball Prodigy, a World at War and a Field of Broken Dreams, according to a complaint filed Oct. 3 in state court in California.
The companies agreed to pay $10,000 up front if the former major leaguer tutored actor Toby Moore on hitting and fielding before shooting began, Yeager said in court papers.
When Yeager “went to the bank in order to cash the cheque,” bank employees told him “the account had insufficient funds,” according to the suit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court.
And he’s the greatest alpha-lactalbumin the world!
Dan Uggla will be regarded as the Marlins’ most valuable trade bait over the winter, and he will be the subject of several offers from teams that believe themselves to be one superstar short of a World Series bid in 2009. Here’s one thing that prospective new teams can be sure of in Uggla. He will certainly maintain the extensive training regimen and precision-targeted dietary program that have made him one of the strongest and most feared power hitters in the National League.
As part of his efforts to sustain maximum muscle repair and growth over the course of a very long baseball season, Uggla makes a point of eating clean, forgoing excess carbs, and consuming plenty of Supreme Protein® bars, his protein source of choice for building muscle.
“Supreme Protein® bars allow me to get the protein and nutrients that I need so that I can recover from my workouts faster and exercise longer before feeling signs of fatigue,” Dan says. “I’ve definitely noticed a difference since I’ve added Supreme Protein® bars to my routine.” As a result, he believes that even higher achievements await him in the next few seasons. “I’ve never felt stronger, sharper, or had more stamina,” the slugger says. “No matter what next season brings, I know I’m going to be playing at a high level.” Whether those future exploits will be recorded in the Marlins’ aqua-and-black, or another team’s colors, remains to be seen.
Unfortunately, with the economy headed south again, it’s likely that we’ll see attendance figures drop again next season, and depending on just how bad things get, a return to the bad old days of anti-Yankee protests with fans throwing trash and or fake money at supposedly greedy players could very well be possible. Spending 365 days a year on this website and the rest of the Royals blogosphere, I can confidently state that quite a few Royals fans remain on the verge of bitterness over salary imbalances in the game and that resentment towards the game’s haves, both franchises and individuals is strong.
The Royals are two good summers away from drawing something like 24-26,000 a night at the K, maybe a notch more depending on how well the renovations go over and how low prices remain. However, if the current batch of players, namely the Alex Gordon Generation fail to materialize into a contender, attendance could drop all the way down to the mid-nineties levels. Unlike so many inside baseball, the Royals spent the boom years barely getting by, leaving them in a precarious position as storm clouds gather.
There was a day in mid-September, not that long ago, when Rafael Furcal had enough of the pain, enough of the setbacks and rehabilitation and complications.
The Los Angeles Dodgers were in Colorado. Angel Berroa was the regular shortstop. They were winning.
Furcal couldn’t play. The back of his left leg was burning again, and it hurt, and he was so tired of it all.
He had tried, tried so hard. He’d agreed to surgery in July to prune a calcified bulge from a lower disc, the one that was leaning into a nerve and making baseball impossible. He’d gone off for two months to Phoenix, endured hours of daily therapy there, and then he was back in the Dodgers’ dugout, that close, feeling the same rawness.
So, he told Stan Conte, the Dodgers trainer, “I’m done.”
(438 - 11:33pm, Oct 07)
Last: There is no dark side of Misirlou, he's all dark