Thursday, May 02, 2013
Baseball’s symphony of sounds
(espn.go.com)
Peavy smiles and says: “I try not to yell; I try not to swear. But at 7 o’clock every night, I turn into someone different. I’m out there trying to focus. I’m competing. I can’t control myself. But I have three little boys. I want them to be able to watch their daddy pitch without hearing all the yelling.
Read More...Dunn smiles and says: “I make fun of Jake. I mock him. I can’t even make the sound he makes when he’s out there; it will hurt my throat. We do an over/under on when he’s going to first yell at ...
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1 2 >If this year doesn't slam the door on the myth of the "proven closer" I don't know what will.
Rivera hurt...Yankees have best record in baseball
Wilson hurt...Giants win pennant
Jim Johnson 51 saves, 20 in 4 previous seasons combined...Orioles have best season in 15 years
Valverde goes to pieces in playoffs...Coke steps in and Tigers don't miss Valverde one bit
Clippard 32 saves, 1 previously in career...Nationals have best season since the Strike
Phillies sign Papelbon...have worst season in a decade
Athletics trade proven closer, rotate new closers...win most games since 2003
Not quite.
This is debatable. The Yankees did a good job of making Valverde's failure in the LCS irrelevant, but the Tigers certainly could have used another reliable RHP in their bullpen in the WS. I don't think Leylend was all that crazy about having to use Coke against so many right-handed batters. And the Yankees certainly missed Rivera this season. More good pitchers is better than fewer good pitchers, notwithstanding the myth of the proven closer.
Oh? That's not us?
Not the part about the virgins, anyway.
Maybe. If they didn't play 250 interleague games every year.
Even as a Braves fan, I agree that the play-in game added some drama to the end of the season. Now to figure out what to do with the roster. I probably wouldn't re-sign Bourn, but there's no obvious replacement. Prado can play 3B or LF, but somebody's needed for the other spot.
they were hugging on the mound before i realized what had happened. it was a heckuva pitch.
i'm a cards fan, but i sympathize with this too. which is why i favor expansion to 32 teams and 8 4-team divisions and let the division winners sort it out. its just neater. but whatever, i'm a baseball junkie and i'd watch no matter what.
"Everyone in the world knew I was throwing a slider...except him I guess." Sergio Romo on his last pitch to Cabrera on MLB Network.
So, who closes for the Giants next season?
No-Hitter [XXXXXXX] (Perfect Game: [XXX])
4-HR performance [X]
Bryce Harper shows up [X]
Teddy Wins [X]
Orioles are above .500 [X] (Orioles somehow make playoffs [X])
Shocking trade [X] (Ichiro out of Seattle!?!!?!?!?! Youk out of Boston?1?!)
Late-Season Collapse [X] (Texas)
Dodgers sold [X]
Ozzie Guillen involved in controversy [X]
Bobby Valentine involved in controversy [X]
Shockingly unexpected playoff team [X] (Two: Orioles and A's)
Umpire controversy [X]
NL wins All-Star Game [X]
Rookie Phenoms [X]
Farewells by future HOFers [X] (Chipper, maybe Thome and Mariano Rivera)
A-Rod is tabloid fodder [X]
Mauer hits .300+ [X]
The Nationals actually go forward on their whole "shut down Strasburg" thing [X]
Astros stink [X]
Mets stink [X]
Orioles stink [ ]
Cubs stink [X]
The only way to be sure of getting the best teams in the World Series is to put them there. With 8 4-team divisions (I also like this, just pointing out flaws), you'd end up with a 78 win division champ who gets hot at some point and then blown out in the WS.
You can't have multiple short series rounds and a good chance of avoiding weak WS teams.
I think I'd do something like this, though it is highly inelegant:
wild card winner gets no home games in the LDS and LCS UNLESS they have at least as many wins as the team they're playing.
worst division winner gets no home games if they are not within 5 games of the 2 seed.
In either event, if the 1 seed is 5 or more games in front of the team they face in the LCS they get 5 home games.
And LDS is best of 7.
Just weight the hell out of it. Best record in league used to mean automatic advancement to the World Series. It isn't automatic now but it should still mean something. For their trouble, the Nats started with two games in San Francisco. I realize that that is a one-off due to a late scheduling change but it signifies that MLB simply doesn't care about regular season records. And it should. (IMO, of course, YMMV).
Melky Cabrera tests positive for a PED [X]
Well, it was the Reds (and Nats in St. Louis), but that's one objection I don't think I'll ever understand. Other than revenue concerns for the better-seeded team (which I don't give a crap about), I don't see what the competitive disadvantage is to the 2-3 format. You play three at home and two on the road. I haven't herad a credible reason why the distribution of those games really matters.
However, I think your solution (involving not just the WC but the other division winners) is at least logical. Too many of the wildcard punishment schemes go too far in making advancement easier for the No. 1 seed, which isn't necessarily appropriate.
I used to think that, but for reasons bunyon suggests, I don't anymore. Too much chance, even with unbalanced schedules, of dogs getting in and good teams staying home.
Better would be four eight-team divisions where eight teams make the playoffs, #1s playing #2s in each league in the first round. You've still got the possibility of third-place teams in one division having better records than firsts in another, but unbalanced schedules would both mitigate that possibility and make it less clear whether the better record meant a better team.
But the current 30-team arrangement is now so locked into odd numbers and interleague play and now a ten-team postseason that to arrive at a nice even-numbered structure seems like the Holy Grail or something.
Fans in San Francisco chant Barry Zito's name [X] (In a positive fashion [X]) (Causing Tim McCarver to confuse Barry Bonds and Barry Manilow [X])
Position player earns a win [X]
Mets no-hitter [X]
Alfonso Soriano is available [X]
Yeah it was. I mean that was a 89 MPH straight FB that if Miggy was looking for it, could have easily put over the wall in CF or RF.
I completely blanked on this, and had to go look it up to remember.
I'd also add:
"Where did THAT come from?" performance [X] (Edwin Encarnacion)
Stats controversy [X] (Melky's non-title)
(BTW, I've noticed that Posey is listed in BBTF as the league leader for AVG. His name (and stat) also has a glow around it. What's up with that?)
(Actually, all the AVG leaders for all years have "glows" around them. And the ERA leaders. Huh?)
I'm pretty sure that Claire Chennault was the leader of the AVG during both years they operated.
I think you guys don't realize how good Romo's FB was last year. Romo got a lot of guys out with that FB.
The LDS round was pretty great, too. I think Tigers-A's was by far the best series, but the other three each had their merits. The LCS round was arguably still above-average - the NLCS was one of the least interesting seven-game series ever, but any seven-game series is hard to argue against. And in the ALCS, despite the sweep, Game 1 was very entertaining, games two and three were close, and most of us got to relish the defeat of the Evil Empire. The World Series was terrible, but I don't think it takes much away from the greatness of the rest of the 2012 season.
(That one seems like it should have been mentioned earlier.
But the point is, Romo didn't get a lot of guys out with that FB because of the nastiness of the pitch itself. The pitch itself is has "gopherball" embossed in gold script all over it. Had Cabrera been expecting it, the ball would probably be coming down right around now, somewhere in rural Michigan.
The pitch is wickedly effective because Romo's slider is nastiness itself. Cabrera, as great a hitter as there is, had been helpless against it, unable to touch it. Therefore Romo's able to set batters up like bowling pins for that meatball fastball. (Plus, he places everything with pinpoint precision; the fastball to Cabrera maximized its purpose by being on the inside half of the plate, and up -- where it gets in on the hitter quickest, allowing for the least reaction and response; Cabrera couldn't even begin to get off a defensive foul-it-off two-strike swing. He just stared at it, wide-eyed and stunned.)
Now way, that pitch was right on the inside corner. But Winnipeg, yes.
Pena just kept hammering VanSlyke, fastball, fastball, fastball and Andy kept fouling them off. Finally on the eighth pitch, Pena goes with some kind of floating change-up pitch but a terrible location, bellybutton high right down the middle. VanSlyke is completely frozen, called strike three, game over, 1-0 win for the Braves.
I attended three games and one was Dickey's (first) one hitter.
For example, in 1981, Sammy Stewart had the lowest qualified ERA in the AL. The ERA title rules at the time, though, said that you had to round a pitcher's innings to the nearest whole number, meaning that 167.2 IP and 168.1 IP both would be counted, for the purposes of the ERA title, as 168 IP exactly. That bizarre method of calculating innings pitched hurt Stewart (who had 112.1 IP and thus lost that .1) and helped Steve McCatty (who had 185.2 IP). In fact, calculating ERA that way gave McCatty a lower ERA than Stewart, so McCatty won the ERA title despite allowing slightly more earned runs per nine innings than Stewart did. B-R recognizes McCatty as the winner of the ERA title by putting the glow around his 2.33 ERA in 1981, but it recognizes Stewart as the statistical leader by bolding his 2.32 ERA in that same year.
I think it's kind of silly. Also, I don't really get why Melky's average isn't bolded - is it because he took himself out of the running?
No one (sane) confidently predicted they would go on to have the careers they did. But both of them absolutely knocked the socks off all observers. The upside potential of both was impossible to ignore or minimize.
You all do see the similarity, don't you?
Yup. Look at recent history in the NFL: 9-7 Giants in 2011 winning the Super Bowl, 8-8 Broncos winning a division in 2011, 7-9 Seahawks winning a division in 2010, 8-8 Chargers going to the playoffs in 2008 while 11-5 Patriots stay home...
The 8 divisions with 4 teams format eliminates the "hated" wild card and guarantees that only division winners make the playoffs. But it doesn't guarantee that the 4 best teams make the playoffs. And it introduces a high level of randomness based on geography that the wild card actually mitigates.
It would be better if we went back to pre-1961; 8 teams, separate leagues, a pennant is huge, and the WS is a bonus. Like some European systems, The next 8 or 12 or 16 or 20 teams play in a lower league. Winners of lower league swap to the big one, switching with the crummy ones.
Amazingly when I google "Turk Wendell Mark McGwire" it pops right up:
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