Fox Sports: Ex-Dodgers pitcher Bobby Castillo dies at 59 after battle with cancer

Bobby Castillo, a former Dodgers and Minnesota Twins pitcher credited with teaching Fernando Valenzuela how to throw a screwball, died Monday in a Los Angeles hospital after a battle with cancer, the team announced. He was 59.

Grantland: The sad, financially successful legacy of baseball commissioner Bud Selig

This column never would have happened if baseball had a salary cap….

In many ways, Selig will be reckoned as one of the great commissioners of baseball. This is because, in the universe of baseball enthusiasts, the commissioner’s office always has been the repository of what Lewis Lapham once referred to as the American “wish for kings.” It was the commissioner’s office that threw out the Black Sox but winked at gamblers in other cities. It was the commissioner’s office that ...

Pearlman: Trading for George Foster…Frank Cashen’s Best Move

Was Lee Mazzilli overrated at the time of the deal?

One thing that, to me, stands out about Cashen: When folks try and figure out the biggest trade of his 12 years with New York, they focus upon Keith Hernandez being lifted from the Cardinals for two pitchers, or Gary Carter coming via Montreal in exchange for Hubie Brooks and a bunch of mediocre youngsters. They’ll mention David Cone’s acquisition from Kansas City for Ed Hearn; maybe even Ron Darling and Walt Terrell being taken from ...

Primer Dugout (and link of the day) 7-1-2014

Milwaukee Journal, July 1, 1914:

Ball players never hand the ball to an umpire? [sic] It would be a violation of one of the strictest of the unwritten laws of the game. Even though a player is within a couple of paces, or one pace, of an umpire, he will flip the ball to him. Why this is true the majority of players cannot say. When asked one of them stated: “Guess it’s just because we don’t like to have any more to do with an umpire than is absolutely necessary…”

I’d never thought about it ...

OTP - July 2014: Republicans Lose To Democrats For Sixth Straight Year In Congressional Baseball Game

As Time magazine recently reported, Republicans, frustrated by their 22-0 loss in last year’s game, sought a new coach to shake things up on the field this year. Some members even appealed to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to fire the coach, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas). But Boehner said he wasn’t powerful enough to control the baseball diamond, and Barton refused to walk away after spending 28 years with the game. Instead, he brought on Rep. Roger Williams (R-Texas), a former ...

Techie’s website hits ‘cool’ factor out of the park - Houston Chronicle

Baseball cool or geek cool?

You don’t have to work for the Astros or any team to be baseball cool in this town, and Daren Willman is quintessential baseball cool.

What To Expect: Mariners RHP Taijuan Walker - BaseballAmerica.com

Who is Taijuan Walker?

Notes: The history behind why Tanaka, Abreu count as rookies | FOX Sports

Rosenthal’s latest notes.

The holdup bears a resemblance to the delays that occasionally occur in free agency when players fail physicals and teams try to rework deals.
If indeed Aiken failed his physical, the Astros would have the right to offer him 40 percent of his signing bonus value, according to the new draft rules that were negotiated into the collective bargaining agreement in 2011.
The signing bonus value for the No. 1 overall pick is $7,922,100. Forty percent of that would be ...

Relieved Hessman sets IL homer record | MiLB.com

Ollie Carnegie isn’t exactly a household name.

Along with the smell of champagne and some Gatorade stains on his jersey, what Mike Hessman seemed to take away most from Monday night was a sense of relief.

Exactly one month after tying the International League career home run record, Hessman homered in the third inning of Triple-A Toledo’s 9-1 win over Indianapolis on Monday night. The round-tripper was the 259th for Hessman in the IL, surpassing long-time Buffalo outfielder Ollie Carnegie for ...

Harper, Williams give thoughts on Nats’ lineup | Comcast SportsNet Washington

Managers love this kind of stuff.

Harper, in fact, reiterated that point on Monday. He said he found out Williams’ lineup on Twitter and respects his skipper’s decision to put him back in left. That said, he thinks the Nats’ best lineup is a little different than the one constructed on Monday.

“I’m in the lineup, that’s all that matters. If I had the lineup it would maybe not be the same. But he’s got the lineup card, he’s got the pen and he knows what he’s doing. There’s nothing I can do about ...

Manny Ramirez vows to mentor Cub prospects

Just Manny being ... mature?

“Everybody makes mistakes, you, me, and everybody that’s in this room,” Ramirez said Monday while speaking to the media for the first time since signing a minor league deal with the Chicago Cubs. “But that’s it, you just have to grow and move on.” ....

“Theo (Epstein) was really honest,” Ramirez said of the Cubs’ president. “He said, ‘Hey, we don’t got a chance for you in the big leagues, but we got some young guys that we want you to help,’ and then I took it.”

...Read More...

Walt Davis Posted: July 01, 2014 at 01:09 AM | 33 comment(s)
  Beats: cubs, manny ramirez

OMNICHATTER 7-1-2014

The Start-Of-July OMNICHATTER

Frank Cashen dies at age 88

All bow to Bow-tie Cashen.

Frank Cashen, the architect of the 1986 world champion New York Mets, died Monday, a team spokesman said. He was 88.

Cashen, who died at Memorial Hospital in Easton, Maryland, served as Mets general manager from 1980 through 1991, transforming the organization from a perennial loser into a juggernaut.

According to the Elias Sports Bureau, the Mets owned the best record in Major League Baseball during Cashen’s final eight seasons as they compiled a 743-550 mark from ...

OMNICHATTER 6-30-2014

The Daily OMNICHATTER

Bryce Harper Returns To Nats Lineup, But Where

Yankees, Jeter, Red Sox, Girardi, Tanaka, Sabermetrics, silly grand predictions, get off my lawn…
(hopefully that pushes all the right buttons to get this posted before the end of the regular season.)

For more than two months, Matt Williams has been waiting to fill out a lineup card that includes Bryce Harper in it. And for several weeks, the Nationals’ first-time manager has been contemplating just how much he wants to shake up the rest of his lineup as a result of Harper’s return.

The ...

Awful Announcing - RETHINKING BASEBALL ON NATIONAL TELEVISION

There’s a stigma attached to writing about baseball’s predicament on television. Mostly, the idea that if you write about it, you’re proclaiming the death of the sport. It’s fair that the people who love it (which includes me) defend it, because as we’ve seen with soccer, sometimes it’s worth defending the thing that you like more than almost anything.

Fact is, however, that Major League Baseball has a national television problem. Sunday Night Baseball is doing fine, but ESPN still ...

Leaked: 10 Months Of The Houston Astros’ Internal Trade Talks

Some of these asks were just foolish.

Two years ago, the Houston Astros constructed “Ground Control”—a built-from-scratch online database for the private use of the Astros front office. It is by all accounts a marvel, an easy-to-use interface giving executives instant access to player statistics, video, and communications with other front offices around baseball. All it needs, apparently, is a little better password protection.
....
7/26/2013
[Nationals GM Mike] Rizzo called [Luhnow] to ...

Melewski: The scoop on Schoop: Showalter on his rookie second baseman

Jezus, how do you defend a 65 OPS+‘er…Buck Showalter finds a way.

“Think it’s more a challenge mentally and emotionally than anything,” Showalter said. “The thing I like (is) his defense hasn’t suffered. He knows, it gets harped on, bring something every game. How are you going to impact this game?

“You don’t get frustrated with them, you get frustrated for them. Because we feel like Jon is going to be a good hitter up here and there are things you go through. You know Manny (Machado), maybe ...

Primer Dugout (and link of the day) 6-30-2014

New York Tribune, June 30, 1914:

A near-riot marked the first game of the Cincinnati-Chicago series [in Chicago yesterday], which the Cubs won by a score of 10 to 7. In the visitors’ sixth inning Moran fouled down the third base line. Hoblitzell protested to Eason, the umpire, that the hit was fair and was ordered to the clubhouse. Charley Herzog ran into the argument and was ordered to join Hoblitzell.

A few moments later one of the players took Moran’s bat and threw it toward the players’ ...

Will soccer’s gain be baseball’s loss?

When the 2014 World Cup concludes, soccer isn’t going to disappear the way it typically has. Major League Soccer is growing in influence and popularity in traditional sports cities. More significant, major networks such as ESPN, Fox, and NBC Sports have adopted the sport.

In particular, ESPN’s awesome communications machinery is committed, to an unprecedented extent, to growing the world’s most popular game in America.

And if the 21st century has taught us any important sports lesson, it’s ...

Bill Madden: An Old Brew GM

Melvin’s: With Yo’ Eyes, Not Yo’ Stats. (King Buzzkill)

For a guy whose team has just had the best first-half in the 45-year history of the franchise, Milwaukee Brewers GM Doug Melvin is sounding pretty grumpy about the state of baseball these days. Maybe it’s because the 62-year-old Melvin, an old school GM who values scouts over Ivy League whiz kid stat geeks, thinks his NL Central-leading Brewers deserve a little more respect from the Sabermetrics crowd. “There’s this one guy,” ...

Caputo: Several more Detroit athletes are HOF worthy

Sabermetrics rule!

2. Alan Trammell – It is incredible Trammell only gets a relatively small percentage of the votes for the Hall of Fame. The baseball-reference version of the Sabermetrics statistic WAR rates him as the 93rd best MLB player of all time. He filled a premier position brilliantly, shortstop, and was a World Series MVP. He was robbed of the American League MVP Award he richly deserved in 1987, placing second behind overrated Blue Jays’ outfielder George Bell. Trammell was ...

Jerry Green: MLB Sabermetrics geeks quick to make silly grand proclamations

And all hail SABR’s Alex Bensky in the comment’s section!

This was considerably before Bill James learned to count to two. So it was somewhat before the creation of Sabermetrics with its collection of numbers freaks. This is the group of baseball intelligentsia who pay homage to James with the mystical belief that statistics never mattered until such arcane data as WAR and OPS were concocted.

Bradley’s gem also was somewhat before Clayton Kershaw’s recent no-hitter for the Dodgers was ...

Leitch: Billy Beane’s Ascendant A’s Are Playing a Brand-New Brand of Moneyball

But, but…Harold Reynolds said “the A’s aren’t going to win because they make too many errors.”

Except: The A’s didn’t actually end up trumping anybody. Moneyball the movie and the book are the rare inspirational sports stories that end with a big game … that the little guys lose. And, all told, after Moneyball came out, the A’s went through an eight-year stretch where they made the playoffs only once. This led to some mockery inside the baseball industry, particularly among those ...

OMNICHATTER 6-29-2014

Bartolo Colon will be hitting today!

Mike Napoli calls Masahiro Tanaka an ‘idiot’ after hitting game-winning home run to beat Yankees

Dum Dum boys.

Masahiro Tanaka probably would agree.

If, in a tie game, you throw a two-strike, two-out pitch over the middle of the plate to a hitter who can knock the ball out of the ballpark—with first base open and a guy on deck who couldn’t get a hit with a tennis racket—well, you’ve just made a colossal mistake.

And so, after first baseman Mike Napoli lined Tanaka’s belt-high fastball into the first row of the right-field bleachers on Saturday night for his 10th home run, giving the ...

BP Unfiltered: Ross Detwiler and the All-Fastball All-Stars

In his game-extending appearance, the lefty struck out two and walked one (intentionally), which was pretty darn Detwiler, though he did get six grounders without allowing a ball in the air and threw 32 strikes in 42 pitches (apart from the free pass). What really stood out about the outing, aside from the zeroes, was Detwiler’s pitch selection, which varied less than the song selection at a Kanye West/Jay Z “Watch the Thrones” show.

“I don’t remember an off-speed pitch,” Brewers ...

BtBS: The Home Run Derby doesn’t affect some types of hitters more

We keep hearing, though, that players whose swings aren’t built for home runs are particularly susceptible to getting out of whack because of a Derby. Is that true? Albert Pujols and Joe Mauer suffered wOBA drops in 2009 (.046 and .027, respectively), and other hitters who aren’t necessarily thought of as power-first guys have made up a pretty big chunk of the group of 40.

Taking the leap that power-first guys are also pull-first guys, I computed the percentage of the time that each of the 40 ...

Scarpetta leads Lynchburg to second straight no-hitter:  Braves’ Carolina League affiliate holds Wilmington hitless for second consecutive night

For two nights, Class A Advanced Lynchburg’s pitching staff has been unhittable. After Braves’ No. 1 prospect Lucas Sims and Alex Wilson combined for a no-hitter Thursday night against Wilmington, Cody Scarpetta and Benino Pruneda combined for a no-hitter of their own Friday, as the Hillcats defeated the Blue Rocks, 5-0.

Shaikin: For sake of argument, baseball’s replay review system has a downside

Of the 598 plays reviewed through Thursday, the call was overturned almost half the time — on 278 occasions, or 46.5%, according to Major League Baseball.

“There is a challenge every night,” Dodgers outfielder Andre Ethier said. “I don’t think there was a manager coming out to argue every night.”

In preparation for replay expansion, league officials reviewed video from last year’s games and determined one call every six games would be challenged, according to Joe Torre, the executive vice ...