It all started with Alexi Casilla on second, Nick Markakis on first and Baltimore third baseman Manny Machado at the plate. Machado roped a line drive toward Yankees second baseman Robinson Cano, who fielded the ball on a short hop.
Cano quickly flipped to shortstop Jayson Nix for the first out and—with Casilla initially freezing on the line drive—Nix had time to pivot and fire to third baseman Kevin Youkilis, catching Casilla in a rundown.
But let’s go back and turn that statement into a question: “Why would Quentin snap over this one?” It took until the second news cycle to start to examine why a guy who had been plunked 279 times since college would only take umbrage at the 280th HBP on Thursday night. Quentin’s an intense fellow on the field, but if you had an “erratic behavior” competition leading up to this incident, Greinke would win going away.
(Plus, Quentin wasn’t even over the plate this time.)
The answer turns out to be “a lot of things”, and they all happen very quickly, and it doesn’t end well for the batter (or the pitcher). I sat down with some physics books, a Nolan Ryan action figure, and a bunch of videotapes of nuclear tests and tried to sort it all out. What follows is my best guess at a nanosecond-by-nanosecond portrait:
The metric, according to Fangraphs, is an “attempt by the sabermetric community to summarize a player’s total contributions to their team in one statistic.” Sean Forman, the founder of baseball-reference.com, has called it “a framework ... an estimate of a player’s overall value.”
WAR estimates the number of wins that a player provides over a minor league or waiver-wire “replacement,” taking into account offense, defense and ...
I just saw “Olympus Has Fallen,” a truly great shoot-‘em-up, bombs-blasting, suspense thriller of a movie, which explains why I occasionally tune in to an Angels game.
No one crashes and burns like the Angels, a team loaded with talent and high on expectations, only to flop.
What great reality TV it would be to just train a camera on the face of Angry Arte, beginning with inning one against a low-payroll team like Oakland, and then watch him lose it.
But what is now lost from the game is the mystical feel of our pastime, found in the greats who once played the game. Sure, we still have legends. But even those are diminished in some respects. Take Derek Jeter, for instance. Many call him one of the greatest players to wear a uniform. But now, through advanced statistics, picking him apart for his below average UZR (which, in case you were wondering, measures the amount of space a fielder can cover). With ...
It’s Saturday. And that means a few things… one of them being a full slate of games. And, to make it even better, a lot of aces will be on the mound today. Fun.
The Blue Jays’ wobbly start took a grim turn Friday night when an ankle injury drove shortstop Jose Reyes from the game.
Reyes, attempting to steal second in the sixth inning in what turned out to be an 8-4 victory over Kansas City, rolled his left ankle on his trailing leg as he made an awkward slide into second. The Jays shortstop was writhing in agony after the slide and after several minutes was taken from the field on a cart.
A judge has rejected a plea agreement from the former head of a sports memorabilia auction house who admitted to using shill bidders to drive up prices and to altering the most valuable baseball card ever sold.
William Mastro of Mastro Auctions admitted to doctoring the 1909 Honus Wagner cigarette card that was once owned by hockey great Wayne Gretzky. The card sold for $2.8 million in 2007.
The New York Times reported online Thursday that Major League Baseball had purchased documents from a former employee at the clinic, which operated under the name Biogenesis of America and is now closed, in an effort to uncover evidence that would link the clinic to the distribution of performance-enhancing drugs. The article also stated that one major league player had also purchased clinic documents from a former clinic employee so that they could be destroyed. That player was not identified ...
“Lately, it just sort of seems to be a thing that—come the sixth inning—somebody wants to do the wave, regardless of the situation in the game,” Lattuca says.
The “Kill The Wave” effort is really about respecting other fans at the ballpark, he says.
Don’t Grieve! Anything you lose comes round in another form!
Well, during the bottom of the fifth inning of the Rangers’ game at Seattle on Thursday night, Rangers television play-by-play announcer Steve Busby went to Fox Sports Southwest’s Dana Larson for an update on the Oakland-Angels game in Anaheim.
Larson reported that the A’s were leading the Angels, currently in last place in the American League West, 3-1.
Larson threw it back upstairs to Busby and Rangers’ color analyst Tom ...
Good-by, Rube! Manager Joe Cantillon, of Minneapolis, announces that he probably will send Rube Waddell to one of the smaller minor leagues, his usefulness in class AA being ended.
Rube ended up in Fargo, of all places, going 3-9 in 15 games for the Graingrowers. Waddell died of tuberculosis in the Spring of 1914.
Word to Carlos Quentin: Assuming you aren’t suspended, the pitch headed towards you in next week’s series with the Dodgers is probably going to be intentional.
Major League Baseball has taken an unprecedented step in the Biogenesis of America investigation, paying a former employee of the South Florida anti-aging clinic linked to performance-enhancing drugs for documents on athletes named in the case, the New York Times reported Thursday night.
The move, according to the newspaper, came after at least one player linked to the clinic bought documents from a former employee there in order to destroy them. The Times, citing two unidentified people ...
Hello friends, discuss today’s games here. It’s a good slate, with Baltimore returning to the Bronx for the first time since the ALDS, Atlanta facing Washington for early NL East supremacy, Oakland facing Detroit, and Clayton Kershaw taking the mound against Arizona.
RIP, Grady Hatton…or as we used to call him The Creeper.
Grady Hatton Jr., a Beaumont-native, major league baseball player and manager of the Houston Astros, died Thursday morning from causes relating to cancer, his daughter-in-law said.
Hatton was born in Beaumont and played in the majors from 1946-60 after attending the University of Texas-Austin. He made his major league debut on April 16, 1946 as a 23-year-old second baseman with the Cincinnati Reds. In 1952, he was named a National ...
ToBP: What Is Bad Hip?...“Selig knows more about bad hips than he does about being hip.”
This is MLB’s “autopsy report” because the sport is on life support in black communities. We aren’t mad at Selig, though. Whether it’s just for the publicity or genuine concern, he’s making an effort and he needs the help. Selig knows more about bad hips than he does about being hip.
Baseball’s problem is that they rested on their laurels and refer to themselves as an American pastime, instead of ...
CLEVELAND—It is two hours before the scheduled start of Wednesday night’s Yankees-Indians game, and baseball’s all-time saves leader is deep inside the bowels of Progressive Field, holding a marching band’s bass drum.
Mariano Rivera wants to know how the drum’s owner, John Adams, hits it when he’s really mad.
“When the Indians are supposed to score, and they don’t score, how do you hit it?” Rivera asks. [...]
The ability to pay to get out of some sort of drudgery of everyday life or, alternatively, to get a taste of the good life. Front-of-the-line-passes. Elite status everything. It’s, in most respects, a logical extension of a capitalist system — if people want something, someone will provide it at some cost — but it also comes at another cost, and that of a shared civic experience.
Cubs president Theo Epstein is expected to address the media sometime this afternoon about the situation Wednesday night involving Cubs prospect Jorge Soler at Class A Daytona. We’ll pick things up here from our blog of this morning and add some reaction, which we’ll flesh out more in depth for the paper tomorrow and online later today. The Cubs and Giants are working out on the outfield grass as a cold rain continues to fall at Wrigley Field before the scheduled 1:20 p.m. game.
SAN JOSE—Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig has brushed back San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed’s formal request last week for a personal meeting to resolve issues holding up the Oakland A’s desired move to his city.
And Selig in his April 4 response added that Reed’s reference in an April 2 letter to “additional litigation” over the proposed A’s move “is neither productive nor consistent with process that the Athletics have initiated under our rules.”
That’s the bold claim advanced last week by Michael Brendan Dougherty, who just took a step away from political writing to found a baseball newsletter (news-email?) called “The Slurve” [http://www.theslurve.com/], and who gives a great interview about the decision here. His case that baseball is peaking acknowledges the sport’s various difficulties (the Hall of Fame’s steroid problems, the pace of games, the Florida Marlins), but then follows with this:
More daring than the Ruy Lopez or the Caro-Kann Defense!
The Baltimore manager has his first baseman, Chris Davis, playing a few steps off the bag when holding runners. Not just the slow-of-foot — all runners, all the time. The situation doesn’t matter. According to Orioles broadcaster Gary Thorne, the practice began in spring training and has been in place for every game since the start of the season. [...]
Something else Showalter said — and what he wouldn’t say — is where the ...
In other news, I am monitoring Kate Upton. Up in a tree. With binoculars.
When the Marlins traded Jose Reyes and Josh Johnson to Toronto last November, Mets officials began asking one another questions that remain in their minds today: Can we get Giancarlo Stanton? Would we trade Zack Wheeler to do it?
According to three team sources, the Mets then spent time at the winter meetings debating whether to make Wheeler available in a variety of trades, including for Arizona’s Justin Upton and ...
The party line is defensive coverage in the three-four hole, but it probably isn’t that simple. Knowing Buck Showalter, some gamesmanship is at play as well.
The Baltimore manager has his first baseman, Chris Davis, playing a few steps off the bag when holding runners. Not just the slow-of-foot — all runners, all the time. The situation doesn’t matter. According to Orioles broadcaster Gary Thorne, the practice began in spring training and has been in place for every game since the start ...
Maury adds…“As poet laureate Steve Perry said, “The party is over. I have gone away.”
Contrary to popular belief, not everyone likes to have their predictions come true. That’s certainly the case here. While each year writers look to predict the final outcome of MLB’s regular season, I’ve tried to look at attendance trends to see what may occur during the season.
The Red Sox were one of those cases. After missing the playoffs in the last day of the 2011 season, the whole “chicken and ...
Part of the reason for Oakland’s intentional surplus was to try to approximate the production of its deeper-pocketed competitors, on a payroll of about $60 million, by the establishment of platoons. “We said, OK, if we can put together a 25-man roster of depth, maybe you build a platoon in two or three spots that ultimately gives you the production of a $12- to $15 million player,” explains assistant general manager David Forst. Bob Melvin, the A’s manager, intended to orchestrate at least four ...
