Sinatra estate steps to plate in Dodgers Chapter 11

Sinatra at the Jerry Sands, if you will.

The estate of Frank Sinatra, a long-time Los Angeles Dodgers fan, has joined four other season ticket holders to ask a bankruptcy judge for an official say in the baseball team’s future.

Nancy, Frank Jr. and Tina Sinatra and the other ticket holders are seeking recognition as an official committee to advocate on behalf of Dodger fans who generally blame team owner Frank McCourt for its financial problems.

They did not specify their concerns or motives ...

ESPN: Szymborski: White Sox need a Dunn-Rios miracle (INSIDER)

So, we know Adam Dunn and Alex Rios are playing terribly. But it's actually a little worse than that. When we make preseason projections for players, we don't know how important individual wins will be to the team at the end of the year. We might have an idea that a player is three wins above replacement level, but we don't know for a certainty how crucial those wins will be. If the White Sox were running away with the division or mired in last place, the missing wins from Dunn and Rios may ...

Rangers planning statue to honor Shannon Stone

The Rangers have announced plans to erect at Rangers Ballpark a statue of Shannon Stone, the Brownwood firefighter who died after falling from the stands July 7. The statue, which is still being designed but should be ready by 2012, will feature Stone and his 6-year-old son, Cooper, who was attending the game with his father.

Abraham: Red Sox have Lackey’s back

Lackey has pitched all season for the Red Sox while trying to support his wife Krista in her fight with breast cancer. There have been times when Lackey’s performance on the mound mirrored his personal anguish. But he continued to show up.  Lackey has not talked at length about his wife’s illness. He acknowledged the situation during spring training, saying that Krista had been diagnosed during the offseason. He asked that the details be kept private.  A series of positive steps came to an ...

Pirates sign top two draft picks

With the signing of Cole and Bell - and high school pitcher Clay Holmes on Monday evening - the Pirates signed all of their draft picks from the first 10 rounds, furthering their commitment to building their franchise around prospects. The Pirates spent about $17 million signing draft picks, which will likely place them near the top of the league in terms of total investment for the fourth consecutive year.

Great day for Pirate fans everywhere.

Blue Jays only team not to sign first round pick

The Blue Jays were unable to reach an agreement with first-round pick Tyler Beede prior to Monday’s midnight ET deadline.

Toronto selected the pitcher with the 21st overall selection in the 2011 First-Year Player Draft. The native of Massachusetts will instead attend Vanderbilt University in the fall and is not eligible to re-enter the Draft until 2014.

There appeared to be a large gap between the two sides during the final week of negotiations, and they never got close to getting something ...

O’Connell: Burnett gets 1st August victory as a Yankee

Beyond meaningless month streak thingee over! (Michael the K snaps six-packet of sumptuous Saxa Brown Sauce)

Finally.

It can no longer be said that A.J. Burnett has never won a game for the Yankees during the month of August. His manager and his bullpen got Burnett over the hump Monday night at Kansas City in a 7-4 victory that lifted the Bombers back into a first-place tie with the Red Sox in the American League East.

...Yankees manager Joe Girardi removed Burnett with two outs and a runner ...

MSH: Brian Wilson gets the loss, but maybe it should go to Bochy

Sure, sure…always blame Bruce. First Johnston, now Bochy.

Come October, the Giants may be in a position where they look back at several key moments that proved to be the difference between making the postseason and not.

Monday’s 5-4 loss in Atlanta, when the Braves scored three times in the ninth to win, may be one of those moments. And it’s hard to shake the feeling that it could have — even should have — been avoided, if not for Bruce Bochy’s decision to stand by his closer, Brian ...

McNeal: Jim Thome belongs in Hall of Fame, on the first ballot

Stan McNeal, numbers crunching HOF voter! (drops thick Burt Standish brick on toe)

By hitting his 600th career home run, Jim Thome has entered one of baseball’s most exclusive neighborhoods. By my count, he joins Henry Aaron, Babe Ruth, Willie Mays and Ken Griffey Jr. as the only players to reach that milestone without artificial aid.

If Thome wasn’t already a certain Hall of Famer, he is now. Even in this era, 600 homers remains a magic number. He will have my vote on the first ballot.

...

N.Y. Times: In Milwaukee, a Fake Personality Turns Into a Real Phenomenon

“He’s Mr. Flamboyant,” Morgan said. “When I’m between the lines, it’s like a Jekyll and Hyde. Now I’m Nyj Morgan, the businessman. But when I get onto the field, that’s when I try to make it happen and just try to be Tony Plush and leave it all out on the field, just so the fans and whoever who have never seen me or my teammates can say, ‘Wow, this team can play,’ or ‘That kid Tony Plush, Nyj Morgan, can play, too.’ ”

Santiago Casilla And The Worst Plate Appearance In Baseball History

The Giants were beating the Marlins 5-2 with none on and one out in the top of the ninth. A real pinch-hitter was preparing behind Eli Whiteside, but after Whiteside struck out, Bruce Bochy sent Santiago Casilla to the plate instead. Casilla had pitched in the bottom of the eighth, and Bochy didn’t want to remove him for a pointless at-bat with closer Brian Wilson unavailable.

So you can already see why this was weird. Casilla had pitched in the eighth inning of a close game because Casilla is ...

Zambrano apologizes, wants to stay with Cubs

And so it goes, and so it goes, and so it goes…

Primer Dugout (and link of the day) 8-16-2011

Pittsburgh Press, August 16, 1911:

After pitching big league ball for 22 years, Cy Young, the most famous pitcher the game has ever known, was granted his unconditional release by the Cleveland club last night.  The action was not entirely unexpected.

At age 44, Young latched on with Boston (NL) for the final 11 starts of his career.  He threw 80 innings of league-average ball before heading back to his farm near Peoli, Ohio.

Hoffarth: GM Colletti talks about frustrating season, the future

Michael Franzese? Pro-faci. Anti-faci…still a whacky interview with Ned Colletti.

About once a month, Colletti’s been going to dinner with “five or six guys who are well-versed in life,” he said. “We talk about whatever comes up. If we’re there three hours, I hope the baseball conversation is only 15 minutes.”

The other night, the group included Tom Sherak, the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; Bob Moore, the president and general manager of KABC-AM radio, the ...

ESPN: Szymborski: Who’s next to 600 home runs? (INSIDER)

At long last, Jim Thome hit his 600th career home run and became the eighth player in major league history to reach that milestone. Given the increase in home runs in the past 20 years, the 400-homer club has become almost old news, and hitting 500 homers is no longer an automatic ticket to Cooperstown.

But 600 homers is still a pretty rare feat—you can count the club members without running out of fingers—and many of the best players of this generation are likely to fall well short.

Who ...

ESPN: Jim Thome hits 600th home run

Minnesota slugger Jim Thome has become the eighth player to hit 600 home runs, connecting twice against the Detroit Tigers on Monday night.

The 40-year-old Thome hit a two-run homer in the sixth inning for No. 599, then came to bat again in the seventh. He hit a 2-1 pitch from Daniel Schlereth over the fence in left field, then circled the bases as the Detroit fans gave him a standing ovation.

Thome became the second-fastest hitter to reach the milestone, hitting his 600th homer in at-bat No. ...

Yahoo: Brewers turn triple play in second against Dodgers

The more unusual 4-6-3-2 variant…

The Milwaukee Brewers turned the sixth triple play in franchise history against the Los Angeles Dodgers in the second inning on Monday night.

Matt Kemp walked and Juan Rivera singled to put runners on first and second. James Loney hit a grounder that second baseman Josh Wilson snagged moving to his right. Wilson flipped the ball out of his glove to shortstop Yuniesky Betancourt and Betancourt threw to Prince Fielder at first for the second out.

Fielder went ...

ESPN: New Baseball Tonight Studio to Debut

..New Baseball..126 NFL PLAYERS ARRESTED..Tonight..NBA’S STERN REVEALS FLAMING RIM TAT..Studio..CHRIS BERMAN RELEASES BLUEGRASS CD..to Debut..

ESPN will debut a new Baseball Tonight studio – the network’s first studio space devoted exclusively to baseball throughout the entire Major League Baseball season – tonight, Monday, Aug. 15, at 10 p.m. ET. The new state-of-the-art Baseball Tonight studio is the largest ESPN sport-specific studio, with approximately 5,000 square feet including an ...

Tim Marchman: The Classical

I’ll let Tim explain this venture…“So along with some really smart guys and good writers like Bethlehem Shoals from FreeDarko, Eric Nusbaum from Pitchers and Poets and Tom Scharpling from The Best Show on WFMU among others, I’m starting up a website for which I’m presently raising some funds.”

Plus, David Roth, Lang Whitaker and others!

The Classical is a daily web publication. We’ve written about sports and other things for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated, ...

WSJ: MLB Postpones Vote to Approve Sale of Astros

The commissioner’s office said Monday “the standard due diligence that must be completed before any transaction of this magnitude can close remains ongoing.”

Translation: Bud doesn’t yet have the votes to approve Mr. Crane’s petition to join the brotherhood of MLB owners.

Twins trade Delmon Young to Detroit

Fun fact: Delmon Young had more MVP votes last year than Buster Posey, Matt Holliday, Shin Soo Choo, Alex Roriguez, or Jim Thome.

The Twins have traded Delmon Young to Detroit for minor-league left-handed pitcher Cole Nelson and a player to be named later.

Nelson, who was selected by the Tigers in the 10th round of the 2010 draft, pitched for Class A Lakeland in the Florida State league this season. The 6-foot-7 lefty is 5-11 with a 4.87 ERA and has been assigned to Class A Fort Myers.

In ...

Hauls of Shame: Where’s “Black Betsy”?  Is “Shoeless Joe’s Bat Still in Greenville?

....the claims that it was used in Jackson’s days playing for Cleveland and Chicago will have to be examined more closely as the result of a report written by Carter ”Scoop” Latimer for the cover-story of The Sporting News in 1942.  In his report, Latimer describes how a small group of local kids appeared at Jackson’s home to present him with a gift:

“The treasured gift, which the kiddies bought with pennies saved was a replica of “Black Betsy,” the ebony-colored, hand-turned ...

Baseball Transitions from ‘Eye Test’ to Sabermetrics in Latin America

In Latin America, the perception, as president of the Puerto Rico Professional Baseball League Sadi Antonmattei admits to be true, is that scouting and the evaluation of players is done primarily by the old-fashioned “eye test.”

However, he believes that’s about to change.

“Change is not always very welcomed at first, but those who don’t evolve with this technology might be making a big strategic mistake in the long run,” Antonmattei said. “It is too early to tell how ...

ESPN: Simon: Peter Bourjous has them covered

BIS employees do video tracking for every play in every major league game, providing reports and stats to more than half the major league teams. The company has multiple methods of compiling defensive data.

One involves the plotting of points at which plays are made on a computerized baseball diamond, with the ability to denote for an outfielder whether the batted ball was a line drive, fly ball or something in-between (they call them “fliners”), and for how long the ball was in the air ...

Barry Zito sprains ankle during rehab start

San Francisco Giants left-hander Barry Zito sprained his right ankle during a rehabilitation start for Triple-A Fresno and will be sidelined indefinitely.

On the bright side, his name is in the credits of The Franchise for providing some music, so that’s nice.

THT: Jaffe: Baseball’s Randy Moss All-Stars

Chris splains…“It tries to come up with a team full of guys whose careers seemed like terrible wastes of talent despite rather impressive career numbers.”

Third base: Dick Allen

In terms of popular perception, Allen might be closest to Moss. He had undeniably talent, and his career numbers were impressive enough to garner him some Hall of Fame support (despite the fact that his off-field reputation didn’t help him with the voters).

Maybe if Allen had been healthier, he’d be a better ...

Athletics Nation: elcroata: PxP: Out of Control

So, when the hitters connected on the meatball and put it in play, they had a batting average of .368, significantly higher than the 2010 baseline of .299. However when they reached for the slider that was either too low or too far outside they did significantly worse.

So, by taking a mix of all the pitchers, hitters, defenses, parks, counts and whatnot, we are hoping to isolate the effect the pitch quality itself has on the BABIP. What we get is the observed level of talent, and we are ...

Jays-M’s could make killing in Vancouver

They should be playing 150 miles to the north – at BC Place in Vancouver, B.C.
Just think of the buzz it would generate: Jays rookie Brett Lawrie, a 21-year-old from the Vancouver suburb of Langley, is a sensation in the North. He has an OPS of 1.104 after nine big-league games, and Canadians would surely turn out in droves to see their native son.

“It would be huge,” said Bart Given, the former Blue Jays assistant general manager who currently lives in Vancouver.

Of course, that’s ...

Kilgore: Jayson Werth has much to prove in season’s final months

The gods of baseball are cruel! In time, all men shall learn to live without them!

The black-and-white truths of the first 119 games, he knows, have told a different story. Even after a recent surge, Werth has a 97 OPS+, a metric that combines a player’s ability to slug and reach base on a scale that uses 100 as league average. He has a .330 on-base percentage and a .383 slugging percentage.

His batting average, now .225, has been the measure most commonly held against Werth.

“It’s an ...

Stan Isaacs: The Philadelphia Story: Glory, Glory, Glory!

Ribby awakening quotes from some punchy old-timers…including Larry Merchant!

Charley Scott, 97, a onetime Penn soccer coach, said, “I guess I didn’t pay much attention to the Phils because of the Athletics. The father of a girl friend of mine was a lawyer who had some of the great Athletic players as clients and I met some of them when I visited a few times.”

Dr. Pete Hyman, 94, another Haverford resident, an internist at Temple U.niversity Hospital before he retired, said he saw a game ...