President Ban Johnson, of the American league, has hit upon a new idea for shortening the average ball games. A new ball will be put into play every time a foul is hit, even if it does not go over the fence, or into the stands. Two small boys would be retained to pursue the ball and return it immediately.
And if that doesn’t work, they can reduce the average game length by eliminating Yankees-Red Sox matchups.
Rear Admiral Upper Half ‘A.J.’ Showalter on Conor Jackson’s retirement.
Orioles manager Buck Showalter found out about first baseman/outfielder Conor Jackson’s retirement today during a text exchange with Triple-A Norfolk manager Ron Johnson.
“He loved being with the organization and all that, but he’s at the stage of his life where it wasn’t something he wanted to continue to do,” Showalter said. “I know a little bit more than that, but that’s something that should come from Conor. He’s ...
Jarrod Parker made it through just 3 1/3 innings and allowed nine hits for the second consecutive start Sunday. The difference from his last one—when he gave up just two runs in Anaheim—was the Detroit Tigers made him pay with a career-high eight runs allowed in the A’s 10-1 loss at the Coliseum.
Parker had a rocky spring and has not fared much better in his three regular-season starts. His ERA is currently at 10.80, and he has allowed 23 hits in 11 2/3 innings. ...
I don’t know about you, but HBO’s Game of Thrones is probably my favorite show on television right now. So it’s safe to say I thought it was a pretty badass when DC Sports Bog posted about Jayson Werth using the shows theme song as his walk up music. The fact that Werth and his beard could probably make for a great character in Westeros just makes it even better.
You can kind of hear it in the above video but if you’re unfamiliar with the theme song you may not make it out.
It’s not only Jackie Robinson Day… it’s also Patriots’ Day! So that means, y’know, 11:05 start for Boston-Tampa. Sadly, the Cubs have the day off, presumably because we can’t have nice things.
Other things to watch: Buerhle faces his old Chicago teammates, Cliff Lee goes for a 3-0 start, and the Dodgers face the Carlos Quentin-less Padres.
“There’s been many different ideas and thoughts and concerns out there,” Quentin said Sunday. “Let me say this as far as the Dodgers series: Obviously I will miss the upcoming one but I will be a part of the rest. We play them many times.”
Quentin charged the mound after he was hit in the upper left arm by a pitch from Greinke. The two players lowered their shoulders and Quentin slammed into Greinke, who broke his left collarbone in the wild fight that ensued.
During spring training in 2010 as the Cardinals tried to indoctrinate fastball jockey Brad Penny into the organization’s philosophy of sink, pitching coach Dave Duncan and his staff kept a running tally for Penny’s benefit on a markerboard in the coaches’ office.
In one column, the pitching coach counted every fly ball allowed during spring, and in another all of the groundballs. Beside each was the number of extra-base hits in the air or on the ground. That number, so much higher by the ...
Baseball America has the story of the second player the Dodgers signed from the Negro Leagues:
Within weeks of Robinson becoming the first African-American player in modern baseball history to sign in Organized Baseball in the fall of 1945, lanky New Orleans native John Wright became the second. A righthander with a solid array of pitches who had a decade of success in the Negro Leagues, Wright also signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers, with both Robinson and Wright set to report to Dodgers spring ...
“I hopped on Baseball-Reference.com” Obviously, Lowe hopped up on something…
I got on the scent of this question during Wednesday’s game between the Tigers and Blue Jays. Miguel Cabrera singled in the first inning, giving the Tigers two .400 hitters on the young season, Cabrera and Torii Hunter.
I hopped on Baseball-Reference.com and learned that the only team to have more than one .400 hitter was the Philadelphia Phillies of 1894. They had three players bat at least .400: the starting ...
Then Sveum said, ‘Let us make the Cubs in my image, in my likeness’
But if you combined all the Cubs’ offensive stats from two weeks into the season to form a single player? Well, we’ve got almost enough stats to Frankenstein together our own utility player, even if all he is really good for is moaning “Fire bad!” and occasionally pinch hitting for Brent Lillibridge.
So far this season, the Cubs have amassed about 400 plate appearances, 11 homers, 35 runs, a 23.9% strikeout rate and a 5.5% ...
From the if Don Mattingly can play third base & second base file comes…
Needless to say, it’s not a position of comfort for Cano, but he’s certainly athletic enough to pull it off if he logged the time necessary to make it work. His lack of experience wasn’t a concern here though since Cano never handled a chance in the inning, and it won’t be going forward as Girardi will only use him there in situations like Saturday or when it’s a true emergency.
“It sounds kind of small-minded, but I would think they probably have the legal right to do that, especially if they let people know in advance that that’s the rule,” said Paul Bender, a professor of law at Arizona State.
“I hate to say that. I don’t like them doing that. And it’s conceivable if it’s treated as a city, state or county stadium that the rule would be different. But with what kind of clothes people wear, usually people who run the ...
Some of the Nationals feel that left fielder Bryce Harper plays with a chip on his shoulder, as if he has something to prove.
“To myself, yes,” Harper says. “To everyone else, I could care less.”
Another theory among certain Nats is that Harper is hell-bent on proving that he is better than the Angels’ Mike Trout, with whom he shared headlines last season as Trout won AL Rookie of the Year while Harper took NL honors.
Now where is my fully nucleationed copy of Doug Morris’ “Frigid Digit”?
Kind of like the Supreme Court on obscenity, the Mets will know it when they see it. Or feel it . There is no set criteria by Major League Baseball for it being too cold to play a baseball game, Sandy Alderson said Saturday, before the Mets played the Twins in 36-degree weather.
“Twenty-eight, 26, I don’t know where you draw the line,” the general manager said. “Nine would seem to qualify.”
Sunday at the Masters, but more importantly, it’s Sunday in baseball. Will Washington finally end Atlanta’s streak? What will happen in the AL East showdowns? On a scale of 1 to 100, how cool is it that Mat Latos has a cat named Cat Latos? Find out and discuss in the Omnichatter!
(Jackie) Robinson, a Dodger base runner, had reached third and was standing on the bag, not far from me, when he suddenly came apart. I don’t know what happened, what brought it on, but it must have been something ugly and far too familiar to him, another racial taunt—I didn’t hear it—that reached him from the stands and this time struck home.
San Diego Padres outfielder Carlos Quentin will appeal the eight-game suspension he received after inciting a brawl during which Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Zack Greinke broke his left collarbone.
After Greinke hit Quentin on the arm with a 3-2 pitch in the sixth inning of a one-run game, the 30-year-old bull-rushed the mound at Petco Park. Greinke threw his glove off, stood his ground and got trucked, swallowed by a pile of Dodgers and Padres who cleared the benches.
Greinke will have surgery ...
Joe Maddon: “I think the bunt is an overrated play.” (somebody wake up Kristina Akra…we have another half-baked show to do!)
Following another dreadful performance with runners in scoring position during a 2-1, 10-inning loss to the Boston Red Sox on Saturday, Tampa Bay manager Joe Maddon wasn’t making excuses.
He wasn’t second-guessing himself, either.
“For that group of people out there that want guys to bunt all the time, you don’t know the outcome when you choose to do that,” Maddon ...
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.
