‘Old man’ Arroyo pitching better than ever

Bronson: The Man. The Myth. The Cincinnati Celebrity.

Arroyo has pitched well enough that he could well end up in the Reds Hall of Fame some day.

“That’s something I don’t think about,” he said. “It’s just weird, man. I’ve said it a lot about other guys. You look at Brandon Phillips’ numbers, and they’re neck and neck with Joe Morgan, and you think of Joe Morgan as a god, but when you play next to Brandon Phillips for eight years, you don’t think of him as anything but ...

Quiz: Do you know MLB rules? - SportsNation - ESPN

My results were…disappointing.

Playing, coaching or umpiring baseball games for a number of years should lead to knowing all the ins and outs of the rule book, right? That doesn’t seem to be the case for everyone given the amount of blown calls we’ve seen this season. ESPN’s baseball crew teamed up with a rules expert to create and administer a quiz to current MLB players, managers/coaches and the media. The results were less than impressive. Do you know the game better than the people who live ...

Kevin Youkilis needs back surgery, out 10-12 weeks

######, NYC Tonite, Up Against The Wall

The injury hits just keep on coming for the Yankees, who announced that Kevin Youkilis needs surgery to repair a herniated disc and will be out for 10-12 weeks.

That puts Youkilis’ season in jeopardy, because 10 weeks would get him into September and any setbacks would leave him running out of time. Youkilis hit just .219 with two homers and a .648 OPS in 28 games for the Yankees after signing a one-year, $12 million deal as a free agent.

Mercury News: San Jose sues MLB over stalled Oakland A’s move

When Liquid Plumr failed to clear things up, the city filed suit.

The lawsuit argues MLB’s decree that the San Francisco Giants have exclusive territorial rights to San Jose, which the defending World Series champions refuse to relinquish, constitutes unlawful restraint of trade.

“For years, MLB has unlawfully conspired to control the location and relocation of major league men’s professional baseball clubs under the guise of an ‘antitrust exemption’ applied to the business of baseball,” said ...

Murphy: Ruben Amaro Jr. doesn’t “do” five-year plans, but the Phillies need a good one

Any professional who talks to the media about his area of expertise is succeptible to a certain level of contrarianism. Legend has it that even God the Creator once answered a question with the words, “I don’t know if ‘rest’ is the word I’d use to describe that seventh day, but. . .” So when the man responsible for the short and long-term success of the Phillies organization said on Monday afternoon that he doesn’t “do five-year plans,” it may have offered more of an insight into his psychology ...

Steinberg: St. Louis baseball writer makes hilarious jokes about the Nats

Woo-hoo…I haven’t laughed at a Strauss this hard since Stanislas “Animal” Kasava danced with Harry “Sugar Lips” Shapiro! #stalaugh17

Joe Strauss @JoeStrauss

District in meltdown. Mention Natitude and it’s as if someone shook the hive. #NotMyMarketingCampaign

Now, this is funny, because apparently a few Nats fans got angry at Strauss or something. And by writing “#NotMyMarketingCampaign,” Strauss here signifies that he did not, in fact, come up with Natitude. Meaning he’s zeroing in on ...

Brian Cashman Calls Hitting Coach Kevin Long’s Stance On Teixeira ‘Alarming’

As Thomas Carlyle Overbay once said: “Genius is an infinite capacity for taking painful cuts.”

Yankees general manager Brian Cashman insists he’s not angry with hitting coach Kevin Long. But Cashman didn’t too happy with him either when discussing Mark Teixeira’s wrist woes with reporters on Monday.

Long said Saturday night that he wasn’t sure if Teixeira’s right wrist “has been right” since coming off the disabled list on May 31.

“It’s alarming in the fact that K-Long ...

Schoenfield: Scherzer has turned into another Detroit ace

The Cone of Silence can’t drop on Dan Plesac quick enough.

I still like pitcher wins, warts and blemishes and gaping scars and all. Are pitcher wins perfect? Of course not. Should they be the first recourse in evaluating a pitcher’s performance? Of course not. Should they be discarded into the trash bin of ill-advised statistics, like the game-winning RBI? Of course not.

So I think it’s pretty cool that Max Scherzer is now 10-0, the first pitcher to win his first 10 decisions to begin a ...

Stan Lopata, 87, legendary Phillies catcher of the 1950s

RIP, Stan Lopata…

Stanley Edward Lopata died Saturday from heart complications at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania at age 87.

Stan played for the Phillies from 1948 to 1958, accumulating a .257 batting average with 25 triples, 116 home runs and 395 RBI in 822 games.

His biggest year was 1956 when he had 33 doubles, seven triples, 32 homers, 95 RBI and a .267 batting average. He was selected to the National League All-Star team in 1955 and 1956.

Among Phillies catchers, he ...

Primer Dugout (and link of the day) 6-18-2013

El Paso Herald, June 18, 1913:

[Naps manager] Joe Birmingham has denied the report that Vean Gregg and outfielder Graney engaged in a fist fight on the train, the result of which Graney received a black eye. Graney admitted a black eye, but said that he bumped into the head of a Pullman porter. Gregg also denied having been implicated in an argument.

Suuuuuure, Jack. Sure. You got a black eye bumping into someone’s head.

OMNICHATTER for June 18, 2013

17 MLB games today!

WaPo - Sheinin | For Angels’ Mike Trout, no ceiling applies

You have something special on your hands, a true phenom, a man among boys on the baseball field, but because you’ve been around the game a long time, you know there are hundreds just like him around the country, and you understand that injuries happen and flameouts happen and life happens. So you use some perspective. You talk about needing to be realistic. You aim on the low side.

“You go out and have a good high school career,” Jeff Trout once told his son, Mike, “and you’ll have a ...

Calcaterra - You can thank Major League Baseball for the sewage mess in the Oakland Coliseum

Still gobsmacked that a major league team is playing in a joint like the Oakland Coliseum, where the raw sewage flows more freely than the Bud Light. So too is A’s owner Lew Wolff, who tells Eric Fisher of SBJ that he is embarrassed by the mess but that it’s out of his control

Keidel: Bob Costas Blurs Line Between Illuminating And Illuminati

You killed them. You killed the Mets. You killed everything. You’re a monster.

Bob Costas is often evangelical at odd times. His recent ill-timed (if not illogical) remarks about gun control felt like something reserved for the Huffington Post — not the goal post — where he was broadcasting a football game. Now his increasingly throaty, theatrical bent led him to say that the Mets’ celebration after Sunday’s victory was a sign of the “end of Western Civilization.”

But this time ...

Numbers For Dodgers Do Not Add Up As Baseball Takes More Of Team’s TV Money

Forbes article discussing how the Dodgers will realize much less money from their TV contract than they expected.

Berg: Rumored trivia legend Nick Swisher bats .429 in pub trivia

Schwabalicious, he ain’t.

FTW: What super-famous musician was born Stevland Hardaway Judkins in Saginaw, Mich. in 1950?

Swisher: Steven Tyler?

FTW: Stevie Wonder.

Swisher: (laughing) In Michigan. I’m an Ohio guy!

FTW: Besides the Cincinnati Reds, which two Major League Baseball teams did Pete Rose play for?

Swisher: The Phillies, and… what other team did Rose play for besides the Reds?

Jason Giambi (from a nearby locker): Montreal.

FTW: You guys should be a team.

FTW: In 1776, the ...

Farnsworth: Breaking Down the Swing - Best Hitters of 2012

To counteract the Manmohan Singh Primer… the search for objective knowledge about hitting mechanics.

I compiled a list of the top 50 hitters from the 2012 season according to Fangraphs’ Batting component of WAR.  I then looked at side views of each of these hitters from highlights of the 2012 season in which each player hit a homerun.  In the case of switch hitters, I used the side of the plate where they were most successful.  In all but Melky Cabrera’s 2012 stats, that described their ...

Raw sewage on clubhouse level creates postgame chaos

In what equipment manager Steve Vucinich, a 46-year employee of the A’s, described as a first, the A’s and Mariners had to shower together in the Raiders’ second-floor locker room after today’s 10-2 Oakland win. Players from both teams trudged up and down one stairway in towels and shower shoes as both teams tried to get their flights out of town.

“It’s an unfortunate situation,” A’s third baseman Josh Donaldson said.

“Kind of a weird thing,” Oakland catcher John Jaso ...

Curt Smith: Not much time left to hail Tim McCarver

LOAD UP GANG!!!

If a great picture studs an art show, you pay a visit before the exhibit ends. If a classic car is for sale, you raid the piggy bank before your dream auto vanishes. If a popular broadcaster announces his retirement, you try as long as possible to postpone the inevitable. Tim McCarver is about to leave us. Let us bid him an affectionate farewell.

Born 52 days before Pearl Harbor, McCarver was a fine 1959-80 major-league baseball catcher — one of only seven modern ...

Primer Dugout (and link of the day) 6-17-2013

Toledo News-Bee, June 17, 2013:

DENVER, Colo., June 17.—(Special.)—With two men on the bases and the star batter at the plate, an unknown minister attempted to interrupt a Sunday ball game here.

The minister stepped to the plate and, raising his hands in the air, started to sing a hymn. The umpire called for the continuance of the game. The ball sped from the pitcher’s hand, a hit was made and the runner from third slid over the home plate between the minister’s legs.

65 years later, the ...

Stan “The Fan” Charles: After Biogenesis, Should MLB Players Still Have The Right To Arbitration?

Dumb Dora/Donald doesn’t pretend to be enough of an ____________ .

If an already-signed player who hits an average of 20 home runs and 80 RBIs per year makes, say, $5 million per season, then surely a second player who is averaging 24 home runs and 86 RBIs deserves $6 million per year. It made perfect sense in those honest days, before the introduction of steroids and performance-enhancing drugs to the game.

But teams made deals based on the supposed integrity of the accumulated statistics ...

WSJ: Well That Was an Unlikely Mets Comeback

About 90 minutes after the Mets gave up two runs on a can’t-anybody-here-play-this-game fifth-inning play in which they made two errors and nearly made a third, the Mets actually thought they had a chance. The Cubs still had three outs to get. They got one.

Nieuwenhuis, batting .097 at the time and already having gone 0-for-2 with a walk, nailed his first homer of the season by drilling an 0-1 fastball from Chicago reliever Carlos Marmol off the facing of the upper deck in right field. It was ...

Gackle: A’s pitcher Bartolo Colon becoming Bud Selig’s worst nightmare

Why…did he squat out the raw sewage problem?

When news broke in August that Colon had tested positive for PEDs, many, including yours truly, assumed the tubby, strike-throwing right-hander had tossed his final big-league pitch. Synthetic testosterone had rejuvenated his arm, helping him stretch his career into the late innings, and without it, he seemed destined to hit the beaches (wearing a shirt we’d hoped) back in the Dominican Republican.

But after serving a 50-game suspension, Colon is ...

OMNICHATTER for 6/17/2013

12 games today, not counting college and such. Chatter up!

Wil Myers promoted by the Tampa Bay Rays

Tampa Bay’s star baseball prospect, heralded in the top five of any national ranking you will find, is officially on his way to the Rays roster. Five games back in the AL East, the Rays will play three games in Boston and four games in New York in the coming week, starting with a double header on Tuesday.

To say the least, Wil Myers has been destroying the minor leagues. Myers hit his fourteenth homerun of the season in a three hit performance yesterday, and has raised his batting line to ...

Mark Appel signs under slot deal with Astros

$1.44M sounds like a lot of savings to spend further down their draft. And a rare example of a top pick going back in the draft and making a ton more than the previous teams offer.

Journal-Sentinel: Baseball players anonymously give their opinions

They like model Kate Upton. They like manager Joe Maddon. They like Ryan Braun as a hitter, but they love Miguel Cabrera even more. Much more.

They’re not too high on Milwaukee as a city in the circuit, but they disregard Oakland even more. Way more.

They wouldn’t want their daughters to marry any ballplayer, but especially if his name is AJ Pierzynski.

Those are some of the results in a survey of 146 major-league baseball players conducted by Athlon Sports, which is to publish the ...

Press-Democrat: RUBINO: DiMaggios’ father no fan of baseball — at first

In Tom Clavin’s revelatory and surprisingly touching new book, “The DiMaggios,” there is a quote from a syndicated sports column of the 1940s:

“The old-time baseball writers used to refer affectionately to (19th century reporter and groundbreaking statistician) Henry Chadwick as the Father of Baseball. It would seem fitting to bestow this distinction today upon Mr. (Guiseppe) DiMaggio. ... We know of no other father who has contributed that many sons to the uplift and perpetuity of ...

Mark Teixeira leaves 6-2 Yankees loss due to wrist trouble, to see doctor on Sunday

The hell with Teixeira’s meaningless .151/.270/.340 slash line…how are the Yankees ever going to replace his 12 RBI’s!? #francesspool

Up close, hitting coach Kevin Long harbored worry about his slugger. A staple of Teixeira’s pre-game routine involves hitting off a tee. When Teixeira attempted that practice left-handed, which places stress on the strained tendon sheath in his right wrist, he felt “discomfort,” Long said. His left-handed swing lacked “the whip and the bat speed that you ...

With defensive shifts on the rise in baseball, Orioles among leading proponents

Manager Buck Showalter downplays the notion that he suddenly found religion on the shift.

“People were doing it years ago,” he says. “It’s not something new. Ask [1960s slugger] Willie McCovey. But a lot of it then was really tough, because you were basing it on just what your gut told you.”

...Orioles closer Jim Johnson, a ground-ball pitcher when he’s throwing well, says the shift has become too popular. “It’s fine on certain guys, but I think sometimes it gets a little carried ...