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1. BDCIncredible. Koufaxian.
EDIT: Closed out the italics but didn't touch anything else. Ron J
I guess when one team is responsible for three of the top 10 pitchers' duels, it's a sign that you have really good pitching and really crappy offense. The Giants and Angels fit that description pretty well.
... without even mentioning that the Braves' two runs were scored on Tim Hudson's own two run homer? I mean, what's the point, then?
Not to mention that his useless commentary is wrong anyway, that game was in Atlanta, obviously, not Toronto.
Pass.
Offensive levels have changed drastically, and this is a really nice anecdotal depiction of the difference. James is still great at finding the right anecdote to illustrate a point.
1966 Larry Jaster scoffs.
Not only should James probably know everyone who threw more than 150ip last year, but Collmenter is the Mike Marshall mechanics guy and stands out if you see him throw one pitch.
How did you know of that guy? I barely recalled the name and certainly not his crazy good performance against the Dodgers in 1966
I'm and old school Cardinals fan, so it's my job to know stuff like that.
Wow! What a strange split. 5 shutouts against the Dodgers, no better than a 3.95 ERA against any other team.
I'm not sure what's more impressive, that or the fact that he went 6-5 with a 77 ERA+ against the rest of the league.
But this is the perfect opportunity to tell people about Collmenter and maybe add some substance and it would have taken two sentences.
Is he mad at the stats crowd or just feeling pretty cocky now that th larger worlsd has discovered him?
This is James doing his 80s-type non-theoretical stuff. No more, no less. Entertaining? Sure. Enlightening? Occasionally. But other than that it's just product.
As for Kuroda, the context that Bill isn't telling you is that since 1961 there have been 47 seasons that meet this (arbitrary) criteria. The reason why it used to happen so much more than has been the case recently is not just because of offensive levels, but due to the changes in pitcher usage that have resulted in starters getting less decisions (78% of decisions went to starters in 1968, 68% in 2000, 73% in 2011).
What Bill also doesn't tell you is that the three incidences of this "stat paradox" in 1992 were a fluke clustering. From 1979-1992, this happened only seven times. For the record: it happened 21 times in the 60s, 18 times in the 70s, 4 times in the 80s, 3 times in the 90s (all in '92).
He's always been like that a little bit. Hell, when he stopped doing the Abstracts one of the reasons he gave was he was writing more "hey idiot" response letters (not sure that was the precise term, but you get the idea I hope). James' style has always included a good bit of snark that like any snark could crossover from "funny" to "insulting" pretty quickly.
Sure, I'm not saying I'm proud not to have heard of him; I'm ignorant. Between a full-time job, a family, and being utterly absorbed in the Rays-Rangers ALDS, I simply missed that whole series. My bad.
James, OTOH, as people have pointed out, has always been a certain percentage information to a large percentage of shtick. He's the Neil Tyson of baseball science – and I say that admiringly as a fan of both of them :)
92. September 5, Boston in Toronto, Josh Beckett against Henderson Alvarez
Beckett left early with a sprained ankle, but the game was scoreless through nine innings, scoreless through 10. Brett Lawrie homered with two out in the bottom of the eleventh. Toronto 1, Boston 0.
That home run, against that team, from that guy, at that time, with that player/teammate/crowd reaction, was awesome.
Yup, that's it. I couldn't think of it.
Every Cardinal fan knows that guy. He's in the pantheon with Nelson Briles, Dick Hughes, Glenn Brummer, Roger Freed, and Mike Laga.
Also:
sorry to hijack, but seeing these names makes me smile...if I ever meet either guy in an airport, they will be getting a beer from me like it or not.
Damn straight! Lawrie had a string of Papi-esque clutch hits in his limited playing time. I have (hopefully not unrealistic) high hopes for him this year.
And Cole Hammels was pretty darn good, too.
As a Philly phan, I'm sad at how the Phillies 2011 season went, but you have to admit, they had a monster rotation last year (even though Oswalt went down early).
I love this line. I'm picturing Roger Freed trying to get to his gate with some guy chasing him, trying to force a beer on him. "Take the beer, dammit!"
Ah, this lets me translate it into my own dialect. Based on the Phillies Alternative Career Translator System (PHACTS) he's the Cardinal equivalent of Wayne Twitchell.
and your thoughts are "Stolen Base, PH Home Run" then you're a true Cardinal fan.
with Tom Lawless and Mike Ramsey.
Especially since he got ripped off on the ROY vote. (at worse he should have been third behind Ramos and Worley, but arguably could have been ahead of either of them)
You better hope you don't meet Roger Freed in an airport(RIP), but at the baseball writers association dinner a few years back, Brummer proved he would be more than willing to take you up on that offer(he was trashed)
It's possible during these more specialized times, I think, to focus much more on a single league than before, if your team is in it. My team (and James's teams) are in the AL.
Anyway, I thought this was a super-fun list, and he struck me as not one percentage point dickier than usual.
James doesn't care how players' names are spelled. He reserves the right to spell anything and everything his own way.
No, seriously, he does. In The Mind of Bill James, the biography by Scott Gray, there's a part where James complains about copy editors with their narrow belief that if you spell a guy's name one way in one paragraph, you should spell it the same way in the next paragraph.
I had never heard of Collmenter either.
1) I was listening to Buck (Jack!) and Shannon for Brummer's straight steal of home in the bottom of the 12th.
2) I was about 15 and attended the game against the Dodgers when Freed hit a pinch 3-run bomb to finish of the 9th inning rally from down 6-1.
He's right. Of course ideally that one way to spell the name should be the right way. As for the specific Zimmerman(n) issue I think that's a forgiveable transgression.
With 2 out and 2 strikes on the batter! One of his 4 career steals.
And that's only his 2nd-most-famous pinch homer.
Without looking it up, I seem to recall a pinch-hit extra-inning grand slam in 1977, and I remember (or I imagine I remember) the photo of him being mobbed by his Cardinal teammates. But I may be mis-remembering what was really the 3-run job mentioned above.
Now I am going to look it up.
EDIT: OK, wasn't imagining it, although I did have the year wrong. On May 1, 1979, after the Astros scored three in the top of the 11th, Freed hit a 2-out pinch-hit bases-loaded walkoff homer off ace closer Joe Sambito.
Anthony Swarzak
Guillermo Moscoso
Rubby de la Rosa
Alejandro Sanabia
Jhoulys Chacin
Henderson Alvarez
Luis Perez
Cory Luebke rang a bell, but I couldn't tell you anything about him, like what team he played for.
That's more than I would have thought. I'm off to look those guys up to figure out if I should be embarrassed or not. I note that it's possible that I'm a racist, since many of those names appear hispanic.
My Pirates (thankfully) got a young RoY CF Bill Virdon from the Cards; he and Roberto anchored our outfield for many years.
Tough being a Pirate fan these past 20 years; happy for you Cards fans that your team has been lots of fun to watch over the years.
Hey, that was how they did it until about 200 years ago. Roy Holliday, Roy Holiday, Roy Hawlidey, you know who I'm talking about. Also, when you get off the boat we make your name more pronounceable to your new neighbors. Alejandro Sanabia, you are now Alexander Sanabia. Jhoulys Chacin, you are Julius Chasen. Luis Perez, you are Lou Peters.
Thanks for reminding me, Bill Virdon was at the St Louis BBWAA dinner last week(not on the dais, but at one of the tables) and TLR kept trying to get Bill Virdon to like him(he said if he could get Bill Virdon to like him, he'll consider himself to have been successful---or something like that)
Roberto Hernandez Heredia, you are now Fausto Carmona.
he struck me as not one percentage point dickier than usual.
Praising with faint d--ns.
I remember watching that game, listed at #1, between Verlander and Haren on the television at my B-i-L's apartment just before SABR in Long Beach. It was the second time that season that I could have gone to a Verlander start if I'd set aside all other responsibilities and bought the tickets, the other being the no-hitter in Toronto.
Cool, no wonder I was way ahead on the Al Albuquerque curve.
Complete with the Jamesian touch.
Been pimping that for years on BBTF (and maybe others have, too), but plenty of room on the bandwagon. Bizarre numbers even for the era and # of teams for a mediocre pitcher to score...
You are to current players what Howie Menckel is to historical players.
Cano didn't score on a ground ball . . . he scored when Shields tried to pick him off 3B (!) and threw it away (!!!)
I presume that's just shorthand at the end. No two of the three McDaniel brothers -- Lindy, Von and Butch -- were twins.
To add a name to the pantheon of Cardinals unlikelies: Doug Clarey.
The "low-scoring game" and "starting pitchers pitch well" seem like the more expected criteria for a good pitchers' duel IMO than "quality pitchers on the mound" and "something is at stake"
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