Not much starting pitching depth on the Birthday Team. Neftali Feliz is fifth all-time among May 2 birthdays with three career starts, all of which have come in the past three weeks. As a result of Feliz and Clay Carroll going to the rotation, Steve Grilli heads the bullpen crew. Apart from being Jason's dad, Grilli's perhaps best remembered as the losing pitcher in the longest game in baseball history.

C: Jarrod Saltalamacchia
1B: John Leary
2B/Manager: Eddie Collins
3B: Ollie Beard
SS: Eddie Bressoud
LF: Gates Brown
CF: Felix Jose
RF: Keith Moreland

SP: Larry Cheney
SP: Clay Carroll
SP: Bill Piercy
SP: Neftali Feliz
SP: Luke Hudson
RP: Steve Grilli

Owner: Bing Crosby
Dead Milkmen Devotee: Jim Walewander
Cool Names: Brick Smith, Skinny O'Neal

That's some awesome OF defense!

Historical item at THT notes that today is the 10th anniversary of Mike Cameron hitting four homers in one game. He got them all in the first five innings. He & Bret Boone hit back-to-back homers twice in one inning, too.

First-hand accounts of how Cobb's contemporaries viewed him are always good.

Cobb was only 25 at the time of this article. Their first baseman was pretty bad (well, so were most of their hitters) and they had four good outfielders including Jim Delahanty, so maybe Cobb was right.

I'm waiting for Bryce Harper to demand to be allowed to play first base and pitch.

Dissension in the ranks of the Tigers is blamed for the poor showing of Jennings’ ball club this year, and Ty Cobb, the Georgia Peach, is the cause. The Tigers are all fighting, not the enemy, but among themselves.

Soon, Cobb will be fighting cripples in the stands, and the team will joins ranks to stand behind Cobb.

Cobb was usually right. That's not where the problem came in.

I think Sam Crawford (an older star that Cobb both admired and was sometimes at odds with) told Cobb that he needed to do something about that heckler or he was a #####. And he assured Cobb the players would back him up. I wonder how well it was known beforehand that the heckler was a cripple.

When Cobb was told that the guy he was pummeling had no hands, Cobb looked up long enough to yell, "I don't care if he doesn't have any feet!" and resumed the pummeling. Class act.

Speaking of Gates Brown, I think he was the 1960s ballplayer who returned to the reform school he was sent to as a kid to speak to the current student body. During the Q&A one of the administrators asked, "Tell the students what you took when you were here." Gates paused a moment and said, "Mostly, overcoats."

IBB watch: Rockies just IBB'd Kemp with 2 outs, a runner on first, up 2 runs in the ninth; Dee Gordon just doubled in two runs to tie the game. This makes me happy.

GotD to come shortly.

Game of the day (yesterday): Blue Jays 8, Rangers 7. Texas's excellent offense starts things off in the top of the second by batting around for 5 runs, using only one extra-base hit (a double by Ian Kinsler, driving in 2 and later scoring himself) in the process. The Jays countered quickly in the third, with Kelly Johnson's three-run homer and Jose Bautista's ensuing solo shot pulling them within a run. Texas posted an unearned run in the fourth on a single, a sac bunt on which the Jays tried and failed to get the lead runner, moving former Cabinet member Alberto Gonzalez to third, and a groundout. That ended the scoring until the seventh; Toronto loaded the bases on a single and a pair of errors, then scored on two groundouts and a single to take their first lead of the game. Texas rallied to tie in the ninth on three consecutive two-out singles, but Brett Lawrie led off the bottom of the inning with a game-ending solo homer.

Solid game (3.94), although not one you necessarily expect to be the best of the day when there were 14 played. Suffered from a lack of non-scoring rallies - the teams combined to leave one runner in scoring position in scoreless innings. There just wasn't much to pick from yesterday, as only three games of the 14 were better than the median.

Game of the day (last year): Mets 2, Phillies 1 (14). 5/1/11, on the other hand, had quite a few fine baseball games - but when one of them lasts 5 innings longer than the others, it tends to make the choice pretty easy.

The Mets loaded the bases in the top of the first, and did not score. It was an omen.

The teams neglected several individual baserunners over the next few innings. New York posted the game's first run in the fifth, with Carlos Beltran doubling in David Wright. The Phils loaded the bases without a hit in the seventh (2 walks and an HBP), but couldn't bring in the tying run; the Mets put two on with one away in the top of the eighth, but couldn't bring anyone in. Philly tied it up in the bottom of the inning with a pair of walks and an RBI single from Ryan Howard; they went on to load the bases, but not to score again. Both teams put runners on first and second with two outs in the ninth; neither scored.

The extra innings were more rally-free; only one runner reached scoring position from frames 10-12, and that with two outs. The Mets picked up a one-out double from Jason Pridie in the thirteenth; he took third on a flyout and watched Jose Reyes draw an IBB and steal second behind him before Daniel Murphy's groundout ended the inning. Finally, in the fourteenth, the New Yorkers put it away; Wright and Jason Bay singled, Ronny Paulino doubled in the go-ahead run, and one IBB later, the bases were left loaded for the fourth time in the game. In his second inning of work, Taylor Buchholz retired the Phils in order to end the game.

It's a very good game - 6.34, the 5th-best game of 2011 so far. Moreover, the low score and the extended length of the contest actually make it the most pitching-dominated game in the database as it exists at the moment. Put it this way - the Mets' hitters combined for -.603 WPA, and they won the game. The teams combined to leave 30 men on base, and went 2/24 with runners in scoring position.

In case any of you are going to SABR42, the schedule of research presentations has been posted on the SABR site. (Actually, it's there whether you're going or not.)

We're still finishing up the descriptions of the papers, so all that's there at the moment is time, presenter, and title. Further information should be on the website within the next few days. As should the list of posters and their associated blurbs.

PS. I remember Cammy's 4-homer game. What a blast! In his 5th plate appearance, as I recall, he hit a flyball to the track.

IBB watch: Rockies just IBB'd Kemp with 2 outs, a runner on first, up 2 runs in the ninth; Dee Gordon just doubled in two runs to tie the game. This makes me happy.

Is that one so unreasonable? Kemp has been an absolute beast this year: His OBP is .485, so likely as not he's going to reach base anyway. Dee Gordon, on deck, is a scrub with a lifetime .304 OBP, so if you walk Kemp, you've still got a 70 percent shot of getting out of it.

Walking Kemp puts the tying run on base, but it still took an extra-base hit from Dee Gordon to bring him around. Gordon, this season, has an extra-base hit in about 4 percent of his plate appearances this year; Kemp has homered in 12 percent of his plate appearances, or three times as often. It was much more likely that Kemp would homer than that Gordon would get an XBH.

I don't know that it was absolutely the correct strategy to walk Kemp. But I think it's defensible.

I don't know that it was absolutely the correct strategy to walk Kemp. But I think it's defensible.

Well, first, I doubt that Kemp's performance this year is exactly representative of his true talent level...

Second, it may be a defensible walk strategically (although you also have to account for the fact that he'd have scored on back-to-back singles, for instance). But either way, it's irritating to watch as a fan.

So, will that make the Game of the Day? Pretty squiggly win probability graph.

It'll certainly have an excellent shot. Innings 8-9 look to be worth about a median game on their own.

So, will that make the Game of the Day? Pretty squiggly win probability graph.

About that... not so much any more, given that Phillies-Braves just went to the bottom of the 9th tied at 13. But it'll rank highly among second-best games of the day, assuming nothing else passes it of course.

And... the Phillies just lost a game in which they scored 13 runs, and Roy Halladay was the starting pitcher.

A 41 and 40 year old hit walk off home runs and a no hitter.

Baseball is awesome.