Elsewhere 100 years ago...

The Toledo News-Bee with more interesting and semi-lucid writing:

If you will take a squint at Gavvy Cravath's .233 batting average, you possibly may lose some of the 1911 respect you had for this athlete's walloping ability. But then a 15-year-old lad might be a mental wonder in the primary grade, and an ivory conk in the high school. Don't muff the illustration.
...

If Fred Derrick ever becomes a manager, he should prove an adept in lifting pitchers. Quick, Ignatz! Throw the cold water in his face.

Christy Mathewson's new book is now available, says the Pittsburgh Press:

"Pitching in a Pinch" is the title of a new book written by Christy Mathewson, the great pitcher of the New York Giants, which has just been published by G.P. Putnam's Sons. His book is a collection of baseball stories sure to prove interesting to every fan.

Judge for yourself.

Good thing today's Birthday Team has a Hall of Fame manager. They'll need him.

C: Brook Fordyce
1B: James Loney
2B: Al Cihocki
3B/Manager: Dick Williams
SS: Mickey Doolin
LF: Conor Jackson
CF: Steve Whitaker
RF: Gus Williams

SP: Tom Zachary
SP: Casey Patten
SP: Ed Heusser
SP: Joe Neale
SP: Al Papai
RP: Claude Raymond

Professor Frink's favorite player: John Flavin
Team Clergyman: Allan Travers

My article this week at THT is The state of the AL Central, part of a regular series THT is doing, with a weekly piece on each division. I got the AL Central and every six weeks I'll have an article up on it.

Fun info on how bad the Twins are in that article.

Multiple primates acknowledged in the references & resources section at the end.

Game of the day (yesterday): Orioles 9, Red Sox 6 (17). Well there's a shock. Baltimore went ahead 5-0 through the top of the fourth on a pair of solo homers by JJ Hardy and a 3-run shot by Robert Andino; Boston rallied to tie on a fourth-inning RBI single by Ryan Sweeney and a fifth-inning Will Middlebrooks grand slam. Through this point in the game, Oriole DH Chris Davis had struck out looking once, and struck out swinging twice.

In the top of the eighth, Adam Jones hit a foul popup that was dropped by Jarrod Saltalamacchia, then reached on an infield single, stole second and took third on Salty's second error of the inning, and after Davis struck out looking, Jones scored on a Mark Reynolds double to give Baltimore the lead. The bottom of the inning commenced with a double by David Ortiz, who was replaced by pinch runner Darnell McDonald. McDonald took third on a groundout, and scored on Saltalamacchia's sac fly to tie the score at 6. The Orioles went 1-2-3 in the ninth, and the Red Sox half of the inning ended on a K/CS double play. Baltimore picked up a leadoff walk in the tenth but couldn't advance the runner; Davis ended the inning with his third swinging strikeout of the day.

Starting in the top of the eleventh, the teams put exactly one runner on base in each of the next nine half-innings (there were actually two innings that had two separate baserunners, but both of them saw the first runner get doubled up before the second reached. The Orioles hit into a remarkable 6 double plays during the game.) Davis batted twice during this period, in the thirteenth and fifteenth; he made contact both times, but the Orioles would have been better off if he hadn't in one case, as he hit into one of the aforementioned double plays the first time he put the ball in play. McDonald, having taken over as Boston's DH, struck out in the tenth, but led off the thirteenth with a single; he then participated in the first 1-2-3 inning in quite some time in the bottom of the fifteenth.

Then came the sixteenth, and Chris Davis. He started things off with a strikeout and a flyout, but then Marlon Byrd reached on an error, and Mike Aviles followed that with a double to center; Byrd was thrown out trying to score. Boston, seeing their opponents' DH pitching so well, apparently decided that two could play at this particular game, and put McDonald on the mound to start the seventeenth. This went less well; he walked his first hitter, then after Wilson Betemit bailed him out by getting caught stealing, gave up a double to Hardy and walked Nick Markakis. With two runners on, Adam Jones then launched a home run over the Green Monster, giving Baltimore a 9-6 lead. Davis started the bottom of the inning by giving up a single and a walk, putting the tying run at the plate, but struck out Adrian Gonzalez and induced a game-ending double play from McDonald.

The game grades out at 8.56; that makes it not only the game of the year to date, but the best game I have in my database so far. I'm honestly a little surprised by that; I mean, it's 17 innings, and it has position players pitching (which doesn't affect the rating but is awesome), but it doesn't seem to flip some of the usual switches I look for - the teams combined to leave 20 runners on base, which is a lot, but they're spread over 17 innings; they only had 19 combined PA with runners in scoring position (only two runners reached as far as second from the 9th to the 16th, both with 2 outs)... so I'm actually going to break this down a little further. The natural game to use as a comparison is Toronto's 16-inning 7-4 win over Cleveland on Opening Day, which garners a still spectacular but considerably lower score of 6.66.

Splitting the games into three segments...
1. Regulation. In yesterday's game, Baltimore took a big lead early, but Boston rallied almost immediately, and the game was close from that point on; it also had an extra lead taking/comeback in the eighth. On Opening Day, Cleveland went up 4-0 in the second inning; the Jays scored once in the fourth, but remained down 3 until the ninth, when they tied the game. That makes for a highly exciting ninth inning (it was in fact the most exciting single inning in either game, in large part because Toronto threatened to take the lead after tying, then Cleveland had a shot at the win in the bottom half), but a fairly dull several innings in between. The O's-Sox game has a lead of about 1.9 points; the difference in the games' regulation periods is worth about 1.0 of that.

2. Extras before the last inning. Toronto and Cleveland had the most exciting single inning; Cleveland loaded the bases with one out in the bottom of the 12th before Asdrubal Cabrera hit into a double play, and Toronto had put two runners on in the top of the inning as well. But the rest of their extra innings had less going on; there were 4 1-2-3 half innings, compared to 2 in yesterday's game, and yesterday's (admittedly small) rallies tended to happen earlier in the innings. Also, yesterday has an extra inning in this portion. Overall, it's a small difference in favor of the more recent contest, about .4 points' worth.

3. The last inning. JP Arencibia's go-ahead 3-run homer came with nobody out, and the Indians only put one runner on base in the bottom of the inning. Meanwhile, Boston recorded an out before Adam Jones broke the tie, and got the tying run to the plate with nobody out. That's the remaining half point of difference.

Yesterday's game can and will be beaten at some point; for instance, Dag's article on Tiger Stadium from a little while back linked to a 22-inning game there that I believe scored over 10. It just hasn't been beaten yet in this system.

Game of the day (last year): Nationals 3, Marlins 2 (10). Feels a little anticlimactic switching over to writing about a game in which all of the pitchers were normally paid to pitch... Washington started off in the second with a Jerry Hairston RBI double, and added an Ian Desmond sac fly in the fourth. The Marlins put runners on second and third with nobody out in the fifth; the lead runner scored on a sac fly, and the trail runner was caught stealing home. (Given that the trail runner was catcher John Buck, and the batter at the time was pitcher Ricky Nolasco, I'm assuming busted squeeze play. On the other hand, that assumption is no fun.) Florda tied the game in the sixth on an RBI single from Gaby Sanchez, and had a chance to score more until the artist who was then known as Mike Stanton lined into a double play. The Nats put the go-ahead run at third with one out in the seventh, but couldn't bring it in; they did the same thing in the tenth, and this time, Adam LaRoche got the job done with a sac fly. The Marlins went loudly in the bottom of the inning, putting runners at the corners with nobody out (which made them favored to win despite the fact that they were trailing). A grounder back to the mound held the runner at third, but the pitcher looking the runner back allowed the trail runner to take second, putting the winning run in scoring position (well, debatably, since it was Buck again). A strikeout and a lineout later, Washington had escaped with the win.

Rockies rotation now features 4 guys with 37 ML starts among them and Jamie Moyer.

Nicasio, Pomerantz, Alex White and Christian Friedrich; Friedrich was their 1st rounder in 2008 and will make his 1st ML start Wednesday. They were going to option Jhoulys Chacin but will put him on the DL with shoulder inflammation instead.)

Doesn't Jeff Francis have an opt-out in his contract at this point? He's doing OK for Louisville, and as long as the team isn't going anywhere, it would be nice to have a fan favorite back. And he only needs three more wins to climb back into second place among the all-time Rockies pitching leaders.

Dylan Bundy gave up a run tonight. I'm not quite sure what happened on the play as it appears to be strikeout-wild pitch-catcher throwing error-outfielder throwing error.

Think Francis said he wouldn't exercise it / the date passed in spring training.

Thole knocked out of the mets game - hopefully nothing serious (smacked in the head in collision at plate).