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 ...

Ted Kubiak returns to share his knowledge with the Scrappers

It might not be a uniform…but here’s one book jacket I’m going to dislike.

So, on top of buying and selling a wealth of baseball memorabilia on ebay, including Babe Ruth signed balls, bats and gloves from the 1920s and authentic merchandise from the 1890s, Kubiak started penning his thoughts.

“What the book is is a combination of instruction and how I develop what I do with players,’ ” he said. “It mixes with my major league days, too. There’s a lot of history of the game in it like how did ...

Ballou: Another Drew attracts anxiety for Red Sox

Scat Ballou: Is this the way to make a shiity column…? You bet it is!

Now, the Sox have taken it to a new level with the Brothers Drew.

Neither is very good, but there’s something about a Drew that whoever Boston’s general manager is can’t resist, be it Theo Epstein or Ben Cherington.

OK, J.D. Drew had a couple of respectable seasons with the Red Sox. And, OK, Stephen Drew is a good defensive shortstop. Still, starting with Opening Day of 2010, Boston has committed $37.5 million ...

Madden: Fewer runs, more power relievers lead to ugly MLB marathons

Bill Madden! Elias Sports Bureau! Partridge Pattern Cords! It’s all here!

Why have extra innings, which used to be looked upon with great anticipation, instead been replaced by a sense of dread? And why are there suddenly so many of them? According to scouts and baseball execs I talked to, it starts with the gradual decrease of runs and homers since baseball instituted its ban of amphetamines in 2006.

“There’s less power in the game,” said one exec, “less examples of one swing of the ...

OMNICHATTER for June 16, 2013

Got Omnichatter?

MSN: Baseball highlights are far more exciting with a British spin [video]

Just try going to another baseball game and not thinking of a routine flyball being “caught by the chap in the pajamas with the glove that makes everything easier.”

Press-Telegram: The secrets behind baseball’s walk-up music

The origins of walk-up music are difficult to pinpoint. There is no “aha moment.” Or even an “A-ha” moment.

Loosely defined, the concept has been around for decades. St. Louis Cardinals leadoff hitter Lou Brock, to name one example, used to ask Busch Stadium organist Ernie Hays to play the “Theme From Shaft” for his trips to the plate in the early 1970s.

Sparky Lyle of the Yankees was also an early pioneer of baseball as musical theater. In 1972, his first season in New York, the left-handed ...

Newsday: Shyman [sic] Das, former MLB arbitrator, breaks down baseball’s appeals process

If a player is suspended as a result of the Biogenesis probe and appeals the decision, the case will go to the current arbitrator. Das said the arbitrator’s role is to judge the ultimate fate of any player suspected to be in violation of baseball’s joint drug agreement, and the arbitrator’s decision is not likely to be challenged outside of baseball.

“Baseball, like most other private employment collective bargaining, is covered by federal law,” Das said in a recent telephone interview. [...] ...Read More...

bobm Posted: June 15, 2013 at 11:14 PM | 2 comment(s)
  Beats: appeal, arbitration, peds

AWOL catcher Miguel Olivo begs Marlins: “Let me go”

To waste my baseball life
Would be a sin
Release me
And let me play again #humpdink

The Marlins placed Miguel Olivo on the restricted list after the team refused his request to be released and he walked out on the club during Friday’s game.

“I told them I wanted to be released and they wouldn’t give it to me,” said Olivo, who has been unhappy with his lack of playing time, in a phone interview with the Miami Herald. “I don’t understand why they don’t release me. I told them I wanted to be ...

BtBS: Phil Hughes: Baseball’s own “Jekyll and Hyde”

I’m going to broaden the study to the beginning of the 2012 season and look at a number of possible answers. Slowly, I’ll narrow down the problem areas and identify the real problem area(s).The first task was to separate Hughes’s starts into clearly defined “good” and “bad” samples, to best construct anatomies of each. I used Game Score as a quick and simple method, by excluding all starts since 2012 in which his score was between 36 and 64—roughly speaking, average starts. ...

Rosenthal: Team that gave us Moneyball ditching HR’s for BB’s & OBP - and W’s

Harold Reynolds: “The A’s aren’t walking a lot.”

Last season, when the A’s won the AL West, they mostly walked and hit homers — their .238 batting average ranked next-to-last in the AL, and they struck out more than any team in the league.

This season, their identity is different due to the acquisitions of two quality hitters, catcher John Jaso and shortstop Jed Lowrie, and emergence of a third, third baseman Josh Donaldson.

The A’s grind down opposing starters — they’re first in ...

YES Network: An interview with Ken Singleton

Terrific (yet clutch) interview with Singleton.

MW: I found that my personal appreciation of the game has increased exponentially as I’ve explored sabermetrics. I know there is a group of fans out there (and maybe they’re even the majority of fans) who cringe at the new age stats – can’t have the nerds ruining baseball with all their numbers! For me though, the metrics are not diminishing the game, rather they’re merely elaborating on what our eyes see. The “mystique,” if ...

Lee, Carbo sound off on MLB

Lee Carbo?  Pretty sure Toots Mondt used to book him all the time at the rickety Sunnyside Garden Arena.

And Bill Lee would like to keep the ball in play too, “talk about speeding up the game, use the same seven or eight balls during the game, what is the story? Tell the Fox Network not to run long commercials. And don’t have the girl with the tweater thing, the twit thing between innings, I don’t care what anyone says calling in - unless it’s the Flying Stilarsky Sisters.”

...“Get the drugs ...

OMNICHATTER for June 15, 2013

You know the drill.

Bernhardt: Albert Pujols is now just ‘average’

That’s how far Albert Pujols has fallen in the year-and-change since moving from St. Louis to Orange County. Last year, he was a victim of a very poor start to the season which colored everyone’s perception the rest of the way, but come June he hit his stride, with a .941 OPS the rest of the way. This June has also been his best month of the year so far, but whereas last June he hit .326/.409/.568 (.977), this June has only seen him hit .262/.327/.548 (.874) so far. A slugging-heavy .874 OPS is ...

ESPN Los Angeles: Do the Dodgers need to get Puig under control?

Chemistry problems already? Oh no!

I happen to think Puig was perfectly within his rights to fly off the handle Tuesday night. But that’s not to suggest there aren’t reasons to fret that he is a ticking time bomb in the Dodgers clubhouse.

After his past two games, Puig has refused to speak with reporters. It kind of sounds like no big deal. He hasn’t had much to say anyway and the questions would have undoubtedly been repetitive.

But it’s a bit troubling that, at age 22, with less than two ...

TPM: Congressional Baseball Game slideshow

Congressional Democrats handed Republicans a stinging 22-0 shutout during the annual Congressional Baseball Game at the Washington Nationals Park in Washington, D.C. on June 13, 2013. The game marked the 52nd edition of the modern version of the game, amounting to major bragging rights in the halls of Congress.

Seems like everyone wore the jersey of the closest minor or major league team to their district, which is pretty cool.