Newsweek: With Big Data, Moneyball Will Be on Steroids

More Statcasting…and the death of the amateur sabermetrician?

Another incentive for the league—particularly in the face of rising salaries—is an improved understanding of player value, particularly on the defensive end, where teams have focused more attention in the past few years. Defensive shifts, once only employed by the wonkiest teams, have become a league-wide staple thanks to advances in batted-ball data. The problem is, shifts or not, evaluating glove work remains difficult, as ...

OMNICHATTER 7-26-2014

The OMNICHATTER forecast for the day: A Sunny Day, for it’s Sonny Gray… day.

Or something.

Giants purchase contract of 2B Uggla

So much to like from this article.  It’s like they are trolling me.

Dan Uggla needed a fresh start. The San Francisco Giants needed a healthy second baseman who could step in and produce.

Well, at least one of them will get what they needed.

Uggla will cost the Giants only $500,000. The Braves are responsible for the $18 million he’s guaranteed over the rest of this season and next season.

You know the sport is flush when a team will plunk down a cool half mil to sign a player after ...

Price, Rays beat Red Sox for 8th straight victory

Price won his sixth start in a row, Evan Longoria hit a three-run double, and the Rays earned their eighth straight victory by beating the Boston Red Sox 6-4 on Friday night.

‘‘A little bit of the swagger is back,’’ Tampa Bay manager Joe Maddon said.

59 games left, 40-19 gets them to 90 wins.  It could happen.  Hopefully they have some more games with the Red Sox on the schedule.

Cardinals agree to deal with veteran catcher A.J. Pierzynski

According to Derrick Goold of the St. Louis-Post Dispatch, that’s what has brought veteran catcher A.J. Pierzynski and the St. Louis Cardinals together. The two sides officially agreed to a deal Friday night, and it’s expected Pierzynski will be available on Saturday in Chicago.

Apparently the Cardinals decided they didn’t have clubhouse tension.  It’s pretty hard to make the Cards less likable, but they’ve gone and done it.

Yankees push home streak over Jays to 17

Toronto’s Yankee Stadium skid, which started in September 2012, is the longest for a team at one opponent since Tampa Bay lost 18 in a row in Cleveland from September 2005 to July 2010, according to STATS.

Yasiel Puig hits three of Dodgers’ five triples, joins elite company

Yasiel Puig returned to the lineup with a bang-bang-bang on Friday night, becoming the first Los Angeles Dodgers player since Jimmy Sheckard in 1901 to hit three triples in a single game.

...he became the 49th player in MLB history with at least three triples.

Jimmy Sheckard!  That’s who Puig reminds me of!  Man, that’s been bugging me.

The first triple was a little sporty.  A drive into left center that was batted down by a fan.  The umps spent four minutes looking at it and then ...

Bespoke Bats Are Must-Have Accessories for Picky Hitters

In his airy new workshop, in a business park less than a mile from the Long Island Sound, Pete Tucci has batting cages, renovated offices, a showroom and a humidor large enough to store more than 13,000 billets of wood.

There is also, tucked in a corner, the rusty, motorized lathe that used to be in his garage.

It was there that Tucci began tinkering as a late-night diversion from the heating and air-conditioning business he co-owned with a relative. Tucci had no woodworking experience. The ...

Buehrle treats Toronto rookies to new suits in NY

“...Buehrle decided to get the rookies fitted for some custom suits. He gathered Marcus Stroman, Aaron Sanchez, Rob Rasmussen, Ryan Goins and Todd Redmond at the team hotel on Friday morning and then went to one of his favourite spots…”

Wisch: Cooperstown Shouldn’t Close Out Lee Smith

Outside of Hyapatia…I haven’t seen a Lee screwed this badly since “Three’s a Crowd” got cancelled and Lee Ving was out of a gig!

One could argue that their accomplishments have diminished the greatest line on Smith’s Hall of Fame resume, but that makes no sense to me. After all, if only current record holders were considered Hall-worthy, there would be a lot of Hall-worthy guys who should be bumped from Cooperstown.

What matters is that Smith was the saves leader when he retired. That was ...

Hurdles remain in Mets-Rockies deal for Tulowitzki, Gonzalez

The Rockies and Mets would seem to be perfect trade partners.

Colorado has star players at the very two positions the Mets need in shortstop Troy Tulowitzki and left fielder Carlos Gonzalez, and it needs to think about retooling things after another year fighting and losing the altitude/injury battle.

The Mets have a stash of young pitching prospects, just the sort Colorado so badly needs.

And, in fact, Rockies people have identified the Mets as one of the teams—perhaps the perfect team—that ...

Kemp’s agent Stewart on trade talks: ‘Sometimes change is good’

“Eight years is a long time to be in one place,” Kemp’s agent Dave Stewart, the former star pitcher, said by phone. “Sometimes change is good. This might be the time to change.”

Stewart hinted at that a week ago, first expressing an openness for Kemp’s to be dealt to another team, preferably one that would play him in center field, a proclamation that mostly surprised Dodgers folks for its timing; he had played 42 of the past 44 games at the time.

Well, the trade talks are on, and ...

News Center Recently Identified Molecule Could Lead to New Way to Repair Tendons

It’s an all-too familiar scenario for many people. You sprain your ankle or twist your knee. If you’re an adult, the initial pain is followed by a long road of recovery, with no promise that the torn ligament or tendon will ever regain its full strength.

That’s because tendon and ligament cells in adults produce little collagen, the fibrous protein that is used to build new tendon and ligament tissue. Physical therapy and surgery help, but for many people, there may always be a nagging ...

Re/code: Major League Baseball Cries Foul on Net Neutrality Proposal

‘Flixing it the other way.

Last week, the sports league’s digital media arm told the FCC that the controversial fast-lane net neutrality proposal was a bad idea for several reasons, one being that the added costs to content companies to use those fast lanes would likely ultimately be passed along to consumers.

“Fast lanes would serve only one purpose: for Broadband ISPs to receive an economic windfall,” MLB’s Advanced Media unit wrote in a filing. “American consumers would be worse ...

BA Report: MLBPA Files Grievance Against Astros Over Aiken, Nix, Marshall

When the Astros found an irregularity in Aiken’s elbow during a physical, they backed out of their $6.5 million agreement and reduced their offer. The two sides could not complete a deal before Friday’s deadline, which meant the Astros no longer had the money to honor their agreement with Nix (who passed his physical) without forfeiting a pair of future first-round picks.

The MLB players’ union indicated Friday that it was concerned about the way the two players were treated by the ...

SoE: AN IDIOT IN EXILE

Johnny Damon was a major league baseball player for 18 years. He won a World Series with the Red Sox in 2004 and another one with the Yankees in 2009, which is why he once said, “Being a baseball player is so great.” He said the game “was fun,” and winning championships was even more “fun.” He learned how to have “fun” with the A’s and then taught his teammates with the Red Sox and Yankees how to have “fun.” His concept of “fun” was mostly that of a young boy. “I could buy different toys,” he ...

5 for Friday: Leo Mazzone, pitching coach to the HOFers

“the hitters are off the ‘roids and the amphetamines for chrissake!” I’m now going to use this to end every bargument I get into.

5. MALINOWSKI: There’s been a trend this season where we’re seeing more position players pitch in games than ever before, but the Braves haven’t had one do so since 1989, the longest such streak for any team. Was that something that was just never considered, and what do you make of this new acceptance we’re seeing these days?

MAZZONE: Yeah, I know it ...

Primer Dugout (and link of the day) 7-25-2014

Bennington [Vermont] Evening Banner, July 25, 1914:

The management of the Athletics, the American League baseball club, has forbidden the further operation by newspapers or other news distributing agencies of baseball score boards on which the games in [Philadelphia] are reproduced on the street play by play. The management takes the ground that the boards are responsible for the loss of more than $1,000 a day in attendance at the ball park.
...
[Athletics president Ben Shibe:] “It is just as if ...

La Russa: Asterisk for tainted stars

La sterisk, if you will.

La Russa, who managed the White Sox, Athletics and Cardinals between 1979 and 2011, said that because he’s one of the Hall’s six new inductees, he now feels free to state his opinion on the candidacies of the tainted greats of the modern era.

“Treat them all the same,” La Russa said. “If you were a Hall of Famer during that period as far as your pitching and playing, I would create some kind of asterisk, where everybody understands that, ‘Look, we have some questions, ...

7-25-14 OMNICHATTER

TGIF. It’s OMNICHATTER

Noble: Tom Seaver expects Derek Jeter to become first unanimous Hall of Fame inductee

Lyme disease. Just horrible.

But while his Hall of Fame standing has brought him unique acclaim and been so fulfilling, he is quite willing to be displaced atop the list—so long as his replacement is the right player.

Derek Jeter is the right player.

Seaver says so. Moreover, he believes the Yankees captain ought to be the first unanimously elected Hall of Famer.

“I can’t see how he won’t be,” Seaver said on Wednesday from his home/vineyard in Calistoga, Calif., “unless somebody beats him ...

The Inventor of the High Five

Glenn Burke was credited with inventing the high five in 1977, early in his MLB career. Unfortunately, he was outed as a gay man that offseason, and his career and his life were both shortened.

Surprising Sports Stars – Guided by Voices’ Robert Pollard

Perhaps Now the Phil Regan.

Another claim to fame for Guided by Voices is that Pollard is sometimes mentioned as the most prolific songwriter of his generation. In fact, he’s joked that he could write five songs while on the toilet, and three of them would be good. As of the writing of this article, he has 1669 songs registered with BMI, and more than 80 albums released.

But what makes Pollard’s story even more unbelievable comes down to his less heralded athletic past. It may not be such ...

Ex-MLB star Chuck Knoblauch accused of assaulting ex-wife

And yet, still no justice for him hitting Keith Olberman’s mom.

Former Major League Baseball star Chuck Knoblauch was arrested Wednesday night and accused of assaulting his ex-wife.

Knoblauch, 46, is charged with assault of a family member after allegedly hitting Cheri Knoblauch.
They divorced in 2012.

Memorial Village police officers arrested Knoblauch and he was released after posting a $10,000 bond.

This isn’t the Knoblauch’s first brush with the law. He was convicted of hitting ...

Twitter / Ken_Rosenthal: Mariners announce acquisition of Kendrys Morales for RHP Stephen Pryor.

This tickles me for some reason.

A’s designate Johnson for assignment

Oakland acquiring Jim Johnson from Baltimore and agreeing to pay him $10 million this season left a lot of people shaking their heads and now the move is officially a spectacular failure. And over, too.

Intentional Walk Issued to Bonds Yields Unintentional Disbelief (Happy Birthday, Barry)

The Diamondbacks led San Francisco, 8-6, with two out when Bonds walked to the plate with the bases loaded. When he walked to first base, the run forced in by the rare intentional walk made it 8-7. Gregg Olson, who had walked five other batters in the eighth and ninth, went to a 3-2 count on Brent Mayne before getting him on a line drive to right field, ending the game.

“There are only three or four players in this game you’d do it with, and Bonds is one of them,” [Buck] Showalter said. As the ...

OMNICHATTER: 7-24-14

The OMNICHATTER!

Primer Dugout (and link of the day) 7-24-2014

Washington Times, July 24, 1914:

Eppa Jephtha Absolom Rixey, jr., [sic] former Virginia varsity twirler, was sadly bumped again yesterday by the Cubs. Rixey insisted on remaining at college until June this season and has been of no use to the Phillies at all. He has yet to win a ball game and may be released.

This is the second day in a row that a newspaper suggested that a guy who’d go on to become the winningest pitcher in franchise history would be released. Yesterday it was the Phils’ ...

Buck Showalter, Tommy Hunter bemoan shrinking strike zone in Orioles loss

Hour by hour it gets smaller - and - smaller! Grant Williams, yes. Grant Angelos, no.

The glare that Buck Showalter shot home plate umpire Hal Gibson III as the Orioles manager exited the visiting dugout during the eighth inning to pull Brian Matusz spoke volumes.

A late-inning shrinking strike zone had made an already tough task—beating the Angels—tougher.

Angels starter Jered Weaver seemed to get the low strike call throughout the night in the Orioles’ 3-2 loss. But as a one-run Orioles ...