Sherman theatrics offers everything needed for a complete evening of entertainment!
In 2011, Posada became almost exclusively used against righties because his right-handed swing became so putrid, and Swisher and Teixeira were much better against lefties than righties. Detroit used all righty starters and Posada hit well in the Division Series; Swisher and Teixeira were bad.
Beltran was the lone switch-hitter this year (minimum 100 plate appearances as both a lefty and righty) to produce a ...
Since coming to the Detroit Tigers in 2005, Magglio Ordonez has provided the Tigers with one of the most memorable moments in their 110 year history in 2006, and with one of the most productive seasons that any Tiger has had at the plate in 2007. In almost fifty years of watching Tiger baseball, I honestly don’t believe that I have ever seen any Tiger have a better season at the plate than the season that Magglio had in 2007. He was that good.
Red Smith on the fifth and final game of the Yankees’ 1961 World Series championship:
Mrs. Charles Shipman Payson of New York and Craig Cullinan, Jr., of Houston were reported among the 32,589 guests at a lawn party in Crosely [sic] Field on Monday. If they still insist on putting their money into National League baseball, they’ll have only themselves to blame.
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Cincinnati has cuddled the game of baseball to its hospitable bosom ever since the first ...
Harvey Kuenn’s ‘82 club won by bashing the baseball, which is precisely what the Brewers did in a 9-6 win over the Cardinals in Game 1 of the National League Championship Series on Sunday, an opener owned by the offenses. If these NL Central rivals trudged any of their regular-season tension into October, they released it by swinging the bats.
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Ryan Braun led the way with four RBIs and hit one of the Brewers’ trio of two-run home runs in the opener of an all-NL rematch of ‘82 World Series ...
We Want the San Jose Airwaves! ~~ Part I and Part II.
TB: How do you figure out - is there a metric that you guys have outside of the really simple one of wins - but is there a metric to figure out whether your manager is doing a good job? Do you sit down at some point and review every decision they make in a game and then give him a ranking, or is it strictly the wins and losses? How do you guys go about judging that?
BB: We don’t have a specific metric for evaluating a manager. I’ve ...
5. Bud Black, manager, Padres - Could he really become the Angels GM? The feeling is yes. He and Mike Scioscia are very close friends and would work well together on the player personnel side of things. Black doesn’t have front office experience but is certainly bright enough and has a pitching expertise that would make him valuable in that position.
More and more, it seems, players are empowered, and the days when they followed orders from the manager have gone the way of the Edsel. The ...
Independent leagues are relatively new in Japan, where high schools, colleges and industrial leagues provide most of the young talent for the top teams. Even so, Irabu’s reputation in Japan was still strong, so he stood a better chance of catching the attention of a Japanese big-league club by playing in Kochi than if he remained in California.
It was a brief stay. His first start went as well as could be expected. In seven innings, he gave up three runs, walking five and striking out three. ...
McCourt has argued Selig forced the Dodgers into bankruptcy by rejecting a proposed television contract with Fox Sports, claiming the contract was structured similarly to others approved by the commissioner and that the rejection was but one example of how Selig applied a double standard to McCourt and the Dodgers.
“The Commissioner’s relationship with LAD, including his refusal to approve the media rights sale, is what is at issue,” Gross wrote in his ruling, using “LAD” to refer to the ...
This season, 19 major league teams—including playoff teams like the Rays, D-backs and Brewers—are utilizing a new tool created by Bloomberg Sports that combines video, data, analysis and news in one system. It also includes a tablet product for Major League players to help them analyze their mechanics and prepare for games. It is apparently so good that FoxSports and TBS will be using a version for the League Championship playoffs and World Series on their telecasts.
There hadn’t been a rain delay in Arlington since May 23. That’s over four months. The last actual rainout this season was May 11.
A packed house of 50,000-plus was amped, national TV cameras were rolling, the best-of-seven countdown to the American League pennant had begun, the Rangers had a quick Game 1 lead on Detroit horse Justin Verlander, and…
Damn, here came rain.
The rain is heavy and constant here in Arlington this morning, and the best idea of all would be call Game Two now and ...
Last Chance: Behind the Scenes at the Final Eight…
As soon as the last day of the regular season concluded, I was convinced there was a book to be done that would focus strictly on that final day, arguably the most dramatic in regular season baseball history. I thought—think—that if you go back to the eight teams involved in those four deciding games, focusing on the four teams fighting for the playoffs but also including the other four teams and get players, managers, coaches, ...
The Journal Sentinel asked a panel of five baseball experts to compare and contrast “Harvey’s Wallbangers” of 1982 with the current team, headed to the second LCS in franchise history.
The panel consists of five former major-leaguers, all of whom played for the Brewers and still live in the Milwaukee area: Jerry Augustine, Sal Bando, Larry Hisle, Ken Sanders and Gorman Thomas.
...Offensively, the teams were built differently. The 2011 Brewers are heavily reliant on Braun and Fielder for their ...
Of all the overpriced coffeehouses, in all the towns, in all the world, he walks into mine.
Pinzur said he was sitting near the window of the Starbucks on Racine and Wrightwood avenues, surfing the web on his laptop, when a Honda SUV pulled up and parked out front with the engine running. The driver stayed in the car, while Epstein, or his doppelganger, walked in wearing a ‘‘Diablos” baseball cap and stood in a short line.
Pinzur couldn’t believe his eyes. He had just finished reading a ...
But the most dramatic thing the Yankees do, other than sign more free-agent stars, is change pitching coaches once in a while. They make the playoffs with amazing consistency, year after year. Make boatloads of money. Then they make the Series about as often as a lot of other people in baseball, even as they talk about how special they are.
...“Oh, they destroy secondary pitching,” a manager from out of their division said Friday night. “They destroy fourth and fifth guys in the rotation and ...
It’s not unfair to say Delmon Young is one of those baseball players who cuts both ways.
His lethal edge is as a hitter, of course, and that’s where he most helps a team.
He can hit .300 and slam home runs. He found a home with the Tigers as manager Jim Leyland’s prized No. 3 batter after he was traded to Detroit in August, and he has given the Tigers an immense lift, especially during last week’s playoff upset of the Yankees.
But he also is risky in left field, especially at Comerica Park, ...
Tito Premiere: Bringing the worlds of TV and baseball entertainment together on one intelligent, easy-to-use idiot box!
No matter how you thought Francona handled Saturday night’s Game 1, this is still a bad idea.
Think about it: The Foxies are putting Francona, a guy with exactly one game of baseball broadcasting experience, on the biggest of stages. And they’re actually expecting him to give baseball fans what they deserve, a compelling, competent contribution to the telecast.
If you think these comments are surprising, you don’t know Zack!
In a Milwaukee Brewers clubhouse filled with oversized personalities, the first shot at the rival St. Louis Cardinals going into Game 1 of the NL championship series came from a surprising source: Starting pitcher Zack Greinke, whose bout with social anxiety disorder typically make him one of the least likely players to pop off.
Speaking to reporters at Miller Park on Saturday, Greinke said the Brewers don’t like Cardinals ace ...
Serving Size 1 bag (21.0 g)
Calories - 110 ~ Calories from Fat 54%
Total Fat - 6.0g ~ 9%
And is the rotund Sabathia really worth investing in over the next five years? Six years? Seven years?
Let it be said right here that Sabathia is worth the money.
Just not the years!
Sabathia, a nice man by all accounts, can bloviate all he wants about how “there’s no reason to think I can’t” be an ace over that period of time, as he told reporters following the Yankees’ Game 5 loss on ...
Red Sox President and CEO Larry Lucchino, in a Saturday afternoon appearance on the Mustard & Johnson Show, said that the appearance by Red Sox starting pitchers in the video for Kevin Fowler’s song, “Hell, Yeah, I Like Beer,” had not received team or Major League Baseball permission to use either Fenway Park or Sox players in uniform.
In the video, Josh Beckett, Clay Buchholz, Jon Lester and Tim Wakefield all make brief cameos mouthing the lyrics to Fowler’s ...
Talking to a baseball executive recently, I expressed the thought that David Samson, the president of the Florida Marlins, was probably the most disliked executive in baseball. I was thinking about Samson because I had just written about the Marlins’ questionable treatment of their rookie left fielder, Logan Morrison, in demoting him to the minors.
However, my executive friend disagreed. If not Samson, I asked, who? Jeff Wilpon, he said.
2. Matt Kemp and Clayton Kershaw had MVP/Cy Young Award-type seasons. Do you plan on trying to extend either of their contracts this offseason?
Matt Kemp is a priority, and I plan on getting with his agent, Dave Stewart, and will work diligently in trying to work out a long-term deal with Matt. There is some urgency because he’ll be a free agent at the end of the 2012 season if they don’t sign him long term now. Clayton Kershaw’s situation is not as urgent because he’s only first-time ...
“I’m sure we’ll show it Opening Day,” Morgan said. “But it’s not something we do every game and we probably won’t do it every game of that series, either.”
In 1993, then 46-year-old Ryan hit then 26-year-old Ventura with a pitch. The White Sox third baseman charged the mound but Ryan put the younger player in a headlock and got in a number of shots to his head. It still makes highlight reels of all-time baseball brawls.
Morgan has also incorporated Ventura into the Texas Legends race, where ...
Just walking through batting practice in the rain @PalmerFacelift
Getting soaking ####### wet @MildBillHagy
Torturing my frickin’ heart @EatMeBrooks
By trying to forget @IHateCrabs
At a time when this organization is desperate to find talent, more players needed to play winter ball and they did not.
I have seen some of the minor leaguers post on Twitter this year they were happy once when batting practice was rained out. I won’t mention any names here, but someone needs to remind these kids ...
In 2004 I organized a “gay night” with the New York Mets. It wasn’t easy. When I first approached them, they were very reticent; one team executive even wondered aloud in a meeting with me, “What do we do if a guy dressed as a woman tries to use the women’s restroom?” There was some twisting of arms back then, and I felt I had to let them know that “of course, if you don’t make this happen, I’ll have to call my friends at the New York Daily News and let them know.”
All told, there is zero evidence to support one of Moneyball’s pillars: Beane’s unique ability to identify and draft undervalued prospective stars. Indeed, Beane’s weak track record drafting players clearly contributed to the team’s disastrous performance in 2011. Many low-budget teams fared better – not just this year but over the past several years.
In Lewis’s telling, the A’s use of advanced statistics also produced superior game management. The team ...
Pufferfish will not last long outside their temperate zone!
All might have been forgotten in Game 5, as he came to bat against Joaquin Benoit with the bases loaded and the Yankees trailing by two runs in the seventh. Teixeira drew a walk, cutting the deficit to one, but the Yankees were unable to get the big hit they needed to complete the comeback.
“It’s tough; I felt really good about my at-bat,” Teixeira said. “It was 3-1 and I said, ‘I’m going to get a pitch to crush right here.’ You ...
Many of you know how much I hate TLR’s in-game managing. I think he is atrocious and today he did not disappoint. I said before the game started to my son and someone I know in the Cards front office that Tony would do something dumb just to show how “smart” he is. It didn’t take long. Even before the game, he inserted Nick Punto into the lineup in place of John Jay. Now Punto is probably the better defender than Schumaker at second, but Punto has no bat whatsoever. My sim ...
