Let’s let Kapitan Kirk Gibson answer that…”“I left him in; it was a bad decision on my part, obviously,”
This is not to say that these are the only considerations to take into account. Perhaps Arizona manager Kirk Gibson or his coaches could have seen something in Kennedy at that point that would have indicated he should be pulled (I don’t know). Maybe Gibson would have been better served to bring in an appropriate lefty-killing reliever to get Fielder out.
And he’s got time to roll a number…Oh, Alburquerque.
Why did he bring Al Alburquerque, a right-hander, into Game 1 of the Division Series on Saturday night instead of a left-hander to face Robinson Cano with the bases loaded in the sixth inning?
Cano made it a hot topic because he hit a grand slam off Alburquerque in the Tigers’ 9-3 loss to the Yankees, the first home run Alburquerque has allowed as a Tiger.
“To me,” Leyland said, “that’s one for everyone else to second guess. Obviously, ...
Branded! The anti-anti-anti Moneyball is in full swing!
And yet just watch, everybody will skip Young’s role because, frankly, it involves intangibles, and what cannot be measured no longer matters in baseball, or so we have been told. Just do not tell Rangers manager Ron Washington unless you want him to drop an f-bomb on you and walk away talking about the fool he just talked to who does not know the first thing about baseball or how much chemistry matters.
Terry Francona didn’t talk about OPS numbers on Friday after he was fired in Boston. He didn’t talk about Pythagorean winning percentages or range factors or runs created or win shares. He didn’t talk about Bill James or Billy Beane or sabermetrics, the cult that now runs baseball. Francona essentially spoke of how the men on the field playing the game for the Red Sox this past September weren’t enough of a team when their season exploded all over the ...
Robinson Cano connected for his team’s first postseason grand slam in nearly 12 years and Ivan Nova fired 6 1/3 sterling innings in his postseason debut, leading the Yankees to a 9-3 victory over the Tigers in Game 1 of the American League Division Series on Saturday.
Cano’s towering blast to right field off left-hander Al Alburquerque highlighted a six-run New York sixth inning, helping the Yankees pull away after the skies cleared to permit the continuation of the contest.
The Rangers scored five runs in the fourth inning and held on for a 8-6 victory over the Rays in Game 2 of the American League Division Series at the Ballpark in Arlington on Saturday night.
The victory, their first ever in a Division Series at the Ballpark, allowed the Rangers to even the series at one game each.
...
Derek Holland earned the victory despite allowing three runs in five innings.
Philadelphia never blinked after falling behind early Saturday in an 11-6 comeback victory over the St. Louis Cardinals in Game 1 of the National League Division Series at Citizens Bank Park.
...
Halladay quietly got into a groove, and by the time the Phillies scored a run in the fourth inning to make it 3-1—Shane Victorino singled in a run after Cardinals third baseman David Freese dropped a foul ball, giving Victorino new life—Halladay had retired nine consecutive batters.
Remember, he’s almost left before. Six years ago, Epstein exited the Red Sox for roughly a month before returning to the fold. Perhaps that was merely a negotiating ploy—he presumably did well, financially—but the relationship between Epstein and his bosses has not always been 100-percent highly functional.
I don’t know Theo Epstein anything like well enough to read his mind, but it’s certainly possible that he’s simply ready for a change. I’ve had two great jobs in ...
Gallardo pitched eight inspired innings and tied Don Sutton’s postseason franchise record with nine strikeouts, and Prince Fielder belted a seventh-inning, two-run home run, the biggest hit of a 4-1 Brewers win over the D-backs in Game 1 of the National League Division Series on Saturday.
...
Eight innings and 106 pitches later, [Gallardo] had limited Arizona to four hits and one run to give the Brewers the series edge. Gallardo was just short of what would have been the Brewers’ first complete ...
All in a night’s work — the roughly 3,800th game Sterling has worked since he joined the Yankees, a period during which he has never missed a game.
Within 90 minutes of the final out, Sterling is usually at home in his apartment in Edgewater, N.J., where he lives alone. In public, he always seems undeniably on display, a tall man stalking through hallways with a booming voice that precedes him. Late at night, he mixes a drink, revs up the DVR and ...
Ha! Nice try, Topps. I’m still sitting on a worthless pile of J.M. Gold RC’s.
Topps celebrated its 60th anniversary of making baseball cards this year by placing actual diamonds into cards.
Next year, it’s going gold. The company recently unveiled the design for its flagship card set to arrive next February, and it’s one that sets a new standard with gold all over the product.
As in real gold—the stuff that set a new record high at $1,922 an ounce earlier this month.
Congrats, Steve! The 1st place prize is on its way!
Former Mets manager Steve Phillips is on the verge of winning the Sirius XM Fantasy Baseball Experts League and talked about it with the RotoExperts yesterday.
What was his strategy?
Phillips claims he turned over 23 of his 26 players on his roster during the course of the year. “Trader Phillips” acquired Matt Kemp and Carl Crawford and then flipped them to get Adrian Gonzalez. He also dealt Victor Martinez for Alex Avila. He says he ...
D-backs (Kennedy) vs. Brewers (Gallardo) at 2:00 PM on TBS
Cardinals (Lohse) vs. Phillies (Halladay) at 5:00 PM on TBS
Rays (Shields) vs. Rangers (Holland) at 7:00 PM on TNT
Tigers (Fister for Verlander) vs. Yankees (Nova for Sabathia) at 8:30 PM on TBS
Lord, I’m running trying to make .300 because .29876977152… won’t do.
Yet the strangest occurrence of all last Wednesday may have happened during the Brewers-Pirates game in Milwaukee. The game itself was meaningless. The Brewers had long since clinched an appearance in the playoffs. The Pirates had long since assured themselves a record 19th straight losing season. But in the bottom of the seventh inning, Prince Fielder came to bat. Facing Brian Burress, a left-handed journeyman, Fielder ...
But, I’m starting to feel like the idea of Justin Verlander is becoming larger than the reality of Justin Verlander. He’s a great pitcher who had a great year, but it’s not like he did anything this season that was historically unprecedented. In fact, there’s a pitcher that performs at something close to this level nearly every season.
...If we set a 220 inning minimum (which eliminates a few amazing seasons by guys like Pedro ...
Gather round ye sunshineless stat geeks and rise up against…..
Bingo. Henry has had Francona in his crosshairs for a couple of years. Ultimately, Francona was not enough of a numbers guy to satisfy Boston’s Moneyball boss.
...Francona represented a nice blend of old school and Moneyball. He always had a computer on his desk, but had reverence and respect for the baseball lifers who played when his dad played in the 1950s and ’60s. But it was hard to deal with daily lineup suggestions ...
As Gary “Sarge” Matthews lid-flippingly said the other day…“With the dimensions here at Citizens Bank Park…Mike Schmidt would average 50 HR’s a year!”
Watch a game today and count the number of hittable fastballs the run producers watch go by in those counts. Again, in a perfect world, the get-on-base guys would only swing with two strikes, but the thumpers need to remove the safety and pull the trigger. I wish there was a stat that told this story, what a hitter would have done had he swung ...
This is all an inexact science and very subjective, and if someone values pitchers slightly less than I do (or more for that matter), I understand it. And if someone wants to make the case that players on also rans should be given greater consideration, I understand that, too. There are voters more numbers-oriented and less wins-oriented who will tell me my votes are idiotic, that Kemp and Bautista should be higher than third and fifth, respectively. That’s OK, the individual numbers have ...
Game 1 of the American League Division Series between the Tigers and Yankees at Yankee Stadium on Friday night was suspended because of rain and will resume on Saturday at 8:37 p.m. ET in the bottom of the second inning with the score tied at 1.
Game 2, weather permitting, has been rescheduled from Saturday night to Sunday at 3:07 p.m. Ivan Nova—originally scheduled to pitch Game 2—will be on the hill for the Yankees when Game 1 resumes, and Doug Fister will pitch for the Tigers. New York will ...
ESPN Boston baseball analyst Curt Schilling was on ESPN Boston Radio with Adam Jones on Friday afternoon…
[Schilling said,] “The days of the manager running through the clubhouse and turning stuff over and fearing guys into performing is gone in baseball. It’s been gone for a long time. The smarter managers understood it before a lot of the other managers did: You need players that will police themselves and police each other. We always had that ...
Kelly Shoppach homered twice and Matt Moore continued to live up to all the hype as the Rays posted a 9-0 win in the first game of their American League Division Series with the Rangers on Friday.
Shoppach had five RBIs and three hits off Rangers starter C.J. Wilson that put the game on ice early.
...
Moore allowed no runs on two hits, while striking out six to pick up the win.
Currently, the players and their agents are in charge. They decide when to play, when to train, when to seek medical advice and how to rehab an injury. The inmates are running the asylum. And it flat-out didn’t work in 2011.
It simply never occurred to anyone that a player as spectacular as Jose Reyes would end up leaving New York for a bigger paycheck elsewhere. New York teams aren’t supposed to let popular, homegrown stars go.
Which is why the Mets’ season finale at Citi Field on Wednesday—and quite likely Reyes’ final game in a Mets uniform—was so shocking.
...Finally, in 2011, Reyes became the star everyone expected him to be. He won a batting title, ...
Tony Reagins has resigned as general manager of the Los Angeles Angels after the team failed to make the playoffs for the second straight season.
Reagins took over for Bill Stoneman after the 2007 season. The Angels won the AL West in his first two seasons, losing to Boston in the 2008 division series and the New York Yankees in the 2009 AL championship series.
Despite starting this season with baseball’s fourth-highest payroll at $139 million, Los ...
Brian Wilson, still climbing my personal Bobby Richardsonuva rankings!
San Francisco Giants pitcher Brian Wilson is well known by now for what he does off the baseball diamond, but the latest appearance in a commercial is especially interesting.
Scroll down to see the video of the commercial.
Wilson was in his own short film to debut a baseball video game, but now the pitcher has crossed sports lines and appeared in a commercial for a basketball video game.
After the Mets vetoed Newark as a temporary home, the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees are going to be barnstorming in 2012:
While the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees permanent home at PNC Field undergoes a $40 million dollar rebuilding project during 2012, the organization has announced the team will play its home games in the upcoming International League season in a combination of six venues: Frontier Field in Rochester, New York, Dwyer Stadium in Batavia, New York, Alliance Bank Stadium in ...
Frank McCourt could know by mid-November whether he can retain ownership of the Dodgers, according to a schedule set forth Friday by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court.
In his order, Judge Kevin Gross set a four-day hearing—Oct. 31, Nov. 1, Nov. 2 and Nov. 4—and wrote that McCourt and Commissioner Bud Selig would be expected “to testify in person.”
Gross also struck a huge blow against McCourt by ruling that the Dodgers’ owner cannot put Commissioner Bud Selig or the other owners on trial. McCourt and ...
