Kei Igawa - The Lost Yankee

In the end, Cashman sounded mystified by Igawa.

“It’s the most curious case I’ve ever heard of,” he said. “And frustrating. The lesson is to be very careful with Japanese pitchers. I give him credit for living a dream and for fighting the fight. It can’t be easy. It has to bother him, too.”

Cashman added, “He does things his own way.”

Like commuting to and from Manhattan.

“Yeah, he’s passed me on the drive down to Trenton,” Cashman said. “He drives faster than his fastball.”

Yakkin’ About Baseball: The Michael Kay Diet

Can’t stop the jellied vealing! David Roth and David Raposa serve it up!

David Raposa: Kay’s three basic food groups, per his wife: bacon, steak, and the aformentioned chicken-pasta amalgam. His colon must look like Clint Hurdle’s face.

David Roth: I know that Clint Hurdle is a bunt-happy doofus, but I do love that the Pirates are in first place. I love it a lot.

David Raposa: I wish I could fully get on board with the Pirate love.

David Roth: What’s your problem with the Bucs? They kept Derek Bell off the streets, they made Pat Meares a millionaire… they’re like the Medicaid of sports. Remember the neediest, David Raposa.

...David Raposa: I would love to hear what those dopes who dismissed the Nate McLouth trade have to say now.

...

In the view of ‘Hit King’ Pete Rose, today’s hitters wilt

He just wishes the batters had the upper hand.

“I don’t know what the problem is with hitters today,” Rose said. “Man, there are so many guys who are swinging at balls bouncing in the dirt, so many guys hitting .230, .245. It’s hard to believe that (Derek) Jeter and Ichiro (Suzuki) are both batting under .270.”

...The one issue on which Rose did not have an opinion was whether players from the steroid era ought to be excluded, like him, from the Hall.

“You have to make up your own mind on that,” he told a reporter who has a Hall of Fame ballot. “It’s going to be interesting. The luckiest guy in that group is A-Rod. You know why? By the time he’s eligible, it’s going to be 2023, and a lot of people will forget ...

The Yankee Analysts: Jesus Montero’s Declining Stock

In the case of Jesus Montero, I think we are now getting enough data to see what others may have missed.

...The four year trend line is headed straight down in OBP, SLG, wOBA and wRC+. As the competition he’s faced has improved, the concerns about plate discipline and pitchers exploiting his aggressiveness have come to pass. Since peaking in High-A in 2009 his results have gone down annually when you look at his advanced numbers. This is not one bad season, its a manifestation of an underlying trend that’s becoming more evident as the sample gets larger. If anything, Jesus has been lucky with the bat this year. His .346 BABIP is higher than it was in AA or last year in AAA, though it has to be noted that 09 was a split season between ...

Bolch: Sizing up Hall of Fame chances of some of today’s baseball stars

Way too early for John Lannan and his 35 wins but…

Give peace (and these guys) a chance

Players aren’t inducted for being versatile and sticking around into their mid-40s. Good thing Omar Vizquel can hit too. The last remaining player who made his debut in the 1980s, the 44-year-old shortstop could reach 3,000 hits if he sticks around a few more seasons. He also has won 11 Gold Gloves and has played every infield position.

Assuming he plays until he’s 40, Johnny Damon, 37, could easily surpass 3,000 hits. Of the 28 players who have reached that threshold, 24 are Hall of Famers and two — Jeter and Craig Biggio — probably will be. Only the scandal-plagued Rafael Palmeiro and Pete Rose will likely be left out.

David Ortiz will always ...

Doyel: Santo will make Hall one day, but call will be too late

Saints alive! Doy-El takes on El Santo!

Voters from 1980, you were idiots. And you people didn’t get a lot smarter. Over time Santo received more support, but never enough to get into the Hall. Never close to enough. Needing 75 percent of the BBWAA votes to get in, he topped out at 43.1 percent in 1998, his offensive numbers from the pitching-dominated 1960s obscured by the cartoonish steroid era that was in full bloom in the late 1990s—and his defensive contributions simply ignored, I guess.

Look, there are thousands of words I could write on Santo’s worthiness for Cooperstown, and theories why he hasn’t gotten in. His nine All-Star seasons. His offensive numbers being diluted over time by steroids and the forgotten fact that Santo ...

CBS:  Induction gives Blyleven chance to thank Koufax

The only one that maybe compared came when Blyleven was with Pittsburgh and threw a two-strike curve in St. Louis one day to catcher Terry Kennedy, who was a lefty, “and he swung at it at the last second, like he was chopping wood,” Blyleven recalls. “Thank goodness it was the last out, because it made everybody laugh, not only on our team, but on their team.

“It was strike three, third out, so I went back to the bench, put a jacket on and looked over at their dugout and they were still laughing at the way he chopped down. I didn’t laugh. I never laughed at a hitter.”

These kind of stories are one of my favorite things about baseball.  I don’t even care if they shade the truth a little—a good story is the essence of baseball nostalgia. ...Read More...

Wyers (BP): Lost in the SIERA Madre

whenever we use a skill-based metric like xFIP or SIERA….We are using a proxy for regression to the mean that doesn’t explicitly account for the amount of playing time a pitcher has had. We are, in essence, trusting in the formula to do the right amount of regression for us. And like using fly balls to predict home runs, the regression to the mean we see is a side effect, not anything intentional.

Tigers TV guy: Latinos need ‘rice and beans’ for postgame meal

Detroit Tigers broadcaster Rod Allen made an unfunny and inappropriate attempt at a joke about Latinos during Fox Sports Detroit’s telecast Thursday night.

Allen, a color analyst since 2003, said the postgame meal in the Tigers clubhouse at Target Field should include rice and beans, because most of the team’s lineup against the Twins had Latino heritage.

You see, the Latinos just love them some rice and beans, as the stereotype goes.

Would Allen, who is African American, make a joke about a Tigers lineup that was mostly black requiring something stereotypical to eat? Would he stoop to make a watermelon joke? Maybe he would. Maybe he has. But that wouldn’t make it right, or funny.

  Allen: “Tigers pretty much got a all-Latin squad ...

Frank McCourt loses round in bankruptcy court.

Frank McCourt cannot use a loan he arranged to run the Dodgers for the rest of the season, a bankruptcy judge ruled Friday.

The embattled Dodgers owner suffered a significant setback when he was ordered to negotiate with Major League Baseball for a loan.

McCourt had argued he should not have to accept financing from Commissioner Bud Selig, who he feels is intent on stripping him of his ownership of the Dodgers.

Round 1 to MLB, but this fight’s just getting started ...

Pirates: Will they or won’t they??

The atmosphere should be electric this weekend when the Pirates host the St. Louis Cardinals in a three-game series between National League Central contenders that begins tonight at PNC Park.
Only a few tickets remain for games tonight and Saturday night. Sunday afternoon’s series finale is also likely to sell out. There is no doubting that the Pirates are not only the hot story on the Pittsburgh sporting scene but in all of baseball as they continue to be surprise contenders following a run of 18 consecutive losing seasons.

Gigantic weekend in Pittsburgh starting tonight.  I’m a little sad, because I’m only going to get to Pittsburgh on the first of August (we’re going to try to catch a Cubs game that week)... wish I could be there this ...

Brad Pitt’s Moneyball gets new poster

(throws corn across room)

More posters have been revealed and this time for some interesting films. First off is the baseball dramedy MONEYBALL, starring Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill and Philip Seymour Hoffman and directed by Bennett Miller. Pitt stars as Billy Beane, the General Manager of the Oakland A’s back in 2002 most known for using a modern analytical system to draft players. The poster is actually pretty lame and reminds me a little too much of FIELD OF DREAMS. However, the basic point is made, as in the film is about baseball and Brad Pitt has some big dreams of sorts.

Hoffarth: Blyleven’s Hall of Fame route went from old to new school

Congrats to long time pal, Rich Lederer!...oh, and you too Blyleven.

“You look at the new age that we are in with the Facebook and (Twitter) and the online, all that stuff is very important, because I think, as writers that do vote, that is your job to look at numbers,” Blyleven said. “And that is what I think Rich Lederer brought out. He brought my numbers out a lot more.”

Jon Weisman of the DodgerThoughts.com blog called Lederer’s achievement “the most effective grass-roots campaigns for Cooperstown ever.” Dave Studenmund, the editor of The Hardball Times, wrote it was “greatest story of Sabermetrics on the Internet.”

...“Such praise from my esteemed peers not only feels good but means I achieved what I set out to do 7 1/2 years ...

Tigers’ Hank Greenberg should share RBI mark with Gehrig, statistician says

Sorry. Steve Hirdt says you didn’t produce enough RBI evidence. Nothing we can do about it. Tough (%$^!).

Herm Krabbenhoft presented his findings to the Elias Sports Bureau, the official statistician for Major League Baseball, but thinks Elias hasn’t amended the record because Gehrig is an icon.

“They do not want changes, especially in significant records involving icons,” Krabbenhoft said. “Getting things changed by Elias is difficult.”

But Steve Hirdt, executive vice president of Elias, says this particular case isn’t about protecting an icon. It’s about getting all the facts to make a decision with historical ramifications.

“As part of its duties for Major League Baseball, Elias reviews credible evidence that might involve ...

Souhan: Bert Blyleven could be the final old-time Twin to get the Cooperstown call.

Sorry, I never actually read the complete “Dwight Siebler for the HOF!” petition pledge when I signed it.

Bert Blyleven, entering the Hall of Fame at the advanced age of 60, will represent more than his body of work when he enters the Hall of Fame on Sunday. He will represent ghosts and friends, the injured and the ailing, the legacies of a foregone era.

“I look at the guys in the Twins Hall of Fame, and I played with all of them,” Blyleven said. “That’s pretty special.”

Blyleven chafed during the years he fell short of the Hall of Fame in the voting by the Baseball Writers Association of America. He got in, though, and he could be the last Twin who played at Metropolitan Stadium to make it to Cooperstown.

Those who watched and played ...

Primer Dugout (and link of the day) 7-22-2011

Regina Morning Leader, July 22, 1911, immediately to the left of the linked article, Rube Waddell drops some early 20th century smack talk on…Toledo?

Yep, Toledo.  Of all places.

Mr. Rube Waddell opines that there must have been some mistake about a Toledo fan assaulting [umpire] Gerald Hayes on a street car in the silent city.

...

“Fight in that town?” queried Mr. Waddell.  “Why, they haven’t got the heart and courage in that town to stick a fishworm on the hook.  They tie ‘em on with silk cord for fear the worm will bite ‘em.  As for mobbin’ umpires, why the next time they get fresh when I’m in town, I’m going to take a whisk broom and chase ‘em all out to the back end of the grandstand.”

It being a thirty-foot drop to the ground from ...

Garciaparra, Hamm Are Parents of Twins

Again the Twins are the subject of contraction talks.

ESPN.com - Yankees’ Jeter forced to leave game with injury

“Derek Jeter, the heart and soul of the Yankees, was knocked out of New York’s opener Monday night after a violent collision at third base with Toronto catcher Ken Huckaby, who landed hard on the shortstop’s left shoulder.”