It’s About Time

October 23, 2010 By Leave a Comment

By Alex

I know I’m gonna ruffle a few feathers here but it’s nice to see the New York Yankees out of the players. Not because I don’t like them (I love excellence) but how many times can you watch the same team have a shot at a title?

Not that the Yankees win every year but it would be nice to see a full rotation of different teams make a run. The Philadelphia Phillies have a (though dwindling) shot a making it to the World Series three years in a row. Their opponents the San Francisco Giants can reach it for the fourth time in their history since being in San-Fran. They haven’t won since they were the New York Giants back in the 1950s. 1954 I believe.

And then there’s the Texas Rangers. Years ago I remember reading in Mad Magazine a joke about, and my memory is clouded, how some jobs are likely to never pay off – like a scalper for the Seattle Mariners at a World Series.

Indeed, Mad was pretty accurate with its prognosticative powers. Going into this season, only three franchises never made the World Series: The Washington Senators/Texas Rangers, Washington Nationals/Montreal Expos and Seattle Mariners. The Rangers made their first finals appearance after defeating the New York Yankees (more on this in a second) so we can take them off the list. My beloved Montreal Expos were probably going to make in 1994 before the shameless strike kicked in thus leaving the Mariners. Not bad Mad.

The Rangers basically kicked Yankee ass in their 4-2 series victory outscoring them 38-19 in the process. Not only that, it’s unheralded pitching rotation shut down a behemoth hitting line-up notorious for grinding out long at-bats that wear down pitchers.

In fact, winning two games flattered the Yankees. Aside from catching a couple of breaks that directly led to runs (think A-Rod at bat in game six), had it not been for that sick comeback in game one, this series is over in four flat.

Although this is a first for the Rangers, it’s not so for the state of Texas. The Houston Astros were in the World Series in 2005 only to lose to the Chicago White Sox. As mentioned earlier, the Rangers will either play the Phillies or Giants.


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The Most Dedicated Blog

October 19, 2010 By Leave a Comment

By Beaker

“You won’t find a more fierce competitor.”

I heard this uttered in last night’s game between the Yankees and Rangers. I think they were referring to Andy Pettite.

For real.

It’s one of those unprovable, vague, fill in the air type comments.

And I hear it a lot.

It’s in the same vain as “he’s the greatest leader in sports.”

I have no idea what criteria they use to quantify these assertions. It’s an opinion in the sophist tradition. A former athlete can say it based on experience but those experiences are largely based on what they perceived personally. There’s no way for them to assert that way up in a booth or even take at face value what a particular player’s teammates say.

Is someone who shows his (or her) emotions more “fierce” than someone who doesn’t? How can we even begin to ascertain who is fierce let alone “most fierce?” Many times, in my experiences, fierce could be code for “asshole” too. Indeed, dirty players tend to be tagged as fierce. No they’re not. They’re jerks who get off on hurting people.

Athletes as a breed tend to be fierce. The degrees to which one is so differeniates no doubt but judging so is subjective. Which is why commentators are best to avoid terms like “the most ‘blank’” at all costs.

Someone may be listening. After all. Right?

I mean, am I going around sayig this is the “most dedicated” blog? Nope. Because I can’t prove that.


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Moving LCS To Seven Games Good Idea. Would It Have Made A Difference This Year?

October 13, 2010 By Leave a Comment

By Beaker

As the league championship series draw to a close, the inevitable calls for MLB to expand the first round playoff format from best of  five to seven games series has been uttered among sports writers.

Theoretically and technically, I agree. A best of seven is better. Teams battle for 162 games and then they suddenly have a short series to survive seems a little disproportionate.

However, I doubt it would have made much of a difference for most of the teams this year. 

But would it have made a difference for this year?

I’m guessing no.

Would one more game have mattered for the Twins or Reds who were summarily beaten down by the Yankees and Phillies respectively? A mild case can be made for the Braves and Giants, but even then, it looked like if there was a fifth game it’s possible the Giants would have won that one too.

The only series that the case for a seven game series would have most probably been a difference maker is in the Texas-Tampa series. Then again, if Tampa was the better team, they would have found a way in game five to win. Game five or seven, they would have to face Cliff Lee, right?

On a side note, the playoffs in any sport, are a crap shoot. Lotsa luck (the residue of design they say),


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ALCS Matchups

October 6, 2010 By Leave a Comment

By Alex

Here’s a brief look at the American League set ups:

New York Yankees v. Minnesota Twins

A.J Burnett has been unsurprisingly knocked out of the rotation for New York, while the Twins come in with Ron Gardenhire widely regarded as one of the best managers in the game.

Season series: 4-2 Yankees.

NY has always played the Twins well and of the three options, I bet they prefer playing Minnie. Stats are nothing when you have the intangible aura of St. Jeter.

Still. The past is the past and the present is the present. And the future, kids, is the? Right. Is the present.

I’m just gonna focus on WHIP and OPS for the heck of it and some other “relevant” stats. I do have a life outside these wordpress walls.

Yankees:

-.730 OPS last 28 days. .786 for the year second to Boston at .790. Their OPS is basically the same for the 1st and 2nd half of the year.

-859 runs scored by far the best in the league. 490 came in the first half.

- Their OPS is .726 with two outs and RISP. Like most good hitting teams, don’t get behind them on the count. Even if you’re ahead they’re patient enough to wait you out. Like an aligator waiting to pounce on its prey.

-Their best inning is the 3rd where they’ve scored 129 runs with a .884 ops. Next, the 6th 109r/.883 ops.

-WHIP 1.310 5th in the AL. 1.383 in the 2nd half.

-The Yanks are 4-25 when they score less than 2 runs and 28-32 when they score 3-5.  In fact, they have the worst winning percentage (.303) in this scenario of the four remaining squads. In other words, they do best when they score a lot of runs. If an opponent can exploit that, they have a good chance at beating them.

-NY’s best inning is the 9th with a 2.85 era. I wonder if Mariano has anything to do with that. Their next best inning is the 3rd – like with their hitting – with a 3.33 era.

Twins:

- .623 ops last 28 days. .762 for the year good for 4th overall in the AL.

-They do their best “ops” when trailing at .816. Not bad with 2 outs/RISP at .803.

-5th in runs at 781.

-Best innings are: 1st with 132 runs and .860 OPS. Obviously, try to get out of the first inning alive with the Twins. After that, the 5th has been good with 88 runs and .825 ops and 7th with 99 runs and .788

-1.291 WHIP 4th in the AL. Second half of the season 1.314.

-Best innings pitched is in extra ends at 2.56 era and the 3rd at 3.06 (where the Yankees are strong). They’re mediocre in the 6h inning where the Yankees excel.

-The Twins are 11-33 when they score less than 2 runs and do better than the Yankees where they score 3-5 runs with a 30-27 record. They make do with less better than New York. .388 winning percentage best among playoff teams.

Tampa Bay Rays v. Texas Rangers

Battle of the Souther ‘T’s.’ I know. Bad one. The Rangers welcome back Josh Hamilton, but will it be enough against the best team in the AL? Obviously the key for Texas to have a shot is for ace Cliff Lee to outpitch Tampa’s gem David Price.

Season series: 4-2 Tampa Bay.

Rangers:

-Season OPS .757 5th in the AL.  .734 in the last 28 days. OPS in the 2nd half .743 as opposed to .769 in the first.

-They do well with 2 outs/risp with an .802 ops.

-Best inning: 4th with 108 runs and .868 ops. In fact, the middle innings between 4-6 is good for them with 297 runs and .807 ops.

-1.310 is good for 6th in the AL and the lowest among playoff teams. Well, actually they’re tied with the Yankees.

-WHIP improved in the 2nd half to 1.276 (1.338 in the 1st). The only playoff team to do so. 

- Rangers do their best pitching in extra innings with a 1.89 era. Other than that, within the 9 innning frame, the best inning for Texas pitchers is the 8th at 3.02.

-Rangers are 7-34 when they score less than two runs but are 31-26 when they score 3-5 runs.

Rays:

-Not the most powerful of hitting teams with a .736 OPS which stands just above the league average. In the last 28 days their ops is a squeamishly low .597 (.724 in the 2nd half).  Of course, this is offset by one of the best pitching staffs in the AL – Oakland being the other. Their WHIP is 1.255.

-But don’t let the low “brut” power stats fool you. The Rays score runs. 802 in fact. 3rd behind the Yanks and Sox. After all, that’s the name of the game, right? And they do that right. So-called “small ball” although their OBP is nothing out of this world. They’ve stolen the most bases with 172. I’m definitely missing something. They must be the most efficient team in professional baseball.

-Their best inning is the 5th with 117 runs. with an .820 ops. The 6th is also solid with an .817 and 104 runs. They’ve also scored 112 runs (.795 ops) in the 8th. They’re a dangerous team late in a game.

-OPS is best when they play from behind: .743. Not so good with 2outs/risp: .659.

-WHIP in second half 1.283.

- Like the other teams, they ain’t so hot when scoring less than 2 runs 4-33. But they have the best record at 38-25 when they score 3-5 runs. They the lowest winning percentage >2 at .108 and highest 3-5 at .603 giving them an average of .357 basically the same as Texas at .358.

There you go. Rationalize it how you want. I just threw them out there. Next, the NL.


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Stats Corner: Top MLB Teams By Wins For 2000-2009

September 26, 2010 By Leave a Comment

By Alex

After reading Moneyball I was interested in seeing how the Oakland A’s closed out the decade. Turns out pretty well.

Top 17 teams (over .500) by wins/winning percentage 2000-2009.

1) New York Yankees – 965 (.596)

2) Boston Red Sox – 920 (.568)

3) St. Louis Cardinals – 913 (.564)

4) L.A. Angeles – 900 (.556)

5) Atlanta Braves – 892 (.551)

6) Oakland A’s – 890 (.549)

7) Minnesota Twins – 868 (.536)

icon cool Stats Corner: Top MLB Teams By Wins For 2000 2009 Los Angeles Dodgers – 862 (.532)

9) Chicago White Sox – 857 (.529)

10) San Francisco Giants – 855 (.528)

11) Philadelphia Phillies – 850 (.525)

12) Seattle Mariners – 837 (.517)

13) Toronto Blue Jays – 835 (.515)

14) Houston Astros – 832 (.514)

15) Cleveland Indians – 816 (.504)

16) New York Mets – 815 (.502)

17) Florida Marlins – 811 (.501)

Notes:

-No surprise at the top two. But before you go off about big payrolls equating to success, keep in mind the L.A. Dodgers well underwhelming and the New York Mets a downright mess. Conversely, small market/budget teams like the A’s and Minnesota Twins did well. Incidentally, I would like to know how the Twins do it year in and year out.

-Only four teams won over 900 games: Yankees, Red Sox, Braves, Angels. 15 won over 800. Of the 15 only two teams have winning percentages below .500: Chicago Cubs .498 and Arizona Diamond Backs .497.

- Worst team (s)? Kansas City Royals (672 – .415) and Pittsburgh Pirates (681 – .420). By choice and design or pure ineptness?

-Oakland had seven winning seasons two with 100 plus wins. Only three other teams had multiple 100 win seasons: The Yankees (4), Cardinals (2), Braves (2). The Red Sox, a big payroll team, had none. Although, of course, they have two world titles.

-The A’s made the playoffs consecutively four times between 2000-2003. They never made the World Series. The Yankees were in the playoffs every single year going to the series four times winning twice (2-2). The Cardinals reached it twice going 1-1 and the Red Sox also two times winning each time. The Angels made the playoffs six times winning one world title. The Twins made five trips to the post season; same for the Braves. Like Oakland they both didn’t make it to the final series.

- The average wins for MLB is 810.7. The top 17 teams are the only ones above the average.

-Currently, the Yankees have a $206 million payroll. The Sox $162. The A’s are at $51 million.


Filed Under: Baseball, Featured Articles, Stats Corner

Nostalgia Keeps Things Alive

September 23, 2010 By Leave a Comment

By Rebecca Glass

Right now, my Facebook page is dotted with references to the Hartford Whalers, Winnipeg Jets and Montreal Expos.

It’s 1.30 in the morning, and I’m drawn in by the power of teams no longer there, contracted or moved elsewhere, their original incarnations working their way until they become favorites of ours.

I’ve been to Montreal, and I’ve seen the Expos play (in 2002, versus the Houston Astros), and I remember falling in love with a young Vladimir Guerrero, and despite the last place team, despite the empty stadium, despite my most prevalent Expo memory having been David Cone’s perfect game, I still found myself liking the team. I liked it then, and I love it more now.

The Expos are only one of many teams where the nostalgia permeates, in baseball and in other sports, but they might be the most obvious example of this feeling because they were torn from us, undone by the strike, just when they were the best team in all of baseball. That’ll create nostalgia, just like the Dodgers skipping town only a couple years after winning their one and only World Series.

Sometimes I wonder if what I love is the team…or the idea of the team.

What I love isn’t so much Tim Raines or Andre Dawson or Dennis Martinez; what I love is the idea of a team, playing in a city that loves their team, like Seattle loved their Sonics, like Cleveland loved their original Browns.

I wonder, if/when the Nets move to Brooklyn, will their New Jersey tenure be looked back upon with a sense of fondness? The idea of a basketball team in Brooklyn has a ton of pull, and even I, a native Jerseyan, don’t absolutely hate the idea, but what my reaction will be when the move is finally done…I have no idea.

On the surface, it’s crazy to compare the move or contraction of a team to the death of someone you know and love, but when you get to the fanatical level that you’re probably at if you’re reading this post, the relationship becomes complicated. You know the team, everything you possibly can know about them, celebrate their successes and mourn their failures even if you know the reciprocation is never coming.

Maybe it’s the notion that they’re there, like that Nike Ad from last Christmas said, when everything else fails, when rent is too high, the weather too 33-and-raining, the wrong candidate wins the election…the team is still there, still showing up, still playing, for good or ill. So, then, when the team is taken from you, be it after a long, drawn out process or something sudden and nearly overnight, that certainty, that fallback, that pride, is gone.

What would happen if the departed team came back? If the Nationals went back to Montreal or the Carolina Hurricanes back to Hartford?

Would they be welcomed back with open arms and live happily ever after as we hope? Or are we more in love with the nostalgia than we are the team itself?

As geography constantly changes, so too will teams in their locations, choosing to migrate to more populous or lucrative areas, and fans somewhere will be left in the cold. The Expos and the Whalers and the Jets and the Sonics will go from living experiences to the memories of a Wikipedia generation, and the nostalgia will continue to grow.


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Thome’s 586 Eases Cloud Of Cynicism

September 9, 2010 By Leave a Comment

The beautiful thing about Jim Thome bagging his 586th home run tying him with the great Frank Robinson for 8th spot on the all-time list, is that it comes without cynical baggage. Unlike some great sluggers in the last 20 years or so Thome’s name hasn’t been linked to drugs or cheating.

Here’s one hitter people can say, “hey, he did it without juicing.”

Alright. That we know of.

Forgive this post if it’s a tad positive.

Thome is now closing in on 600. If he reaches that plateau he’ll be only the eighth player in MLB to achieve such a feat.


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Sports Injuries Among Youth On The Rise

September 5, 2010 By Leave a Comment

By Sal Marinello

Health and Fitness Advice

Youth sports has experienced unprecedented growth over the past two decades and with this growth has produced many negative outcomes. There is no better example of what is wrong with youth sports than Little League baseball.

So many things are wrong with what Little League in particular, and youth sports in general, has become. Talk to an athletic trainer, physical therapist or orthopedist and you’ll hear a litany of horror stories about injuries suffered by little kids who play baseball almost year-round. It’s bad enough that it’s August and the Little League World Series is still going on, but the season has just ended for countless other kids who play all levels of youth baseball.

Fall baseball – one of the most ludicrous consequences of the “more sports is better trend” – starts in just a few weeks, giving kids barely a month to recover from their 5+ month baseball “regular” season. And on top of the fall baseball, many kids will be playing fall football or soccer or lacrosse, as well. Certainly, these other sports are guilty of many of the same excesses on display with youth baseball. However, because of the uniquely demanding act of throwing a baseball, youth baseball can – arguably – be more damaging to the development of a kid than these other sports.

Mental burn-out is always a risk when engaging in a sport 12 months of the year, but youth baseball has produced a spate of uncommon arm injuries that have never been seen before in young athletes. Expert opinion is pretty much unanimous on the subject that we are in the midst of an epidemic of over-use injuries being suffered by youth sports participants.

The question has been raised by my peers; “Who is Little League baseball for, the kids, the parents, or ESPN?” I think the inescapable conclusion is that the kids are at the bottom of this Totem Pole. There is no justification for the length of youth baseball’s “regular” season or the necessity for fall and winter baseball. There are no good arguments to be made for 11- and 12-year old kids to be playing baseball in late August.

Dr. James Andrews, recognized as the leading expert in arm injuries and performing the surgeries to fix them, has data that indicates youth pitchers who throw more than 8 months of the year are 5 times more likely to suffer an injury that requires surgery. Dr. Andrews also recommends involvement in a variety of sports and to only participate in one sport per season. Playing one sport year-round is not recommended.

There are those who drink the recruiting Kool Aid and believe that unless 12 to 15-year olds are on some kind of elite travelling team they won’t be good enough down the road to get looked at by scouts or colleges. This is just nonsense.

We are at a point where parents and too many coaches clearly do not know what is best for the children. Youth sports are out of control and no sport better illustrates this than Little League baseball.


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Jackie Robinson’s Obscure Scorecard

August 24, 2010 By Leave a Comment

History Detectives looked into a scorecard for a barnstorming game in 1946. It’s a most interesting investigation and explores the world of Robinson, barnstorm games and intergration.

Here’s a direct link to the video.


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Steinbrenner Joins Yankee Immortals In The Big Sky

July 14, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Rebecca G.

It’s right after death that it feels like a person is most alive.

This is especially true of great and famous men and women. We are surrounded by the recently departed, by their photos, their videos, their actions and their words as we try so drastically to try to create their essence just as the real thing is no longer available.

In this world, the true magnitude of a passing doesn’t hit until much later on, at some point in time in which we would normally consider a said person in a situation, only to find that he or she is no longer there.

Such is the case with George Steinbrenner.

Most likely, if you are reading this, you are like me–you never met him, or, if you did, it was only for a moment. In his life, he was busy running the Yankees; you and I were busy being fans, applauding and criticizing his decisions as they seemed relevant to the common cause of yet another World Series title.

We live our lives, he lived his, and if not for the vehicle of a baseball team, the probability is that they would have never intersected.

And yet, here we are now, if not necessarily blindsided, than at least stunned by the passing of a man who truly was a lion in his realm. In our remembrances, we bring him to life again.

We remember him, figurative warts and all, because his character so often made an appearance in our pastime, and even for some of us, our jobs. We will remember him not because he was perfect, but because he was human. His goal–that of winning–was human, as was the manner in which he set out to do it, a manner that could sometimes blur the lines between what was acceptable and what was not.

It does seem fitting–after all, ideals don’t play baseball; people do. Yes, people that we hail as near saints, but also people that can err–sometimes quite grievously–but people all the same.

The videos, the obituaries, the tributes will fade with the passage of time.

Yet it is because of his legacy, because of what he did, good and ill, for the baseball team we like to call our own even if we never paid a cent nor swung a bat, that his memory will not just live on, but prosper.

Some cultures pose that no one is truly dead until the last that remembers has gone as well; if this is the case, then Mr. Steinbrenner will live for a little while longer…


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