Category: Sports

Opening Day Looms

Finally, our long national nightmare is about over. Next Tuesday at 3:00 AM Pacfic Time, the Mighty A’s take on some Eastern Division team in the Tokyo Dome. The DVR is fired-up and ready to go, and Mike has his Season Tickets ready for the home opener the following Saturday.

This is going to be a very different team that last year’s third place finisher, and in many ways a better one. Swish and Haren are gone, but there’s a whole crop of new faces in the outfield and the bullpen. Rumor has it that Crosby is healthy and setting up closer to the plate, and even China Doll Harden has thrown a few innings in Arizona without bankrupting Kaiser. The Evil Anaheim-Los Angeles-San Dimas Angels of Anaheim have their two top pitchers on the DL, and even Boson’s Beckett is ailing, so we ought to get off to a decent start.

The Western Division is going to be even stronger this year than it usually is, so I’m not going out on a limb to suggest the eventual World Series winner will come from the West. Unless it’s Detroit, a truly ferocious bunch of Kitties this season, of course. But dream teams have a way of not pulling through, due to all the pressure, I suppose.

My First Baseball Game

Thanks to Retrosheet, I can identify the first major league baseball game I ever saw in person, an epic 4-3 victory by the Yankees over the Senators on July 3, 1959. Winning pitcher Whitey Ford scored the winning run, Ryne Duren got the save, Mickey Mantle hit a single and Tony Kubek went 3-5 playing RF for some weird reason. I had remembered it as a 3-2 game, but was otherwise pretty accurate in my story-telling about it.

Cleveland Indians

Game 6 of the ALDS was painful to watch, with the Indians going limp all over the place. No pitching, no defense, no hitting. You can’t win too many games that way.

I’d like to see these boys get it together and win game 7, but it looks like they lack the killer instinct. Better to find about it now than in the World Series.

Excellent analysis

My post-season baseball predictions have been shockingly good. Each of the 3 game in the ALCS (AKA “Real World Series”) were won by the team I said had the pitching advantage. We’ll see if this holds up in game four, but I’m feeling pretty good about it on account of Wakefield coming off an injury and being a knuckler and all. Cleveland still has several key hitters MIA, such as Sizemore and Hafner, so those boys do need to step up.

The NLCS was a total snooze-fest, the only excitement coming in Game 4 when the Snakes had to leave their pitcher in to give up 6 runs in one inning because he was their best hitter. Dumping that poser Byrnes was the best thing Billy Beane ever did.

Rabid right-wing “Christian” fundamentalist Jeff Goldstein is pretty excited about the snake-handling Rockies playing the Champion, and I have to admit there’s something cute about a Cleveland-Rox series; as long as Ted Haggard doesn’t throw out the first pitch.

Baseball Play-offs

Why is Yankee pitching like Chicken Vindaloo? They’re both forms of Indian food.

The hapless Cleveland Indians haven’t won a World Series since 1948, a record so tragic it’s even worse than that of the Giants. They’ve been the butt of a series of comedy movies about their extreme suckitude and get no respect from anyone. But they handed a spanking to the surging Yankees in the playoffs and probably ended Joe Torre’s career as a major league manager. And they did it by proving an old maxim of baseball wisdom: good pitching beats crappy pitching.

Seven Indians had OPS’s above 1.000, compared to exactly one for the slugging Yankees, Robbie Cano. Captain Clutch produced exactly no offense for the Yanks, as his three singles were erased by the three double-play balls he hit, and while he didn’t exactly choke, the great A-Rod hit a mediocre .267 with one measly RBI. You can’t blame it one the short series or the plague of locusts, as the Yankees simply didn’t have the pitching to dominate the Central Division champs.

All you can say for the Yankees and their $230M payroll is that they didn’t get swept, which puts them in rarefied company this post-season. But maybe it’s better for the fans of the Cubs, Phillies, and Angels who had their teams surgically removed from the tournament in the shortest order possible. The ALCS (or Real World Series as I like to call it) should be great baseball because the teams are so evenly matched.

Pitching matchups

Sabathia vs. Beckett: advantage Boston
Carmona vs. Schilling: advantage Cleveland
Westbrook vs. Dice-K: advantage Cleveland
Byrd vs. Wakefield (or somebody TBD): advantage Cleveland

The Indians have a better bullpen, with the exception of closers, and that may be the difference. I don’t see much difference between these two teams offensively, but the Indians have the edge on defense as long as Manny is on the field. Statistically, the Sox are slightly ahead of the Tribe in both ERA and OPS, but that was regular season. Post-season, the Indians have the edge in hitting and the Sox have ridiculous pitching numbers due to the performances of Schilling and Beckett. Small sample size. Emotionally, I’d give the edge to Boston as they haven’t had to work hard, while the Indians may crash with all the off-days they have before Friday and a big high after beating the Yanks.

Both of these teams are well-designed, so it will all come down to execution, as they say. Go Indians!

Post-Season Baseball Predictions

My pre-season picks weren’t too bad, as I got 3 of the 6 division winners: Indians, Phillies, and Red Sox. Considering none of them had won a division in ages, they were actually pretty good. Both my wildcards (Mets and Tigers) were wrong, and they were safe picks at the time. Sometimes you got to go out on a limb.

The momentum factor favors the Rox in the playoffs since they’re on a 14-1 tear and recorded a victory in the tie-breaker, but it was tainted by the fact that Holliday didn’t actually touch the actual, you know, plate, owing to Barrett’s foot being on it and all. But it was the 13th inning and the ump was getting hungry so that was that.

The most exciting series will be Rox/Phils, with lots of long balls and some furious base-running. I expect Jamie Moyer will continue to throw lots of change-ups and Cole Hamels will prevail over the worn-out Rox. If the Rox somehow squeak by the Phils, they will have to be the favorite to take the World Series, otherwise the Phils will lose to the AL champ.

The over-coached Yangels will go up in flames in Fenway, and the Indians will clobber the Yankees because they have better pitching. The Indians will then go on to the WS as the Sox peaked in July and have been winding down ever since. Plus, Schilling is a gasbag and Jesus doesn’t like him.

But you never know, these things are a crap shoot and anything can happen.

See Matt Welch for more of this kinda thing.

Blogger manages Mariners’ pitching staff

This is quite an interesting example of how blogs, the Internet, and new technology are improving our world, our culture, and our American way of life. Major League Baseball has installed cameras in 20 ballparks or so that allow MLB’s Gameday to chart the speed and trajectory of every pitch thrown in a ballgame, and the results are archived (click on the Gameday link). USS Mariner blogging dude Dave Cameron studied the data for the Mariners’ ace pitcher, young Felix Hernandez, and found he’s been throwing too many fastballs in the first inning. So he sends the pitching coach an e-mail, which he passes on to Felix, and things change:

This team needs Felix to be better in 2007 than he has been. Since it’s unlikely that you can fix his command before his next start, there has to be another way you can help Felix get over his first inning struggles. Thankfully, I believe there is. It’s pitch selection.

Last night (6/26), Felix threw 10 straight fastballs to start the game. Coco Crisp singled on an 0-2 fastball. Dustin Pedroia singled on the first pitch he saw, a pitch he knew was going to be a fastball. David Ortiz drew a four pitch walk, all on fastballs. The bases were loaded with nobody out after 8 pitches, all fastballs.

In his previous start against the Pirates (6/21), Felix threw 13 consecutive fastballs to start the game. Those 13 pitches turned into 5 outs, as the Pirates hitters aren’t very good.

Of course, this could go too far, as we certainly don’t want Mike Lascioscia taking Matt Welch’s lineup and batting order suggestions.

Anyhow, computers are cool, and so is baseball. Link via Slate.

Bud Selig’s Travels

Isn’t this ironic as all get-out?

While Barry Bonds was breaking the home run record in San Francisco, baseball commissioner Bud Selig was in New York, preparing to meet with his chief steroids investigator.

Selig watched Bonds’ 756th homer on television Tuesday night, then met with George Mitchell on Wednesday before returning to Milwaukee, a person with knowledge of Selig’s whereabouts said.

Commissioner Selig is responsible for the Steroids Era in baseball (by refusing to do any testing until last year) and he couldn’t be bothered to see the fruits of his labor. Hypocrite.