Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category

I heard an amazing nugget from Peter Abraham this morning. The Rays have now gone 753 games since they last used a starting pitcher over the age of 30. Here are their most recent games with a starter over 30:

Can you name their last starter over the age of 30 before Hendrickson? Here's a list going a ways back. It was Hideo Nomo, preceded by John Halama, preceded by Todd Ritchie, preceded by Paul Abbott.

By doing a Pitching Game Finder and a little manual addition, I found which teams have the fewest starts by a 30+ year old pitcher since 2007:

Tampa Bay: 1
Pittsburgh: 40
Oakland: 60
Florida: 87
Minnesota: 115

And here are the teams with the most starts by a 30+ year old pitcher:

Houston: 426
Los Angeles (N): 396
St. Louis: 393
Atlanta: 377
New York (A): 376

Tampa 8, Boston 5: I'm exhausted just from following this series online. Matt Joyce had his first 3-RBI game since April, and the Rays made the most of their 7 hits (no HRs), helped by a potpourri of wild pitches, passed balls, stolen bases and errors.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tampa 4, Boston 3; The gap's back down to 3 games, with David Price facing Tim Wakefield in Sunday's finale.

-- Jeff Niemann gets the credit for picking off Jacoby Ellsbury breaking for 3rd base to end the 5th (with Boston behind by 2). But look who really made the play. (Hint: He also turned his MLB-high 34th DP in this game.)

Read the rest of this entry »

[For the Detroit clincher, see here and here.]

-- In a crackling Friday night game that seemed a "must-win" for both sides -- and was played that way -- Boston's staff induced a year's-best 15 Ks, and hung onto a 1-run lead over the last 5 innings of a 4-3 win over the Rays. They ended a run of 6 straight losses to Tampa, and restored a 4-game bulge in the wild-card race that should have earned them at least one night's restful slumber.

Read the rest of this entry »

Courtesy of our own B-R Bullpen

30 years ago today: Read the rest of this entry »

Champagne flowed in the Tigers' clubhouse, but stayed on ice in Philly....

-- In Oakland, Doyle Alexander ... er, Doug Fister pitched the Tigers to their first division title since 1987, improving to 6-1, 2.12 in 9 Bengal starts. Fister threw strikes with 69% of his 91 pitches -- 30 of them called strikes -- and held the A's to a run on 3 hits in 8 IP. It was his 6th straight start of 7+ IP and no more than 1 ER; only Justin Verlander has a longer streak since 2006 (7 this year), and only Verlander and Al Benton (7 in 1945) have longer streaks for the Tigers in the live-ball era.

Read the rest of this entry »

Every time a starting pitcher has a monster season, a debate arises around whether a pitcher can deserve to win the MVP (or even if they should be eligible to win it.)

Justin Verlander is up to 23 wins, and leads the majors in IP, K, ERA+, and WHIP. He will be the unanimous AL Cy Young winner and I believe also deserves to win the AL MVP award.

Here's my argument for why pitchers should be eligible to win the award, and why Verlander specifically deserves it this year. Read the rest of this entry »

-- Evan Longoria kick-started Tampa's assault on Fenway with a 2-out, 3-run HR in the 3rd. A couple weeks ago, the Mets' outstanding TV man Gary Cohen (not an old-fashioned sort) surprised me by saying on the air that Longoria was "not having a good year at all."

It wasn't true then, it isn't true now: Despite a .239 BA, Longo began tonight with a 132 OPS+ and 5.0 Wins Above Replacement (the latter ranking 8th among AL hitters), thanks to his power, plenty of walks, and his usual excellent defense; he's leading MLB third-sackers in DPs for the 3rd straight year. Longoria is 3rd in AL WAR over the past 2 years, behind Jose Bautista and Miguel Cabrera, and he tops the junior circuit in WAR over the past 3 seasons. Read the rest of this entry »

Following on a comment from another thread here are the players since 1901 to score all of their runs on home runs, minimum 3 homers:

Alex Fernandez and Walt Terrell stick right out...

Adam Dunn sits at 160 strikeouts with a .162 batting average. Unless he gets a few more hits or doesn't get any more at-bats this season, he's likely to finish with more strikeouts than batting average points.

Excluding pitchers, here are the guys with the most plate appearances to previously achieve this "feat":

Mark Reynolds is really the only guy to do it, as all the other players here simply had zero hits and a very limited number of at-bats.

By dropping the requirement to a strikeout total that is 80% of batting average points, we get 10 "real" seasons where a player did it:

The 2011 version of Dunn already makes this group easily, joining his 2006 version.

And, yes, I saw you smile when you read Rob Deer's name.