Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category

-- If they hadn't been in Houston, you could almost believe the Phillies had stage-managed their playoff-berth clincher. In winning the series finale, 1-0, Roy Halladay -- who began this season with 19 career shutouts (6 more than any other active pitcher) -- became the 49th pitcher this year (and just the 2nd Phillie) with a CG shutout. On a getaway day, with an afternoon home game Thursday, Doc allowed 6 singles and a walk, with 86 strikes and just 28 balls. Read the rest of this entry »

There are a lot of ways to come up with a list of the worst players from the last 50 years, but here's one particularly interesting variety. Here are the most plate appearances in a season since 1961 by a player with an OPS+ of 60 or worse, provided that they didn't play at least half their games at 2B, SS, or C:

Many of these seasons stick out as classic "What were they thinking?" years, in reference to why the manager put the guy out there so often.

There's Adam Dunn at #20, but his teammate Alex Rios is also on there for this year's 2011 performance. In some ways, that makes me think Ozzie Guillen should be Manager of the Year for having his team near .500.

In a few cases, I think managers were fooled by high stolen base totals (with Hunter and Taveras springing to mind.) there are also a few cases of fading stars being given a final year in the sun.

On a night when both wild-card leaders won, each pursuer blew a lead in the bottom of the 7th with an ace on the hill and 2 outs -- St. Louis on Andrew McCutchen's 2-run HR off Chris Carpenter, Tampa on a pinch-hit double by Jake Fox off David Price. Only one would keep pace with their quarry.

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Mlb.com is  reporting that tonight Johnny Damon has become the ninth member of the 200 HR 400 SB club. Here is the club with their stats prior to today.

For those who haven't played this game before, here's how it works. If you use the word "the" in the search box, it returns the top result for whatever follows the "the". For example, The Mick returns Mickey Mantle and The George returns George Herman "Babe" Ruth.

See how many of these you can correctly guess:

The Brooks
The Lou
The Frank 
The Rafael
The Mel
The Jose
The Jeff
The Juan
The Kal
The Brian
The Joe
The B B
The C C
The G G
The H H
The Q Q

-- Rays 5, Orioles 2: Reason #755 why I don't bet on sports: This seemed like the classic "trap" game: Coming off a sweep of Boston, facing the last-place O's (who are sneakily respectable at home) while the Red Sox are idle, and throwing one of their lesser pitchers, Jeff Niemann, who'd been rocked in 2 straight games. What I missed: The Rays are just playing too well right now in all phases and are too hungry to let down against a team that's playing out the string.

• Ben Zobrist had 3 hits, 3 RBI, his 45th double and his 17th SB.
• Joel Peralta subbed for the ailing Kyle Farnsworth and struck out the side for the save. He's allowed 1 run in his last 13 games.
• Tampa trails Boston by 3 games with 16 left for each. (Does Big Panic Papi know that the schedule favors Boston?)

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If you're over the age of 30 and been a baseball fan for a long time, there's a good chance you remember Steve Lombardozzi, who was one of the heroes for the Twins in the 1987 World Series. He had a fairly short career but made a mark for himself.

Oddly enough, there's a second major-league Steve Lombardozzi now, and he is the son of the first one.He got his first major-league hit today.

(I just wrote this, and I noticed that John Autin has a much better post on the same subject that he's drafted but hasn't published...sorry JA!)

-- Rays 9, Red Sox 1 (wild-card gap down to 3 in the loss column): With Jon Lester on the hill, Boston was banking on the adage "momentum is only as good as tomorrow's starting pitcher." But there's a corollary: "When two aces square off, bet on Big Mo." Lester went up against James Shields, trying to stop Boston's 4-game, 8-of-10 slide and salvage something from the series at Tampa, but it was not to be. Read the rest of this entry »

Paul Konerko has drawn 16 intentional walks this year, 3rd in the AL and 7th in White Sox history. As discussed in a prior thread, Konerko is having an excellent year, while the hitters right behind him in the White Sox lineup (mainly #5-6) have done poorly overall. But what about these specific IBB situations? Have opponents benefited from putting Konerko on and pitching to a lesser hitter? Let's take a look.

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Wishing all people of the nations of the world peace, love, and harmony, and remembering those we've missed the last 10 years.