Category Archives: MiLB

They call the AAA team the Norfolk Tides (but the All-Stars don’t wear blue)

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Miguel Tejada (left) chats with Brian Roberts before a ballgame in Rochester. Photo by Dan Glickman.

Brian Roberts. Miguel Tejada. Nate McLouth. Jamie Moyer. Between those four players, there are 10 All-Star Game selections. And yet, all four of them are currently at Baltimore’s AAA affiliate in Norfolk. There are several other ex-MLBers on the Norfolk roster as well, such as Bill Hall.  I recently saw three games involving the Tides. Here are some impressions of this unusual group of players who all have found their way to the International League, whether due to injury, poor play, bad luck or an attempt to make a comeback.

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Some interesting names from the MLB draft… and why it might not matter

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The draft is over, so, of course, there are some stories here and there about some of the ballplayers who were drafted. Mainly, those stories about those who are the offspring or other relatives of former big leaguers.

This is all well and good, and it is always great to hear about how baseball continues to be passed from one generation to the next, but, well, the fact is is that these draftees are unlikely to make it to the majors (especially if drafted in the later rounds) and, in many cases, aren’t even going to sign with the teams that drafted them and instead head to college.

(more after jump)

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The Not-An-Expert Q&A preview of the MLB Draft

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Tomorrow, the MLB draft begins. As I mentioned before, College Baseball is sort of the odd man out in college sports. And, as I referred to in that post, a lot of high schoolers get drafted in the MLB draft. So, with that in mind, in most years you need a scorecard to know who the people being drafted are. So, with that in mind, I’ve done some research to get you up to speed on the draft, and who will probably get drafted, check it out underneath the jump:

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Ballplayers who gave everything

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On this Memorial Day, it is as good a time as any to mention some of the ballplayers who gave their lives serving in America’s armed forces. The DeadBallEra site has a list of those who died while serving America, and there is also a good site entirely about Baseball in Wartime (primarily focused on WWII), but here are some notables (although, in the end, everyone who gives the ultimate sacrifice is notable). Not all of them died in combat, but all of them died while in military service or (in the case of people like Christy Mathewson) as a result of those actions:

  • Eddie Grant was a Harvard-educated infielder who spent time with Cleveland, Philly, Cincinnati and the Giants. On October 15, 1918, he died after being wounded by a artillery shell in the Argonne Forest of France. His unit had been fighting to rescue the “Lost Battalion” that had been pinned down by German forces. He was 35. A memorial to him was placed in the Polo Grounds (it is one of the plaques that can be seen in the expanded version of the Willie Mays catch photo), and a replica of it is now apparently in San Francisco.
  • Larry Chappell was a light-hitting outfielder in the 1910s who was at one point part of a trade for Shoeless Joe Jackson. In 1918, he died while in Army service only a few days before the armistice from the Spanish Flu pandemic that killed tens of millions of people. He was 28.
  • Ralph Sharman was a young outfielder who did well in a September stint with the Phillies in 1917. After the ’17 season, however, he was inducted into the army. He died in May, 1918 when he drowned while in Alabama, where he was undergoing training. He was only 23.
  • Christy Mathewson had retired from pitching by the beginning of America’s involvement in WWI, and was manager of the Cincinnati Reds. He left the club in the middle of the 1918 season, going to France, where he served in the Army’s chemical division. While there, he suffered the effects of poison gas, which left him with various respiratory ailments, including the tuberculosis that took his life in 1925.
  • Elmer Gedeon, who had had a cup of coffee with Washington in 1939, died while piloting a B-26 Marauder over France on April 20, 1944. He was 27.  He was one of only two people with Major League experience who died in WWII. The other being…
  • Harry O’Neill, who was a catcher in one game (with no plate appearances) for the Athletics in 1939. He was killed by a sniper on Iwo Jima on March 6, 1945.
  • Bob Neighbors, who had a cup of coffee with the Browns in 1939. In 1941, his baseball career came to an end when he had a poor season and, perhaps more importantly, lost his wife of only six months in a car accident while he was away on a road trip. He signed up for the United States Army Air Force after Pearl Harbor, and became a career military man from that point on. He went Missing In Action (and presumed dead) in 1952 when his B-26 went down over North Korea. He was both the only MLB-experienced man to die during the Korean War, and the last to have died in active service, period.

Of course, there were plenty of players who never made it to the big leagues who died in the line of duty, some of whom may have one day become Major Leaguers if not for the cruelty of war:

 

To them and all who have given the ultimate sacrifice, and to those who made it home, we salute you.

Who is Dylan Bundy?

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This is a baseball public service announcement.

You may have been hearing about somebody named Dylan Bundy on ESPN. And perhaps you are wondering: “Who is this Dylan Bundy?”

The answer: Only one of the best pitchers in the minors. Maybe even in all of baseball. He’s 19, in the Orioles organization, and yesterday, in his first start in High-A Frederick and ninth start overall, he gave up his first professional earned runs. Ever. This brought his total ERA to date to… 0.51 in 35 innings. The six hits he gave up yesterday doubled his career minor league total to an astounding… 11. And his opponents’ batting average for his career has skyrocketed to… .097.

Oh, and he’s walked a grand total of two people. That means that, given how many hits he has given up, his WHIP (Walks/Hits Innings Pitched) is 0.371. In other words, he allows less than half a man to reach base per innings.

Oh, and he’s struck out 46.

It is too early to think about how Bundy will do as he makes his way up the ranks, and, of course, every pitcher is a ticking injury time bomb, but should he be able to move up the ranks, it won’t surprise me if he ends up in Baltimore near the end of the year if they are still in the race. And he could be a regular starter in just a year or two.

This has been a baseball public service announcement.

Jair Jurrjens has gone missing

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So, Monday night I went to a game between the Rochester Red Wings and Gwinnett Braves. The pitcher was somebody who they claimed was Jair Jurrjens. However, I don’t think it was actual him. Jair Jurrjens, after all, is a star pitcher from Curacao. I saw him during his rookie season, where he ended up third in RoY voting.  He was somebody who pitched in the All-Star Game last season who finished 2011 with a 2.96 ERA. Who had a HR/9 of 0.8 in his career. He had some injury problems, including last season, but definitely one of the better pitchers in baseball.

That man, I believe, was kidnapped over the winter and replaced by this guy:

It’s an identical twin of Jurrjens, who has a glorified BP fastball and who gives up 11 hits and 6 earned runs to a team that, while recently resurgent, is in last place in their division. And, the thing is, if not for him Houdini-ing his way out of a few innings (such as the first inning, where the Wings got a man to third with no outs but were unable to bring him home), it would have been an even bigger massacre.

So, if anybody out there knows where the real Jair Jurrjens went, please let the Braves organization know. It’s sad to see such talented pitchers lose their stuff, get sent down and then try to make their way back up to MLB as shadows of their old selves. We’ve seen it happen to Dontrelle Willis recently, and to other pitchers in the past. And it remains sad to see.

Twins. Red Wings. It’s a revolving door.

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Quick, ignore the logos and team names, what team is this?:

Well, it’s the Rochester Red Wings. But it’s filled with players who have been a part of the Twins over the rather disastrous past season-and-a-half. Revere is now back up with the Twins (saving Rochestarians from having to hear him sing), but plenty of once-and-possibly-future Twins remain. So when, and who, is most likely to rejoin Revere in Minneapolis? Let’s take a look (more below the break):

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Thoughts on Andy Pettitte’s Upcoming Return

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So, Andy Pettitte is coming back to the majors, and will start for the Yankees this coming weekend. It’s been a tough few weeks for Pettitte, having to testify in the Roger Clemens trial while doing his warm-up starts for the various minor league affiliates of the Yankees. Everywhere he’s gone, though, he’s been treated like royalty. Take his start on May 6 in Rochester, where the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees have been playing most of their games this season as their stadium back in Pennsylvania undergoes major renovations.

I was at that game- I have the sunburn to prove it- and it was a packed house to see the all-time leader in playoff wins. I doubt I was the only person who was taking photos of his delivery as he warmed up before the first inning.

Andy Pettitte warming up before his game against the Pawtucket Red Sox on May 6, 2012. Photo by Dan Glickman.

However, it wasn’t the best of days for Pettitte. He went five innings, gave up three earned runs (five runs total), eight hits and two walks during his 92 pitch outing. He took the loss, and at one point even walked in a run with the bases loaded. However, while watching the game, I couldn’t help but get the feeling that he wasn’t entirely at fault, and that his performance on Sunday was not necessarily a indication of future success or failure.

For one thing, the fielding behind him was atrocious. The first run the PawSox scored, for example, was unearned, as the first basemen for Scranton dropped an easy pop-fly in foul territory (little known rule: an error in foul territory makes the resulting at-bat an unearned run). Brandon Laird was also extremely shaky at third, making an error and having some balls get by him that Alex Rodriguez probably would have gotten. Pettitte also managed to strike out five and do one of his patented pick-off moves, showing that he, at least against AAA competition, still has his stuff.

But, of course, AAA is just that, AAA. Facing the Boston Red Sox (even with how their season is going) is orders of magnitude more difficult than facing the Pawtucket Red Sox. He was able to escape potentially “big” innings thanks to his fastball and off-speed pitches, but that won’t work as often in the bigs.

But, well, the Yankees have been having trouble in the rotation, so what do they have to lose?  Pettitte will at least be an improvement over Freddy Garcia and/or David Phelps. If not, the panic in the Bronx will increase.