Pablo Sandoval hit 4-5 with THREE homers and SIX RBIs. I’m so sure that he won the MVP of Yesterday that I wrote this late last night and set it to automatically post in the morning.
Standings are after the jump:
September 9th, 1992. At the end of the day, after a 13-8 victory over the Cubs, the record of the Pittsburgh Pirates showed that they had 81 wins.
It never happened again. Until yesterday.
How long ago was 9-9-92? Well…
In other words: It was a long time ago.
Brandon Barnes and 3 hits, a home run, and five RBIs. Oh, it wasn’t enough to get his Astros a win, but still, impressive enough to be the MVP of Yesterday. It’s his second of the year.
Standings, as always, after the jump: Continue reading
While looking for some Bizarre Baseball Culture on eBay, I came across something else….
Above, you see a “BASEBALL BALLPLAYER ADULT SIZE CARTOON MASCOT COSTUME” available from “sinooceantrade” on eBay. And, for $229.99 plus potential shipping, it can be YOURS via eBay. Seems totally legit.
How legit?
Well, for one thing, the “outter fabric” (sic) is “Short hair velvet”, but the “lining Materials” is “POLYESTER TAFFETA”. I don’t know anything about mascot uniforms or the Mr. Met costume, but I’m sure that it has POLYESTER TAFFETA in it. Also, guess what? It’ll be shipped to you in the finest packaging: “Put into thick box”.
And, that’s not all, look what it has to say about the “characteristic” of the costume:
3.One-piece of the head material :: We use the advanced machine to manufacture POLYFOAM head, it is only one piece, it is stronger and enough hard to avoid to break when it meet strike accidentally ,User head can be protected very well, but paperboard or foam head was produced by different paperboard or foam pieces, they was usually agglutinated by the bad gluewater ,this kind of head is not very firm, and very easily to turn into fragment, At the same time, the gluewater do harm to the User, It makes the User headache or feel unhappy.
4.Breather and vision : User can breath very well when he wears it, there are the hole of eyes and mouth and the neck area, They have enough ventilation for User, User have a good vision from the head eyes or mouth.
5.Eye net: there are plastic net on the costume eye, They can prevent the dust or the others into the User eyes.
6.Waterproof: POLYFOAM material can be Water resistance
7.Costume fabric: We choose the high quality fabric for our costume. we fill polypropylene cotton Material in the middle of outer and inner fabric, It make the costume soft and verisimilitude.
So… what are you waiting for? You too can get your own soft and verisimilitude-y Mr. Met costume!
With Baseball Reference adding Japanese stats, it’s time to look at some of the coolest stuff from it.
First off, of course, there is arguably the greatest Japanese player ever and one of the greatest hitters on any continent: Sadaharu Oh. You probably know about his 868 HRs, but you probably didn’t know about his impressive 2786 hits. Going on a tangent here, I remember reading somewhere that, after statistical conversions between the leagues, it’s thought that Oh would have had a career in MLB similar to Mel Ott.
Much like how Babe Ruth had Lou Gehrig behind him, Oh had Shigeo Nagashima, who formed the N in what was called the Yomiuri Giants’ “O-N Cannon”. Together, they helped the “Yankees of Japan” win nine straight titles.
However, had you looked hard enough, you probably could have found their statistics elsewhere, and the same probably goes for Americans and other westerners who spent time in Japan since the 1970s, like Charlie Manuel and Randy Bass and recent Japanese imports like Yu Darvish. What makes the Baseball Reference data awesome is that it goes beyond that to Japanese baseball’s earliest professional seasons.
For example, I can’t ever remember seeing the stats of Wally Yonamine, the first American to play in Japan post-WWII. Nor do I ever remember seeing statistics for Eiji Sawamura, the ace pitcher (Japan’s Cy Young Award equivalent is named for him) who once struck out Charlie Gehringer, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Jimmie Foxx in succession during one of Ruth’s famous tours of Japan, but whose career ended premature when he died during WWII.
As a third example of a early-years Japanese player who has interesting stats to look at: Victor Starfin (sometimes spelled Starffin). The first pitcher to win 300 games in Japan, Starfin was able to (mostly) avoid WWII’s effects on Japanese baseball. Well, until he was released in 1944 due to “security concerns” and thrown into a detention camp for being a foreign national. That, by the way, is like the fourth most interesting thing in his SABR biography. Seriously, it starts with his family fleeing the Russian Revolution and ends with him tragically dying in a drunk-driving accident in January, 1957- not long after his final season (1955).
Those just scratch the surface of the treasures in Baseball Reference’s new Japanese pages… go check them out.
Chris Colabello of the Twins only had two hits yesterday, but both of them were home runs and one of them was a grand slam that put Minnesota ahead for good in their game against Houston. Therefore, I’m naming him the MVP of Yesterday.
Standings, as always, after the jump:
Michael Cuddyer went 4-4 with a HR, 3 RBIs and a SB yesterday, so I’m naming him the MVP of Yesterday.
Standings, as usual, under the jump:
Like a giant zombie beast-thing, the Yankees have somehow shambled back into the Wild Card race, again, and have even passed the Orioles, thanks to yesterday’s MVP, Ivan Nova, who threw a 3-hit shutout.
Standings, as always, after the jump:
Two hits. Two homers. Four RBIs. Adrian Gonzalez is the MVP of Yesterday.
(Standings after jump)
Jeff Passan has an article on how the Union is worried that the contracts being offered by teams like the Cubs could be a slow march to non-guaranteed contracts on par with the NFL. You can read the article for the full details, but in essence, they are worried that the expansion of the “conversion clause” that allows a team to turn it into a non-guaranteed contract if a player does something. It’s a call-back to the eighties, when everybody was worried about all the cocaine going around, but now-a-days the MLBPA is worried about the implications that teams could not only use the clause to extend it to PEDs, but to, well, anything.
Like, take this snippet apparently from a Cubs contract, meant to list out restricted activities that could allow the Cubs to turn the contact into non-guaranteed if there was an injury. Passan notes that due to the way some parts of the contract were originally written, they could have in theory been able to convert the contract for even the most mild of injuries doing these activities:
“(A)uto racing, motorcycling, piloting, co-piloting, learning to operate, or serving as a crew member of, an aircraft, being a passenger in a single engine airplane or private plane, hot air ballooning, parachuting, skydiving, hang gliding, bungee jumping, horseback riding, horse racing, harness racing, fencing, boxing, wrestling, karate, judo, jujitsu, any other form of martial arts activity, use of an All Terrain Vehicle (‘ATV’), skiing (water or snow), snowmobiling, bobsledding, luging, ice hockey, ice boating, field hockey, squash, spelunking, basketball, football, softball, white water canoeing or rafting, kayaking, jai-alai, lacrosse, soccer, tennis, rodeo, bicycle racing, motor boat racing, polo, rugby, rodeo, handball, volleyball, in-line or other roller skating, surfing, hunting, paddleball, racquetball, archery, wood chopping, mountain climbing, boating, any weightlifting not prescribed by or approved in advance by Club (said approval not to be unreasonably withheld), participation in the ‘Superteams’ or ‘Superstars’ activities (or any like activity) or other made-for-television or made-for-motion picture athletic competitions…”
That’s a big list, and the union was- if I’m reading this right- worried that such a big list and the vague writing of the contract could have allowed the Cubs to NFL-ize the contracts of anybody who, say, had a slight sprain during a pick-up basketball game or had a soccer ball hit them in the nuts. Thankfully, that vague language has been changed, so now the they probably have to actually get shot by a bow-and-arrow or falling down a cliff while mountain climbing for their deal to become non-guaranteed.
Still, even if they WERE in danger of seeing their guaranteed contracts going poof if they got hurt doing those above activities, they still have many activities they still could have done:
…Oh, wait, there is this at the very end:
“…or any other sport, activity, or negligent act involving a reasonably foreseeable substantial risk of personal injury or death.”
Well, there goes those. Good thing the Union was able to get a change in the language of the Cubs contracts, otherwise, they could have ended up with people getting their contracts non-guaranteed after paper-cuts while playing Uno.
The Baseball Continuum 