In 1996, Ichiro Suzuki pitched during a NPB All-Star Game.
This is video of that event. Sadly, Hideki Matsui was pinch-hit for.
Random Video of the Undetermined Amount of Time: Ichiro Pitches
Reply
Category Archives: MLB
An Eyewitness account of Evan Longoria’s setback
So, I was at the ballpark last night. Evan Longoria was in town with Durham on a rehab assignment- having injured his hamstring earlier in the year. I’ve seen him 
before in the big leagues, but the chance to see a ballplayer on a rehab assignment in the minors is something you should never pass up: you can see them far closer for far cheaper. Why, you can get close enough to realize they have begun growing more facial hair.
Good thing I went last night, otherwise I wouldn’t have seen him at all.
(jump)
What’s the worst seat in Fenway?
Okay, so I’ll be heading to Fenway Park later this year, thus allowing me to scratch another thing off my baseball bucket list. But one does not simply go to Fenway, one must plan. Fenway Park, after all, is from a time before modern design and engineering had made the obstructed view seat an endangered species. You could easily be stuck behind a pole or something.
Thankfully, there is a site called Precise Seating that allows you to see what your view would be like from most seats in Fenway. And, clearly, this was not only made to aid potential visitors to the Fens, but also to amuse those of us who want to find what the worst seat in the house is.
Sadly, Precise Seating doesn’t allow direct linking to the sites for individual seats, so follow along manually at home.
Anyway, now take a look at my non-scientific study after the jump:
Great Predictions in History: Expansion will water down the Majors… in the late 60s.
Occasionally, you hear about how watered down the Majors are compared to what they’d be if there were fewer teams. There is some truth to that, but it ignores the fact that A) the fact that so many cities can now see Major League Baseball is good not only for baseball, but America and B) the so-called “Golden Age” that those writers so often harken back to was the 40s and 50s- when there were far fewer sources of foreign talent and where several teams still hadn’t desegregated.
Of course, this is in no way new, as you’ll see in a April 1968 Baseball Digest excerpt after the jump:
WBC 2013 Projections: Dominican Republic
As I stated at the end of my 2013 Team USA projections, I’ll also do some projections on possible players for the other teams as well. Here, for example, is the Dominican Republic.
The Dominican, in some ways, has been even more disappointing in the WBC than the USA has. They only managed fourth in the inaugural tournament, and they weren’t even able to make it out of the first round in 2009, losing twice to the Cinderella team from the Netherlands. Given how much pride the Dominicans have in their ballplayers, these could only be seen as large disappointments.
In 2013, like in the previous tournaments, the Dominican Republic will almost certainly bring a team made up of MLBers, with perhaps a few top prospects and overseas players if needed.
The same rules apply for this as I used with the Team USA projections, although in some cases they might not be as stringent, due to the fact the Dominicans generally are more into the WBC than American MLBers are.
- Any player coming off a major injury or who has a history of injuries is unlikely to participate. This is especially true for the pitchers.
- Players that will be on new teams are less likely to participate, but shouldn’t be completely ignored, with the exception of pitchers.
- Teams are made up of 28 players, of which 13 of them must be pitchers and two of them catchers.
- The pitch count rules make relievers extremely important.
And so, after much research and thought, I have my projections, which can be found under the jump:
Great predictions in history: The NL is lost to New York City forever
From the December 1957 edition of Baseball Digest comes this story:
Although, to be fair to Daley, he mentioned in the article that that statement was only true if there wasn’t expansion:
“Only in such an eventuality- at least, that’s the firm conviction here- can the National League re-establish itself in New York.”
However, he makes some other rather hilarious-in-hindsight ideas: the minor leagues would be doomed because every city with a halfway decent stadium would want a team, that Commissioner Ford Frick should become a “dictator, undemocratic and un-American though it be” to put a stop to all the team-moving madness, and that the move of the “over-the-hill” Dodgers to Los Angeles wouldn’t get them back their “lost youthfulness.” Considering that the Dodgers would win three World Series titles and four NL pennants in the ten years after they went to Los Angeles, I’d say Daley didn’t expect such things as “Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale becoming one of the best 1-2 pitching combo in baseball history” and the arrival of guys like Maury Wills and Willie Davis.
By the way, if you don’t already know, National League baseball returned to the five boroughs in 1962, although I’m sure some would argue that the Mets played more like they were in the International League until 1969.
Projecting a possible 2013 USA WBC team
(EDITED IN ON DEC. 31: As of this writing, the most recent projection for the United States can be found here.)
Joe Torre will be managing the 2013 WBC team. As I mentioned during my musings on what a baseball dream team in 1992 would have been like, I guess now is as good a time as any to try to predict who will be on the 2013 WBC team. Unlike my pie-in-the-sky 1992 team though, these predictions will be based more in the cold reality about WBC teams that emerges due to the fact that the tournament takes place during Spring Training:
- Any player coming off a major injury or who has a history of injuries is unlikely to participate. This is especially true for the pitchers.
- Players that will be on new teams are less likely to participate, but shouldn’t be completely ignored, with the exception of pitchers.
- Teams are made up of 28 players, of which 13 of them must be pitchers and two of them catchers.
- The pitch count rules make relievers extremely important.
So, with this in mind, and after much looking over of statistics and histories, here are my projections (after the jump):
Perfect Perfection
Matt Cain did not just throw a perfect game last night. No, he threw one of the most perfect perfect games. One of the greatest games in history, in fact. It had everything: drama, close plays, a legendary catch and the final out, where, as always, there is that one second of worry that somebody is going to screw it up.
Oh, sure, Don Larsen’s perfect game came on the sport’s greatest stage, against a team of future Hall-of-Famers, but statistically, the greatest perfect game has long been Sandy Koufax’s brilliant game in 1965. It’s game score was 101 (out of a possible 114), second only to Kerry Wood’s 20-K one-hitter (105).
Cain has tied Koufax. Let that sink in: Matt Cain’s game was, statistically speaking, as good as Koufax’s magnum opus.
In other words, Giants and Dodgers fans now have another thing to argue about.
In short, there have been perfect games, and no-hitters. But of the many recent ones, this one is perhaps the one that is the most… perfect.
Baseball needs a better trophy
On Monday, the Stanley Cup was handed out. It is a a nearly 120-year-old trophy that is more revered than the actual event that is played for the right to have it. People have drunk out of it, had their kids baptized in it, it’s been thrown in rivers and pools and knocked off tables. There are names on it that are misspelled or put on as gags. Wherever it goes, it has at least one concierge with it. Every year, it produces a instant image that would become etched in the mind of that team’s fans: the captain hoisting it above his head, parading it around the ice.
In October, the winner of the World Series will receive the Commissioner’s Trophy (did you even know it had a name?), a rather uniconic statuette that has a new copy made every year for the champion, unlike the Cup, which goes from team to team. It only dates back to 1967. There are no iconic images of the Commissioner’s Trophy: no hoistings by the team leader, no images of a unflappable star weeping as they hold it and certainly no thrustings into the air as confetti falls. Why, the default pose with the Commissioner’s Trophy is just kind of holding it, like Lance Berkman did. Although Pedro used it as a hat, which is kind of cool.
(more after jump)
Somebody get Harper and Trout into the All-Star Game
The two great young stars of baseball right now, I mean the really young stars, are the Angels’ Mike Trout (20) and Washington’s Bryce Harper (19). They are in opposite leagues, hit from opposite sides of the plate, play on opposite coasts and have received the opposite amounts of hype (Harper was hailed as the second coming, Trout’s emergence in the bigs has been far more subdued), but they both have been playing like they’ve been in the Majors for years, instead of months.
To pick which one is “better” is a fool’s errand, it is too early to really project the (hopefully long) careers of the two, and although Trout is having the better season (.354 BA/.412 OBP/.565 SLG compared to Harper’s .295/.381/.527), who knows what the future may hold for them?
I personally hope the future involves the 2012 All-Star Game in Kansas City.
(more after jump)
The Baseball Continuum 
