Category Archives: MLB

Baseball in the Year 2044: A look at “Rockets on the Mound”

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The internet is a great place. Really, it is. And one of the reasons it is great is that you can find practically anything on it. Take, for example, short stories. There are countless stories that are in the public domain, either because they are really old, or because nobody bothered to renew the copyrights on things from cheap pulp publications. It’s from one of those that “Rockets on the Mound” comes from. First printed in 1954 in Super Sports magazine, and written by one Jim Moore, it is the tale of a baseball team in 2044 and it’s star, Rockets Rigby, who is in a horrible hit-and-run flying car accident. Seriously.

But before all of that, check out this picture that goes with it:

First, let’s note the field itself. It has a lot of space, almost circular in appearance. I mean, look at all of those players practicing to the left of the diamond, where they are conducting warmups as the umpires descend with their jet-packs from the stratojet. As this huge amount of foul territory can show, Moore was foreseeing the rise of multi-use facilities, and the Oakland Coliseum in particular. Either that, or whoever was hired to do this image hadn’t seen a baseball field in their lives. Also notice how the fans are dressed. Apparently, in the 2040s, women will all wear pointed witches’ hats and gigantic collars, while all of the men will wear space-cadet helmets. Nobody wears plain-old baseball caps, nor even the hats men wore in public before President Kennedy made them go out of style. Also, the “stratojet” used to bring the umpires in seems to be powered by a rocket and has swept wings. An F-16 flyover it isn’t…

Anyway, a few things to keep in mind before we start:

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The Art (and Question) of the Farewell Tour

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It is a given these days that future Hall of Famers announce their retirements in advance, so that they can receive their applause from the rest of league. It is a good tradition, allowing even every city and fanbase to show their appreciation to a transcendent talent.

It is an old tradition. During his famous “Luckiest Man” speech, for example, Lou Gehrig noted that the New York Giants had sent him a gift, despite the fact he would, he admitted, have been willing to cut his arm off to beat them.

The tradition continues to this day. Take this tidbit about what the Cardinals have given Chipper Jones:

It’s hardly surprising that the Cardinals would giving gifts to Chipper. Heck, a few days ago the Cardinal fans gave him a big round of applause during his first at-bat. Chipper will probably be getting a good reception most everywhere- in Wrigley Field, for example, he was given the Braves pennant that was used to indicate their place in the division standings.

But this leads to a interesting question: what is the proper etiquette for the teams? Do they look bad if they don’t give the retiring HoFer a gift? Like, if the Mets decide that Chipper Jones had inflicted too much pain on them during the 1990s and decide not to honor him, is that breaking one of the unwritten rules?

I think too much about some of this stuff.

East Coast Bias and ESPN Sunday Night Baseball Part 4: The Blue Jays

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(Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3)

As part of my study of ESPN’s scheduling patterns for Sunday Night Baseball, I was somewhat surprised to see that the  team with the biggest discrepancy between performance and appearances on SNB were the Toronto Blue Jays.

Seriously. The Blue Jays had the 15th best record in baseball from 2007 to 2011, but were tied for 30th (dead last), with no appearances. They’ve had two of the best players in the game to knowledgeable baseball fans: Roy Halladay and then Jose Bautista have been in Toronto. But, guess what, they haven’t shown up on Sunday Night Baseball in recent years. At all. In fact, it was a bit of a surprise when I saw them on Monday Night Baseball earlier this season. Apparently, Tim Kurkjian had to appeal straight to the State Department to get some passport problems fixed, which is probably a good indication of how rarely ESPN gets up there.

But why, exactly, are the Blue Jays so ignored by ESPN, despite the fact they usually have a winning team? Well, there are two reasons, read on to see them.

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East Coast Bias and ESPN Sunday Night Baseball Part 3: Who gets ignored

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As noted yesterday and the day before, ESPN does indeed have East Coast teams on Sunday Night Baseball more than many teams from other areas. However, it isn’t because ESPN wants teams closer to Bristol, it’s just that teams on the East Coast tend to do well both on the field and in the ratings, so it makes sense to schedule them more.

That said, there are some teams that end up getting the short end of the stick because of this. These are some of those teams.

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East Coast Bias and ESPN Sunday Night Baseball, Part 2

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As we saw yesterday, ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball does, in general, feature more eastern teams than teams in other parts of the country.

But, as I said yesterday, that isn’t telling the whole story. Yes, there is an East Coast Bias in appearances, but that bias is not necessarily geographical so much as it is based on two factors: finding the best stories (which are usually the best teams), and getting the most eyeballs watching the games. In fact, at one point a VP of Programming and Acquisitions at ESPN even said as much.

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Texas + Baltimore= Wackiness

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On May 10, 1972, the Texas Rangers (formerly the Washington Senators) faced the Baltimore Orioles for the first time. The game was a tight pitching duel between Dave McNally and Pete Broberg, who both went the distance. In a strange circumstance, the Orioles would win when, in the bottom of the ninth, Merv Rettenmund would score on a error by Rangers’ catcher Ken Suarez. In other words, not a single earned run was scored in the 1-0 Orioles victory.

This set the tone for the future of the two most bizarrely matched teams in baseball. When the Red Sox and Yankees face off, the games go forever. When the Orioles and Rangers face each other, games go to the Twilight Zone. So after that first game, where no earned runs were scored, here are some notable occurrences since then:

Interestingly enough, the weirdness magnet that is Texas-Baltimore did not start when the Rangers moved their from DC. On Sept. 12, 1962, Senators pitcher Tom Cheney went 16 innings and had a record 21 strikeouts.

Know of any other weird Texas-Baltimore games? Let me know.

Great Predictions in History: Kiko Garcia will be the Orioles’ shortstop of the future (in 1980)

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Google Books has lots of old Baseball Digest issues available. It is interesting to see how previous generations thought. And, so often, it is fun to see how wrong they were. Take this headline from March, 1980.

Kiko Garcia had an okay career and was able to stick around baseball for parts of 10 seasons, but ultimately he ended his career with a middling .239 BA, .286 OBP and .323 SLG. He had a total of 12 career home runs.

Funnily enough, at the time this was published in Baseball Digest, there was a third baseman in Orioles camp who, just the year before had hit a respectable .286 between Miami and Charlotte. He was headed towards a breakout 1980 season, where he’d hit .276/.367/.492 and hit 25 home runs. The year after that, he was in Rochester. And the year after that, he was Rookie of the Year in Baltimore… as a shortstop. Perhaps you’ve heard of him. He was Cal Ripken Jr.

Kiko Garcia, by the way, was sent to Houston in 1981 and never played in more than 100 games again.

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.

East Coast Bias and ESPN Sunday Night Baseball, Part 1

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Over the past few months, I finished a project for school (the last project before I graduated!) on something of my choosing. I chose, as the title of this post suggests, to look at whether “East Coast Bias” existed in the selection of who was playing on ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball, and, if so, why.

I’m not going to bore you with the whole thing (although perhaps I’ll put it up as a download later), but I do want to summarize my findings.

In essence, it is true that teams on the East Coast (or at least the East divisions) do appear most often on Sunday Night Baseball. Here are the top ten teams in appearances from 2007 to 2011 on Sunday Night Baseball*.

1. Yankees (25 appearances)
2. Red Sox (24)
3(T). Cubs and Cardinals (23)
5. Mets (22)
6. Phillies (20)
7. Dodgers (18)
8. Braves (17)
9. Angels (12)
10. Tigers (11)

There really aren’t many surprises here. If you asked an average baseball fan to list the ten teams they think are on ESPN the most, they’d probably give you roughly this same list. However, you will note that half of these teams are in either the AL East or NL East, including three of the top five.

So, yeah, the East is dominant in Sunday Night Baseball appearances. But that only tells half the story. Stay tuned in the next few days when I cover why (hint: it’s a mixture of good teams and big markets- surprise, surprise), as well as what teams might have the biggest beef.

*By the way, note that, with the exception of times where Opening Night has been a Sunday, every team is allowed a maximum of five appearances per year on SNB. Just a few days ago, in fact, ESPN’s Buster Olney mentioned this after somebody accused ESPN of ignoring the Bay Area. (For the curious, the Giants were tied for 12th in most appearances).

 

Putting Josh Hamilton’s 4 HR night in perspective

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Josh Hamilton went 5-5 with 4 HRs and a double last night. Here’s some perspective on that:

  • It was only the 16th time in MLB history that somebody hit four homers in a game. By comparison, there have been 21 perfect games.
  • Hamilton is only the sixth player in American League history to do it. To put that into perspective, twice as many people have walked on the moon.
  • The 18 total bases Hamilton had last night, an AL record, meant that Hamilton traveled 1620 feet on the basepaths.
  • That is almost five-and-a-half football fields.
  • That distance is almost the walking distance between Camden Yards and Babe Ruth’s birthplace.
  • Babe Ruth, by the way, never hit four home runs in a game.
  • Hamilton’s 8 RBIs were greater than the run totals of all but one non-Texas Rangers team (Milwaukee)  last night.
  • It was more runs than were scored in five of last night’s games.
  • And, finally, it was only one less than the number of RBIs that Albert Pujols has had all season.

So, yeah, it was a historic night.