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.
Huzzah, internet! Google used to scan a bunch of old newspapers, and although they stopped doing it, the ones they did before they ceased the scanning are still there. Thus allowing us to see such headlines as this beauty from the Boston Evening Transcript July 10, 1914:
Kind of different from the reaction of Bryce Harper coming up to the bigs, huh?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
As I mentioned, the Baseball Continuum is far beyond just the majors, it is everything baseball related. And, since the internet is so amazing, the world of baseball is more accessible than ever. Our forefathers may have been stuck with newspapers, ESPN and such, but the many niches available online mean we can follow almost any type of baseball league.
One such league is Nippon Pro Baseball (NPB), which, as the name suggests, are the Japanese leagues. And one of the best places on the internet for news about baseball across the Pacific is Yakyu Baka. It has up-to-date standings on their leagues, as well as updates on former major leaguers and possible future ones. As baseball becomes more international with things like the World Baseball Classic, international ball no longer can simply be ignored.
So, in honor of bringing Japanese baseball to English-speaking fans, Yakyu Baka is being added to the Blogroll.
Josh Hamilton went 5-5 with 4 HRs and a double last night. Here’s some perspective on that:
So, yeah, it was a historic night.
The Baseball Continuum 