The MVPs of the Weekend are Bud Norris, Jeremy Guthrie and Clayton Kershaw.
Wait, Clayton Kershaw? Didn’t he have a bad game yesterday? Oh, wait, a bad game for Clayton Kershaw is still just 2 ER and 9 Ks over eight innings?
I wish I had his bad days.
Standings, as ever, after the jump:
So, September is going on now, October will be here before you know it. So here are some things to keep an eye out for during the coming month:
Cy Young’s coffee pot. Freaky Mr. Met costume. Stan Musial’s wallet. Mickey Mantle’s music. Mike Trout’s Little League card. All have been available/are available from eBay. All have been on the Baseball Continuum.
And now, I am proud to give you… a Mr. Peanut costume once worn next to Reggie Jackson. Yes, not a Mr. Peanut costume once worn by Reggie Jackson (as hilarious as that would be), but rather one reportedly worn next to him as a publicity stunt during the media blitz for the release of the REGGIE Bar.
Yes, you can own that Mr. Peanut suit. And also get a commemorative wrapper of a REGGIE bar! Say, what does the Mr. Peanut suit look like now?
Somewhat nightmare-bringing, okay, but, still, truly a great part of… standing next to baseball history.
And all for the low, low, price of…
Just under 16-thousand dollars.
Any takers? I’ve got about twenty bucks.
Apologies for being late, but here are five things we learned from the 2014 Rochester Red Wings season:
1. It is possible to throw a No-Hitter in two different states and two different months
3. As always, the fate of a Minor League Team is in large part outside of it’s control
Make no mistake, the purpose of AAA baseball teams is, and always will be, to provide a place for future MLB players to get ready for The Show. Winning is of only secondary importance, and, with rare exception, no AAA team will go the season with all of their key pieces untouched. What’s more, there are still the other hazards that haunt every baseball club: injuries, slumps, players that just don’t work out or underperform.
This year’s Red Wings were a perfect example of that. The Red Wings played 144 games this season. Only six position players were in at least 100 of them, only four were in at least 120 of them, and only two (Eric Farris, who’s “get to know your Wings” scoreboard segment was by far the best, and Aussie infielder James Beresford) were in at least 130 of them. Danny Santana, who many thought would be in Rochester for a good chunk of the season, ended up only playing 24 games, while Darin Mastroianni was lost to first the Majors and then to the Blue Jays through waivers after just four games. Chris Parmelee, the leading power threat through the first month of the season, was also gone early. The vaunted opening-day rotation of Alex Meyer, Trevor May, Yohan Pino, Logan Darnell and Kris Johnson saw all but Meyer spend at least some time in Minnesota, and the loss of May and Pino down the stretch especially hurt. If Rochester had all five of them all season, I see almost no way that they miss the playoffs, but, again, those are the breaks that come with being a AAA franchise.
And, of course, there were injuries, both in the majors (which led to certain players getting called up to replace the injured Twins) and down in the minors. The loss of Meyer to injury early in the third-to-last game of the season may well have doomed the Red Wings, as it forced them to burn Mark Hamburger, who was expected to pitch a must-win game against Pawtuckett the next day. Instead, the Red Wings had to have Jose Berrios, a 20-year-old (albeit one of the top prospects in the system) pitch that game, where he was beaten up on in a loss that ended the Wings’ playoff chances.
Health problems below AAA also put a wrench in the Wings’ season. At the start of the year, it was considered possible that top prospects Miguel Sano and (although more of a longshot) Byron Buxton could join by the end of the year. Sano got hurt and missed the whole season, and Buxton got a concussion in his first game in AA (although by that point it was clear he was probably not going to end up in Rochester by the end of the year).
Speaking of prospects, I think it’s becoming increasingly unlikely that Rochester will ever see Kennys Vargas, who has gone .314 in 140 AB for the Twins since getting the call-up from AA. Prospects jumping from AA to MLB is less frequent in Minnesota’s system than it is in some others, but it does happen: Joe Mauer would never have played in Rochester if not for a injury so early in his rookie season in MLB, for example.
4. Of course, the above thing also can go the other way.
After the first month of the season, I don’t think anybody expected that Chris Colabello would be back in Rochester. He’d done great early in the year, after all, even winning AL Player of the Week at one point. Then he crashed back to earth and ended up spending more games in Rochester this season (61) than he would in Minneapolis (59). He did not receive a call-up at the end of the year and it’s almost certain that his time with Minnesota- and maybe even affiliated baseball in general- is at an end. But what must have been a horrible disappointment for Colabello was good news for the Red Wings, as he ended up leading the team in HRs. In his two seasons with the Red Wings, Colabello ended up batting .319 in 551 ABs, with 34 HRs and 114 RBIs. His OPS of .966 was spectacular. He will be missed, but hopefully he gets another shot at a permanent place in the Majors.
Similarly, Chris Herrmann was originally with the Twins to start the year, but ended up playing sizable time in Rochester, where he became one of the Wings’ best hitters. He’s now in Minnesota again as a September call-up.
The same sort of thing will no doubt happen next year, just as it happens every year.
5. The Mario-Coin Sound Is An Excellent Sound Effect For Scoring A Run
This season, when the Red Wings scored a run, the sound from Super Mario Brothers when you got a coin would play. They aren’t the only team that does it- I believe the Cleveland Indians do the same, and the Twins use the 1-Up Sound from SMB. It’s great, funny, and is also a good reminder that ultimately baseball is a game.
In fact, it even inspired me to try my hand at some artwork:
That’s Mario in a Rochester Red Wings jersey. I’m not entirely sure why I made it, but I find it funny and I’m glad I made it. Let’s just hope they don’t change the sound effect next year, otherwise this will just be ridiculous.
…
So, the 2014 season is over in Rochester. It’s far too early to guess what the 2015 season may bring: Will Gene Glynn return as manager? Will some players be lost to free agency or by making the jump to the big leagues? Will next year by the year that Sano and/or Buxton make the jump to AAA?
Only time will tell.
The MVPs of the past two days are, starting on Wednesday, Danny Salazar and Devin Mesoraco (even if the Reds lost).
Standings, as always, after the jump:
The MVPs of this long weekend were: Buster Posey (Friday), Drew Hutchison (Saturday), Clay Buchholz (Sunday), and (since I can’t give it to all four Phillies no-hit pitchers) Miguel Cabrera (Monday).
Standings, as always, after the jump:
If there is one lesson to be learned from the 2014 Rochester Red Wings, it is that minor league baseball is perhaps even more cruel than Major League Baseball, and perhaps even more unforgiving, at least to teams.
If you want to know what I mean, take a look at the standings of the International League this year. You’ll see on them a horrible unbalanced league, where one division clearly was better than the other two. That division was the IL North. Take a look at the near-final (there were one or two games still going on when I posted this) standings here:
Now, as you can see, the North simply owned the other divisions. The four teams with the best records in the league were in it (meaning the playoffs will consist of the first, second, fifth, and sixth best teams), and it’s two worst teams (Scranton and Lehigh Valley) would have been in a three-way fight with Gwinnett for second in another division (the South).
Sadly for the Red Wings, they were in the North. And, sadly, they were unable to win the Wild Card. To be sure, there were times this season where it could be said they blew their chance at the postseason: a horrible 0-for-Ohio road trip, a few blown games by the bullpen here and there, and some games where they got plenty of men on base but never got enough of them home. But, ultimately, the Red Wings were just unlucky victims of geography, stuck in what may have been the best division in all of baseball (relative to the rest of it’s league).
That said, despite the disappointing ending, it was a ton of fun, so on Wednesday, I’ll have a second part, a retrospective on the 2014 Red Wings season, complete with photos!
In Bizarre Baseball Culture, I take a look at some of the more unusual places where baseball has reared it’s head in pop culture and fiction.
As I write this, America is in the grasp of the Every Simpsons Ever Marathon on FXX. To be more exact, we’re currently on Day 10 of 12. Maybe Day 11 of 12. Depends on when this goes up (probably Day 11). But, don’t let FXX lie to you: They don’t have every Simpsons ever. No, they are lacking the original Tracey Ullman Show shorts, the Butterfingers commercials, at least one other short, at least two music videos, and, of course, countless comics.
The Simpsons has long been a staple of Bongo Comics, the publishing group co-founded by Matt Groening to produce comics based on his TV shows, and this time on Bizarre Baseball Culture, I look at Bongo Comics’ Simpsons Comics #120, which tells the tale of Homer, Bart, and a record-setting baseball.
So, it’s time to get up and…. D’OH!
GO BELOW THE JUMP FOR MORE:
In Bizarre Baseball Culture, I take a look at some of the more unusual places where baseball has reared it’s head in pop culture and fiction.
There is a special type of baseball culture that I haven’t really covered yet… the baseball biography comic. Whether authorized or unauthorized, the baseball bio-comic is it’s own small subgenre of weird.
Take Baseball Superstars Comics‘ bio-comic on Cal Ripken, Jr. from 1992. A black-and-white comic from the now long-defunct “Revolutionary Comics” and seventh in a series of baseball bio-comics, it’s like a fever-dream of a look into the life and times of the Orioles great up through the 1991 season. The art is disturbing, the writing wooden, and the facts sometimes feel wrong.
That said, it’s not all bad. It’s got a so-bad-it’s-good quality at times, and any comic that features two pages devoted to the longest game ever is going to get my attention.
So, on his 54th birthday, here’s a look at the Baseball Superstars comic on Cal Ripken Jr…. after the jump:
With two excellent pitching performances and a hitting of the cycle, Kluber, Gallardo and Cuddyer are the MVPs of the Weekend!
Standings after jump:
The Baseball Continuum 