World Baseball Classic News for 12-17-2015: Catching Up

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It’s time to catch up on some World Baseball Classic news!

 

Lincoln Holdzkom passes away

First off, though, there is tragic news out of California, where New Zealander-American pitcher Lincoln Holdzkom has passed away after a car accident. Holdzkom, the brother of John Holdzkom of the Pirates organization, was expected to be the team captain for New Zealand in the WBC Qualifiers. Our thoughts are with him and his family and friends.

Mexico’s roster starts to take shape

Jon Morosi has an article on the Mexican National Team that has begun to take shape. Edgar Gonzalez will be the manager for Team Mexico in the WBC Qualifiers and presumably the main tournament as well if they qualify. His younger brother, Adrian Gonzalez, will be on the roster. The team could be pretty deep in pitching, Morosi writes:

Mexico’s preliminary roster will be especially deep in pitching, with Yovani Gallardo, Marco Estrada, Roberto Osuna, Aaron Sanchez, Miguel Gonzalez and Dodgers prospect Julio Urias among the notable arms certain to be included on it. Pitchers Jorge De La Rosa, Joakim Soria and Olivez Perez also are eligible to play for Mexico, as is Dodgers outfielder Andre Ethier, who is Mexican-American.

However, there are some problems that could trip up Mexico. For one thing, while MLB teams are very strongly encouraged to allow players to participate in the qualifiers, they are not required (unlike the main rounds of the WBC, where they are only allowed to officially block player participation if they are coming off an injury or there are too many players being picked from their roster). In addition, there is an ongoing feud between the Mexican League and Mexico’s national baseball federation that will make the participation of Mexican Leaguers iffy.

Edwin Rodriguez will begin recruiting for Team Puerto Rico

In a Spanish-language article on Elnuevodia.com, there is the news that Edwin Rodriguez will soon begin to recruit for Team Puerto Rico. While the article mentions how he will try to make an effort to get players of Puerto Rican descent (like Jake Arrieta) to take part, I personally think it’s more likely they’ll have to rely upon native-born Puerto Ricans like Yadier Molina, Carlos Beltran, Angel Pagan, Carlos Correa, Francisco Lindor, and the like. All of them are mentioned in the article. Puerto Rico came in a surprising second in the 2013 WBC.

Other Notes:

So, until next time, this has been a WBC update!

Over at @HOVG, I pitch a Star Wars movie made up entirely of baseball names

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Over at Hall of Very Good, my latest went up yesterday. It’s about how you could probably pitch a pretty good Star Wars movie using only baseball names for characters and locations.

Check it out.

Rochester Red Wings Programs of the Past: 1989

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In 1988, the Rochester Red Wings won the Governor’s Cup championship under the helm of Johnny Oates and a team that included young guns like Steve Finley (would lead the league in batting, Pete Harnisch and Craig Worthington (who would be that year’s IL MVP) as well as veterans like Dale Berra and Jerry Narron, all while dealing with plenty of movement between AAA and the Orioles, who were infamously in the middle of their worst season ever. And while they lost a AAA championship with the American Association champion Indianapolis Indians, it remained the Red Wings’ first IL title since 1974.

So, it makes sense that that would be on the front of the following year’s program. Oh, it’s sort of bland, but it gets the message across: The Red Wings were defending champions!

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Now, this program I have is a bit beaten up, and is missing a few pages, but most of it is intact, so go below the jump to read about what was in the 1989 Red Wings program, and click on any picture to make it bigger:

Continue reading →

This weekend…

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This weekend, we’ll take a look at another Program Of the Past for the Rochester Red Wings. So keep an eye out.

The Best Tweets of Day 2 of the 2015 Winter Meetings

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Yesterday was a busy day. We had a Mystery Team, Dusty Baker inserted his foot into his mouth, Ben Zobrist chose the Cubs over the Mets, and the Braves basically robbed the Diamondbacks blind, getting 25-year-old Ender Inciarte and their two best prospects for Shelby Miller, who isn’t that bad of a pitcher but who is hardly the type of guy to go Herschel Walker over.

So, here are the best tweets from the second day of the 2015 Winter Meetings:

We began with the cry of MYSTERY TEAM!

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Sadly, then Dusty Baker said stupid stuff:

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//platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsThere was then the Ben Zobrist watch. Everybody thought he was going to the Mets, but then the Cubs made a few moves and suddenly had space to get him, so…. well… :

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And then, finally, there was the big Shelby Miller deal:

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And, finally…..

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2016 #Blogathon For Charity Update!

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Hello everyone. A few updates on the 2016 Baseball Continuum Blogathon for Charity, benefiting Roswell Park Cancer Institute:

  • Over 40 people have agreed to take part in the Blogathon, meaning we are close to having enough people to have TWO WHOLE DAYS of submitted content here. These people range from relative unknowns all the way up to published authors, and are coming from various countries, fandoms, and areas of expertise. I’ve added many of them (or the places they blog at) to the blogroll!
  • Next off, I’m proud to announce that Out Of The Park Developments, creators of Out Of The Park Baseball, have agreed to contribute three copies of OOTP to be given away as raffle prizes for people who donate! I have also heard from others who will be contributing prizes, which I will reveal as we get closer to the blogathon.
  • I will, however, tell you another thing that I will be contributing to the Blogathon raffle! It’ll be a Andre Dawson Living Baseball Card! The Living Baseball Cards are something I did a review of a few years ago, and I’ve had Andre’s LBC ready for a giveaway like this since then! So this should make a neat little prize to somebody who donates.
  • Finally, remember that if you would like to contribute to the Blogathon- whether in the form of a piece or as some sort of raffle prize- you can contact me at djgwriter@yahoo.com.

Thank you!

The Best Tweets of Day 1 (and partly Day 0) of the 2015 Winter Meetings

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Yes, it was the first day of the Winter Meetings yesterday. This year, it is in the Gaylord Opryland, which, like the TARDIS, is bigger on the inside than it is the outside.

And that means a lot of Baseball Twitter got lost, found interesting things, or became one with nature:

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However, eventually stuff started happening. For example, as I mentioned yesterday, the Veteran’s Committee failed to elect anybody. Chad Finn was quite disappointed they ignored one of the best old-timer candidates:

 

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//platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsThe biggest story of the day, though, was the strange (and sad) case of the Aroldis Chapman trade. It started innocently enough, with Ken Rosenthal (as is tradition) breaking the story:

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But slowly, issues came up, like the fact that the Dodgers would have a logjam in back of the bullpen, which was part of what led to the many problems in Washington last season. Man, we were so naive:

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Okay, so… more teams involved? Okay, so it’s just more complicated, right?

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsOkay, so the Dodgers leaked the deal, kind of shady, but…

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And, after that…. well… I think Jen Mac Ramos speaks for all sane people here:

 

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Yes. The trade is not what is important here anymore. It is, at the very most, a very distant secondary topic. And even that is stretching it. And anyone who says otherwise should probably reconsider their priorities. Yes, Aroldis Chapman has one of the best fastballs of all time. But that is not what is important. What is important is what happened in October and the safety of those around Chapman. Hopefully, a robust investigation by MLB will go into this incident and an appropriate punishment will be passed down, unlike the half-assed measures done by the NFL, where true action has only been done when pictures have come out.

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Come back tomorrow for more of the best Tweets from and about the Winter Meetings. Hopefully they will be more light-hearted.

Yes, there are some long-dead white guys who still belong in the Hall of Fame

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Today, the Veteran’s Committee once again failed to induct anybody. This year, it was the “Pre-Integration Era” panel doing the voting. That in itself is a bit of a problem, as (despite the name) it only focuses on the white portion of the pre-integration days, under the logic that Sol White and other deadball-era Negro Leaguers went in during a special election. This, along with the fact that these guys are long, long dead, have made some people call for the end of this “era” in the Hall of Fame voting.

I can definitely see the reasoning, and it definitely needs to be changed, but the idea that everyone from the ancient days of baseball who is worthy is in the Hall of Fame is flawed. Yes, 95% of fans would have no idea who they are, but that isn’t a reason not to include them.

For example:

  • Doc Adams helped make baseball as we know it…. baseball as we know it. He even created the position of shortstop. Him not being in the Hall of Fame is sad, a result of not having good publicists like Alexander Cartwright had and more research coming into focus over the years after the time where there would have been people who remembered him.
  • Bill Dahlen had a 42-game hit streak, was among the leaders in most offensive categories at his retirement, and was one of the better defensive shortstops of his day.
  • Wes Ferrell, one of the few players on the Pre-Integration Ballot who was entirely in the 20th century, has one of the best JAWS scores by pitchers not in the Hall of Fame, and also has the record for most HRs by a pitcher in a career (non-Babe Ruth category, obviously).
  • Harry Stovey was one of the few players of the 19th century who could be called a power-hitter, hitting 122 career HRs, becoming the first player in history to have 100, and at one point holding the single-season HR mark (with 14).
  • And, finally, there’s Pete Browning. Pete Browning is like my pet overlooked 19th-century ballplayer. Browning’s career .341 batting average is 13th overall, and was one of the greatest hitters of the American Association and the short-lived Players League. Also, he is indirectly responsible for the creation of the Louisville Slugger, as he went to Hillerich and Bradsby for custom-made bats after one of Hillerich’s bats helped him break out of a hitting slump in 1884. Browning, amazingly, didn’t even appear in the latest VC ballot. This- and the fact he isn’t in already- probably came about because his best years came in the American Association and Player’s League, not the National League, and history, as they say, is written by the victors.

 

So, I say get those guys in… and then drastically change how this is done:

  • Make it open to Negro Leaguers as well. Yes, the 2006 inductions did a great job bringing in some of the older Negro League greats from before integration, but there is no reason why they shouldn’t still be considered.
  • Make this committee a less-common occurrence. Have it every six years, instead of every three years. Allow the “Golden Era” and “Expansion Era” votes be more common to make up for the difference.
  • Either make the committee entirely made up of just experts of the era, or have a slightly lower threshold for election.

So, yeah, that’s what I think.

We’ve now got a countdown to the #Blogathon on the site now

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Hey everybody. Housekeeping announcement:

 

Over to the right here (possibly below an ad) is the new countdown to the First Annual Baseball Continuum Blogathon For Charity. Right now we are over a month away, but as we get within a month, you’ll see it count down day by day.