Tag Archives: baseball

The last time Jeremy Bonderman pitched…

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Jeremy Bonderman pitched for the Mariners today. The last time he pitched in the big leagues (when he was with the Tigers), it was October 1, 2010.

How long ago was that? Well…

  • 975 days have passed.
  • Five of the nine Tigers who were in the lineup that game are no longer with the team in 2013.
  • Seven of the nine Orioles who were in the lineup that game facing Bonderman are no longer with the Orioles (only Nick Markakis and Adam Jones remain).
  • The number one movie that weekend was The Social Network. The number one movie this weekend was Fast & Furious 6. The Social Network was nominated for best picture, Fast & Furious 6… won’t be.
  • The number one song that weekend was Bruno Mars’ Just The Way You Are. Wait, that song is that old? Wow, I guess it’s true what they say about time starting to move faster the older you get.
  • Bryce Harper had not yet made his professional debut. Neither had Matt Harvey. Manny Machado had played only nine total professional games. Kevin Gausman, who started for the Orioles today, had yet to start his first game at LSU.
  • LeBron James had yet to play his first game with the Miami Heat.
  • Edwin Rodriguez was manager of the Marlins. Since then, there have been four other managers, interim managers, or acting managers of the Marlins (Brandon Hyde, Jack McKeon, Ozzie Guillen, and Mike Redmond).

In short: It’s been awhile.

If this is the end of Josh Beckett, his tale is a tragedy

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Over the past few years, Josh Beckett‘s life has been a dark comedy. There were the fights with the media, the failure to live up to his contracts, and the whole thing with the fact he was one of the Red Sox who apparently were having chicken and beer over games of Call of Duty while the 2011 Red Sox burned.

But now, it looks like it will instead be a full-on tragedy, as the Los Angeles Times reports that Beckett has been feeling numbness in his pitching hand, something that could well end his career.

And that stinks. Because, while Beckett’s career has been in free-fall this decade, at his peak he was one of the best pitchers in the game, and, what’s more, he was awesome in the post-season.

In fact, it’s the post-season where, if this is the end, we will probably most remember Beckett. His first appearance on the national stage came in 2003, when he was the World Series MVP with the Marlins, finishing off the Yankees on short rest with a complete game shutout in Game 6.

That is more than can be said for many pitchers, but in 2007, he did it again, going 4-0 in his starts for the Red Sox, including winning the MVP of the ALCS, where he had a absurdly low ERA 1.93 ERA… which was actually higher than his ERA in the other two series he pitched in (although, admittedly, those series were sweeps where he only had one start).

Of course, after that, his career took a downturn. His postseason performances did a downturn first, with him going 1-1 with no ERA below 5.40 in the three series he’s pitched since 2007.  While he was a regular season All-Star in 2008 and 2011*, he was no longer the above-all ace he once was. Since 2011, in fact, he is 7-19 with a 4.76 ERA in the regular season.

But, perhaps if this is the end, we should try to remember where he was best: the World Series. In his three starts (so admittedly a small sample size) and 23.1 innings pitched in the Fall Classic, Josh Beckett went 2-1 with a 1.16 ERA.

And that’s impressive.

*Before the ASG in 2011, Beckett was 8-3 with a 2.27 ERA, but the second half saw him be a just-okay 5-4 with a 3.73 ERA.

The Joys of Strike Zone

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The most under-rated and overlooked piece of baseball television is the MLB Strike Zone channel.

You probably have no idea what I am talking about. That proves the above point about it being the most overlooked piece of baseball television.

Put simply, MLB Strike Zone is a twice-weekly (usually Tuesdays and Fridays, but occasionally Wednesday as well) injection of nonstop baseball. Available on it’s own channel on most cable and satellite systems that have a sports package, Strike Zone is similar to MLB Tonight, only with little-to-none of the talking heads and with zero commercials. It is, in many ways, similar to the NFL RedZone channel: minimal interruption, maximum game action.

Watching yesterday, for example, I was able to see, amongst many other things: the David Phelps‘ meltdown against the Mets, Ryan Zimmerman‘s first and second home runs (I only missed the last one because I did some channel surfing), several good defensive plays, the Orioles’ comeback and the start of the late games. I would have, had I just chosen one or two games and switched between them, missed a lot. But with Strike Zone, I saw more-or-less everything of note that happened in baseball last night, live or with only a short delay.

And yet, nobody seems to talk about Strike Zone all that much. Perhaps because it is relatively new- it just started last year, after all. Or maybe it is because it doesn’t seem to receive much publicity: I’ve only seen maybe one or two commercials for it, and it seems like MLB Network itself is more focused on getting eyes on the games they are showing on the network on the nights that Strike Zone is on.

With luck, more will start paying attention to Strike Zone, and, with luck, it could even be expanded to more days of the week. So if you haven’t already, check it out.

Random Video of the Undetermined Amount of Time: Jose Canseco pitches

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In one game during the 1993 season, Jose Canseco pitched in the major leagues. It didn’t go well.

PACES! (As of May 29, 2013)

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  • Miguel Cabrera is on pace for 185 RBIs. The single-season record of 191 is held by Hack Wilson of the 1930 Chicago Cubs. The AL single-season record, held by Lou Gehrig of the 1931 Yankees, is 184.
  • Chris Davis is on pace for 53 HR. The Baltimore single-season record is 50, by Brady Anderson in 1995.
  • Jason Grilli is on pace for 65 saves. The single-season record is 62, held by Francisco Rodriguez in 2008.
  • The Miami Marlins are on pace for either 40 or 41 wins (depending on how you round it). Want to know what other team only had 40 wins? The 1962 New York Mets.

What does this mean? Well, nobody can be 100% sure, since keeping up a pace, especially one of historic significance, is hard. But it’s an interesting thing to think about…

Crazy Question: Should Surgeons be in the Hall of Fame? (AKA: The Importance of Tommy John Surgery)

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A man who had a major impact in baseball passed today, someone who helped teams win championships and aided some of the biggest names in the sport.

That man was Lewis Yocum, and he was a orthopedic surgeon specializing in sports surgeries like Tommy John Surgery, in addition to serving as the team physician for the Angels. His passing has been commented upon by many in the baseball community, with some declaring that they owed him their careers.

Which leads to this: should surgeons and doctors be considered for the Hall of Fame?

Well, the answer is probably no. After all, they aren’t in this for fame, and to try and say what makes a “Hall of Fame Surgeon” is fraught with questions I don’t think can be answered.

But, let’s just consider for a second the impact that some of these surgeons have had on baseball.

Imagine what the world of baseball pitching looked like before Frank Jobe. Who’s Frank Jobe? He’s the guy who first performed ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) reconstruction surgery, where a UCL is replaced by a tendon from elsewhere. You probably know it as Tommy John Surgery.

Before TJ Surgery, to have a dead arm was a death sentence for a career. Let that sink in and then remember the full implications of that statement:

  • Without TJS, Stephen Strasburg‘s career would be done.
  • Without TJS, Jim Morris would never have been portrayed by Dennis Quaid in a movie.
  • Without TJS, Hyun-Jin Ryu never gets out of high school, much less comes to America and becomes one of the few bright spots of the 2013 Dodgers season.
  • Without TJS, Chris Carpenter‘s career probably would have ended on Opening Day, 2007. Adam Wainwright‘s career would have ended in 2011.
  • Without TJS, Eric Gagne‘s career probably have ended in the minors. Same goes for Kenny Rogers, C.J. Wilson and David Wells.
  • Without TJS, Tim Hudson wouldn’t have won the 55 games he’s won since 2009.
  • Without TJS, Phil Humber never has his perfect game. Francisco Liriano doesn’t have his no-hitter. Neither does Anibal Sanchez.
  • Without TJS, Kerry Wood‘s career would have been an even bigger “what might have been” than it ended up being.
  • Without TJS, John Smoltz‘s career ended in 2000, with 56 wins and 154 saves never happening.
  • Without TJS, we MAYBE might never have even heard of Mariano Rivera. (There is some confusion over whether or not Rivera had a TJS in the minors, or if it was a different type of surgery).

Hmm… maybe surgeons should be in the Hall of Fame. At least Jobe should.

Classic Continuum: Ballplayers who gave everything

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This article was initially published on Memorial Day, 2012.

On this Memorial Day, it is as good a time as any to mention some of the ballplayers who gave their lives serving in America’s armed forces. The DeadBallEra site has a list of those who died while serving America, and there is also a good site entirely about Baseball in Wartime (primarily focused on WWII), but here are some notables (although, in the end, everyone who gives the ultimate sacrifice is notable). Not all of them died in combat, but all of them died while in military service or (in the case of people like Christy Mathewson) as a result of those actions:

  • Eddie Grant was a Harvard-educated infielder who spent time with Cleveland, Philly, Cincinnati and the Giants. On October 15, 1918, he died after being wounded by a artillery shell in the Argonne Forest of France. His unit had been fighting to rescue the “Lost Battalion” that had been pinned down by German forces. He was 35. A memorial to him was placed in the Polo Grounds (it is one of the plaques that can be seen in the expanded version of the Willie Mays catch photo), and a replica of it is now apparently in San Francisco.
  • Larry Chappell was a light-hitting outfielder in the 1910s who was at one point part of a trade for Shoeless Joe Jackson. In 1918, he died while in Army service only a few days before the armistice from the Spanish Flu pandemic that killed tens of millions of people. He was 28.
  • Ralph Sharman was a young outfielder who did well in a September stint with the Phillies in 1917. After the ’17 season, however, he was inducted into the army. He died in May, 1918 when he drowned while in Alabama, where he was undergoing training. He was only 23.
  • Christy Mathewson had retired from pitching by the beginning of America’s involvement in WWI, and was manager of the Cincinnati Reds. He left the club in the middle of the 1918 season, going to France, where he served in the Army’s chemical division. While there, he suffered the effects of poison gas, which left him with various respiratory ailments, including the tuberculosis that took his life in 1925.
  • Elmer Gedeon, who had had a cup of coffee with Washington in 1939, died while piloting a B-26 Marauder over France on April 20, 1944. He was 27.  He was one of only two people with Major League experience who died in WWII. The other being…
  • Harry O’Neill, who was a catcher in one game (with no plate appearances) for the Athletics in 1939. He was killed by a sniper on Iwo Jima on March 6, 1945.
  • Bob Neighbors, who had a cup of coffee with the Browns in 1939. In 1941, his baseball career came to an end when he had a poor season and, perhaps more importantly, lost his wife of only six months in a car accident while he was away on a road trip. He signed up for the United States Army Air Force after Pearl Harbor, and became a career military man from that point on. He went Missing In Action (and presumed dead) in 1952 when his B-26 went down over North Korea. He was both the only MLB-experienced man to die during the Korean War, and the last to have died in active service, period.

Of course, there were plenty of players who never made it to the big leagues who died in the line of duty, some of whom may have one day become Major Leaguers if not for the cruelty of war:

 

To them and all who have given the ultimate sacrifice, and to those who made it home, we salute you.

434.2 milliseconds

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434.2 milliseconds. That’s about how long it takes a 95 MPH fastball to reach home plate.

It’s only about 34 milliseconds more than what it takes some people blink. Only 134 more milliseconds than it takes the slowest of us to act on reflex based on visual stimuli. Only slightly less time than it takes for a satellite communications system to receive and transmit information.

In the time it took you to read this blog post up to this line, about 13 seconds had past if you are an average silent reader. In that time, you could have had 28 fastballs go past you with another one about a third of the way towards you.

That sound you hear is your mind getting blown. Or maybe it’s of a fastball hitting the catcher’s glove.

How Don Mattingly can try to get fired (HUMOR)

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In a Ken Rosenthal article earlier today, a rival GM said that Dodgers Manager Don Mattingly is practically trying to get fired after his infamous ripping into of longtime RF Andre Ethier on Wednesday. However, despite that and the horrible 19-26 start for the Dodgers, he is expected to still be the skipper of Los Angeles when the sun rises on Friday.

Therefore, if we were to foolishly take the rival GM’s quotation literally, we can only guess that Mattingly has not done enough to get fired. Therefore, I have suggestions for him as he tries to escape the black hole of horrible the Dodgers’ season has been so far:

  • Accuse Tommy Lasorda of not actually bleeding Dodger Blue, but instead bleeding the red that everyone else has.
  • Hit the pitcher in the clean-up spot for kicks.
  • Leave game in the 7th inning to beat traffic.
  • Criticize Vin Scully. Note that doing this is not just grounds for termination, but is grounds for being shot into the heart of the sun.
  • Say that you wish the Dodgers had go-getters like Carlos Quentin.
  • Call AJ Ellis by the name of “DJ Elliot” for no apparent reason whatsoever.
  • Show up in Anaheim in a Angels uniform, see if you can get past security.
  • Sign Dwight Howard to play CF.
  • Give a long discussion on how you would approach 5-base baseball.
  • Donald Duck suit.
  • And the easiest way of all to get fired: keep having the team play .422 baseball.

Chris Sale (or at least his appetite) is not human

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Chris Sale‘s eating habits were recently unveiled to the world in a Wall Street Journal article, and they are sickening but impressive.

For example, it is said that during a four-hour flight, the 6’6”, 180 lb pitcher ate 2 ice cream sundaes and 30 bags of potato chips.

Now, admittedly this is likely just another tale of athletes exaggerating, but, just for kicks, this is roughly what the nutritional info for such a meal would be:

Screen Shot 2013-05-22 at 4.23.41 PMI’m not entirely sure how he would survive such a eating frenzy without throwing up. His metabolism must be something completely unlike anything else on this earth. There must be something unique about him. If everyone could have such a metabolism, obesity could disappear overnight.

In other words, I ask that Chris Sale reconsider his career in baseball and donate his body to science. Within his body may be the secrets of ending obesity and who knows what else.

Make it happen!