Tag Archives: MLB

How long can the Orioles keep this up?

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The Orioles won again last night. In 15 innings, they defeated the Royals, rallying in the 9th to tie the game and then taking the lead for good with a Adam Jones homer in the top of the 15th. With the victory, the Orioles kept pace with the Tampa Bay Rays (who they are tied with), and extended their lead over the Yankees, who are now 3.5 games back. So we must ask: how are they doing this, and can they keep this up?

Maybe it’s the return of the classic logo…

One thing that really is standing out with the 2012 Orioles is how well the no-name pitchers are doing. Most of the All-Stars the Orioles have had since the retirement of Cal Ripken have generally been hitters: Miguel Tejada, Melvin Mora, Brian Roberts, Nick Markakis, Adam Jones, Matt Wieters, etc. The only exceptions have been B.J. Ryan in 2005 (who flamed out after a few years in Toronto in the late aughts)  and George Sherrill in 2008 (he now pitches for the Mariners), although Erik Bedard (who was slyly traded for Jones, Sherrill and others in 2009) could probably have been said to have been snubbed on at least one occasion. That likely will remain true this year: the Orioles will probably see Wieters (who should probably start) and Adam Jones make the All-Star Game this year if they keep it up. But it will be ignoring the no-name pitchers that are keeping them in the race this late in the season.

Take their bullpen. It is spectacular, and I, like most people, can’t name a single one of them without looking it up. Even I, who prides myself on trying to be at least vaguely familiar with everybody in baseball, is just that with the Orioles: vaguely familiar. I recognize the names when I see them, but if I were vacationing down in Maryland and ran into one of them in the Inner Harbor, I wouldn’t be saying “Oh, you’re Jim Johnson!” I would probably instead say: “Look where you’re going!”

And yet, Johnson is having a brilliant year. He has a 0.51 ERA and he leads the league in saves. And the rest of the bullpen has been doing great:

-Pedro Strop, who had been given to the Orioles as a player-to-be-named-later from the Rangers, has a 1.29 ERA in 21 innings.

-Veteran reliever Luis Ayala is the holder of 1.86 ERA and, along with Johnson, Strop and Darren O’Day, is one of four O’s pitchers with WHIPs (Walks and Hits per Innings Pitched) under one.

-Speaking of O’Day, he has the lowest WHIP of anybody in the Baltimore ‘pen: 0.873. Like Strop, he’s a cast-off from the Rangers: the Orioles picked him up off of waivers.

By comparison, the Baltimore rotation hasn’t been as good, especially at the top. Tommy Hunter (another Texas cast-off, arriving to Baltimore along with the immortal Chris Davis last season in exchange for Koji Uehara) is 2-2 with a 4.78 ERA. Jake Arrieta, arguably the best homegrown starter in the rotation, has also struggled, with a 5.21 ERA and a 2-4 W-L record. It leads one to wonder why Buck Showalter hasn’t promoted the two success stories in the rotation up a bit. Taiwanese import (via Japan) Wei-Yin Chen has yet to lose a game, and has a 2.45 ERA. Jason Hammel, a serviceable-but-unremarkable starter the last few years, is 4-1 with a 2.68 ERA.

In my eyes, the only chance the Orioles have of staying in the race in the long run is having the pitching hold up. This seems obvious, but it is true. No matter how well the Orioles hit, they cannot survive the apocalyptic struggle that is the AL East without pitching that can silence the Rays, Yankees, Blue Jays and Red Sox.

Whether they can is up for debate. Chen, for example, is still new to the majors, so it’s possible that the hitters just might not be used to facing him yet. Eventually, they will figure him out, and then, like every other pitcher, Chen will have to make more adjustments.

But if the Orioles keep this up- unlike so many of the previous years where they have teased the world with hot starts- the people who may need to adjust are the rest of the AL East, which somehow now finds itself even stronger.

Why baseball is the best sport to follow on a day-by-day basis

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Baseball’s long season is one of it’s greatest strengths and one of it’s greatest weaknesses. While football long ago has been able to surpass baseball in casual followers thanks to the fact you only have to pay attention two or three days a week, baseball is a day-by-day grind. This also leads to some… interesting things happening.
Take yesterday, for example:

-Brett Lawrie threw his helmet towards umpire Bill Miller and got him on the bounce, for which he will almost certainly be suspended.

-Stephen Strasburg somehow got Icy-Hot in his jock strap. My guess: somebody was trying to haze a rookie and grabbed the wrong jock strap.

-There was the whole thing with David Wright getting pulled so that he wouldn’t get hit as part of the unwritten rules.

-The Angels fired hitting coach Mickey Hatcher.

-The Orioles beat the Yankees and remain tied for first place. Although as a article yesterday at Grantland points out, they’ve been teasing everyone basically the whole decade.

-Josh Beckett, for one day at least, silenced the boo-birds.

And it is like that, day after day, week after week, month after month, from April to October. There is always something happening. Sometimes those somethings are trivial, some times they are important, but they always are happening.

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.

Continue reading →

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.

Continue reading →

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.

Continue reading →

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.