Category: Baseball

Offseason notes

Some notes I made that weren’t worth full posts on their own:

– There is a poll on mlb.com for the best play of the year. I’m biased, of course, but I fail to see how any play of the nominees could be better than Jeff Francoeur reaching his whole arm over the wall. I’m confident that you’ll all vote the right way.

– The Phillies are continuing their quest from last offseason to buy every pitcher in the Major Leagues, having signed Jonathan Papelbon. They do appear to recognise, however, that some of the blame for last year’s failure must go to their hitting and have convinced Jim Thome to return.

– I was going to put something about the now Miami Marlins here, but none of it was actually very interesting.

– The next ten days will see all of the major awards announced. There has been a bit of controversy this year, with discussions of whether pitchers ought to be eligible to win the MVP and whether relievers ought to be eligible to win the Cy Young. (To which the answers are ‘yes’ and ‘yes’ respectively.) The big question, however, is whether Eric Hosmer will get the Rookie of the Year award that he deserves. He probably won’t, but we’ll find out on Monday.

Royals trade Cabrera

As sick as I am of constantly reshuffling the outfield, it looks like it’s probably a good deal. The Royals got left handed pitchers Jonathan Sanchez and Ryan Verdugo from San Francisco in return and it’s little secret that we badly need pitching. Sanchez’s career numbers aren’t spectacular, an ERA of 4.26 in the National League, but he had a strong 2010 and averages better than a strikeout per inning pitched over his career. He struggled a bit more in 2011, and was hampered by an injury, but he looks like a good addition to the rotation. He also ensures that the Royals will have at least one left handed starter, even if Bruce Chen and Jeff Francis do not return to KC. I don’t know a lot about Verdugo, but he is seen as a relief prospect despite starting at the Giants AA affiliate this year. He will be in Omaha with the Royals.

Cabrera’s departure leaves a hole in centre field, presumably to be filled by Lorenzo Cain on an every day basis. Cain is the main result of the Greinke deal (I view Escobar as having come over for Betancourt in a like-for-like swap) and it will be very nice to see him get a regular chance to start in the major leagues next season. He had a good year with Omaha last year and his .273 as a September call up. It may also give Jarrod Dyson and Mitch Maier more time in the outfield as Cain will probably get more days off than Cabrera did. It’s obviously far too early to say what the team might look like in April, but I think this is a step in the right direction.

ESPN Fail

ESPN bill themselves as ‘the worldwide leader in sports’ and they may well be. I know that they are one of the main cricket channels in India and they own Cricinfo, one of my favourite sites. I’m less enamoured with their American arm; even when they’re not discussing/showing non-sports like poker and Nascar they pay far too much attention to the east coast. (They do show Premier League football though, which is good.)

Tonight, however, was the worst coverage I’ve ever seen. They somehow have decided that after advertising their coverage of the Gold Glove awards they would not show it on any of their four main or two alternate channels until the end of a university American Rules football match. This despite that the main channel was showing the world series of poker and that they have a channel dedicated to university sports that was not showing any live match at all. Their two alternate channels showed just showed a logo. The award show was finally shown, but fifty minutes late. It was a slap in the face to baseball fans and showed that ESPN do not care about the game.

Of course, I understand that some people care about university Yank Rules and that some people like to watch poker on TV (though I find the latter incomprehensible). I don’t think more people wanted to see poker than the Gold Gloves, however, and in any case ESPN prevented someone like MLB Network from showing the awards on time. They could have shown the Yank Rules match on the channel dedicated to university sports. They could have put poker on an alternate channel. They didn’t. If they don’t care enough about the Gold Glove awards to show them when they say they will they should leave it to a network that will.

2011 Gold Gloves

The shortlists for the 2011 Gold Glove awards were announced today and two Royals made it into the final three for their positions. Alex Gordon and Jeff Francoeur were nominated after each having career years. The rest of the nominees are here.

Unfortunately, I don’t think that Francoeur will win; he’s up against Torii Hunter and Nick Markakis. I actually suspect Markakis will win. Hunter is still a good outfielder, but his best days are behind him and Markakis is pretty well established. Francoeur is also a Royal, which never helps.

Alex Gordon has a better chance. He’s up against Brett Gardner though, who is not a better outfielder but is a Yankee. The other nominee is Sam Fuld of the Rays. In an ideal world neither should present any challenge to Gordon, but Gardner is from a big market and thus tends to have something of an advantage. I think in this case, however, the gap will be too large and Gordon will get the recognition he deserves.

There were a pair of notable snubs from a Kansas City standpoint, however. Alcides Escobar did not even get a nomination for his brilliance at shortstop, whilst somehow JJ Hardy did. Also, Zach Grienke has been overlooked for the nth year running, despite this time being on a division winning team. The awards show will be shown live for the first time on ESPN2 in the US and Canada at 21.00 CDT. I doubt it will be shown overseas though.

End of the season

Today is the last day of the baseball season. By 23.00 CDT (probably) either the Cardinals or the Rangers will be World Champions. Neither probably deserve to be; last night’s game would have been embarrassing in Spring Training. Neither have been the best team this year; the Rangers still don’t have a solid pitching staff, they just have a better one than they used to. The same is true of the Cardinals, who have only two properly good starters. It still surprises me that they beat the Phillies. In many ways it has been a dreadful World Series; the pitching has been distinctly average. The one game with good pitching, Game Two, was then marred by a boneheaded collapse in the ninth by St Louis. Game Three finished 16-7. Game Six finished 10-9, and featured the worst defence I can remember in a World Series.

But despite all that the series may go down as a classic. It’s the first time a World Series has gone to a seventh game since the Angels beat the Giants in 2002 and just the third since 1997. It has not been a well played series, but it has been close. Neither side have lead by more than a game at any point. (Though both sides have spurned chanced to do so.) Three of the first six games have been decided by one run, one of them in the ninth and another in extra innings. Last night the Rangers were within one strike of winning the World Series.

The Cardinals certainly have the momentum coming off the win last night, and coupled with their home field advantage I think they’ll win tonight. Their cause will be helped by playing good fundamental baseball tonight. In theory they could have won the series already if they hadn’t blown the second game. The Cardinals will need a good effort from their starter tonight though, LaRussa burnt through the bullpen last night. Texas are faced with a similar problem, however, and I think the Cardinals have the advantage.

Rangers of Texas, not Glasgow

Before the RWC final and England’s almost certainly ill-fated attempt to salvage something against India there is another event. (Tonight is going to be fun.) Game Three of the World Series starts at 19.00 CDT/01.00 BST. The Rangers won Game Two after a bit of inspired idiocy by the Cardinals allowed Texas to score twice in the top of the ninth. Most of the blame for that loss had to go to Tony LaRussa for his increasingly frenetic (and increasingly ill-advised) pitching changes. It came off during the NLCS, but there was an element of fortune to that. It did not come off in Game Two.

I expect we’ll see more of the same tonight, with some of the changes maybe even warranted. Kyle Lohse starts for St Louis and he has failed to impress in the postseason, both this year and in his career. With the smaller dimensions in Texas it may be a long night for the Cardinals staff. Matt Harrison starts for Texas and it’s a golden opportunity for them to take a 2-1 lead in the series. Home field advantage looks like it will play a very big role in the series, and the Cardinals lapse on Thursday night could prove very costly.

There’s pitching after all!

Surely it wasn’t ridiculous to expect a high scoring World Series. Carpenter, Garcia, Wilson and Lewis combined for an ERA of 6.60 during the ALCS and NLCS. During that time, the hitters for the Cardinals and Rangers averaged 6.83 runs per nine innings. So I thought it would be a fairly high scoring series. But now Game Two is almost over and the Cardinals lead 1-0 after winning the first game 3-2. It still could become a high scoring series, the Rangers have a tiny ballpark and they’ll have their crutch Designated Hitter back for that leg, but the first two games have not at all been what I expected.

But the pitchers for both sides deserve credit. There is a saying that hitting wins games but pitching wins championships. This doesn’t make sense, of course, but the first sentence is supposed to be thrown out. And saying that pitching wins championships is usually correct, but the pitching for the Cardinals and Rangers has not been anything about which to write home. The top two in each rotation all did reasonably well in the regular season but were not the best in their leagues by any stretch. Previously in the playoffs only Chris Carpenter had done anything of note, the brilliant complete game shutout in Game Five of the NLDS. I’m not sure why the pitchers have suddenly come to the party but hopefully they’ll continue. Pitchers’ duels are so much more exciting than slugging contests.

India’s loss is baseball’s gain

I have wanted to see HotSpot in baseball for some time. Admittedly this was without a detailed plan of how the manufacturer would accomplish this, just a desire to see it. It could even clarify contentious hit by pitch calls. Now, courtesy of the pig-headedness of the BCCI I have got my wish. In the top of the fifth of Game One of the World Series Fox Sports showed the batsman fouling the ball off his foot in infrared. It was truly a glorious sight. Well, that’s not really true, but it was a cool sight. (And slightly odd, since I’m used to seeing it in a very different context.)

It also provided a lovely reminder of how mind-blowingly stupid Tim McCarver is. Joe Buck, after making a stupid TSA joke did actually explain that it was an infrared camera borrowed from their cricket coverage. (I had actually forgot that Fox does the cricket in Oz too.) This prompted Tim McCarver to proclaim that he had no idea how it worked. It’s hard to be sure, but I think he is unaware that friction causes heat. Either that, or he just likes talking about how ignorant he is. I’ve spent a lot of time during the postseason trying to decide if the various TBS commentators are worse than Joe Buck and Tim McCarver. I still suspect they are, but Tim is making it close.

This, that and the other

Some short thoughts on the various matches I’ve been watching.

South Africa v Australia: First ODI
As I type this South Africa are 84-6 after sixteen overs needing 223 to win off 29 overs. Australia were marginally on top at the interval and Cummins put them firmly on top with two wickets in the eighth over. They haven’t looked back since. The rain was disappointing but Duckworth-Lewis gave a fair target. It’s also been really nice to see the lack of adverts on the ground. There is a plain rope around the ground and the bowlers run ups are marked with CSA’s facebook and twitter sites. Hopefully in the second ODI they will find a way to project their status updates and tweets on to the pitch. I know the technology exists.

Pakistan v Sri Lanka: First Test
Pakistan are in absolute control of this match after losing only one wicket on the second day. Sri Lanka bowled loosely at the start and it doesn’t look like they ever really recovered. (Though I could be wrong, I went to bed after about an hour. In my defence it was 02.00 in my time zone.) We saw in England that Sri Lanka no longer have any bowlers of note. Unless they can find someone to do what Stuart Broad did at Trent Bridge last summer it’s just a matter of hoping that they can hold on for a draw. Unfortunately for them, I believe it rains slightly less in the UAE than it does in England.

Marsielle v Arsenal
I have no idea how this match is going because Fox prefer to show matches between continental sides about whom I care little. (Not so little that I’m not watching between overs, mind.) So I get to watch Barcelona play Czech champions Viktoria instead. Yesterday I got to watch Inter Milan play Lille instead of either match involving a Manchester based side. Even more infuriatingly the Arsenal match is being shown on a delay, so they refused to even tell me the halftime score or show highlights. I would, of course, just watch the match later, except they’re showing it at the same time as the World Series. And it’s not like they don’t know. It’s the same broadcaster. They had an advert for the World Series at halftime. It’s times like this that I’m kind of glad that Liverpool did not make Europe, because if I’d had to miss the Reds in favour of some continental side I would be be very cross instead of just mildly irritated.

Rangers v Cardinals: Game One
Both sides have had very good offensive performances and won their respective Championship Series in six games. They scored a lot of their runs at opposite ends of their matches though, with St Louis consistently jumping out in front early and the Rangers blowing games open with late home runs. The big story for their Cardinals has been their bullpen performing brilliantly after some shaky starting pitching. They might have some trouble getting away with that against the powerful Rangers offence however. The Cardinals have home field advantage which may be important as the Rangers will definitely fancy their chances in their very small park. (They were 4-1 at home in the first two rounds.) I am tipping the Rangers to win, as unless the Cardinals’ starters improve they will find themselves in big holes early on.