Month: April 2009

IBR links cuz it’s a happenin’ place

satminn 013

I just posted a Q & A of star shortstop Brandon Wikoff (above) over at Illinois Baseball Report last night.  He’s good now and is definitely worth keeping your eye on.  Check out the interview over at IBR.

Illinois, fresh off their sweep of Penn State last weekend (which put them in a tie for first place with Ohio St in the Big Ten), just defeated Southern Illinois Salukis in a mid-week non-conference.  I just came from the game and was able to get some photos.  Check out the write-up and some photos also at IBR. 

Finally, for those who keep tabs on Willie Argo (and you really should), he took the Big Ten Player of the Week Award for his performance against PSU. 

PS. he’s not stopping there.  He hit a grand slam tonight.

Go Illini!

Satirical piece tells the truth of Drew?

At least one friend of mine thinks the latest Onion article entitled Brawl Clears Benches of Everyone But J.D. Drew hit a little too close to the truth. 

"I thought about getting in there for a second, but then I thought, nah. It didn’t really directly concern me. I mean, yeah, they shoved a bunch of my teammates, but it’s not like they were gonna die or anything.”

War of words between execs

kids-fighting

Looks like MLS commish Don Garber and Yanks prez Randy Levine are having a hissy fight… all over the issue of attendance figures.

Sez Levine:

"Don Garber discussing Yankee attendance must be a joke.  We draw more people in a year than his entire league does in a year. If he ever gets Major League Soccer into the same time zone as the Yankees, we might take him seriously… Hey Don, worry about Beckham, not the Yankees. Even he wants out of your league.

Garber had earlier made a comment about the empty front row seats at Yankee Stadium. 

There’s no point in taking sides in this one.  They’re both being idiotic.  Garber is taking on the seven-headed giant and worse, Levine is stooping to respond to the comment in a rather childish manner. 

Take a time out, guys. 

Who Was the HR King Before the Babe?

connor Kids of my era all grew up with the number 714 ingrained in us, it was written into our DNA. But I wonder if there’s anybody out there who would know without googling, what the Home Run Record was before Babe Ruth shattered it and who held that record. Yesterday’s White Sox tear-off calendar asks the question, “In 1921, Babe Ruth became the all-time career home run king. Whose record of 138 career home runs did he eclipse?”
A. Roger Connor

I had no idea, so I looked up Roger Connor, and this is what I found. The 6’3″ 220 pound Hall of Fame firstbaseman played from 1880-97, amassing 2,467 hits in 8,837 at bats, for a .317 lifetime batting average. He hit 441 doubles, 233 triples, & 138 home runs, swinging from the leftside.

Connor entered the National League in 1880 as a member of the Troy Trojans. He later played for the New York Gothams, and, due to his great stature, gave that team the enduring nickname “Giants”.

Roger is credited with being the first player to hit a grand slam in the major leagues and being the first to hit an over-the-wall home run at the Polo Grounds. His grand slam came with two outs and his team down three runs in the bottom of the ninth inning.

Another notable fact from Connor’s career: in his first year in the Majors with the Troy Trojans, he teamed with future Hall-of-Famers Dan Brouthers, Buck Ewing, Tim Keefe and Mickey Welch, all of whom was just starting out their careers.

Kill the Ump, Bat Almost Does

Umpire Injured Baseball Home plate umpire Kerwin Danley was carted off the field on a stretcher in the sixth inning of Tuesday night’s Toronto-Texas game after being struck in the head by a broken bat shard as Hank Blalock followed through on his swing. Danley immediately collapsed to the turf and Blue Jays catcher Rob Barajas motioned to the dugout for help as Blalock’s soft infield popper was caught by shortstop Marco Scutaro. Starter Roy Halladay and a few other players huddled around as both trainers came to attend to Danley. All players cleared the field shortly after.
Blalock’s bat shattered at the handle as he made contact and the barrel flew out his hands at full speed into Danley’s mask. The game was delayed 10 minutes as Danley was taken off field. Hunter Wendelstedt moved form second base to behind home plate.

I wrote about this incident, which occurred April 15, 2008. Maple is a harder wood, and many players swear by it these days. But there’s a reason maple wasn’t used in the first place. While ash cracks under pressure, maple shatters, sending shards of sharp wood everywhere. In the dugout of a game on April 15 in Los Angeles, the maple bat of the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Nate McClouth bat shattered on a hit and a piece of the bat flew into the dugout, opening a huge gash in the cheek of his hitting coach, Don Long. “Didn’t see it at all,” Long told Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports. “It just hit me. I backed up. I saw the blood coming out on the card I keep and on my shoes.” The piece of maple cut nerves in Long’s cheek and a doctor had to remove the wood before he sewed in 10 stitches. Who will be next? Perhaps a player or an umpire or, worse yet, a fan. And studies show very little difference between ash and maple in performance. What will happen next? A movement is afoot to either ban maple or at least change the shape of the bat handle.

When will baseball do something about this dangerous situation? I know the ash borer beetle has taken its toll on quality ash bats, but something needs to be done about maple bats shattering before somebody gets killed.

Ryan Zimmerman and his $45 mil-5 yr. contract

 

Look at THIS !!!

Ryan Zimmerman strolled into the home clubhouse at Nationals Park after Monday’s news conference announcing his $45 million, five-year contract and was greeted with a smile and a yell from a teammate sitting on a couch…

  In this age of declining (or at best, "stagnant") salaries — see the free agent class of last winter — , Ryan Zimmerman drags this kind of contract out of the Nationals? WOW !!!

  Would Jim Bowden have EVER agreed to something like this?

  Is this Exhibit A of: Why Team Presidents should not be left alone with agents?

  I wonder if this is the first contract Kasten ever negotiated.

  I stand in AWE of this agent. Scott Boras, scoot over.

  Question for you guys: On a scale of 0% (no chance) to 100% (sure thing), What do you think is the chance that Ryan Zimmerman will be worth $14 mil in 2013?

  What do you think?

DonS.

P.S. Disclosure: I originally drafted Ryan Zimmerman in ILLOWA League in the Second Round. A year ago, I decide he was "Tim Wallach" rather than "Mike Schmidt" and swapped Zimmerman for Huston Street. So factor in as many "grains of salt" as you think that deserves.

Quit messin’ wit’ my box scores

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With the advent of the digital era, we as baseball fans now have a bevy of sports information at our fingertips.  We have baseball data galore, streaming video, analysis all of it coming to our screen even to our mobile devices. 

That was pretty apparent when I was standing next to three Cub fans at the Illinois game last Saturday.  Between pitches, they would refresh their smart phones so they could check on the progress of the Cubs-Cardinals game. 

Unfortunately, with progress in one area, we step back in one or two others.  Do a search on “Where are the box scores?” in your favorite search engine and you’ll find more than a smattering of articles or even letters to the editors complaining about newspapers no longer printing box scores in their sports section. 

An argument can be made which I will not refute that print newspapers have seen better days and are on their decline.  Whether their demise is here and now, is quite debatable.  And not doubt it’s true, a lot of newspapers in smaller markets have legitimate financial reasons to cut back on sports coverage.

Also interesting are those newspaper outlets who still print or post boxscores on their web site and use it as a marketing tool.  Like Freep.com.  No, they’re not like those other papers.  

Even among web-delivered stats and box scores there has been a trade-off.  For years, I’ve enjoyed the USA Today’s section for one simple reason… in years past, they’ve displayed their box scores in a one-page format.  A year or two ago, they “enhanced” it slightly but it only required one click to expand all box scores. 

But the full box scores page on UST is no longer.  They’ve taken the “Box Scores” link down.  Unless, I’m missing something, they no longer do that forcing us web browsers to click back and forth for each game. 

The reason is simple from USA Today’s (and ESPN’s and MLB.com’s etc) perspective.  It means more click-throughs and more ad views and therefore more ad revenue.  

Maybe I’m being picky.  But my time is valuable and I’d just as soon scroll down a page.  I will give USA Today credit for keeping their Stats by Team in a one-page format for each league.  That is still pretty handy. 

Quit messin’ wit’ the box scores.  Analysis is great but it’s only opinion.  Box scores are the reality of baseball.

4-15-09 L-O-T-D: James Loney

James Loney  2 AB, 0 H, 3 RBI

DonS emails:

Guys,
 
  Last night, James Loney got 3 rbis without getting a hit.
 
  I wonder when’s the last time THAT happened.
 
  LSOTD on the Baseball Zealot?
DonS.
 
Well, as rare as it is, it’s not as rare as I thought it would be.  The last person to have 3 or more rbis with no hits in a game was Hideki Matsui on July 29, 2007 when the Yankees played the Orioles.
 
It’s happened nine times in this decade.  The strange thing is that it happened FOUR times in 2000.  Ben Petrick of Colorado (remember him?) did it by driving in four runs without the benefit of a hit.
 
 
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