The Baseball Zealot

Colbert’s Clouts Makes Him a Man of his Word

colbert When Nate Colbert was a boy growing up in St. Louis his father took him to a doubleheader in which Stan Musial hit five home runs in a doubleheader in 1954. Young Nate turned to his father and said, “Someday I’m going to do that”.

Now fast forward to August 1, 1972, the San Diego Padres were playing a doubleheader against the Braves in Atlanta. Colbert, nursing a bad back, wasn’t going to play. But when he took batting practice with an old bat, he hit five balls out, and a couple of more that were long gone, but just foul. Nate’s manager decided his slugger would play, so Nate taped up the old bat, and used it in the first game. He hit two out in the first game and three more in the nightcap, leading the Pads to a sweep, 9-0 & 11-7, driving in 13 runs on the day, two more than Stan the Man. Nate finished the season with 38 homers (second only to Johnny Bench’s 40) and 111 RBI’s (highest percentage of runs driven in to a team’s total runs scored in MLB history).

I still remember this big day by this big slugger, even today, but don’t ask me what I ate for breakfast!

Bonehead Brett

Indians Blue Jays Baseball In last night’s baseball game between the Red Sox and the Blue Jays in Toronto, rookie lefty Brett Cecil did something so stupid, Little Leaguers were shaking their heads. The umpires were so stupifide that they had to meet before deciding what to do. Cecil had just walked Jason Bay when he noticed a scuff mark on the baseball, so he wanted a new ball, most pitchers would rather just use the scuffed baseball to their advantage, making the ball do pretty much what they wanted it to do, but that wasn’t even the dumb part. Rather than asking the umpire for a new baseball and exchanging spheres with him, Brett simply rolled the live ball into the Jays dugout, without getting timeout. The umpires originally sent Bay to secondbase, but after meeting, decided he should be awarded thirdbase. Jason would score on a one-out single by Mike Lowell through a drawn in infield. Everything seemed to fall apart from there as Toronto committed three errors, as Boston went on to win 8-1.

If I Was Their GM

spMETSKK33 Although I am a diehard White Sox fan and have loved them for over forty years, I couldn’t help thinking about how a couple of trades might really help the Chicago Cubs. Kevin Gregg has been a disaster as the team’s closer, with Carlos Marmol not doing much better. Perhaps Angel Guzman should be given a shot, but what this team really needs is a proven closer. Enter Billy Wagner, the going nowhere fast, New York Mets just brought Billy the Kid off the disabled list, and he looked like he’s still got it. Only thing is, the Mets signed KRod as their closer in the offseason, and are paying Wags bigtime closer money, even though he’s not closing. It might be a gamble, trading away a good young arm, but I would trade Angel Guzman for Billy Wagner. Next I’d be knocking on the Cleveland Indians door looking for a proven lefty relief specialist. Sure Sean Marshall has looked okay in that role from time to time this season, and Rafael Perez has been lousy all year. But I’d trade Marshall to the Tribe in exchange for Perez & his lefthanded nasty stuff. Wondering what you Cub fans think of my proposed deals, if you agree, contact Jim Hendry. I can’t believe I’m actually trying to help the Cubs. Sheesh, what’s next, a snake & a mongoose sitting down to tea?

Cubs show reason not to give up

The Cubs managed to avoid a sweep and more embarrassment as Rich Harden pitched a gem of a game against the Padres. Harden only allowed a hit in seven frames.

The best part of it is that Cubs came through with some offense too. Milton Bradley and Aramis Ramirez both banged out homers for the good guys.

Bradley, though he gets a lot of flack, has improved over the season. His second half number are looking a whole lot better. Since the All-Star break, he’s hitting .301 and perhaps more importantly, his OBP is .431.

Wednesday’s win is just one game, yes, but I think if it was a loss, we’d be seeing a whole lot more about the Cubs in today’s sport columns. And it wouldn’t be a fun read.

That’s not to say there hasn’t been calls already by the sports media for this season’s demise for the Cubs . Some of it probably fueled by GM Jim Hendry’s statement to the press that sounded almost apologetic:

”If things don’t go well, certainly it’s my responsibility. ‘That being said, we’ve got a real good team. We just haven’t played up to our capabilities. It’s kind of a mystery to all of us. We’ve got a lot of guys that have hit their whole lives who haven’t hit. We’ve done a very, very poor job all year of hitting with men on base. So it’s frustrating.

Before Cub fans start pushing the panic button, they should consider this:

The Cubs have a winning record in the second half of 2009 UNLIKE the first half.
It was not two weeks ago that the Cubs finished their best run of the season when they went 14-6.
The Cubs remaining schedule is full of teams they can beat up on. Washington, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, St Louis (yeah, I said it, St Louis)

Right now though, the Cubs need to focus on the here and now. And the here and now is the Los Angeles Dodgers. Tom Gorzelanny will be facing Jeff Weaver tonight.

Interesting pre-game stat: Aaron Miles is 6 for 15 lifetime against Weaver.

Go Cubs!

Many saves, high ERA

In honor of Kevin Gregg, I played around with Baseball Reference’s Play Index and came up with a list of closers with the highest ERA. More specifically, these are the pitchers with the most saves in a season among those with an adjusted ERA of 70 or less.

    Player            SV ERA+   ERA  Year Age
+----+-----------------+--+----+------+----+---+
    1 Shawn Chacon      35   69   7.11 2004  26 
    2 Mike Williams     28   69   6.14 2003  33 
    3 Derrick Turnbow   24   66   6.87 2006  28 
    4 Jose Mesa         24   61   6.52 2003  37 
    5 Brad Lidge        23   60   7.21 2009  32 
    6 Matt Capps        21   64   6.41 2009  25 
    7 Rob Dibble        19   62   6.48 1993  29 
    8 Dave Smith        17   65   6.00 1991  36 
    9 Willie Hernandez  15   67   5.74 1989  34 
   10 Darold Knowles    15   66   5.81 1975  33

Full list here.

Only 2004 Shawn Chacon of (you guessed it) the Colorado Rockies, breaks the 30 save mark. He had a 1-9 record to go with his 7.11 ERA.

Five more over 20 and it pretty much dissolves after that.

In 1998, Mark Wohlers of the Braves managed to get 8 saves in 27 games with an ERA in the double digits (10.18)

Fuld is a numbers guy

Interesting piece on ESPN Chicago about Cubs OF Sam Fuld. Not only is he a decent outfielder but he is a stathead too.

"He was only 5 or 6 and he was already computing batting averages and ERAs," (father) Ken said. "He’d sit in the bathtub, and I’d say ‘If a guy goes 17-for-37, what’s his batting average?’ What struck me is that he’d perform these operations in very creative ways — not just that he got the right answer, but his methodology, adding in a factor and then dividing by 10, etc. I’d watch him and say ‘wow,’ just like I said ‘wow’ when he used to hit."

The love for stats apparently continued as he grew up. Fuld, an economics major at Stanford, even interned at Stats Inc.

Late-game shenanigans ruin Lilly’s return

I guess I’m glad I didn’t stay up for the entirety of last night’s Cubs-Padres pitching duel. That would have made for an angry bedtime.

Ted Lilly came through for a classic of a “first-game-back” performance that’s for sure. After a month on the shelf, he almost pitched TOO well. It crossed my mind that I’m sure they would want to be careful with him on his first day back on the job. As much as a traditionalist that I am, it would have been easier to pull Lilly had he given up a run. The Cubs didn’t have that problem though, taking Lilly out after 70 pitches and six innings.

They were pretty decent six innings at that. Lilly was helped by good defense most notably two 4-6-3 DPs. He spread out 4 hits and allowed no runs.

Lillly’s return would have been a great feel good story had it not been for the nasty combination of San Diego RF Kyle Blanks and Cubs “closer” Kevin Gregg. Blanks’ walk-off homer won it for the Padres and now has the Cubs wondering about the state of their bullpen. In the space of 2/3 of an inning, Gregg gave up all 4 runs to the Pads.

And with that inning, Gregg has most likely lost his job as the Cubs’ closer.

However, it would be easy and tempting to place all blame at the door of Kevin Gregg for last night’s loss. But let’s face it. We can’t expect Ted Lilly (let alone the bullpen) to pitch a shutout. While the Cubs were winning 1-0 going into bottom of eighth, a little offense isn’t a lot to ask.

As we saw with the series with the Phillies, it’s a question of timing.

With the Cubs’ bullpen in dire straits, Bleed Cubbie Blue wonders if we should sign John Smoltz who was DFAed by the Red Sox. Yes? No? I’m willing to try anything at this point.

TBZ gets a slight makeover

In case you hadn’t noticed, The Baseball Zealot went through a small makeover last week. It got a new banner and a new color scheme. I hope you like it.

As much as I liked the old orange and blue styled banner (above), it wasn’t as reflective of our current emphasis now that I’ve spun off almost all of our University of Illinois baseball coverage to Illinois Baseball Report which I brought up earlier this year (Illini baseball fans check it out!). Much thanks, by the way, to former Illini shortstop (and current Tiger minor leaguer) Shawn Roof who graciously allowed me to put his photo on the banner.

In case you’re wondering, the photo in the new banner is the of the infield of Huntington Park in Columbus, Ohio. Huntington Park is the brand new home (it was weeks old when I took the photo) of the Columbus Clippers and was named 2009 Ballpark of the Year by Ballparks.com. I had the chance to enjoy the park when I was there for the 2009 Big Ten Tournament.

Also, I’ve added Feedburner to better facilitate RSS feeds. There are links on the upper right to help you subscribe to your favorite feed reader or just click on “Subscribe”.

Comments are welcome on the new theme.

Comparing catchers

Mike, our commissioner in the Illowa APBA League sent this out to our members and it generated a fair amount of discussion.

“Can you identify these catchers. Which ones are in the Hall of Fame?”

Player Avg HR RBI Runs

# 1 .285 248 1389 1074

# 2 .262 324 1225 1025

# 3 .269 376 1330 1276

# 4 .308 427 1335 1048

Mike, is a Cardinals fan so he had an agenda behind this all. Two are in the HOF, one is waiting, and the other, in Mike’s eyes, is unfairly being denied entry to the hallowed halls.

Yeah, you guessed it, it’s former Cardinal Ted Simmons who is #1 on the above list. The question of the day is Does Ted Simmons who also spent time with the Brewers and the Braves, belong in the Hall of Fame?

By the way, the others listed are #2- Gary Carter, #3- Carlton Fisk, and #4- Mike Piazza.

Per the Simmons question and comparing hitting only, he holds his own against the other three with the stats provided. Yes, the dinger stats are down but the batting average and run production is comparable if not better.

So why the hate on Mr Simmons? He has plenty of supporters. Fungoes, a Cardinals blog with a SABR bent, puts Simmons second on their list of best Cardinals not in the Hall of Fame. Our dear commissioner, dogmatic fan that he is, would probably rank him over Bench.

Well, there’s the defense issue. Simmons had an reputation problem with the glove. While reports say that earlier in his career he had trouble, in reality, he was an AVERAGE fielding catcher. But in an age where every catcher was being compared to Johnny Bench and you’re the only decent alternative to him (read: backup in the All-Star game), people are going to look at your weaknesses.

Maybe a question for time: Mike Piazza- First ballot Hall of Famer? Hall of Famer at all?

Pops 1970s Alltime Home Run Leader with 296

stargell25 Wilver Stargell was a menacing figure when he stepped into the batter’s box in the 70s, windmilling his bat around, as he waited for the pitcher to summon up the courage to send the sphere plateward. Stargell played 21 seasons for the Pittsburgh Pirates, where he hit 7 of the 16 balls hit completely out of Forbes Field and several into the upper tier at Three Rivers Stadium. Willie finished his career with 475 homers and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1988.

He hit 296 home runs in the 70s, more than anyone else. As the decade comes to an end, who will be the all-time home run hitter for this decade?