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2021 MLB Thread

LTtxfan

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Beau Vine
Beau Vine

Laughed until I cried...So how do I walk?  really got me.  

shadow_operative2.0
shadow_operative2.0

This throw deserves the MLB thread.   

Beau Vine
Beau Vine

So in 2009, my daughter and I were in Omaha at the CWS.  I got an email from her softball coach saying that they had a kid drop off the All-Star team and would she want to replace her?  But she'd have

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shadow_operative

shadow_operative 15932

Posted
Posted
57 minutes ago, WBT said:

Go up and get it big fella

 

that was supposed to be a throwaway pitch on an 0-2 count and he just crushed it. i was watching when it happened (i had Brubaker going for me tonight) and i just started laughing. that was a fastball that was over the top of the catchers head on an 0-2 count and he smoked it. i don't think it's a stretch to say that Willians Astudillo is easily the best pitcher/hitter in the game today. easily.

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shadow_operative

shadow_operative 15932

Posted
Posted (edited)

Danny Duffy retires the Tigers 1-2-3 on 9 pitches in the 5th inning, with his stat line at: 82 pitches, 4 H (all singles), 8 K, 0 BB, 0 R. If this was 1995 Duffy would be thinking CG SO. in 2021? he doesn't come out for the 6th, because the card says you don't let your SP go through the lineup more than twice. i really hate that about today's game. 

edit: oh yeah, his outing doesn't even come close to qualifying as a "quality start". so make sense of that one.

Edited by shadow_operative
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Blotto

Blotto 23585

Posted
Posted
On 4/23/2021 at 11:22 PM, shadow_operative said:

good lord Jazz.

 

Love the hustle from the try hard in the Clark jersey. Dude sprints up and then beefs it over the railing, only to be nowhere close. Maximum effort outta that guy. 

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Jive Turkey

Jive Turkey 12657

Posted
Posted

if any of you wonky statistical guys with math backgrounds ever wanted to work in the bigs, the Rangers have a job opening for you:

Analyst I, Sports Science with Texas Rangers in Arlington · TX

JOB SUMMARY:  The Texas Rangers are seeking a candidate to provide research and analysis through statistical modeling, visualizations, and other assigned projects. This individual will support the Sport Science staff as well as other branches of the Performance, Player Development, and Baseball Operations staffs. This position is based in Arlington, TX.

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS OF POSITION INCLUDE, BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO THE FOLLOWING:

  • Work with Sport Science, S&C, Medical, Nutrition, and Mental Skills departments to aide in driving Performance initiatives through integration of statistical analysis.

  • Utilize Athlete Management System to effectively display data and produce reports (written and visual) for the Performance Group, Field Staff, and Front Office.

  • Conduct statistical analysis, quantitative research, and data modeling on motion capture data and other information related to biomechanics.

  • Manage reporting and analysis of all programs related to Sport Science.

  • Work closely with Analytics and Systems departments to properly support, maintain, analyze, and distribute all Sport Science related information.

  • Lead in data analysis of novel empirical experiments to further Texas Rangers understanding and research of Sport Science related fields.

  • Produce insights and models developed for Sport Science to impact decision making in player development and evaluation.

  • Provide analysis and reporting on human performance data to optimize player performance and minimize injury risk.

  • Conduct quantitative research to support ad-hoc requests from Performance Staff.

https://www.teamworkonline.com/baseball-jobs/texasbaseball/texas-rangers/other--consulting--membership--non-profit--real-estate--/analyst-i-sports-science-1981174

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Beau Vine

Beau Vine 54471

Posted
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JoePos is the best:

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Jacob deGrom does it again, Fernando Tatis Jr. has the magic number: Joe’s Week(end) in Baseball


By Joe Posnanski 7h ago 50 
Baseball doesn’t stop for the weekend, so why should we? Here are some thoughts on the last few days of baseball happenings:

Friday, April 23
🎶  You dropped deGrom on me, baby 🎶

At this point, whenever Jacob deGrom pitches, everything else stops. The guy has been the best pitcher in baseball for three years now, but somehow he’s better than ever. Friday, he threw a two-hit shutout without a walk and he struck out 15, and there are so many impossible deGrom season stats to choose from that it’s hard to pick one.

• He now has 50 strikeouts, the most ever for a pitcher in his first four starts.

• He is one of only three pitchers in baseball history to strike out at least 14 in three consecutive games. The other two are Gerrit Cole in 2019, when he led the league in ERA and finished second to his teammate Justin Verlander in the Cy Young voting, and Pedro Martínez in 1999, when Pedro was the greatest pitcher any of us had ever seen.

• He has allowed one earned run in his four starts, making his ERA a lovely looking 0.31. His ERA+ at the moment is 1,245, which is the highest I’ve ever seen, and he’s also hitting .545. He has allowed 13 hits all year and he’s had six hits himself — or even more to the point, he has allowed five singles and he has hit five singles.

• He became just the seventh pitcher in baseball history to throw a complete-game shutout, allow two hits or less, strike out 15 or more and not walk anybody. Three of these games are very famous. You have Kerry Wood’s 20-strikeout, no-walk one-hitter. And there are the no-hitters thrown by Max Scherzer and Clayton Kershaw.

The other four are fun because they’re all exactly the same — nine innings, two hits, 0 runs, 0 walks, 15 strikeouts.

Van Lingle Mungo did it against Philadelphia on Sept. 29, 1935. Mungo — in addition to having that wonderful name that jazz pianist Dave Frishberg composed into song — was one of the hardest throwers of his time and a player who seemed to have everything necessary to become one of the game’s great stars. At the end of 1935, he had back-to-back shutouts — this was the second one — and it looked like he just might come into his own. But he was wild on and off the mound and though he had a fine career, he never was quite as great as the hopes.

Martínez did it May 12, 2000, when he was, as mentioned, the greatest pitcher any of us had ever seen.

Erik Bedard did it July 7, 2007, against Texas. That year, Bedard finished fifth in the Cy Young voting and seemed ready to jump into the elite pitching group. The Mariners certainly thought so; the next offseason they traded four players to get him, including Adam Jones, George Sherrill and Chris Tilman, all of who would become All-Stars for the Orioles.

The fourth is deGrom.

• How about this one: He has already thrown 127 pitches this year that were at least 99 mph. No other starter is even close. Next on the list are relievers Emmanuel Clase, Jordan Hicks, Jose Alverado and Aroldis Chapman. Only then do you get to another starter, Dustin May, who has thrown 26 pitches at 99 mph or faster.

Fully one-third of deGrom’s pitches go at least 99 mph. It boggles the mind. In 2017, deGrom’s average velocity on his four-seam fastball was 95 mph. Do you know how many pitches he threw at 99 mph? Two. All season.

DeGrom pitches at 99 mph+:

2017: 2 (0.1 percent)

2018: 5 (0.2 percent)

2019: 25 (1.1 percent)

2020: 192 (16.9 percent)

The big jump in 2020 was incredible enough. Now understand that he’s throwing one-third of his pitches at 99 mph, this for a guy who is 32 years old and had Tommy John surgery before his big-league career even started. It is inconceivable, and I do know what the word means.

OK, before we move on from deGrom, there’s one other point to make. Tom Tango asks a wonderful trivia question — how many years older than Jacob deGrom is Clayton Kershaw?

And it’s a trick question because Kershaw and deGrom are the same age. Kershaw is exactly three months older than deGrom. How is this even possible? Well, it’s actually a fascinating answer, I think. So here goes.

Kershaw was 17 years old most of his senior year in high school. He turned 18 in March and less than three months later he was taken by the Dodgers with the seventh pick in the draft because he was a pitching phenom. DeGrom, meanwhile, was held back a year so he actually turned 19 his senior year in high school. He also was mostly a position player and not a pitcher, and he was not drafted. Instead, he went to Stetson.
Kershaw blew through the minor leagues in less than two years and was up with the Dodgers at age 20. DeGrom, meanwhile, played as a shortstop at Stetson and really had no interest at all in pitching. The Hatters put him in a game as a reliever when he was a sophomore, and he showed enough that some scouts immediately became interested in him — particularly when he matched up against super-prospect Chris Sale and pitched well plus hit a home run. He really didn’t pitch all that well overall, but he showed enough stuff that the Mets took a flyer on him in the ninth round of the 2010 draft.
Almost immediately after that, the Mets discovered that he had a torn UCL and he had to have Tommy John surgery. DeGrom missed the entire 2011 minor-league season, which also happened to be the first year that Kershaw won the pitcher’s triple crown and the Cy Young Award.

In 2012, deGrom — now 24 years old — played his first full minor-league season in A ball and pitched well enough to almost get into the Mets Top 10 prospect list. Kershaw meanwhile won his second consecutive ERA title. The next year, with both of them 25, deGrom moved from Class A up to Triple A while Kershaw won his second Cy Young award.
In 2014, deGrom made his big-league debut at age 26 and pitched well enough to win the Rookie of the Year award. Kershaw won his third Cy Young award.
So then you go from there, Kershaw was already a legend, deGrom was an up-and-coming talent, and when they both turned 30 in 2018, the script flipped. Kershaw suddenly began showing his age when he got hurt for the third consecutive year. He was still terrific but no longer the clear-cut best pitcher in baseball. And deGrom had liftoff, winning his first Cy Young with a 1.70 ERA, then winning his second Cy Young when he led the league in strikeouts, then coming close to his third Cy Young in the 2020 “season,” and now taking his game to an even higher level.

Anyway, you’ll win a lot of bar bets with the deGrom-Kershaw age question. Do people still have sports trivia bar bets?

The magic of 23

Sports has a few magic numbers — 23 is one of those numbers, mostly for Michael Jordan (and, ergo, LeBron James) but also Don Mattingly, Devin Hester, Zack Greinke, Ryne Sandberg, it’s just a sweet athlete number. Well, Friday was April 23, and if you go back to that date in 1999, you come up with one of the most famous performances ever in baseball.

That was the day that another No. 23, Fernando Tatis, hit two grand slams in the same inning. It was Cardinals-Dodgers, third inning, Chan Ho Park on the mound for the Dodgers. He loaded the bases by giving up a single to Darren Bragg, hitting Edgar Renteria with a pitch and then allowing a hard-hit single to Mark McGwire.

Tatis crushed a long home run for Grand Slam No. 1.

Then later in the inning, Park walked Joe McEwing, Bragg reached on an error and Renteria singled.

Tatis crushed a slightly less long home run for Grand Slam No. 2.


This anniversary video was going around Twitter even before the Padres and Dodgers played. And then the game happened and one more No. 23 — Fernando Tatis Jr. — hit two home runs off Kershaw. Absolutely wonderful.

And yes, of course, all these number coincidences are just that, coincidences, but so what? Some of the greatest things in life are coincidences.

Saturday, April 24
Will the Oakland A’s ever lose again?

The A’s won their 13th game in a row Saturday. And they came into Saturday’s game having scored exactly as many runs as their opponents. What a weird, weird team.

As of this writing, the A’s are hitting .221 as a team but they rank second in home runs and first in stolen bases. The stolen bases thing might be the first part you notice because we know that one of the tenets of Moneyball was, in the words of Michael Lewis, “Billy Beane’s total lack of interest in the stolen base.” But the reality is that Beane and the A’s were not against the stolen base exactly; they were against getting caught stealing bases. And the A’s have been successful on 18 of 21 attempts so far, and when you’re successful on 86 percent of your attempts, everybody loves the stolen base.

The home run thing is actually a bit stranger. The A’s without Khris Davis and Marcus Semien, do not seem to have many home run threats — Matt Olson and Matt Chapman would be the two who might stand out. But everybody on the team (except shortstop Elvis Andrus) has been hitting home runs during this wild stretch.

And even though they are 12th in the league in ERA, they have also thrown four team shutouts in the last week or so. Contrast this team against what are likely to be star-studded disappointments like the Angels and Nationals and you are reminded that baseball is not like other team sports. You can’t just get a great quarterback or a couple of franchise basketball players and win titles. It takes something more substantial than that.

Dodgers-Padres again!

Could we just have these two teams play each other every day all season long? Saturday was the sixth time they’ve played this season and it was like, what, the fourth classic game between them? I mean, these games have everything — great pitching, unreal offense, breathtaking defense, superstars playing like superstars, bad blood, grand finishes, it’s like another Marvel franchise.

Saturday’s game was simply a joy. The Dodgers had Trevor Bauer on the mound, and we all know that guy’s a show every time he pitches or tweets or gives an interview. The Padres’ first batter was Tatis, who might be the most talented player any of us have ever seen. Bauer got a cutter up, Tatis hammered it out, and as he ran around the bases he covered one eye to call back Bauer’s spring training stunt of pitching an inning with one eye closed.

How much fun is this?

In the third inning, Bauer blew a fastball by Tatis for strike three. In the sixth, Bauer and Tatis tangled again, the count went to 3-2, Bauer threw an 89 mph cutter a couple of inches off the plate and Tatis just reached out for it and homered again.

Forget just having the Dodgers and Padres play every day. How about just having Bauer face Tatis every at-bat every day?

Of course, then we would have missed all the other joyous moments like Trent Grisham’s absurd catch of a Max Muncy drive. We would have missed Justin Turner — JT Overdrive — putting together the perfect at-bat, falling behind 0-2, not chasing three straight pitches out of the zone, then torching a change-up up in the zone for a single that scored the Dodgers first run. We would have missed Blake Snell hurting his own cause by fielding a dribbler that was almost certainly going foul. We would have missed a couple more epic Tatis at-bats against relievers with the tying run in scoring position.

I mean, this is simply baseball at its very best.

Meet Kent Emanuel


(Michael Wyke / Associated Press)
OK, this was some story. So Kent Emanuel was a third-round pick by the Houston Astros way in 2013. He’s a big lefty, 6-foot-4, but he’s never been a prospect because guys who throw 89 mph fastballs are rarely prospects. He kicked around in the minor leagues for seven years as a hybrid starter and reliever, was finally added to the major-league roster, and then was suspended for 80 games for testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs.

He promptly released a long video calmly and with great detail explaining that he never knowingly took the drug and this season decided to wear No. 0 to represent the number of games he deserved to be suspended.

Wherever you stand on this, it’s clear that he put a great deal of thought into his response, and he served his suspension.

This year, he pitched well in spring training and, at age 28 (almost 29), finally got his call to the big leagues. On Saturday, he was told that he might get to make his big-league debut against the Angels and tried to prepare himself mentally and emotionally. Then it happened so fast — Astros starter Jake Odorizzi felt tightness in his forearm and had to leave after five pitches and one out.

“All of a sudden,” Emanuel told reporters, “they were like, ‘Hey you better start warming up.’”

The first big-league batter he faced was Shohei Ohtani. Welcome to the big leagues. He got Ohtani to ground out to first and after giving up a cheap single to Justin Upton, he got Jared Walsh to fly out.

Then the Astros scored three runs. Top of the second, he faced the legendary Albert Pujols and he gave up a home run. An inning later, he gave up a home run to Ohtani. But then he settled in while the Astros scored 16 runs. He retired 13 batters in a row before hitting Kurt Suzuki with a pitch in the eighth — then he erased Suzuki with a double play. He was so efficient with his pitches that the Astros just left him in there to finish the game, which he did with a strikeout of Walsh.

So how about that for a big-league debut — 8 2/3 innings of five-hit relief?

“It’s pretty wild,” he said afterward, “but I’ve been expecting this moment for some time now. I was ready.”

Sunday, April 25
No no-no. No?

So Madison Bumgarner sort of threw a no-hitter on Sunday, sort of didn’t throw a no-hitter on Sunday, and people are going to argue about it, fight about it, rant about it, but it’s a good reminder that these weird seven-inning doubleheaders don’t really fit into the grand structure of baseball.

Last year? Sure. Why not? As I wrote in an earlier entry, last year everything was fine. It was like that season of “Dallas” that turned out to be a dream. We were just so happy to have something, anything resembling baseball while a pandemic raged that many of us would have accepted any new rule, any odd gimmick, any goofy novelty.

But this year is different. It’s a 162-game season, there are some fans in the stands again (with hopes of more), this is much more familiar baseball … and these seven-inning doubleheader games feel a bit like an old high school haircut that we’d all rather just forget ever happened. But they’re still going and so naturally it led to Sunday’s Arizona-Atlanta game with Bumgarner throwing a face-the-minimum near-perfect-game no-hitter that nobody has any idea what to do with.

New York Times headline: “Madison Bumgarner throws a no-hitter. Kind of.”

According to MLB, it’s not a no-hitter — or not an official no-hitter. How could it be a no-hitter? It’s only seven innings long. Bumgarner threw 98 pitches in those seven innings; he would have had numerous obstacles to throwing a nine-inning no-no. How can you put Bumgarner’s fun-size no-hitter up there with the full-size Hershey bar no-hitters out there?

On the other hand, how can it not be a no-hitter? Do these seven-inning games count or don’t they? Or to put it another way, one of the thrills of going to a baseball game — at least for some of us — is hoping that we might see a no-hitter. I’ve seen one in my life; I saw Jon Lester’s no-hitter in Boston. If Bumgarner’s game is not a no-hitter then MLB is taking away that possibility from the fans. It’s not quite a real game then, is it?

Other team sports generally don’t face such issues because other sports generally don’t tie so much of their appeal to history and numerical achievements like no-hitters or four-homer games or 20-strikeout performances or hitting for the cycle. Sure it might be cool to see a basketball player score 50 or see a football player run for 200 yards or pass for 500 yards, but it doesn’t echo and resonate the way baseball magic does. I would guess that in football, in basketball, nobody would care if it’s an official no-hitter or a non-official no-hitter or whatever.

Baseball fans do care about stuff like that. And MLB knows it.

So what are these seven-inning games? Are they 77.778 percent bonafide games? Are they actual games but without the possibility of no-hitters? Who even knows? I think you have to put Bumgarner’s no-hitter in the books even if you put a (7) next to it. But even more, I think that they should ditch these seven-inning games as soon as possible.

 

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