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If only statcast had the technology to measure the launch angle and exit velocity of yankee balls that have been hit off of your chin.

Goo Punch
Goo Punch
Hank Chinaski
Hank Chinaski

Good fucking riddance. 

Beau Vine

Beau Vine 54275

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Posted
8 minutes ago, gsoda3 said:

can you post the rest of that article?

Quote

Ichiro Suzuki may be in the Mariners front office at the age of 44, but he is far from putting his 4,367 hits — accumulated over parts of 27 seasons in Japan and the United States — in cold storage. “He may be technically in the front office,” says one of Ichiro’s closest friends. “But he prepares as if he’s going to play every night. He works out, he does his stretches, he hits in the cages, he works in the outfield… keeping himself ready to continue playing. It might come this season, it might come next spring, but he will be ready.”

Ichiro remains one of the most fascinating persons of the half-century that some of us have covered baseball. He also fascinated the Marlins’ uniformed personnel. Two springs ago, while I was behind the batting cage watching BP with Barry Bonds, Ichiro came out to join in his hitting group. “Here’s something you might not know,” he told us. “Barry Bonds and I have exactly the same number of career hits.”

He was right. Neither of us knew that.

He walked around and into the cage. “He’s unlike anyone who ever played,” said Bonds. “His work ethic. His approach. No one else could ever lean so far forward and still keep his strength and his hands so far back. No one else could do what he does.”

Giancarlo Stanton, who liked to do his warmup tosses with Ichiro every day, said, “No matter what he is asked to do, he is always prepared. It could be to start the game. It could be to come in in the 12th inning in the rain, and he will have kept himself prepared. He’s incredible.”

Don Mattingly marveled at the nine-station workout and stretching contraption that Ichiro had designed for himself in Japan and takes everywhere, keeping stretched-out and at maximum strength every day, no matter where he is. His contraption and discipline became a part of sports lore.

One morning in spring training, 2017, he was in the coaches’ room looking at his cell phone text messages. Ichiro told the coaches about one message he had just received from a number he didn’t recognize. The guy said he’d gotten Ichiro’s number from Alex Rodriguez, and that he wanted to come meet him and study his stretching system.

“What’s the guy’s name?” asked one of the coaches.

Ichiro strolled to the end of the text. “Some guy named Tom Brady. Who the f— is Tom Brady?”

In his baseball-genius world, Ichiro Suzuki wouldn’t know Tom Brady from Al Rando.

But Matt Keough, longtime major league pitcher who played five years in Japan and went on to scout for the Oakland Athletics, has known who Ichiro Suzuki is since Ichiro was a high school freshman in Nagoya, Japan in the late 1980s. Keough saw Ichiro pitch in a high school tournament game, an event that in Japan can draw 50,000 people and is nationally televised.

“He threw 150-160 kilometers, mid-90s in this country,” says Keough. “He had that pause and hesitation over the rubber, and had incredible balance. He could have been a pitcher. He did something that day I’ve never seen approximated. A ball was hit off the first baseman’s glove to the second baseman, and he was the quickest person I’ve ever seen covering first base for the out. I may have seen hundreds of thousands of plays where the pitcher had to cover first. That was the greatest.”

And it was 30 years ago.

“He wasn’t as big as Shohei Ohtani,” says Keough, “but he could have done the same thing. But he always wanted to hit.”

Actually, he did get to pitch. In 2015, after Dan Jennings was named Marlins manager, Ichiro would constantly tell him he wanted to pitch — as he had in the 1996 Japanese All-Star Game. So on the final day of the season, Jennings put Ichiro on the mound for an inning. He allowed two doubles and a run. But according to the Marlins’ reports, he averaged 86.9 mph and reached 88.

Teammates who watched Ichiro take batting practice would famously tell you that he could hit BP homers any time he tried. Like Wade Boggs. He did hit 118 in nine seasons in Japan, but hit 117 in 17 full MLB seasons.

In spring training 2001, his first with the Mariners, he prepared at his own pace. One day Lou Piniella said, “I don’t know what to do with this guy. He can’t hit.” Keough was there. “The great players in Japan prepare for the season, not spring training,” Keough explained. “Lou, he’s your best player.” One month later, Piniella told Keough, “you were right.” And Ichiro went on to be the American League MVP, hitting .350 with 242 hits and 56 stolen bases, as the Mariners won 116 games.

Keough often talks of Ichiro’s eyesight, comparing it to that of Ted Williams. Ichiro could pick up spins out of pitcher’s hands. “He can get every opposing pitchers’ pitches within innings,” says Keough.

“He is one of the most cerebral players I have ever known,” says Oakland manager Bob Melvin, who became a close friend after managing Ichiro in Seattle. “He sees the whole game. He constantly studies it. There’s no question that he could be an exceptional manager, if that’s what he decided he wants to do. He is also very private. He and his wife love to go out to eat, but without any attention. He’s a very funny person, as well. People don’t usually know that.”

After he won the MVP in the 2006 World Baseball Classic, I asked Ichiro: When he is inducted into the Hall of Fame, which language would he use for his speech? He answered politely, but off-camera he said, “Spanish. I swear better in that.”

Ichiro’s Spanish, indeed, is very clear, distinct. Marlins people will tell you he used the language to have a major impact on Marcell Ozuna and help him make his career leap forward in 2016 and 2017.

“Not many people have the respect of all their peers, coaches, managers, everyone around them,” says Mattingly. “Young players saw his disciplined routine, how he was in the cage at 6:15 preparing the same way every day. How he shagged. How he practiced throwing. How when he wasn’t in the starting lineup, he’d be working those nine work stations the entire game. Everyone associated with the Marlins respected him. What more can one ask for a career?”

Think about where Ichiro Suzuki’s career was when he was with the Marlins. When Don Mattingly, one of the most respected players of the last 30 years, talks about the respect Ichiro commanded, he was talking about Bonds and Stanton, Ozuna and Christian Yelich, José Fernández.

“He is,” says the man known as Donnie Ballgame, “the ultimate baseball player.”

So much so that during several offseasons he has gone on his own to Cooperstown, to study the Hall of Fame and its astounding archives of his game’s history.

That focus perhaps explains why he read the text in his cell phone from a number he didn’t recognize and asked his coaches, “Who the f– is Tom Brady?”

 

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Helobious

Helobious 9462

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Posted

Me after Judge took Kimbrel 420 to dead center in the bottom of the 8th:

PLVFa.jpg?fb

Yankees are 17-1 over their last 18 games. 9-3 on the year against teams with a winning % over .600... I'll call it right now, this will go down as one of the greatest teams in MLB history when this year is over.  

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Goo Punch

Goo Punch 4275

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Posted
Just now, Helobious said:

Me after Judge took Kimbrel 420 to dead center in the bottom of the 8th:

PLVFa.jpg?fb

Yankees are 17-1 over their last 18 games. 9-3 on the year against teams with a winning % over .600... I'll call it right now, this will go down as one of the greatest teams in MLB history when this year is over.  

I’m selling all of my Yankees stock right now.

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Beau Vine

Beau Vine 54275

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CINCINNATI — The Mets’ offensive slump reached its logical nadir on Wednesday afternoon, when even the rare hit they collected was stricken from the record books.

Asdrúbal Cabrera’s first-inning double — and an early chance with a runner in scoring position in a game New York would lose 2-1 in 10 innings — was taken off the board when the Mets were called for batting out of order. Cabrera was supposed to hit second in the inning rather than third, and the inning abruptly ended when Cincinnati manager Jim Riggleman brought this to the umpires’ attention.

The lineup card that Ruben Amaro Jr. had handed to home-plate umpire Gabe Morales before the game had Cabrera second and Wilmer Flores third. The handwritten one in the Mets dugout — as well as the one posted in the New York clubhouse before the game — had Flores ahead of Cabrera. Riggleman wisely waited to call out the Mets’ impropriety until it was to his benefit.

“I’m responsible for it,” manager Mickey Callaway, harsher on himself than he’s been on any player this season, said afterward. “I’m pissed at myself. It probably cost us the game. We had a chance to score in the first, and we didn’t.”

Jay Bruce, fourth in both orders, was called out.

“When they threw the first pitch to Cabrera, that legalized Flores as a hitter,” crew chief Jerry Meals told a pool reporter. “So now, the proper batter is Bruce. When they bring it up, in that situation, you take Cabrera off the field, you call Bruce out, and now the next batter is [Adrián] González.”

Rule 6.03(b)(3) of the MLB Rulebook lays it all out as part of its rather exhaustive breakdown of the situation:

“When an improper batter becomes a runner or is put out, and the defensive team appeals to the umpire before the first pitch to the next batter of either team, or before any play or attempted play, the umpire shall (1) declare the proper batter out; and (2) nullify any advance or score made because of a ball batted by the improper batter or because of the improper batter’s advance to first base on a hit, an error, a base on balls, a hit batter or otherwise.”

In this case, Cabrera was the improper batter and Bruce the unwitting proper batter. Always supposed to hit fourth, Bruce is by rule the man called out — it’s ruled a putout by the catcher — with the lineup moving on behind him.

Cabrera’s double disappears from the stat sheet, care of Rule 9.03(d). The emphasis is ours:

“When a player bats out of turn and is put out, and the proper batter is called out before the ball is pitched to the next batter, the official scorer shall charge the proper batter with a time at bat and score the putout and any assists the same as if the correct batting order had been followed. If an improper batter becomes a runner and the proper batter is called out for having missed his turn at bat, the official scorer shall charge the proper batter with a time at bat, credit the putout to the catcher and ignore everything entering into the improper batter’s safe arrival on base. If more than one batter bats out of turn in succession, the official scorer shall score all plays just as they occur, skipping the turn at bat of the player or players who first missed batting in the proper order.”

The next time through the order, Cabrera hit second, driving in Brandon Nimmo with a groundout. (Callaway had double-checked with the umpires prior to the inning to make sure he was sending his hitters to the plate in the right order.)

There is a version of Wednesday’s game in which this all became a laughable “That’s so Mets” footnote and a teachable moment for a first-time manager. Instead, it played out as a cruel joke to an offense that can’t afford to give away outs and at-bats with runners in scoring position.

“I’m not necessarily in a position where I just want to be giving away 0-for-1s,” said Bruce, who could have spoken for the whole team. New York didn’t get a hit in the final five innings of the game as Sal Romano and three Reds relievers sat down 17 of the final 18 batters.

 

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VivaNaranja

VivaNaranja 466

Posted
Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, Helobious said:

Me after Judge took Kimbrel 420 to dead center in the bottom of the 8th:

PLVFa.jpg?fb

Yankees are 17-1 over their last 18 games. 9-3 on the year against teams with a winning % over .600... I'll call it right now, this will go down as one of the greatest teams in MLB history when this year is over.  

So you're back on the Boone/Stanton train?

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Beau Vine

Beau Vine 54275

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Stark:

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They never saw it coming. But here it is.

This is baseball in 2018. More strikeouts than hits. The fewest hits per game since 1972. A pace that is leading this sport toward 10,000 fewer balls in play this year than in 2009.

And they never saw it coming.

“It’s kind of like you’re sitting at a stop light, and you’re rear-ended,” said Braves vice chairman John Schuerholz, a longtime member of baseball’s competition committee. “You might not have expected that to happen… but your awakening has occurred because it did. And I think that’s where we are. This thing has hit all of us in the bumper.”

He is talking about a number that has gotten the attention of everyone in his sport. Nearly 400 more strikeouts than hits? There is only one word for that, Schuerholz said.

That word is “alarming.”

But now comes the hard part. It’s impossible to miss that big dent in the bumper. But how do you fix it? There’s not a body shop on earth that has all the parts to repair this problem.

So that’s where we come in. We’ve spent the last week polling 23 executives, former executives, players, former players, managers and coaches. We asked them a simple question with no simple answer:

What can baseball do to put those baseballs back in play and get more action back in its sport?

The answers were fun. And creative. And thoughtful. But would any of them actually work? And could any of them actually happen? Here is the best of what this group proposed:

LIMIT THE SHIFT

We know what you’re thinking: If the object is to put more balls in play, why would this sport start by attacking a defensive alignment aimed at balls that already are in play?

Good point, actually. But hear us out. There is a logic to this idea.

How are hitters and hitting coaches trying to combat the shift? By “trying to hit over it,” said one NL exec.

And how do they do that? By changing swings – to add more lift, uppercut and launch angle.

So how have the pitchers responded to the hitters’ adjustments? “By pitching up in the zone,” said an NL pitching coach.

And what happens when uppercut swings meet elevated four-seam fastballs? Swing. Miss. Rinse. Repeat.

The result says “strikeout.” But the culprit might be the shift. Which is responsible, in great part, for the most strikeout-prone swings we’ve seen, en masse, in baseball history.

“It’s all about getting the ball in the air,” said John Smoltz, Hall of Fame power pitcher turned Fox/MLB Network analyst. “And if you’re trying to get the ball in the air, you’re going to swing and miss. A lot.”

So maybe messing with the shift isn’t as off-target as it seems. And there are two ideas out there which could make an impact.

There is Plan A, which is so cut and dried, it would essentially end shifting as we know it: Draw a line across the second-base bag. Then require every team to play two infielders to the left of it and two infielders to the right of it. Bam. Shift that.

But how would that help address this problem? Because “nobody wants to hit a ball up the middle anymore,” said Dan O’Dowd, former Rockies general manager, current MLB Network analyst. Once upon a time, players ingrained good hitting habits by trying to stay in the middle of the field in batting practice. But now, “if you hit a ball hard up the middle,” O’Dowd said, “you’re out.”

While you ponder that, you should also ponder Plan B, which wouldn’t be so extreme. It would just require infielders to be infielders – not quasi-rightfielders, lurking 40 feet deep in the outfield grass. Can you dream of a world where line drives over the infielders would actually be hits again? There are hundreds of hitters who would love to live in that dream.

“That’s my big thing – the number of infielders who can play in the outfield,” said Giants catcher Nick Hundley. “If you want to play three guys on the first-base side of the diamond, go ahead – but they have to play in the infield…. I mean, you can shift and do what you have to do. But your infielders have to play infield and your outfielders have to play outfield. Right now, you hit a missile in the 4-hole (through the right side) and it’s a one-hopper to the short rightfielder. That’s not a second baseman. That’s a second baseman playing in right field.”

It all makes sense – if you’re in favor of it. But guess what happens any time this comes up? Yep. The usual. Nothing happens. Heck, the commissioner himself, Rob Manfred, floated this idea a couple of years ago. That float started leaking air pretty much instantaneously.

And upstairs in the analytics departments, they’re still pushing back on all of this. Of course they are.

An exec from one shift-heavy team tried to make the case that every club has the “inalienable right to play your defenders where you see fit.” And while you can’t find that edict in the Bill of Rights, there are legions of data fans who agree.

“But there are rules in other sports that say you can’t stand in certain points,” an AL exec responded. “In the NBA, you can’t stand in the lane for more than three seconds, right?”

Right. So isn’t this a conversation worth having?

“Look,” said one exec. “Nothing is going to stop the use of analytics. Data drives the entire world right now. But if we think about this in terms of, ‘Is it making baseball a more entertaining product – and are there ways to make baseball a more entertaining product?’ That’s a conversation that ought to happen.”

SHRINK THE STRIKE ZONE

The entire sport of baseball starts with the strike zone. But what if you redesigned that strike zone? What if you actually shrunk that zone? If this sport really wanted to help the hitters, wouldn’t it be doing that already?

Well, that almost happened. Remember? As recently as two years ago, there was an actual proposal presented to the players’ union. The idea was to raise the bottom of the strike zone by two inches, to the top of the knee, where the rulebook says it’s supposed to be.

Guess what happened to that idea? Yessir. Exactly what happens to all ideas like this. It floated off into a hazy bubble of hot air and disappeared. As always.

But that doesn’t mean the concept wasn’t oozing with logic. Granted, this might just lead to more walks, not more action. But the bottom of the current strike zone is a sea of outs, filled with whiffs and ground balls hopping directly into the shift.

So suppose you raised that line so that the bottom of the new zone was actually an area where hitters had a chance to swing the bat and hit more balls over those shifts? Who could possibly have an issue with that?

Oh, only every pitcher on earth. That’s who. And since pitchers make up half of the players’ union, what reason is there to think this is something that the union would ever sign off on?

“This is one of those issues,” said one exec, “that is going to be very difficult to get a consensus on – for obvious reasons.”

LIMIT MID-INNING PITCHING CHANGES

The bullpen parade starts early these days. It starts so early, in fact, that there were over 1,300 more pitching changes in baseball last year than just five years ago. But guess what? That isn’t only a time-of-game or pace-of-game issue. It feeds right into this conversation, too.

“I’m a member of the competition committee and I’ve suggested this,” Smoltz said. “And I’ve been looked at like I’ve got three heads. But one real change you could make that might indirectly put more balls in play is to limit how many pitchers can pitch in a game.

“It’s those mid-inning pitching changes that are sucking the life out of the game,” Smoltz went on. “And that luxury that these managers have, of bringing three different guys into a game to face three different hitters, is making it tougher for those hitters to put the ball in play.”

Can anyone prove this? Yes. Everyone can prove this. Your average left-handed hitter now hits .223 against left-handed pitchers, with more strikeouts than hits. Against right-handers, that average goes up 28 points and the OPS goes up almost 100 points. So…your witness.

What Smoltz has proposed is to give every manager, say, three timeouts, just like other sports do. Baseball could define a “timeout” any way it wants. But for every mid-inning pitching change, that manager would lose one of his timeouts.

With just this simple change, baseball would introduce a whole new strategy debate. And speed up games. And free every left-handed masher on earth from the scourge of facing sidewheeling left-handed bullpen funk specialists in every single at-bat in the late innings. Brilliant.

But you guessed it. There is pushback on this – or any – idea to limit pitching changes. The competition committee has been down this road. It has kicked around rules that said every pitcher would have to face a minimum of two hitters or four. It has talked about rules that would limit every team to one mid-inning change per game or two.

It concluded, though, that only the most extreme limitations would make a real impact. And naturally, the more extreme the change, the more worry there is within the sport about whether it’s really worth experimenting with something that controversial.

Meanwhile, would the union ever sign off on a change that instantly made an entire population of situational lefthanders obsolete? Do we even need to answer that question?

CHANGE THE BALL/BAT/MOUND

We heard it all here. Move the mound back. Try lowering it. Deaden the baseballs. Lower the seams to reduce spin rates. Ban certain bats. Or how about combinations of all of the above? Hard to see any of that happening. But it’s sure worth thinking about. Here’s a sampling:

— From an AL executive who had just watched James Paxton, Gerritt Cole and Max Scherzer pile up huge strikeout games in the same week: “[Those] Scherzer, Cole and Paxton starts were awesome, but it was a bit like watching a men’s tennis player with a huge serve at Wimbledon. There’s something to be said for going back to wood rackets after watching ace after ace after ace. If we could deaden the balls and/or change the bats, along with pushing the mound back slightly to account for the change in average velocity, over time we might get back to a more ball-in-play-centric game. I think there’s roughly a negative percent chance of that happening, but that would be my suggestion to at least study.”

— From another AL exec: “Increase the size of the strike zone, deaden the ball, flatten the seams, all in concert. You’ll see a quicker game. Hitters will be forced to adjust. There will be more contact, and there will be less reward for swinging for the fences.”

Before you dismiss any or all of that as too far out there, wait a minute. You know what you can’t alter to fix this? The human beings. This is the strongest, fittest, best-conditioned group of athletes ever to play baseball. That’s not changing.

And the upward surge in the flame coming out of pitchers’ hands? That’s not changing, either. Take a look at this chart. It tells you all you need to know about where velocity is headed.

PITCHERS WITH AVERAGE FASTBALL OF 97+ MPH*

2008: 1
2013: 6
2017: 23

PITCHERS WITH AVERAGE FASTBALL OF 95+ MPH*

2008: 22
2013: 45
2017: 98

(*min. 50 IP)
SOURCE: Fangraphs

It’s what Schuerholz calls “this tsunami of strikeouts” that is sucking up most of those balls that used to be in play. So how do you reduce strikeouts in an era where everybody throws 95 and up? Messing with either the baseball or the mound might do that, by neutralizing some of the impact of that velocity.

But there are potential ripple effects on pitcher health that even the sports-medicine profession is divided on. And no one really knows how much these changes would fix any or all of the problems.

So you probably haven’t heard the last of this talk. But will any of it actually happen? There’s probably a better chance of Bartolo Colon leading the league in stolen bases.

REWARD WPA 

“We’ve lost a generation,” said Dan O’Dowd, “of players who know how to play offense.”

Go to any player’s page at MLB.com, he said. What do you find besides the basics? You find a list of Statcast metrics:

Average exit velocity…Average HR distance…Average general velocity…Average launch angle…Average height.

Nothing wrong with any of those metrics, of course. Except for one thing.

“Everything we do in the game now is focused on what? Hitting the ball out of the ballpark,” O’Dowd said. “Why can’t we create metrics that focus on players in the game who help produce runs by putting the ball in play, even with productive outs?”

Well, there’s a metric that kind of does that – called Win Probability Added. According to baseball-reference.com, it measures “the change in [win] probability caused by this batter during the game.” And there’s a list on the site that shows who led each league in WPA in every season since 1925.

But if you run down that list, you’ll notice something. It’s dominated by home run hitters. Why? Because productive outs don’t change win probability as dramatically as long balls. And never will. But at least it’s the right concept.

“It needs to dig a little deeper to become a mainstream stat that’s part of our evaluation system,” O’Dowd said, “and becomes part of the system for compensating players, in arbitration and free agency. And it’s a stat which, in the industry, there’s very little awareness of….Maybe we need to have an award at the end of the year that rewards that statistic.”

OK, but how would a Win Probability Added Award help transform an entire sport? Because what needs to change, O’Dowd believes, is “the value awareness of players who don’t see value in avoiding strikeouts.”

“Once, there was a mindset and a value that a strikeout was not a good thing,” he said. “But we’re losing that mindset. The Joey Vottos of the world are disappearing… If we want players to believe that a strikeout is a bad thing, we need to create a system where a strikeout is not valued, where there’s a reward for not striking out and there’s a [negative value] for striking out.”

So what kind of reward would accomplish that? Well, there are only two sorts of rewards that ever really get players’ attention. One is money (whaddayaknow). The other is winning.

“If I’m a player,” said Smoltz, “and I hit 40 home runs and strike out 180 times and I’m not getting penalized financially – I’m strictly talking finances here – then hey, if financially there’s no penalty, why am I going to change?”

Meanwhile, does more contact/fewer strikeouts lead to winning? It totally does. Of the last 14 World Series teams, half of them finished either first or second in their league in fewest strikeouts – including two of the last three champs (the 2017 Astros and 2015 Royals).

“Strikeouts are Kryptonite,” Smoltz said. “Look at the Royals. Look at the Giants. The Astros last year got all the strikeouts out of their lineup…. When you look back at the champions of the last few years, not one team fits the analytical Three True Outcomes model.”

In fact, he’s right about that, too. Of the last 10 World Series winners, only one – the 2013 Red Sox – finished in the top five in its league in all the Three True Outcomes categories (strikeouts, walks, homers). Funny how that bit of powerful data hasn’t much dented the Strikeouts Are Overrated philosophy of modern team-building.

And on the financial side, didn’t last winter’s free-agent market demonstrate that one-dimensional home run hitters aren’t getting rewarded anymore? Ask Logan Morrison. Or Mike Moustakas. Or Mark Reynolds. How could players miss that message?

“We saw players who hit 30 to 40 home runs who literally could not get jobs,” said one exec. “I think that’s a sign that home runs and strikeouts – solely that combination – are not very highly valued in the marketplace.”

That marketplace has started to speak – in free agency, at least. And “if you want to follow the trends in the game, follow the money,” O’Dowd said, “and how players are compensated for doing what they do.”

Baseball’s natural inclination – in the Follow the Money sector and virtually all of these areas – has been mostly to sit back and let the game naturally react and evolve, the way it has for a century. And many of the people who responded in our survey favor exactly that.

But not everybody. Some look at the big trends and powerful numbers. They contemplate the true impact of 10,000 fewer balls in play. They consider the ominous potential to damage the sport, at a time when it’s fighting for the attention of a we-want-action generation. And they think it’s time to move, not wait.

“Do we just allow these types of changes to the game to occur organically, or do we as an industry try to make judgments about where the game should go and act accordingly?” asked one exec who admits to deep concerns about this trend. “Other sports do this evaluation all the time and are much more directive in their management of rules. Implicit in your original question is that baseball could change some things to positively affect the game. Does baseball have the wisdom and will to do so?”

That is one powerful question. But you know what it has in common with all of the questions we asked in this column? It’s also a question with no clear answer.

We did notice one thing in the process of reporting this piece, however. Just posing these questions provoked a dialogue that seemed to energize everyone who took part in it. Maybe there’s a moral in there someplace. There is no reason to let this dialogue end when everyone finishes reading this story. Is there?

“It’s a very, very important matter,” Schuerholz said. “And I think conversations like this, or even broader ones – about far-reaching methods of dealing with this – ought to be considered.

“So don’t let this die,” John Schuerholz told The Athletic. “And I promise that I won’t at my level.”

OK. Sounds like a deal.

 

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spystud13

spystud13 2371

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It’s an unfortunate and unlucky injury, and the Cardinals want to make sure it doesn’t happen to any of their catchers again. According to Fox2Now out of St. Louis, the Cardinals have purchased three sets of a product called Armored Nutshellz, which are bulletproof athletic cups. Jeremiah Raber, president and CEO of Nutshellz, LLC, told the station that the Cardinals contacted him the day after Yadi’s injury.

According to the website, Armored Nutshellz are made with “some of the worlds strongest materials like Kevlar, carbon fiber, aero-space epoxies, and more.” And if you’re wondering whether or not these bulletproof athletic cups are actually bulletproof, there’s video evidence. Here’s a video of Raber getting shot in the groin with a real bullet while wearing an Armored Nutshellz cup. As the video says, do not try this at home!

Well okay then! The cups will stop a bullet, so they’re probably a good idea for catchers, who have an above average chance of getting hit in the groin with a baseball.

The Cardinals aren’t the first team to invest in several sets of Armored Nutshellz. Raber said that the Baltimore Orioles and the Cleveland Indians have each bought his products for their catchers. So congratulations to the catchers on all three teams, because their groins are now bulletproof.

 

https://sports.yahoo.com/cardinals-buy-bulletproof-athletic-cups-yadier-molinas-groin-injury-200546733.html

 

Fuck. That. 

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Stark's Useless Info column:

Spoiler

No hits. No outs.

These two feats are not like the other. But they came on the very same evening this week.

James Paxton threw a no-hitter Tuesday in Toronto. I’m going to take a wild guess that you noticed that. But here’s what you may not have noticed:

Dylan Bundy threw something we refer to as “a no-outer” against the Royals. Seven hitters faced. Zero hitters retired. Four hitters making home run trots. And kids, don’t try that at home. Certainly not in the first game of a homestand following an 0-6 road trip!

So what happens when you get a no-hitter and a no-outer on the same day? The Useless Info Department is all over it. That’s what. So fasten those seatbelts. Here we go.

THE NO-HITTER AND THE NO-OUTER

I was amazed by how many people that night had the same thought that I did: When was the last time we’d seen a no-hitter and a no-outer on the same day anyhow?

And of course every single one of those people had a related thought: “Well, obviously, that knucklehead Stark would know!”

OK, so I looked. I spent way too much otherwise-useful time, which I theoretically could have spent bonding with my loved ones, looking. But when you folks demand these sorts of life-altering answers, I know what I need to do. So I looked.

— Last time it happened (h/t to @mattmccall)? It was actually as recently as June 13, 2012 – Matt Cain’s perfecto, paired with a P.J. Walters 4-hit, zero-out mini-start for the Twins. But wait. This gets better.

 I also found two times that it happened just involving Nolan Ryan! There was Sept. 26, 1981 (11-K no-hitter for Nolan, 3-and-done start for Ed Whitson). And there was May 15, 1973 (12-whiff no-hitter for Nolan, 5-and-seeya start for Larry Christensen). See what happens when you throw seven no-hitters? You wind up in the middle of all kinds of trivia.

— So in total, amazingly, this was the sixth time both of these momentous events occurred on the same day in the division-play era. But hang on, because here comes the big note. Get ready!

— Most of those games where the starter didn’t get an out didn’t last as long as Dylan Bundy’s seven-hitter start, you see. So what happens if we look only at starts in which the starting pitcher faced at least seven batters? Here’s what:

There has been just one other day like this one in the entire live-ball era. That’s what you get. That day was Sept. 1, 2007. Clay Buchholz handled the no-hit portion of the festivities. The Phillies’ J.D. Durbin did the rest, with a start that went: Single, HBP, single, single, single, walk, single.

So there. I looked. You can all resume your regularly scheduled lives now. You’re welcome!

THE NO-HITTER WATCH

Now let’s keep rolling – with five fun no-hitter tidbits from a no-hit kind of week:

— First, here’s to James Paxton. The 98th, and next-to-last, pitch of his spectacular, no-hit evening was clocked at 100 miles per hour. (Yeah, technically, it was 99.5, but we round those off and call them 100.) So how often do you see a guy throwing 100 frigging miles an hour in the ninth inning of a no-hitter? Here’s a shocker: Almost never!

There is only one other recorded instance of anyone throwing that hard in the ninth inning of a no-hitter, in fact. According to MLB’s pitch-tracking data, which goes back 11 seasons, the other guy to do it was (who else?) Justin Verlander, who launched the 105th pitch of his May 7, 2011 no-hitter at 100.4 mph to Rajai Davis. Rajai fouled it off – before striking out three pitches later.

Coincidence alert: This happened in the very same ballpark as the one Paxton was twirling in (Rogers Centre).

— Loved this list from the Yes Network’s James Smyth. In honor of Josh Donaldson, who made the final out, it’s all the MVPs who ever made the last out of a no-hitter:

Josh Donaldson (Tuesday vs. Paxton)
Willie McGee (1992 vs. Kevin Gross)
Hank Aaron (1969 vs. Ken Holtzman, 1967 vs. Don Wilson)
Ernie Banks (1965 vs. Jim Maloney)
Frank Robinson (1964 vs. Ken Johnson)
Ted Williams (1958 vs. Jim Bunning, 1951 vs. Allie Reynolds)

— Welcome to 2018 – the first year in baseball history with no-hitters in three different countries. There was Sean Manaea in Oakland last month, the Dodgers tag team in Mexico last weekend and Paxton’s gem in Toronto – all in a span of 2 ½ weeks. We’d like to thank the Dodgers for making that possible, by throwing the first major-league no-hitter ever in a country not known as Canada or the United States.

— Shockingly, however, this is actually the fourth time there have been no-hitters in two countries in the same week. The names are fun, so here come the other three:

May 10-15, 1981 – Charlie Lea in Montreal, Len Barker in Cleveland
June 29, 1990 (same day) – Dave Stewart in Toronto, Fernando Valenzuela in L.A.
May 3-7, 2011 – Francisco Liriano in Chicago, Justin Verlander in Toronto

— Finally, check out this tremendous nugget from MLB.com’s Matthew Leach. Walker Buehler started that combined no-hitter for the Dodgers. He also hit a single at the plate because… of course he did.

He’s the 11th NL pitcher in a row who started a no-hitter in an NL park and also got a hit. Which makes no sense at all, naturally. You know how many 11-game hitting streaks there have been by any individual pitcher in the last 100 years? That would be exactly one – by Carlos Zambrano in 2008. Crazy!

THE BUNDY WATCH

On the other hand, poor Dylan Bundy’s night wasn’t quite that upbeat. So here come five things you should know about the first single-homer-homer-homer-walk-walk-homer start in baseball history:

— The bad news is, Bundy was the first starting pitcher ever to give up four home runs and not get around to recording an out. But hey, the good news is, we found three pitchers – via baseball-reference.com’s awesome Play Index – who gave up four home runs in an outing in which they faced fewer batters than he did.

Pat Mahomes – 5 batters, 4 homers on Aug. 17, 2001
Jason Grilli – 6 batters, 4 homers last June 3
And the only starter, Catfish Hunter – 6 batters, 4 homers (to Rick Burleson, Fred Lynn, Carlton Fisk and George “Boomer” Scott) on June 17, 1977

— Remember when the Royals were hitting four home runs this season over their first 422 trips to the plate? Yep. Same team. But they somehow hit four home runs in a mere seven visits to the plate against Bundy in this game. Unreal.

— Those four homers (and zero outs) aside, it’s wild enough to see a box-score line that includes the tagline: “Bundy pitched to 7 batters in 1st.” Did you know that only one other active starter has ever spun off one of those “Pitched to 7 in 1st” lines?

That would be Matthew Boyd, in only the second start of his career, on July 2, 2015, against the Red Sox. Here is how his night went: Single, single, single, homer, homer, single, wild pitch, walk.

— Meanwhile, no Oriole had put up a “Pitched to 7 in 1st” start in more than six decades. Last to do it: Bill Wight, against the Indians, on Aug. 31, 1955.

But here’s the really crazy part of Wight’s game: After he went single-single-double-walk-double-walk-single, Hal Brown came out of the Orioles’ bullpen, faced 29 hitters, closed out the game and gave up no hits. Seriously.

— Lastly, as sabermetric legend Tom Tango points out, this start capped an out-of-nowhere three-start meltdown by Bundy in which he gave up nine homers (and 22 runs) in just nine innings! Just thought I’d point out that Mariano Rivera had 13 different seasons in which he didn’t give up nine home runs or 22 runs all year.

THE OHTANI WATCH

We have an unusual blockbuster Shohei Ohtani feat this week – since officially, it never actually happened. But luckily, we have witnesses!

Tuesday night, in batting practice at Coors Field, the incredible Ohtani-san hit a baseball where no one has ever hit a baseball. You can watch it here. (It’s the second of two BP homers.) 

It roared off into the mile-high ozone, cleared the fence in deep right-center field, soared beyond the bullpen and crashed off the fence beyond the third deck, behind Section 303. To give you an idea of how far away from home plate that is, check out this tweet from Rockies broadcaster Ryan Spilborghs.

 

In his quest to tell this remarkable story (and hopefully win an Emmy for outstanding achievement in hiking), Spilborghs trekked all the way outward and upward to section 303 on TV the next day. He told us he was so far from Planet Earth – I mean, home plate – up there that “I couldn’t read the jersey on any player. I couldn’t tell facial description. And I have good eyesight. But it was beyond my ability to tell what player was who.”

At first, he said, he wasn’t sure if he was even in the right place – until he looked at the railing behind the section, “and I saw the ball mark. And I was like, ‘Holy crap.’”

Error! Filename not specified.

So how could he be sure this was Ohtani’s ball mark? Because Spilborghs has been watching batting practice at Coors Field for over a decade, as a player and broadcaster. And have we mentioned that this was a spot that no previous baseball had ever visited?

Spilborghs rummaged through his memory bank for us. He has seen Matt Holliday take BP. And Carlos González. And Giancarlo Stanton. And hundreds of other guys. And never, he told Useless Info, has he “seen a ball that came off the bat like that.”

He checked with Angels hitting coach Eric Hinske. Hinske told him: “I’ve never seen a ball hit there.” Then Spilborghs showed Nolan Arenado a photo of where the ball landed. Arenado’s response: “No way he did that.”

But Ohtani did that, all right. So of course we needed to find out how mammoth a home run it actually was. And fortunately, we knew just where to turn – to Greg Rybarczyk (@hittracker), creator of the ESPN HR Tracker and currently a senior baseball research and development analyst for the Red Sox.

After perusing YouTube videos and consulting his Coors data, Rybarczyk estimated Ohtani’s deepest poke of the day at an incomprehensible 517 feet. Which is just a few feet short of a tenth of a mile.

So please. Think about this. Why are we obsessed with Shohei Ohtani? Because he can throw a baseball 101 miles per hour. And he can hit a baseball 517 feet. And he’s a real human being.

“This is the equivalent of Sidd Finch (the fictional Sports Illustrated cover boy once created by George Plimpton),” Spilborghs said, “but without the worker boots.”

Oh, and also without the fiction. We repeat. This is a real person doing this stuff. So Spilborghs started to ponder the possibilities of Ohtani opening the door for “other players like this” and then it hit him. There are no other players like this.

“Even if there aren’t any more guys like Shohei, hitting 517-foot BP homers and throwing 101, who cares?” Spilborghs said, chuckling. “Why don’t we just marvel at the one we’ve got?”

THE BARTOLO WATCH

Bartolo Colon joined yet another fun club in the last week. Let’s call it the 4/44 Club. And how does a guy get admitted into this 4/44 Club, you ask? Pretty darned easily, actually. Just give up four home runs in a game – at age 44.

The club has just three members. But I knew you’d enjoy them:

BARTOLO (May 4, 2018) – long balls served to Mookie Betts, J.D. Martinez and Rafael Devers (twice).
RANDY JOHNSON (Sept. 1, 2008) – long balls served to Albert Pujols, Yadier Molina, Joe Mather and Felipe Lopez.
GAYLORD PERRY (April 10, 1983) – long balls served to Gary Gaetti, John Castino and Randy Bush (twice).
HONORABLE MENTION – Charlie Hough once gave up four in a game at age 46. And Jamie Moyer did it at age 49!

USELESS INFO OF THE WEEK

— Who’s the greatest slayer of giants in baseball? Diamondbacks pitcher Matt Koch, obviously. He now has matched up against former MVPs two starts in a row – Clayton Kershaw on May 1, then Justin Verlander last Sunday – and his team won both of those games. According to @StatsByStats, he’s the first pitcher to run into two different MVPs in back-to-back starts in more than 70 years – since Ed Lopat had to duel Hal Newhouser and Dizzy Dean on Sept. 23-28, 1947.

Addendum No. 1: I hate to break it to the descendants of Ed Lopat, but Matt Koch’s feat had a way higher degree of difficulty – since there have only been two starting pitchers who won an MVP award in the last 25 years, and he faced both of them!

Addendum No. 2: At least Koch gets a break with his next start (Friday against the Nationals). He only has to face the defending Cy Young – Max Scherzer.

— Braves rookie Mike Soroka won’t forget his big-league debut for all kinds of reasons. But here’s one of them: He got his first career plate appearance before he threw his first career pitch. (Right you are. The Braves batted around in the top of the first.)

That’s happened just two other times in the last 10 years, according to the Elias Sports Bureau – to the Reds’ Luis Castillo last June 23 and to the Cardinals’ Tyler Lyons on May 22, 2013.

— Gerrit Cole overmatched the Diamondbacks with a dazzling 16-strikeout complete game last week. But he sure did take a unique path to those 16 whiffs. He had no strikeouts in the first inning. And he had no strikeouts in the ninth inning. But he crammed 16 K’s into the seven innings in between.

So how rare is that? Elias tells us he was the first pitcher to pile up that many strikeouts in a complete game, with none in the first or ninth, since Dwight Gooden did it on Sept. 12, 1984.

— But that’s not all. Cole also had a second big-strikeout game that very same night – at the plate. In the offensive portion of his evening, he went 0 for 5, with five K’s. And that’s even more rare. He’s the first pitcher since 1900, Elias reports, to fan five times during any kind of double-digit strikeout game, let alone a 16-strikeout game. Wow.

— Finally, this portion of Useless Information is apparently brought to you by the number five – because we’re saddened to announce that for the 16thconsecutive year, nobody in baseball went 5 for 5 on Cinco de Mayo. Last to do it: Omar Vizquel, on Cinco de Mayo 2002.

FIVE STRANGE BUT TRUE FEATS OF THE WEEK

— Josh Donaldson and Yangervis Solarte both homered in each game of the Blue Jays’ doubleheader in Cleveland last week. And that, of course, has been done before. But they also homered in those two games while wearing two different numbers (thanks to a postponed celebration of Jackie Robinson Day). And I’m going to bet that no teammates had ever done that before.

— But that wasn’t the only wacky thing about that doubleheader. The Indians had a seven-run inning in Game 1 and a nine-run inning in Game 2 – but didn’t get a sweep out of it (thanks to a 13-11 loss in Game 1). The last team to have two innings that big in both ends of ANY doubleheader? Reginald Jackson’s 1975 A’s. But at least they bludgeoned the Tigers, 11-0 and 16-4, the day they did it (July 22).

— So how about this for losing the hard way? The Angels scored in the ninth, 10th and 11th innings of their game against the Mariners last Saturday – and still lost. Last team to put runs on the board in the ninth, 10th and 11th of any game that didn’t end in a win, according to @StatsByStats: Eric Byrnes’ 2003 Oakland A’s, in an April 3 defeat to (yep) the Mariners.

— Then again, must have been one of those nights in the Pacific Time Zone. That same evening, the Orioles managed to lose in Oakland despite A) allowing a mere two hits and zero runs over the first 11 innings, B) throwing eight consecutive hitless innings in one stretch and C) putting 11 runners on base in between hits allowed.

So how did they find a way not to win a game like that? Well, their hitters also struck out 20 times, in a related development. But according to @StatsByStats, they were still the first AL team in over three decades to lose a game in which they gave up two hits or fewer over the first 11 innings. It hadn’t happened since the Tigers did it – also in Oakland – on May 1, 1987.

— But nobody in the last week found a stranger but truer way to lose a baseball game than the great Corey Kluber. How did the winning run score in his 3-2 loss in Milwaukee on Tuesday? On a home run – by a relief pitcher (Brent Suter).

A sincere thanks to Fox Sports Wisconsin’s Craig Coshun, for saving me the trouble of looking up all the relievers who have ever hit a home run off the incumbent Cy Young winner. According to @StatsByStats, he tweeted, that has happened just two other times.

There was a 1957 homer by Turk Farrell off Don Newcombe. And there was a 1969 bomb by Clay Carroll off Bob Gibson. I still find it incredible that Carroll hit an extra-inning game-winner off Gibson that day – and never hit another homer (or extra-base hit) in a 14-year career!

 

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