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spystud13

By spystud13
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He's probably more pissed off about being related to you. Now go back to Cloak Room or wherever it is that you regularly infect with your stupidity and leave this awesome subforum be.

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Pato del Muerto

Pato del Muerto 52322

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Because he receives it, then goes to get it?

im just trying to think of reasons it’s 1-3 and 2-3. 

All I got is that the act of receiving a pitch doesn’t count. 

A strikeout on a ball in the dirt that the catcher blocks and tags the batter isn’t recorded as a 2 unassisted, is it?  So I just can’t find consistent logic. 

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WBT

WBT 20397

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7 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Because he receives it, then goes to get it?

im just trying to think of reasons it’s 1-3 and 2-3. 

All I got is that the act of receiving a pitch doesn’t count. 

A strikeout on a ball in the dirt that the catcher blocks and tags the batter isn’t recorded as a 2 unassisted, is it?  So I just can’t find consistent logic. 

Yes, it's K 2U

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SurlyBDR

SurlyBDR 22622

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11 hours ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Angels got seriously screwed by the home plate umpire in the 9th.  

Good job, blue. 

I’m sure one of you can find a chart of the  bour strikeout, and the Goodwin check swing looked pretty suspect as well to end it. 

 

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Sbbruin

Sbbruin 21697

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16 hours ago, spystud13 said:

Someone needs to start a Twitter account strictly for Nolan, Manny, & Chapman plays. 

 

That was a fucking screwy hop too. 

Dude is going to go down as a better defensive 3B than Brooks when it's all said and done.  He is fucking amazing.

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Beau Vine

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Stark:

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Anything happen since the last edition of the Useless Information Department? Oh, not much. Only a Cy Young who met his match — exiting the shower! … and one of the great moments ever in Not Base Stealing! … and a catcher who was frozen in his crouch until 1 in the morning!

Whoa. It was another wacky week, all right. So as always, our Useless Info maniacs have it covered.

Marathon Man of the Week

“Let’s play 18!”

Is not a thing said by anybody ever — not unless they’re heading for the golf course, anyway. But some men are born to play 18. Even better, some men are born to catch 18.

And by that, obviously, I mean two things: 18 innings and Erik Kratz.

The Giants’ trusty 38-year-old backup catcher spent 18 innings, 265 pitches and 5 hours, 35 minutes squatting last Friday night. He even drove in the winning run, on a thunderous fielder’s-choice thunker at 12:50 a.m., in the Giants’ 3-2 marathon win over the Rockies. And according to Stats LLC, that made him the first player to catch 18-plus innings and swat the game-winning RBI in almost four decades — since Bob Boone did that for the Angels on April 13, 1982.

But way better than that, it made him the official Useless Information Department Player of the Week* (*not an actual award). And you know what that honor earned him? The chance to engage in witty 18-inning-game repartee with yours truly. You’re welcome, Erik!

USELESS INFO: Since I looked this up, I know you’re actually one of four active catchers who has now caught two 18-inning games. You also caught one with the Pirates (on July 17, 2016). The other three are Yadi Molina, Wilson Ramos and Matt Wieters.

KRATZ: You should have seen some of the bobbly eyes I got from the reporters here when I word-for-word rehashed what happened the last time I caught 18 innings. They said, ‘How do you remember that?’ I said, ‘I haven’t played that many games, so of course I remember that.’

USELESS INFO: The bad news is, Yadi caught over 300 pitches in both of his and one of them went 20 innings, so he’s got you beat on this.

KRATZ: Shocker – that there’s another thing that Yadi has me beat on.

USELESS INFO: Wait. Yadi has you beat on other things besides that?

KRATZ: Yeah. Like pretty much everything in baseball.

USELESS INFO: You uttered a sentence after the game that may never been uttered before in baseball. You said you got ‘a second wind in the 17th inning.’ Where did you get your second wind from at that hour?

KRATZ: I found it in a Clif Bar. The only flavor they had left was blueberry, too. Who picks up a blueberry Clif Bar? I usually go with peanut butter or peanut butter chocolate. But I got a snack … and I guess it worked.

USELESS INFO: Did your loved ones back home in Pennsylvania stay up till 4 in the morning to watch you catch every pitch?

KRATZ: You know what? I got more calls from people I know in San Francisco who stayed up and watched. And that’s pretty impressive because even in San Francisco, it was almost 1 o’clock. What I got from all the people in Pennsylvania and West Virginia was that they said they almost could have turned the game on when they got up to go to work at 4 in the morning. I said, ‘I guess you don’t work hard enough if you’re not waking up to go to work at 4 a.m.’

USELESS INFO: You said you couldn’t even sleep in because you had a day game the next day?

KRATZ: Somehow I wasn’t in the lineup the next afternoon. But you know how Boch [manager Bruce Bochy] is. He tries to protect his superstars.

USELESS INFO: Right. Who’s the other catcher on the Giants, anyway?

KRATZ: Oh, just some guy who’s trying to make the Hall of Fame [Buster Posey]. Boring. [Laughs] I’m trying to catch 27 innings here.

USELESS INFO: I’ve got some really cool research for you. I had Stats look this up. Who do you think is the oldest catcher to catch an 18-inning game? They went back to 1950.

KRATZ: Benito Santiago? I hope it’s not me. I’m not that old.

USELESS INFO: Nope. It’s you, all right.

OLDEST PLAYERS TO CATCH 18+ INNINGS IN A GAME
(1950-2019)

PLYR YRS DAYS GDATE TEAM OPP INNINGS
Erik Kratz 38 301 APR-12-2019 San Francisco Giants vs. Colorado Rockies 18.0
Brad Ausmus 37 123 AUG-15-2006 Houston Astros vs. Chicago Cubs 18.0
Yogi Berra 37 43 JUN-24-1962 New York Yankees vs. Detroit Tigers 22.0
Carlton Fisk 36 134 MAY-08-1984 Chicago White Sox vs. Milwaukee Brewers 25.0
Benito Santiago 36 81 MAY-29-2001 San Francisco Giants vs. Arizona Diamondbacks 18.0
Erik Kratz 36 32 JUL-17-2016 Pittsburgh Pirates vs. Washington Nationals 18.0

KRATZ: Really? Oh man. That just means these other guys are quitting too early. They should have stayed around longer. But if it’s me, that’s pretty cool.

USELESS INFO: You should know they did a little searching before 1950 and found a game where Gabby Hartnett came close in 1939, but he wasn’t older than you.

KRATZ: Old Gabby Hartnett. There’s a name from the past. And no, I didn’t play with him.

USELESS INFO: How are you going to remember your dramatic walk-off fielder’s choice (a bases-loaded chopper into a five-man infield, with the winning run scoring when catcher Chris Iannetta couldn’t keep his foot on the plate):

KRATZ: If there’s one play that would probably sum up my career, that’s the play … because I like winning and we won the game. And none of the hitting gurus on Twitter can look at that at-bat and say, ‘This is how you walk it off — a broken bat on a cutter, down and away, with two strikes. And a five-man infield. And the center fielder, who’s playing second base, lunges and makes a great play and throws home in time, but he’s safe because the catcher pulls his foot off the bag.’ Hey, if that’s what sums up my career, I’m totally fine with that.

USELESS INFO: You’ve actually had a pretty amazing career, considering you’re still catching in the big leagues at 38. 

KRATZ: I’m not going to get the ballyhoos that Bryce Harper got when he signed with Philly. I know that. I’m sure most people say, ‘What the heck are they doing picking up Erik Kratz,’ with every team that picks me up. But I’m OK with that. I have a World Series ring (from the 2015 Royals). I have a second-place World Series ring (with the 2014 Royals). I’ve been involved in the playoffs even though I haven’t always played. I’ve done a lot of really cool things in the game.

USELESS INFO: Not everybody has to be a star to have a cool career.

KRATZ: Look, it’s an opportunity — an opportunity to be in the big leagues. And you know what? Being the ‘R’ (for replacement player) in WAR is OK. I personally think I’m better than the ‘R.’ But I think if you look at the numbers, they’d probably say I am the ‘R.’ And honestly, I’m OK with that.

MORE USELESS MARATHON INFO! Five more crazy nuggets on that 18-inning game:

SAVED BY THE BELT — Five years ago in a playoff game in Washington, Brandon Belt ended the fun with an 18th-inning homer. In this game, he got the game-winning festivities going with an 18th-inning double.

“I’m 2-for-2 in the 18th inning,” Belt told the San Francisco Chronicle’s Henry Schulman afterward. “I’m the greatest 18th-inning hitter ever.”

OK, we can’t vouch for that. But if you count the postseason, he did become the third active player with two hits in the 18th inning or later. The others: Albert Pujols (also a double and homer) and Troy Tulowitzki (a single and a double late in the same 22-inning game in 2008).

LATE NIGHT SOMBRERO — Rockies catcher Chris Iannetta struck out four times in this game. That was kind of hard to do, considering he didn’t even make it into the game until the ninth inning. The only four previous hitters known to have done that, courtesy of Ryan (@theaceofspaeder) Spaeder:

June 13, 2013: Adam Rosales
May 8, 1984: Dave Stegman
July 19, 1969: Graig Nettles
Aug. 13, 1945: Eddie Basinski

PAGING RICK DEMPSEY — Unfortunately, Kratz didn’t sweep all the historical accolades in this game. According to Stats, his 68.7-mile-per-hour exit-velocity walk-off whatever-that-was made him just the fourth-oldest man to have a game-winning RBI in the 18th inning or beyond in the 45 years Stats has tracked game-winning RBIs. The oldest was Rick Dempsey, who was indeed a catcher – but doesn’t supplant Kratz on that previous list because he caught “only” the last 15 innings of a 22-inning game.

PLYR YRS DAYS GDATE TEAM OPP INN
Rick Dempsey 39 344 AUG-23-1989 Los Angeles Dodgers vs. Montreal Expos 22
Raul Ibanez 38 357 MAY-25-2011 Philadelphia Phillies vs. Cincinnati Reds 19
Luis Gonzalez 38 346 AUG-15-2006 Arizona Diamondbacks vs. Colorado Rockies 18
Erik Kratz 38 301 APR-12-2019 San Francisco Giants vs. Colorado Rockies 18
Ken Griffey Sr. 38 34 MAY-14-1988 Atlanta Braves vs. St. Louis Cardinals 19

 18-WHEELERS — The Giants did win that 18-inning game in the postseason in 2014. But their last regular-season 18-inning win was so long ago, their two broadcasting rock stars, Duane Kuiper and Mike Krukow, played in it. That was June 11, 1985, in Atlanta. Krukow was the starting pitcher. Kuiper pinch-hit and did not go deep. He laid down a bunt in the 11thinning.

The last Giants walk-off win in the 18th or later? How ‘bout July 2, 1933, in the Polo Grounds. Hughie Critz had the walk-off. Carl Hubbell pitched an 18-inning complete game!

Something in the water

Here at Useless Info World HQ, this is an excellent time to announce that we’re in favor of both showers and showering. We’re also big fans of water, bodies of water, “The Shape of Water,” non-drought conditions and any use of water that promotes more cleanliness on planet Earth.

But now that we’ve got that out of the way … Blake Snell!

The Athletic’s Josh Tolentino did an eloquent job this week of chronicling Snell’s spectacular shower/bathroom-redecoration/stand-relocation mishap, which landed him on the Injured List with a broken toe. No need to recap that. But there is a need to honor Snell’s epic calamity — with this rollout of our Five Favorite Not Thicker Than Water Injuries of All Time.

  • FIRST PRIZE — Jeremy Affeldt injuries of every variety automatically jump to the top of every one of these lists. And this 2015 lakeside blooper was a classic. All the Giants left-hander meant to do was take his kids to a lake on an off day. Oops! He slipped off an inflatable platform and, next thing he knew, he was having his own watership-down moment – and missing the next four weeks with a “patellar subluxation” in his left knee. According to the Giants’ surgeon general, Dr. Bruce Bochy, that would be a medical term for “Jeremy being Jeremy.”
  • SECOND PRIZE — Until Snell came along, the greatest shower injury in modern baseball history was a Scooter Gennett production in 2015. This April shower didn’t bring the Scooter any flowers. It merely brought him an ill-fated attempt to reach for the body wash. But even that didn’t end well. He somehow cut up his hand on the body-wash holder. And the only good that came from that was, at least he came clean about it afterward — through the magic of Twitter!
 

Can't believe it! Literally trying to grab some body wash in the shower (post game in Pittsburgh) and… https://instagram.com/p/1s_VNeCR0C/ 

 
 
 
 

 

  • THIRD PRIZE — Here’s our motto: Plumbing is overrated. For our first witness, we’d like to call longtime catcher Doug Mirabelli. Back in 2000, he missed a game with eye irritation. And how’d he contract that eye irritation? Plumbing! Well, attempted quasi-plumbing is more like it. He got a drop of Drano in his eye — and don’t try that at home! Still investigating the rumors the team doctors told him he looked a little flushed.
  • FOURTH PRIZE — It turns out that even water that falls from the sky can be hazardous to your health. At least it was hazardous to the knee health of then-Brewers third baseman Wes Helms back in 2004. He volunteered to venture out of the safety of the clubhouse to check on how the playing surface was holding up during a massive rain storm — and never even made it to the field. He slipped in the tunnel, blew out his knee, needed surgery and spent the rest of his career waiting for someone more storm-savvy than him to tell him when those rain delays were over. 
  • FIFTH PRIZE — Finally, our good friend Larry Andersen spent pretty much his entire 19-year career trying to extricate himself from hot water. But those efforts didn’t go real well back in 1991, when he strained a muscle in his chest — while getting out of a Jacuzzi. He revealed afterward he was suffering from a “Jacuzzi-tusion.” But as always, he was looking over the horizon in his tireless quest to avoid future water-world misfortunes: “I’ll probably get little plastic inflatable sides in the mail so I can get out easier next time,” he said.

 Useless Info of the Week

POP CULTURE – Holy crap. What just happened? Joey Votto did what? He hit a pop-up? To the first baseman? For the first time in his career – all 6,828 plate appearances of it? Unreal. Next thing you know, Willians Astudillo will be leading the league in steals.

All right, no he won’t. But just to put this in perspective, in those 13 seasons while Votto was popping up to the first baseman zero times, these five guys were doing it more than 130 times, according to Statcast:

193 – Ian Kinsler
173 – Edwin Encarnación
147 – Albert Pujols
141 – Justin Upton
133 – Chris Young

But of course, they’re all right-handed hitters. The leader board among left-handed hitters like Votto is also pretty star-studded:

44 – Brian McCann
39 – Mike Moustakas
31 – Jason Heyward
30 – Johnny Damon
30 – Nick Markakis

The odds of Joey Votto catching them? Not an actual prop bet that will ever be entertained at any sports book near you!

I’LL TAKE TWO DOZEN – Indians twirler Carlos Carrasco has had an up-and-down month, but in the “up” portion, he has already spun off two 12-strikeout games. And what makes that kind of eye-popping is, it’s April 19!

  •  He’s just the fourth active pitcher to have two games of 12-plus whiffs in the same April (joining Gerrit Cole, Chris Sale and Jacob deGrom).
  • He’s the first to spin off two games like that by April 19 since some guy named Pedro Martinez in 2007.
  • And since Carrasco has two starts left, he might be interested in this: Only one pitcher in the expansion era has knocked off three starts with at least a dozen Ks in the same April. That would be (guess who?) the human K-Mart, Nolan Ryan, in 1978. Sounds like enough incentive to go hunting for some extensive swinging and missing to me!

M-V-PEAT — Maybe Christian Yelich is about to cool off now that he doesn’t get to hit a home run every game against the Cardinals for another few days. But let’s just say that three weeks into the season, it wouldn’t be a stretch to speculate that he’s in position to win another MVP award. And if he does …

As loyal reader Chris Isidore reports, Yelich has a real shot at doing something that has been done only once in history — get traded and then win back-to-back MVP trophies in his first two seasons after getting dealt.

The only other player ever to do that, amazingly enough? That would be Roger Maris — back in 1960 and ’61, after the A’s delivered him to the Yankees. And beyond Maris, just three other men have ever won back-to-back MVPs at any point for a team they didn’t start their career with: Joe Morgan, Barry Bonds and Miguel Cabrera. But those three didn’t pull that off in their first two seasons with their new team.

So if you’ve been thinking that every day, Christian Yelich enters even more rarified territory, guess what? You’re paying attention!

THIRD AND TEN — The Astros just won 10 games in a row — because well, of course they did. That’s what they do every year, whether they need to or not. They had a double-digit win streak last year, too (12 in a row) — and another one the year before that (11).

That makes three seasons in a row, if you’re calculating along at home. And you sure don’t see teams do that a whole lot. Just one other team in the last 40 years has cranked out double-digit winning streaks in three straight seasons. That was Brad Pitt’s 2001-02-03 Moneyball A’s.

The only other team to do it three years in a row since the 1950s? Wilver D. Stargell’s 1976-77-78 Pirates. Wow.

SPEAKING OF STREAKS — When the Indians rolled into Kansas City last weekend, they were in first place. And the home team? They’d just lost their 10th game in a row. So what happened? Weirdness happened. The team with the 10-game losing streak swept the three-game series. That’s what.

So how rare was that? About as rare as you might think. According to Stats, in the division-play era, now a half-century old, only three other first-place teams have been swept in a series by a team that had been in the midst of a double-digit losing streak.

TEAM_SWEPT LOSING_STREAK_TEAM STANDINGS_DATE DIV_RANK SERIES_START_DATE SERIES_WL OPP_LOSING_STREAK_LENGTH
Indians Royals 4/11/2019 1 4/12/2019 0-3 10
Braves Red Sox 5/25/2014 1 5/26/2014 0-2 10
Rays Indians 7/9/2008 1 7/10/2008 0-4 10
Royals White Sox 6/20/1976 1 6/21/1976 0-2 10

Strangest But Truest Feats of the Week

CRAZY EIGHTS — As you’ve probably heard, Tuesday in Philadelphia, the Mets’ Steven Matz did something just four other pitchers have done since 1893. He faced eight hitters. He got none of them out. All eight scored. And off to twist the shower knobs he went. But weird as that was, it wasn’t even the Strange But True part of this note.

The Strange But True part is that, as loyal tweeter Matt Plasha reported, one of the pitchers who started that game got exiled to the International League the next day — but it wasn’t the guy who gave up eight runs in zero innings. It was the winning pitcher, Nick Pivetta.

Baseball!

CAN’T BEAT THE STREAK — The Mariners’ historic home run streak — 20 games in a row to kick off the season — is over. We miss it already. But we’ll let you decide the greatest Strange But True streak highlight.

  • Was it this — the man who hit the home run that enabled the Mariners to break the all-time record (in Game 15)? It wasn’t Edwin Encarnación, Jay Bruce or anyone normal like that. It was, of course, Dee Gordon. And what’s so Strange But True about that? Only the fact that the guy who hit this historic homer was the guy who ranks last in the big leagues in home run percentage, among all active players with at least 3,000 plate appearances.
  • Or was it this — the day the streak ended (Wednesday)? The Mariners didn’t hit any homers, obviously. But they did make a home run trot on the day their home run streak faded to black! Ryon Healy did the trotting in the second inning, after curling a ball “around” the left-field foul pole. Unfortunately, replays showed he’d neglected to hit a fair ball. So we could always go with “consecutive games with a home run trot,” right? Yeah, maybe not.

ALL CAUGHT UP — Even Kevin Kiermaier says he can’t figure out how he did the impossible Tuesday. And that’s pretty much the essence of Strange But Trueness. So thanks! And what did the Rays’ centerfielder do that was so impossible? Would you believe he got caught stealing twice in the same inning, on the same trip around the bases, with the same hitter at the plate? Hard to do!

But Kiermaier pulled it off in the sixth inning, against all mathematical odds. Got caught stealing second, but the Orioles’ shortstop, Jonathan Villar, dropped the throw — for that always-innovative Caught Stealing-E6. Then four pitches after that, Kiermaier danced so far off the bag that he was picked off by pitcher Mike Wright and tagged out at third — for Caught Stealing No. 2.

If it’s any consolation, it’s been done before. Last to get caught stealing twice in the same inning? Brandon Phillips, on July 7, 2011. It’s a beautiful thing.

THE UPPER HAND — The Rays haven’t quite clinched their berth as the Strange But True team of the year. But they give us plenty of material. Here’s what they did last Friday in Toronto.

In the third inning, Austin Meadows launched a baseball into the fifth deck of the Rogers Centre, way, way, way, way out there in deep right field. So what was the big deal about that? Only that he was just the fourth player ever to hit a baseball up there in the 30-season history of the ballpark — and the second in 20 years. That’s all.

In other words, it’s clearly so hard to do, what if we told you that no one would see that again — for another four hitters? Yep, that’s how long it took for Meadows’ amigo, Brandon Lowe, to hit another home run into almost the same spot.

So once in two decades … and then twice in the same inning? How’d that happen? Oh, that’s right.

Baseball!

SAVE THE NEXT-TO-LAST-DANCE FOR NATE — Finally, it’s time for the save that defied all logic, courtesy of WFAN radio’s ever-alert Strange But True correspondent, Sweeny Murti:

Who got the save last Friday in the White Sox-Yankees game? That would be White Sox reliever Nate Jones.

But who threw the last pitch of that game? Not Nate Jones! It was Chad Green of the Yankees, who actually threw 14 of them before the Strange But True baseball gods (and about 2.8 billion rain drops) decided they’d seen enough.

It’s supposed to be impossible for a guy to get a save without throwing the final pitch, you know. Except …

Baseball!

 

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