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spystud13

By spystud13
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Seasick Sailor
Seasick Sailor
Beau Vine
Beau Vine

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.

Beau Vine
Beau Vine

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Beau Vine

Beau Vine 55870

Posted
Posted
36 minutes ago, gsoda3 said:
1 hour ago, Beau Vine said:
fify
It would be nice if there was some sort of happy (safe) medium between what we have now and Hal McRae.

Never bothered me when runners came hard into 2nd. Almost got in to a couple fights dropping low and pegging them though.

I'm guessing Hal McRae coming hard would have bothered you. 

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Beau Vine 55870

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This is kind of fascinating:

https://sportsinfosolutionsblog.com/2019/07/22/poor-alex-bregman/

Used to be that you had a 70% chance of reaching base if you hit the ball up the middle.  Now it's 48%, and the shifting is not the whole effect -- it's 59% even if there is no shift on. 

Bregman is 2-for-12 when he hits the ball up the middle this season. 

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1 hour ago, TonyTexas said:

^^^
It’s probably due to better infielder positioning as a result of improved data. Doesn’t have to be a full shift but a few steps this way or that.

Well yeah.  But it amazes me that this information was sitting out there for decades, waiting to be harvested, and no one cared.  There's nothing space-aged about assigning your scouts to record where every single ball is hit, and then amalgamating that data. 

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Absolutely loved this column from Brisbee:
 

Quote

 

Baseball Time Machine: 20 individual seasons worth going back in time to see

AP_710427054-1024x682.jpg
By Grant Brisbee Jul 19, 2019 comment-icon@2x.png215 save-icon@2x.png

I watched Rickey Henderson. I used to have fluorescent yellow Mizuno batting gloves, and when I reached first base — because the pitcher couldn’t throw a strike to someone 40 inches tall — I would take a lead off first base and hunch down, with cat-like anticipation, waiting to steal second. Then they kicked me out of the over-40 league because I was making them uncomfortable. But I did this in Little League, too.

To anyone who didn’t get to watch Henderson, I’m sorry. He was a blast. He was one of the greatest players in baseball history, and certainly one of the greatest players in baseball history to watch. And I was there for Barry Bonds. The whole thing. We’re almost two decades away from the zenith, and it’s getting harder and harder to describe what it felt like to watch someone be that good at baseball.

But there are players that I missed. I was too young to appreciate vintage Hank Aaron, for example. I missed the best of Tom Seaver. And while I do listen to the Beach Boys on purpose, I’m too young to have watched Ted Williams, Willie Mays and Lefty Grove. It all seems rather unfair.

So I’ve built a time machine. Don’t ask about the technical details — it’s complicated — but I can go back in time to watch any player I want. The catch is that it has only enough juice for 20 trips, and I can only stay a few months, which means I’m limited to a single season. There are only 20 baseball players I can go back to watch.

Here are my 20, in chronological order. I’m sure there will be no disagreement about my selections, and the comments will mostly consist of, “Huzzah! That is the exact 20 players I would have selected! Good show, chap.”

Thank you for your support. Here we go.

1. Old Hoss Radbourn, Providence Grays (1884)

There has to be at least one 19th-century player in here, and there are options. Cy Young was thriving in the 1800s. Candy Cummings invented — or, at least, popularized — the curveball back then. Billy Hamilton 1.0 stole so many bases that he’s still ranked third in stolen bases all-time.

But when you’re picking Old Hoss, you’re really digging into the roots of the game. The 5-foot-9 righty was 60-12 in his 75 games (with two relief appearances) for the Providence Grays, pitching 678 2/3 innings and striking out 441 batters. What does that look like? Could you see the pain and decay emanating from his elbow, like waves above hot asphalt? Or was it easy, glorified batting practice to players who didn’t grow up trying to hit an orb with a stick, and were learning on the fly? What made him so much more successful than his peers? And what was it like to even watch a game back then, when everything was so new?

I don’t know, but I have to see it. And while I’m there, I can indulge in some culinary treats of the time, like, uh, frizzled ham.

2. Ty Cobb, Detroit Tigers (1911)

This isn’t the year he slashed an elevator operator with a penknife and was knocked unconscious when he was pistol-whipped in response. That was 1909. It’s not the season in which Cobb went into the stands to pummel a person with a disability. That was 1912. It’s also not the year he disemboweled a catcher with his feet, as shown in this picture:

Ty_Cobbs_flying_feet_in_1912.jpeg
 
(Public domain/Wikimedia)

That was also 1912.

Look, the first words in the “Major league career” section of Cobb’s Wikipedia entry begins with the words, “Three weeks after his mother killed his father, Cobb debuted in center field for the Detroit Tigers.” Dude was complicated.

No, I’m selecting 1911 to get the full Ty Cobb experience, because I’m less interested in him being a violent freak and more interested in him hitting .419. I know that once we get into the .400s, everything bleeds together, but think about that. You can instinctively tell the difference between a .280 hitter and a .300 hitter over a full season. You can definitely tell the difference between a .300 hitter, which every team has now and again, and a .320 hitter, who might lead his league.

This is like that, but compared to someone hitting .400.

The season also came with 248 hits, 24 triples and 83 stolen bases, so I’m feeling pretty good about this selection when it comes to on-the-field performance. I can’t watch every .400 season, and I’m sick about not having Rogers Hornsby on the list, but if you’re not getting one of Cobb’s seasons in, what’s the point of this Magic Baseball School Bus?

3. Walter Johnson, Washington Senators (1913)

We should talk about the pitchers who aren’t getting a visit. Grove was a marvel, a dominant force at the same time baseball was besotted with runs. Carl Hubbell and his magic screwball would be a fine choice, especially if you time your trip to 1934 and get to watch the All-Star Game. Young was so good that a statue of him was erected at Northeastern University, which is certainly his most lasting legacy.

But “Big Train” is the pick because he’s the closest example we’d have of “What if we took a modern pitcher and inserted him into the dead-ball era?” A munitions laboratory clocked his fastball at 91 mph in 1917, when he was 29, so I’ll give him a couple of extra ticks when he was 25 and had 1,200 fewer innings on his arm. Cobb described the pitch by saying “the thing just hissed with danger,” which is danged near poetic.

In 1913, Johnson fashioned a 1.14 ERA in 346 innings, leading the league in both walk rate and strikeout rate. It was the dead-ball era, yes, but teams were still averaging around four runs per game, so it wasn’t exactly easy for a sub-2.00 ERA.

Mostly, though, I want to see that fastball and compare it to modern players. Johnson isn’t going to touch Aroldis Chapman, but my guess is that it would be absolutely hilarious in comparison to his peers.

4. Babe Ruth, Boston Red Sox (1919)

It’s hard to go wrong with any Ruth season. But I wanna see him pitch.

The best offensive season in baseball history, by WAR, is Ruth’s 1923 season, and that’s a tempting selection. But it was 100 years ago when Ruth hit 29 home runs to break the all-time record, which was set by Ned Williamson in 1884 during a season in which automatic doubles over the fence were counted as home runs.

This 1919 season was when Ruth started melting minds. Twenty-nine baseballs over the fence was the sporting equivalent to landing a zeppelin in the middle of the Colosseum in 103 AD. Nobody knew what was to come, which probably made it the most ridiculous baseball season to date.

And he pitched. Just 15 starts, with a 2.97 ERA — which made him more of a Jeff Samardzija than a Max Scherzer — but I still want both parts of the full Ruth experience. This was before he became one of the most famous people in the country, so there’s even an element of “I saw them at a small club before they released their first EP” to this selection. You can go with 59 homers and the birth of an American icon, but I want the freak who also pitches.

5. Eddie Cicotte, Chicago White Sox (1919)

Two players from the same year wasn’t my plan, but I knew that I wanted a knuckleballer. While toying with the idea of Hoyt Wilhelm and Phil Niekro, I wanted to go back to when the pitch was introduced, to see catchers struggle and hitters accuse pitchers of witchcraft.

With Cicotte, I get all of that and spitballs and emery balls. I’m fascinated with the art of the spitball, and this is the last season it was allowed. The season was legitimately awesome, with a 1.82 ERA (176 ERA+) and 29-7 record, and when the regular season is over, I get to kick back and watch Cicotte help the Black Sox throw the World Series. His ERA in the Series was 2.91 in three starts, if you can imagine such a thing.

It’s also a sneaky way to get a Shoeless Joe Jackson season in without using one of my time-machine credits.

6. Oscar Charleston, Harrisburg Giants (1925)

Charleston had 301 plate appearances for the Harrisburg Giants in the Eastern Colored League in 1925, and he hit .451/.552/.826 with 20 homers. He was reportedly a magical defensive center fielder, too, and he would be 28 this season, which means I’m seeing him right when a player’s baseball aptitude catches up with his physical talent.

Also, I’m being sneaky again, because if I’m watching Charleston in 1925, I’m also getting some of his games with the Almendares in the Cuban League and with the New York Lincoln Giants, who played postseason games against white teams, including one with Lou Gehrig. When you get Charleston in 1925, you don’t just get one of the greatest baseball talents in history, but you also get a rich variety of history.

But you also get a player who was one of the very best ever to play. A scout for the Cardinals, Bennie Borgmann, once said, “in my opinion, the greatest ballplayer I’ve ever seen was Oscar Charleston. When I say this, I’m not overlooking Ruth, Cobb, Gehrig, and all of them.” Buck O’Neil said, “He was like Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth and Tris Speaker rolled into one.”

I believe it. And if you can spot me a little plutonium, we can both see it.

7. Joe DiMaggio, San Francisco Seals (1935)

You want to watch the hitting streak? Well, I want to watch the Pacific Coast League in its heyday, when it was the Major League Baseball of the west. This was the last season that DiMaggio played in the PCL before becoming an instant megastar for the Yankees, and he hit .398/?/.672 as a 20-year-old (they didn’t keep track of walks, apparently). Everyone watching him knew he was going to be a legend, and soon, for an MLB team. It must have been electric.

As someone who owns a Mission Reds, Sacramento Solons and San Francisco Seals shirt, this was an easier call than it should have been. Heck, I even get to see a season with Lefty O’Doul, and if we get to count DiMaggio’s opponents, then I get to see a 17-year-old Bobby Doerr, too.

And I get to see it all in what might have been the best minor-league ballpark in the country, too. Sold.

8. Josh Gibson, Pittsburgh Crawfords (1936)

Bill James wrote this in the “New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract” (which was published in 2001):

Probably the greatest catcher in baseball history, and probably the greatest right-handed power hitter. 

…

His career was not exceptionally long, but I believe that he would have hit over 500 home runs had he played in the majors — 150 more than any other catcher. 

There’s a wrinkle with this season, though. Gibson hit .451/.526/.756, which is hilarious, but he did it in just 95 plate appearances, which is about half of his typical season in the Negro National League. But I’m picking it because he was with the Pittsburgh Crawfords, who also featured Cool Papa Bell, Satchel Paige, Judy Johnson and a 39-year-old Charleston that year. That’s five Hall of Famers on what was certainly one of the greatest baseball teams ever assembled.

Plus, this list is light on catchers, and here’s what Dizzy Dean said about Gibson:

Gibson is one of the best catchers that ever caught a ball. Watch him work this pitcher. He’s top at that. And boy-oh-boy, can he hit that ball!

One of the greatest players of all time on one of the best teams ever, all in a ballpark with a capacity of 7,500. That sounds like an easy call, even if there’s a season with more Gibson at-bats.

9. Ted Williams, Boston Red Sox (1941)

A .406 batting average. A .553 on-base percentage. A league-leading 37 homers and 135 runs. A freakish 147 walks to just 27 strikeouts in 606 plate appearances.

I want to watch the best bat-control season of all time.

A lot of the seasons on this list include lengthy justifications for one year over another. Some of them, though, deserve nothing more than a GIF of me pointing at a computer with a Baseball-Reference page open and making a “What else do you want?” face. This is one of those seasons, and if I had to narrow this list down to five, it would still be on there.

10. Jackie Robinson, Brooklyn Dodgers (1947)

This would probably be the least enjoyable of the seasons to watch, if we’re being honest. Not because Robinson was bad — he hit .297/.383/.427 with a league-leading 29 stolen bases, winning the Rookie of the Year and finishing fifth in the National League MVP voting — but because people are bad. I’m not sure what the screaming, entitled fan of 1949 felt comfortable yelling at a player because of his race, but I’m pretty sure it was ghastly. And constant.

But this is certainly the most historically important season in baseball history, if not the history of professional sports. It also might be the most impressive individual accomplishment in sports history. I can’t fathom the ability to compartmentalize, to ignore, to persevere and succeed at the highest level.

When Robinson took the first at-bat of his major-league career and grounded out, what was the fan reaction as he went back to the dugout? Or am I underestimating the Brooklyn fans? Here was an excerpt from a Minnesota Star notes column the day after, buried somewhere toward the end:

img?id=178735630&width=700&height=100&cr
Wed, Apr 16, 1947 – Page 37 · The Minneapolis Star (Minneapolis, Minnesota) · Newspapers.com

“He’ll have the fans pulling for him.” Well, I want to see that. It was tempting to go with Robinson’s MVP season in 1949, but not that tempting. The history here is too enthralling to pass up.

11. Satchel Paige, St. Louis Browns (1952)

We already have prime Paige with our Josh Gibson pick, remember. He was still a hard thrower back then. But if I’m going to spend a valuable time-machine token on him, it’s to watch a masterclass in the great dookie arts.

Paige was 45 years old in ’52, and he had a 3.07 ERA (127 ERA+). He made six starts and threw complete games in half of them, with shutouts in two. One of those was a 12-inning shutout against the Tigers. He also threw 10 2/3 innings of relief in a 19-inning game (eventually taking the loss) and he also threw 10 innings of a 17-inning game that ended in a tie.

He did it all with dookie. And guile. And smarts. And craft. He was a long way removed from his best fastball, so he had to use deception, movement and command, and he had to do it well enough in his mid-40s to make the 1952 All-Star Game. If baseball is supposed to be simple for a hitter — see ball, hit ball — Paige was proof that for a pitcher it was supposed to be a complex exercise in game theory, like Deep Blue memorizing every possible move on a chessboard.

This also might be a top-five season for me. As tempting as it is to focus on him in his prime, the artistry of this season is impossible to pass up. Other pitchers have done more with less as they’ve gotten older, but I’m not sure if anyone was better at it than Paige. What was he throwing in a 2-0 count? What was he using to get ahead? I want to see all of it.

(It was tough to leave Hoyt Wilhelm off for similar reasons, but I already had Cicotte and, look, this is an impossible exercise.)

12. Willie Mays, New York Giants (1954)

Just … pick a season of his. If you want 1957, with 35 homers, 20 triples and 38 stolen bases, fine, yeah, that sounds great. His second MVP season came in 1965, when he was 34 and still better than everyone, leading the league with 52 homers and still playing a superlative center field. Go for it. Pick a season between 1951 and 1971, and you’re going to see the best parts of one of the greatest all-around players in the sport’s history.

I’m going with ’54, his first MVP season. Mays was still something of an unknown before this year, leaving for the Korean War when he was just a 21-year-old with a modest .266/.349/.459 career line. He came back, attached a saddle to the back of baseball and started riding it around everywhere. Grocery store, post office, everywhere. “This here is the game of baseball, and it works for me. I let it sleep in a barn when I’m not using it,” he would say. Probably.

Mays hit .345/.411/.667 with 41 homers this year, and he did it as a 23-year-old who could catch everything in the outfield.

Everything, you say?

I want to find Clapping Bow Tie Man and figure out if he actually clapped like that after the play, or if that was previously recorded footage that was spliced in after the fact. I might stare at him and miss The Catch in order to find that out. It’s always bugged me. But I also might want to sit in center field and say “He’s got it. He’s got it,” calmly the whole time the ball is in the air, and then act like it’s not a big deal when he catches it. Just because.

Mostly, though, I want to watch a full season of Mays, and this one features an MVP award and ends with him making one of the most famous plays in baseball history. I was wrong: You can’t pick any season. You have to pick this one.

13. Masaichi Kaneda, Kokutetsu Swallows (1955)

Twenty seasons in the NPB, 5,526 innings pitched, with a 2.34 career ERA. That seems pretty, pretty good. Kaneda is almost certainly the best pitcher in Japanese baseball history, coming up as a 16-year-old and dominating for two decades shortly after. In his 20s, his highest ERA was 2.63, his fewest wins was 20, and the fewest innings he pitched was 304 1/3. His ERA was under 2.00 in his 20s more often than it was over.

Dude was good. And this is a great way to travel not just through time, but around the globe.

I picked ’55 because it was the first time his ERA dipped below 2.00 (1.78) and because it was something of a breakout season, shaving his walk rate by nearly half. He wouldn’t have an ERA over 2.00 for another four seasons. The kicker to this Sports Illustrated feature describes his talent well:

Bob Nieman, who is also with the Dragons, adds, “Just ask Mickey Mantle about Kaneda. The last time the Yankees were here in Japan on tour, Kaneda fanned him eight or 10 times and Mantle was muttering all winter long.”

If only there were more understanding of how to take care of the arm in the ’50s.

“Oh, I’d last a while,” (Kaneda) says, “but not long. I’ve seen American baseball, and the emphasis is too much on the fast ball. A pitcher throws his arm out in a relatively short time. Here we throw many fewer fast balls, only enough to vary the basic routine of curves, sliders and sinker pitches. Pitchers last longer. I feel as though I could go on for at least 10 more seasons.”

While he was at his best, though, Kaneda was as dominating as anyone in baseball history. My only regret is having a time machine and not an alternate-reality machine that put him on the Senators, just to see what he could do against Mantle over his career.

14. Roger Maris, New York Yankees (1961)

Speaking of Mantle, here’s the easiest cheat of the list. I wanted to watch Mantle in his prime, but spots were filling up, and I was looking for loopholes. Here’s one! In 1961, I’m getting Mantle hitting a career-high 54 home runs in his age-29 season and looking stupendous doing it. But I’m there for Maris hitting 61 homers and creating all sorts of New York hot takes.

Maris had 159 hits that season:

  • 78 singles
  • 16 doubles
  • 4 triples
  • 61 homers

In one sense, this wouldn’t seem to be the kind of season that would be worth a trip. I watched Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa in 1998, and I followed every game of Bonds’ in 2001, so what’s the big deal about a guy from a long time ago doing nothing but hit homers?

Because this was a milestone in dinger history. And because it was also a milestone in hot-take history. Imagine waking up every morning, snapping the rubber band off the morning paper and seeing what cranky dude wrote about Maris getting to hit against expansion pitching. Just glorious.

(And because we get a free Mantle with the purchase of one (1) round-trip time-machine purchase.)

15. Carl Yastrzemski, Boston Red Sox (1967)

By WAR, it’s the third-best performance from a position player in baseball history. It goes Ruth, Ruth, Yaz, Ruth, and because some idiot decided to spend his time-machine token on a season that Ruth was a pitcher, that means this would be the highest WAR on the list.

While no one is bringing along a printout of the top 20 seasons by WAR to plan their trip, I especially want to see this one. Not only did Yaz win the Triple Crown this season, but he also padded those WAR numbers with a remarkable defensive season. And if there’s a defensive standout season to watch, I’m pretty sure it’s from a left fielder in Fenway Park. How did he play the hot shots off the wall? Where was he positioned against righties? Against lefties? I want to study this and try to reverse-engineer the newfangled defensive numbers, keeping my own Inside Edge-style spray chart to track the ball.

Or maybe I just want to watch the Triple danged Crown from an inner-circle Hall of Famer and have a few beers along the way.

They have delicate saisons in 1967, right?

16. Bob Gibson, St. Louis Cardinals (1968)

Of all the seasons on this list, here’s the most obvious one. If you want an in-depth video about it, please check out Jon Bois’ video “The Bob Emergency,” which is probably the most important video in the history of the internet, except for some of his other ones.

In 1968, Gibson took advantage of the hellacious conditions for hitters and absolutely dominated in a way that the sport probably won’t see again. He made 18 starts in June, July and August combined, and he pitched nine innings in 17 of them.

In the one start he missed that mark, it’s because he pitched 11 innings.

Gibson allowed four earned runs in two of his 34 starts that year. He allowed three earned runs in six of his starts, and two earned runs in three of his starts. And there were nine games in which he allowed just a single run. If you’re doing the math in your head, you’ll note this means that he had 15 games in which he didn’t allow an earned run. He threw as many shutouts in June and July as Justin Verlander has thrown in his career. His ERA in those two months was 0.27 over 11 starts.

Heck, Gibson threw more shutouts in June than Jon Lester has thrown in his career.

Those are good pitchers who might make the Hall of Fame one day. But they weren’t Gibson in 1968. Because nobody was. And this is another easy pick for the top five time-machine seasons.

If you’re forcing me to choose, this is the top time-machine season. Maybe I could see some good shows. Big Brother & The Holding Company once played a free show the night after a Gibson start, you know.

17. Johnny Bench, Cincinnati Reds (1970)

Time does eventually come for everyone, and it’s why Bench’s catching career was over when he was 34. So if I want to see the greatest catching season of all time from the greatest catcher of all time, I’ll have to go back to the beginning, when the Big Red Machine was in its infancy. The, uh, Big Red Waterwheel or something.

Bench was 22 years old and just about the best catcher baseball had ever seen. He threw out 30 of the 62 runners who tried to steal against him, winning his third straight Gold Glove, and he hit .293/.345/.587 with a league-leading 45 home runs.

He also played 15 innings in center field, and I’m pretty sure I’ll need to skip right to that game. For science. But mostly I want to see the whole thing. I’m a fan of the catching arts, and here was the best example possible.

18. Hank Aaron, Atlanta Braves (1971)

Originally I had Sadaharu Oh on the list, and my reasoning for taking him over Aaron was that Aaron never really had a signature season. He was A-plus for almost all of his 23 seasons, but he was never A-plus-plus. I want the A-plus-plus seasons. Aaron never had a 50-homer season, but he did have four different 44-homer seasons, for all you numerologists out there.

Except the more I looked at it, the more I realized that Oh had a similar non-problem. He never had one season that was wildly better than the rest. So if we’re talking 20 time-machine careers, Oh is on there. But I think I have to get Aaron in this one.

The question is which season? His one MVP was in ’57, when he was 24, and he also won a Gold Glove, so that seems like as good a place to start as any. Except I’m already seeing a few of his rookie games with my Mays selection, and I also get to see him smack a homer off Gibson in ’68.

This year, then, is the one when everyone realized that he could break Ruth’s record. Not only was it possible, but it was starting to become likely. Coming into the season, Aaron had hit 592 career homers, but he was already 37. Here’s what the list of 37-or-older players to hit 30 homers in a season looked like in 1971:

  • Ernie Banks, 1968
  • Ted Williams, 1957
  • Hank Sauer, 1954
  • Babe Ruth, 1932 and 1933
  • Cy Williams, 1927

If Aaron hit 30 home runs and had one of the greatest 37-or-older power displays of all time, and then he did it for three more seasons, he still would have been 41 years old and two homers short. Then you factor in the injuries that a 37-year-old full-time player should expect (and he had played 150 games the season before), and it was still a possibility. But it was far from a certainty.

Then Aaron hit 47 homers. It was his career high. He lead the National League in OPS for the third time, which was also a career high (1.079). He finished the season with 639 home runs, just 75 shy, and he had just completed what might have been the best offensive season of his career.

“Oh,” everyone said. “Oh, my.” And I want to hear that chorus get louder and louder as he just doesn’t stop.

19. Mark Fidrych, Detroit Tigers (1976)

When I was younger, I was fascinated with Tiger Stadium. When I was 21 and Comerica Park was scheduled to open the following year, I tried to convince my friends to take a road trip to Detroit that summer. They were … not as enthused. So that’s a part of this. Ease my pain. Go the distance.

But the season that Fidrych had is way more important. For 31 games, 29 starts, Fidrych was a god, leading the league in complete games (24) and ERA (2.34). He finished second in the Cy Young voting, which was bunk, and he had one of the greatest rookie seasons ever. If you use WAR, it was the best rookie season from a pitcher after World War I, and it wasn’t especially close.

It’s the other stuff that I’m just as interested in.

What life. What energy. You can watch the full game referenced in the above clip here if you are so inclined:

Maybe because that’s accessible, we could use this spot on Oh, or Steve Carlton when he won half of the games for a lousy Phillies team, or Hubbell in that All-Star Game, or Lou Gehrig or Frank Robinson or Lou Brock or …

Nah. I want to be in Tiger Stadium, waiting for that curtain call. I want to sit above the home dugout and think, “Is this real life? What is going on?” We have a lot of Hall of Famers to see on this tour through time, but I’m not sure if there’s a season that was more fun than Fidrych’s.

20. Fernando Valenzuela, Los Angeles Dodgers (1981)

This is the only season that I was alive for, but I was busy shoving a plastic Yoda toy up my nose at the time, so it still counts. Plus I get to find 3-year-old me, grab myself by the ears, and scream, “DON’T TRY OUT FOR FOOTBALL AS A FRESHMAN. THEY’RE ALL GOING TO LAUGH AT YOU, AND YOUR ANKLE WILL NEVER BE THE SAME.” Maybe mix in something about doing well in school, I don’t know.

Fernandomania was one of the best all-time vibes that baseball will ever have to offer, though, with a burgeoning 20-year-old Mexican superstar pitching for the city home to the largest Mexican diaspora in the world. Plus, if we’re going to include Cicotte because of the knuckler, then we absolutely need a screwball in there.

Sorry, Vince, but I’m gonna have to watch this 574 more times. Really sorry about this.

More bonus points: The strike was a drag, but I’ll get to watch baseball’s nutty attempt to make up for it with first-half champions and proto-wild cards. Plus, the Dodgers had to grind through two incredibly tense, compelling postseason rounds — when there was usually just one — to get to the excellent Yankees in the World Series. That’ll help make up for the loss of June and July.

While I’m sure that absolutely nobody disagrees with any of these selections, please feel free to leave suggestions in the comments. This whole idea started because I wanted to go back and watch Rod Carew in 1977, and he didn’t even make the final cut, so I get it.

The only rule is that young people who make me feel old by writing things like “I would go back and watch Tim Lincecum in 2009! I was 8, so I missed it” will be arrested. Thank you for your understanding.

I was a kid for the last two on the list. I will never forget the game that Fidrych pitched on Monday Night baseball.  By the third inning, I was so in love with the guy,  I probably would have talked to the ball, too, but I hadn't started pitching by that point yet.  The Valenzuela thing wasn't as exciting 1) because of the strike and 2) there wasn't ESPN yet, so you didn't see him pitch unless it was the NBC Saturday Game of the Week and 3) all of his starts were on the west coast, so the Dallas Morning News wouldn't even have box scores (or the score) the next day.  He was something like 8-0 with an ERA around 0.50 after 8 starts, so something amazing was happening, even if you couldn't follow it in Texas.  I remember my dad waking me up several times in the morning saying, "Valenzuela threw another shutout last night."  And later that year, in 9th grade English, we had an assignment to write a paper "A Tale of Two Cities" style and I wrote about Fernando and the strike.

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youdunnf'dup

youdunnf'dup 2147

Posted
Posted (edited)

Over the last month (94 at bats), Yuli Gurriel is hitting .394 with 14 hrs and a 1.345 OPS. So how does he start off today? With a 2 run hr. Owner in my fantasy league dropped him right before this streak, and I picked him up because he was the best option with triple eligibility. As you can see, that has worked out for me.

 

Really, it’s the whole Gurriel family over the last month...

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UpperWestside

UpperWestside 6284

Posted
Posted
44 minutes ago, Helobious said:

Yankees-Twins was a strong game of the year candidate last night. Pretty wild.

And he may have only played in 45 games so far but Judge is hitting .308/.437/.990 this year. I do miss him selling out for 500 foot bombs though.

Wish I would've watched it. Had a long day yesterday and went to sleep early. That catch by Hicks was ridiculous. I really enjoy watching him play center.

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Goo Punch

Goo Punch 4275

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, TheFlagship said:

So the Giants have played themselves out of selling right? I don’t think they’re actually good, but they’re only 2 back of a playoff spot 

this is the prevailing wisdom, and i think it's completely stupid. i sat there last night and watched Kornheiser (who i like) and Isola talking about how great MadBum has been in his last five starts and his postseason success and how "if you have a chance to win now you don't sell."

win what, exactly? a wildcard game? maybe an NLDS, at best? are they beating the Dodgers, Yankees, or Astros? nope. and i don't like them to beat Cleveland, Milwaukee. Minnesota, Chicago, Boston, or Atlanta should they meet any of those teams. it isn't like they just had three all stars return from the IL and now they're healthy and a true contender, they're just playing well over their last 15 games or whatever. They need to get MadBum (who supposedly "doesn't give a shit" about being traded) to waive that no-trade clause and trade the shit out of him. the Giants are going nowhere, and their run of perpetual WS contention is over. a hot couple of weeks doesn't change that. 

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UTexasFight

UTexasFight 9819

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Posted

Yep
that was my post the other day.
As a giants fan, July would be exhilarating...and I’d also be pissed my team is having its hottest stretch of the season right before the deadline.

Zaidi isn’t stupid. He isn’t going to push all of his chips in for 2019.
I see a little similarity between 2019 Giants and 2015 Astros, where both are playing well above their heads earlier than expected (although the 2015 Astros had visions of winning their division (they didn’t) and were well ahead in their rebuild compared to the 2019 Giants), but here are the trades Luhnow made at 2015 deadline.
Oops

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