Despite a valiant effort, scoring nine of the final twelve runs of the game, the Florida Marlins dropped the finale of last night’s four-game series with the Arizona Diamondbacks by a final score of 12-9. The loss capped a series victory for the Diamondbacks and one of the most disastrous homestands imaginable for the Marlins. Their only victory of the 11-game homestand came on June 10th, a 6-4 victory against Arizona. The other 10 games included a four-game sweep by Milwaukee and a three-game sweep by division rival Atlanta. Entering June, the Marlins were eight games over .500, leading the wild-card race, and only two games behind Philadelphia. Merely two weeks later, the Marlins are floundering at 32-33 and their early playoff dreams may be dashed. What went wrong?

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Bases loaded, one out, top of the 7th, 1-0 game. Casey Kotchman, the worst .335 hitter in the history of baseball, hits a pop-fly to right. Magglio Ordonez camps under it, makes the catch, unleashes a looping throw to the plate. Alex Avila blocks the plate with his left leg. Running hard from third, Justin Ruggiano’s left leg briefly collides with Avila’s, as the catcher makes a swipe tag that catches nothing but air.

Home plate umpire John Tumpane, wisely, withholds his signal. Having slid past home, Ruggiano swings his left leg back, taps home plate. Avila half-heartedly tags Ruggiano’s leg a couple beats later. Now, Tumpane’s ready to make the call.

Out.

Here’s a still shot of Ruggiano’s leg on the plate, with Avila leaning over to make the tag, his glove still touching nothing but air.

Here’s the video of the play, shown from multiple angles, at full speed and in slow motion.

You make the call.

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Some say the world will end in Justin, while others agree.

This edition of One Night Only contains:

1. This announcement, first of all:

Please be advised that tonight’s slate of games is one of the more — if not the most — interesting in the time that I’ve been submitting these daily previews. Only one game tonight (White Sox-Twins) has received a below-average NERD score — which, I recognize that, on account of it’s a totally made-up stat, NERD is possibly not what we’d call “entirely reliable.” Still, it seems to to a good enough job.

Six games tonight have NERD scores of 7, and another four have scores of 6. Even the games with 5s are probably more interesting than their scores might otherwise suggest, including games featuring Juan Nicasio, Charlie Blackmon, Josh Collmenter, Danny Duffy, Eric Hosmer, Michael Moustakas, Trevor Cahill, Jered Weaver, Peter Bourjos, etc.

2. Previews — some thorough-er, some not so much — for these five games: Indians at Tigers, Florida at Philadelphia, San Diego at Colorado, San Francisco at Arizona, and Kansas City at Oakland.

3. Pitcher and Team NERD scores for every one of tonight’s games.

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Was it different pitching in the 1980s than it is today? If so, just how different and in which ways? In a two-part roundtable, six prominent pitchers from that decade — three right-handers and three left-handers who won a combined 1,044 big-league games — address topics that will help answer those questions.

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1980s PITCHING ROUNDTABLE [Part One]: BUD BLACK, DANNY DARWIN, MIKE FLANAGAN, GREG MADDUX, JON MATLACK AND BOB WALK.

ON PITCHER USAGE, INNINGS, AND PITCH COUNTS:

Bud Black: I don’t recall pitch counts being as prevalent as they are now. In my starts, in the 1980s, I was never told how many pitches I threw. I didn’t know and it wasn’t important to me. I’m sure that the pitching coaches knew, but it wasn’t common knowledge in the press box and in the newspapers like it is now. I think that starting pitchers felt as though they wanted to throw nine innings; the goal was to throw a complete game. Back then, I used to say that the biggest satisfaction I had was to complete a game that we won, and that was the mindset of guys who were embedded in a starting rotation. You were expected to take the game into the seventh, eighth or ninth innings, and if by performance or tiredness — if you were running out of gas — in came the closer. In our case, in Kansas City, it was Dan Quisenberry, who would go one-plus inning, two-plus innings, or just the ninth. It was the same around the league with guys like Gossage, Righetti, and the other closers in the age who were multiple-innings guys.

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The All-Star Game is about a month away, and the latest batch of voting results for the National League were released yesterday. If there are no changes, the NL will roll out the following team to begin the midsummer classic:

Catcher: Brian McCann
First Base: Albert Pujols
Second Base: Brandon Phillips
Shortstop: Troy Tulowitzki
Third Base: Placido Polanco
Left Field: Matt Holliday
Center Field: Ryan Braun
Right Field: Lance Berkman

That’s not a bad line-up, certainly. There are no egregious errors there (except for the hilarious defensive alignment of the outfield, but that’s the ballot’s fault), and you could make a good case for everyone listed above to deserve their spot on the roster. But my personal ballot would look a little bit different, and while I’m extolling the virtues of the starters, we might as well look at all the players who I think should be on the team this year.

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There was some grumbling in Milwaukee when Chris Capuano signed with the New York Mets. After all, the 32-year-old lefty was a popular Brewer who had just survived his second Tommy John surgery in order to put up 66 decent innings as a long man and sixth starter last year. In the end, though, the grumbling died down to a whimper, because there were two unassailable reasons that “Cappy” was allowed to walk. For one, the pitcher himself preferred the chance to make a major league rotation, a chance that the Brewers didn’t necessarily offer.

They didn’t offer that chance because they already had another, younger, Chris Capuano on hand: Chris Narveson.

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Over the course of his reign as White Sox Manager, Ozzie Guillen has made headlines by saying outrageous things to the media. This week may have been no different, as Guillen told the media Paul Konerko was a future Hall of Fame candidate. Since joining the White Sox in 1999, Konerko has been a force in the middle of the lineup on the South Side. Even though Konerko has churned out some strong seasons over that period, it seems laughable (if not insane) that he would one day be considered for the Hall of Fame. With that said, do Guillen’s comments actually hold weight or is this another example of Ozzie making headlines with his mouth?
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Padre Anthony Bass makes his major-league debut tonight.

This edition of One Night Only contains:

1. A serious-serious preview of tonight’s game between San Diego and Colorado.

2. Brief, but scintillating, previews of Arizona at Florida and Atlanta at Houston

3. Pitcher and Team NERD scores for every one of tonight’s games.

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This week saw the most movement to date, as all but eight teams slid up or down the rankings. There was still no movement at the top or the bottom, but while teams on the bottom are threatening to uncongeal, the Red Sox and Yankees are moving further and further from the pack. The two have been first or second in each iteration of the Power Rankings (you can see the first week, and methodology here), but where in previous versions the margins were narrow due to each team’s slow start, they have widened considerably as they have picked up the pace. Last week, Boston’s position players were more valuable as a unit than anyone else’s entire team. These differences are showing up in the rankings. The difference between second and third has expanded from 17-18 percentage points, to the 30-point range, to 40 points last week and 51 points this week. In third once again, the Phillies are sort of floating by themselves in what we’ll call tier 1A. Below Philly, we have roughly four more tiers of teams, with lines drawn in faint pencil after the Rays, White Sox and Padres. But just as in the past few weeks, teams are jumping a lot from week to week in both WAR% and rank, be it positively (Atlanta, Baltimore) or negatively (Toronto, Chicago Cubs), and we will likely see those lines redrawn each week for the forseeable future.

1. Boston: Last week – 1, WAR% – .639 (2), FAN% – .605 (1), TOTAL% – .619
Last week, I noted that the Red Sox were pretty much running on all cylinders. They haven’t lost since, putting together a perfect week that included their second sweep in the Bronx, and are now most definitely running on all cylinders.

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