Ernesto Frieri was a bright spot for a Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim team that fell short of expectations. The 27-year-old right-hander stepped into the closer role after being acquired in a May 3 trade with San Diego Padres. In 56 games, he had 23 saves, a 2.32 ERA and a 13.3 K/9. He also didn’t allow a hit in his first 13 innings in an Angels uniform.

Frieri talked about his journey from South America to big-league stardom during a late-summer visit to Fenway Park.

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Frieri: “I come from Colombia and the number one sport there is soccer. We don’t play baseball in all of the country. We only play it in four or five main cities, on the coast of Colombia. I’m from Cartagena, the same city as Orlando Cabrera. Cartagena is a bigger city for baseball. The best baseball players come from there. Edgar Renteria is from Barranquilla, which is two hours from Cartagena.

“Why I got in love with baseball is because my family are baseball fans. It was also hard for me to get any opportunity in soccer, because everybody played soccer and if you are going to play you have to be really good. That’s why I stopped practicing soccer.

“I got in love with baseball when I was 12 years old. I was watching the 1997 World Series — the Marlins against the Indians — and Edgar Renteria was playing for the Marlins. It was Game 7, the bases were loaded with two out, and Edgar Renteria was at bat. He got the base hit to win the World Series. I see my family jumping around and the everybody was talking about it. Edgar Renteria was all the news. Everybody was excited and happy about what he did, and I was like, ‘Wow! I like baseball now. I want to practice baseball and be like Edgar Renteria. I want to make it to the big leagues and make my family feel proud of me.’ Now, here I am, playing the best baseball in the world.

“At that time, my grandma made tamales. This is going to sound like crazy, but my grandma was making tamales and she made it with corn. Read the rest of this entry »

The Toronto Blue Jays got a good defensive shortstop when they acquired Mike Aviles from the Red Sox as compensation for John Farrell. The 31-year-old came into the 2012 season with a utility-man reputation, having played nearly as many games at second base and more than a handful at the hot corner. Thanks to regular playing time at his best position, that has changed. To the surprise of many, hr was one of the best defensive shortstops in the American League this season.

Aviles talked about his defensive game in the final week of the Red Sox season.

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Aviles on playing shortstop: “Starting from high school on, I’ve played short. It’s been a position that’s come rather naturally for me, compared to the other positions I’ve played.

“Everybody has their own opinions, but I feel that I’m a pretty solid shortstop. I may not win any Gold Gloves, and you may not hear about me on ESPN, or see me do all kinds of crazy plays, but I can do the job. My main focus is to just get the out. I want to make the plays and have the respect of my teammates and coaches. That’s all I’m really concerned about. I don’t need a lot of attention.”

On metrics showing that he‘s a good defensive shortstops: “I do like hearing that. It makes me feel proud of all the work I’ve done, because I know I’ve had a rep of not being the best defensively. Read the rest of this entry »

When I walked into the Comerica Park press box this morning, the first person I encountered was longtime Detroit Free Press baseball scribe John Lowe. I asked him who the series MVP has been thus far. His response was, “How about Phil Coke?”

Lowe went on to note that Delmon Young had driven in the go-ahead run in all three contests [which he proceeded to do again in Game 4], but his initial suggestion is in accord with my opinion. The Detroit bullpen has been in disarray, and Coke stepped up to save the day. Following a Game 1 hold that preceded Jose Valverde’s implosion, he shut the door in the next two and was on the mound for the final six outs of Game 4. The slider he threw to Raul Ibanez on Tuesday night may be the most important pitch of the Tigers season.

Read the rest of this entry »

On Oct. 30, 2001, the New York Yankees hosted the Arizona Diamondbacks in the third game of a World Series played just seven weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Left-hander Brian Anderson was on the mound for the D-Backs. Derek Jeter batted second in the Yankees lineup.

Eleven years later, Anderson, who finished his career with 82 wins, does color commentary and play-by-play. Jeter remains a marquee player, although he suffered a broken ankle on Saturday, shortly after recording his 200th post-season hit.

Not surprisingly, Jeter was a primary focus for Anderson when he took the mound. The Yankees shortstop went 1-for-3 against his slants, and his team won the game 2-1. Arizona went on to win the Series in seven games.

Anderson talked about his game plan against Jeter — and what happened in each at bat — earlier this season.

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Anderson on the game plan: “I had faced Jeter a number of times and everybody knows he has the good inside-out swing. He’s a guy that if you stay away, stay away, stay away — even if you’re changing speeds — he’ll shoot you. He’s happy to take his hits to right field. Everybody knows that. Then, if you’re going to come in on him, you really have to get it in there.

“A lot of times, you try to get him leaning, looking to go the other way, and then try to jam him. Sometimes that’s difficult, especially if you don’t execute the pitch properly. He had such a good inside-out swing that if the ball stayed middle-in, he could kind of fight it off and push it. He’d get those little bloop hits out into right field. Read the rest of this entry »

When Dave Cameron recently wrote about Yadier Molina’s MVP-quality season, he included a chart that listed the best catcher seasons in baseball history. It was based on wRC+ and the name on the top of the list probably came as a surprise to many. It was Joe Torre.

The legendary manager, and current MLB executive, was an outstanding player from 1960 to 1977. Spending the bulk of his career with the Braves and Cardinals, he hit .297/.365/.452, with 252 home runs and was a perennial All-Star. He won a batting title, an MVP award and a Gold Glove. None of them came in the season he posted the record wRC+.

Torre was at Comerica Park for last weekend’s Tigers-A’s series. Prior to Game One, he took a few minutes to talk about Molina and his own days behind the dish.

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Joe Torre: “I’m a little biased, but catchers get overlooked a lot. I know, from having been a manager, how much we rely on a catcher. There is so much more responsibility associated with what he does. When I played, if I went hitless in a game that I caught, and we won, I felt that I was useful. I also played a lot of first base. [In St. Louis] we had Tim McCarver and Ted Simmons, so they played me there to keep me in the lineup.

“I felt that I was a solid catcher. I had good hands; I could catch the ball and get rid of it. Del Crandall taught me how to get rid of it quickly. I didn’t have a Johnny Bench arm. Read the rest of this entry »

It was an eventful weekend in Detroit. The Tigers won the first two games of their ALDS match-up with the Oakland A’s, and the manner in which they did so was pure theater. A lot happened at Comerica Park between six p.m. Saturday and 3:30 p.m. Sunday. Some of it was predictable — Miguel Cabrera and Justin Verlander showed why they’re leading candidates to capture the MVP and Cy Young — but much of it was downright remarkable. Here are looks at five of the notable storylines.

THE KISS

“It was just emotion. I was happy. When you do something good, you feel happy.” — Al Alburquerque

By now, everyone knows that 26-year-old Tigers’ reliever Al Alburquerque planted a kiss on the baseball before under-handing it to first base to end the top half of a pressure-packed ninth inning. It was a key play in a wild-and-wacky Game Two and opinions are mixed on whether his actions were a case of innocent, youthful exuberance or just as under-handed as his toss.

Not surprisingly, reactions followed party lines. Asked about it after the game, Gerald Laird said “He’s just young and was excited. He didn’t mean anything by it.” Phil Coke’s response was, “I don’t think it’s something that should be viewed as somebody getting showed up. I didn’t think that at all.” Another teammate, Max Scherzer, said, “He’s on a different planet sometimes. I think that’s evident, with him kissing a ball during a game, during the playoffs. It’s just his personality.”

The opposition saw it differently. Read the rest of this entry »

LaTroy Hawkins might have pitched in his last big-league game. The right-hander was effective out of the Los Angeles Angels bullpen this season — with a 3.64 ERA in 48 appearances — but he isn‘t getting any younger. A veteran of 871 games in 18 major league seasons, he’ll celebrate his 40th birthday in December.

Drafted out of a Gary, Ind., high school by the Twins, in 1991, Hawkins spent nine years in a Minnesota uniform and has since played for eight other teams. He has never been a star, but he does have 65 wins and 88 saves during his career. Whether he’ll add to those totals will remain to be seen, but it’s been a long  journey.

Hawkins talked about the evolution of his career during an August visit to Fenway Park.

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Hawkins on his early evolution as a pitcher: “When I broke into pro ball, I threw a fastball and a slurve, which was a high school pitch I had learned. My pitching coach got rid of it the first week I was in professional baseball. He turned it into a real slider. I didn’t have much command of it, but he told me that I would over time. He said that if I kept practicing it, it would get better. He always told me that. In high school, I threw a one finger up. I had one finger on the ball — one pitching finger on the ball — but I think the bigger change was maturity.

“Over the next couple of years, I got bigger and stronger and was pitching on a full-time basis. I was pitching from spring training until October. I had only pitched a little bit in high school and a little bit in the summertime. I never had any extensive time on the mound, or instruction. Actually, I didn’t have any instruction. The first time I ever had a pitching coach was in professional baseball. Read the rest of this entry »

Francisco Lindor is the Cleveland Indians’ shortstop of the future and the top prospect in the system. At the age of 18, he also likely several years away from the big leagues. Drafted eighth overall in 2011, the switch-hitting native of Puerto Rico spent the season with low-A Lake County where he hit .257/.352/.355. An outstanding defensive infielder, he is rated by Baseball America as the game’s 14th-best prospect. Lindor talked about his development — on both sides of the ball — in early August.

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David Laurila: Scouts speak highly of your defense.

Francisco Lindor: I’m proud of that and pretty confident about my defensive game. I work hard on it and take great pride in it. I try to get better every day. I come out here and get my ground balls and double plays. It’s been a big part of my game since I was little, and it will be for the rest of my career.

DL: How much of defensive ability is instinctual?

FL: You need to have the instincts to play shortstop, because you have to anticipate all the time. You also have to prepare yourself. You have to anticipate and prepare yourself for what will happen next. It’s a big combination of both.

[Reading a hitter] depends on the swing and how we’re working him, whether we’re working him inside or away, or with off-speed pitches. You have to know. You have to be alert on every pitch — where the catcher is and where [the pitcher] is going to throw — and you also have to know the player’s swing. And on two strikes, they change their swing, sometimes. You have to read that. You have to think, and anticipate what he’s trying to do, whether he wants to move the runner from second to third or hit something in the gap — drive it. You have to anticipate and know the game.

DL: Do you position yourself or is that the responsibility of the coaching staff?

FL: I kind of know the hitters here, from playing against them all year, so I pretty much locate myself. Read the rest of this entry »

This interview was conducted in July, and originally ran on the site then – it is being re-posted now that Porter has been hired to be the manager of the Houston Astros.

Bo Porter is in his second season as the Washington Nationals third base coach. It might be his last. The 40-year-old has already been considered for a couple big-league managerial positions, and that opportunity is likely to come again this winter. Highly regarded for his leadership skills, Porter has a degree in communications studies from the University of Iowa, where he was All-Big 10 in two sports.

Porter talked about the approach he’d bring to the manager’s job — and his willingness to go against conventional wisdom — when the Nationals visited Fenway Park in June.

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Porter on defensive positioning and shifts: “It all starts with the guy you have on the mound. Based on your pitcher and the hitter’s history, you factor in the probability of the ball being hit to a particular area of the field. You always have to defend that area first, and go from there.

‘Sometimes managers don’t shift because they don’t want to give up a portion of the field. But why not give up a portion of the field if the probability of the ball being hit there is one percent?

“I think my football background has a lot to do with my approach to the game and my thought process. As coach Fry would say, ‘You have to scratch where it itches.’ Playing football for Hayden Fry at the University of Iowa, you learned that if someone shows you something that you can take advantage of — whether it’s conventional or not — you’re doing your team an injustice by not taking advantage of it.”

On lineup construction: Read the rest of this entry »

Albert Almora is both young and extremely talented. The 18-year-old outfielder was taken sixth overall in this year’s amateur draft, and upon signing became one of the top prospects in the Chicago Cubs system. A right-handed hitting outfielder, he hit .321 between rookie ball and low-A Boise. Showing his inexperience, he logged 15 extra-base hits but walked just twice in 123 plate appearances. Almora, who is lauded by scouts for his instincts and work ethic, talked about his introduction to professional baseball during the final week of the minor-league season.

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Almora on instincts and learning the game: “A lot of my instincts come from having played the game all my life. I’ve played since I was three or four years old. I’ve been fortunate to have a lot of smart people, and a lot of good players, come by. They’ve given me a lot of hints and worked with me on my game. I’ve been really lucky that way.

“The first thing you have to do is respect the game. That’s first and foremost. A big piece of advice has been that things aren’t always going to be the way you want them to end up. You just have to play the game 100 percent at all times, because you can’t control the rest.”

On studying the opposing pitcher: “We have video here and watch it constantly, every day. I have an iPad Read the rest of this entry »