Archive for Teams

There’s a thing about rain-outs. Actually, there are two things.

1. They suck.
2. In theory, they should offer neither team an advantage.

The first one’s pretty evident. Where once there was supposed to be baseball, now there is no baseball, thanks to the rain, and that sucks. The second one seems pretty evident as well. Instead of there being baseball between two teams on one day, there will be baseball between the two teams the next day, with each team having been identically inconvenienced. But the reality is that the inconveniences aren’t always identical, and that’s what we observe in the ALCS between the Tigers and the Yankees. Rain delayed Game 4 by a day — so far, at least — and this has without question worked out in the Tigers’ favor.

Read the rest of this entry »

This post isn’t really about Joe Girardi, even though his name is in the headline and his decisions from yesterday are the inspiration for this post. It’s about Girardi in that he’s a human being, but it’s not about Girardi as a specific human being, because — as I think the results of the poll I put up last night show — there are a lot of people who would have made the same decisions he did. Because, just like the rest of us, Joe Girardi’s decision making process was formed long before he ever played or managed a single baseball game.

At the risk of generalizing, I’d imagine that most of us had parents who let us try things that they knew weren’t going to end particularly well because we’d learn from the pain we were about to bring upon ourselves. Whether it was pulling the cat’s tail or biting into that delicious looking lemon on the table, they would warn us that it wasn’t in our best interests, but knew that we had to experience the results for ourselves to know that it was something we really wanted to do. And, for many of these experiences, we only had to do it once before we realized that we never wanted to do it again.

We learn how to think in a predictable environment. Punch your brother? Go to your room. Eat your vegetables? Have some ice cream. The actions we take as kids almost always have positive or negative rewards that are designed to teach us what kinds of actions we prefer. As a culture, we teach children that every action comes with consequences, and that they can predict what those consequences will be based on what happened the last time they performed that action. You can describe a lot of parenting as predictable repetition.

That training is extremely effective for most things in life, because many of the decisions we face follow this kind of cause/effect relationship. Most of the time, you can effectively judge what the consequence of an action will be based on your own personal experience of what happened the last time you did that same thing. Unfortunately, that decision making process — the one that works really well in life as a whole — is a miserable failure in baseball.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Oakland Athletics want a new ballpark. The team’s current home, the O.co Coliseum, is the only multi-sport stadium in use in Major League Baseball. The A’s share the Coliseum with the Oakland Raiders; in August, September and October, that often means football lines across the baseball field and diamond dirt on the gridiron. The conditions aren’t optimum for either team.

The Coliseum is also the fifth-oldest ballpark in the majors: only Fenway Park, Wrigley Field, Dodger Stadium and Angels Stadium are older. It opened for football in 1966 and for baseball in 1968, when the A’s moved west from Kansas City. Renovations in 1995 — when the Raiders moved back to Oakland from Los Angeles — favored football conditions at the expense of baseball. The most egregious example, of course, was the erection of Mt. Davis where the open outfield vistas once stood. Click here for photos of the Coliseum before and after Mt. Davis.

A’s owner Lew Wolff says the team needs a new ballpark to stay financially competitive with other teams in the league. Wolff has said the Coliseum simply lacks the kind of technology, amenities and corporate sponsorships common in most — if not all — other major-league ballparks. Earlier this month, Wolff told CNBC that a new ballpark could generate $100 million in additional revenue for the A’s. The details behind that figure aren’t clear; in particular, we don’t know how much of that additional revenue is expected to come from ticket sales, concession sales, merchandise sales, advertising and corporate sponsorships.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday morning, Eddie Yost, also know as “The Walking Man,” passed away at 86. Yost had a long career as a third baseman from 1944 to 1962, mostly with the Washington Senators. He also spent a couple of years playing for the Tigers before being selected in the pre-1961 expansion draft by the Angels and spending his final two seasons there. After he retired as a player, Yost coached in Washington, then with the Mets during the “Miracle Mets” era. His last coaching job was as third base coach for the Red Sox from 1977 to 1984. Of more interest for those reading this blog is how many walks Yost drew despite having little power. Now if we could just solve the mystery of his nickname. Oh wait, I’ve got it:0 the local scribe was a big fan of Giacometti.

Read the rest of this entry »

“You labored, it wasn’t a typical Justin Verlander game.”

That was TBS’s Craig Sager, just after Phil Coke made Justin Verlander’s Game 3 performance officially stand up: 8.1 innings, three hits, no walks, just one run.

It’s not good enough for Justin Verlander. Justin Verlander only struck out three Yankees; never mind that the Tigers’ ace held the New York Yankees to one run over 8.1 innings in Game 3 of the ALCS, we bolt to attention because he didn’t record enough strikeouts.

This is Justin Verlander’s level.

Read the rest of this entry »

After Game 3 Tuesday night, the Yankees find themselves behind three games to zero games in the ALCS, one game away from there being no games anymore. What a 3-0 series suggests is domination, and that hasn’t been the case — all three games have been close, with the Tigers just squeaking by. Yet the Yankees have without question been outplayed, and now they can’t lose again. It’s not a surprise they wound up here, since they were behind two games to none before facing Justin Verlander, but one doesn’t typically associate the Yankees with desperation, and this situation is desperate.

What’s interesting is that, while the Yankees faced long odds going up against Verlander on Tuesday, one could argue that plenty of things broke in their favor. It was a cold night, with the wind blowing in, and that helped to even the playing field, since the Verlander run environment couldn’t be reduced by as much as the Yankees pitchers’ run environment. The Yankees pitchers themselves allowed just two runs in eight innings, giving the offense a real chance. Verlander didn’t look like his overpowering self, single run and three hits aside; he tied a season-low for strikeouts with three, and on a handful or two of occasions Verlander left a hittable pitch over the plate that the Yankees didn’t drill. And then at the very end, the Yankees made their final out with the tying run on second and the go-ahead run on first.

Read the rest of this entry »

The New York Yankees find themselves in the unenviable position of trailing the Detroit Tigers two games to zero in the ALCS, having given away home-field advantage. The Yankees do have the consolation of not yet having lost with ace CC Sabathia, who could still make two starts. But then, the Yankees have the anti-consolation of not yet having lost to Justin Verlander, who could still make two starts. It’s Verlander who’s taking the hill Tuesday night, as the Tigers look to take a truly commanding lead in the best-of-seven.

The Yankees have struggled to hit in the playoffs so far, and they’ve struggled to hit against a bunch of pitchers who aren’t the best starting pitcher in the world. I don’t need to tell you that Justin Verlander is a little excellent. On top of that, he’ll be pitching Tuesday night at home, against a struggling lineup, on a cool October evening that should only depress offense even further. Tigers fans couldn’t possibly be happier with the way things are set up. Yankees fans, therefore, couldn’t possibly be less happy.

Read the rest of this entry »

The playoff version of Matt Cain hasn’t much resembled the regular season Matt Cain.

For the fourth straight season, Cain browbeat opposing National League batters and is a very big reason why the San Francisco Giants are back in the playoffs. In fact, you could argue that 2012 was his very best performance of his eight year career.

Cain posted a career low ERA and WHIP at 2.79 and 1.04, respectively. His 22% strikeout rate was the highest of his career and his 5.8% walk rate the lowest of his career. Despite Cain continuing to be the poster boy for pitchers that confound FIP (highest NL FDP, in fact), it appeared that he had taken a measurable step forward in a number of critical areas and at least made a questionable off-season contract extension not look so bad.

But so far in the postseason, Cain has had underwhelming results. It might have a lot to do with his slider.

Read the rest of this entry »

Chris Carpenter did not have a good game on Monday. He only struck out one batter in four innings, and though he only allowed two earned runs in his four innings, he did surrender eight baserunners and five runs in the loss that evened the National League Championship Series. By the time it was done, the announcers had his fastball diving three-plus miles per hour off its normal pace, and the twittersphere was contemplating which delicious young prospect should come out of the St. Louis pen to start over Carpenter the next time he was due on the hill.

Maybe the eulogies came a little early?

Read the rest of this entry »

The Detroit Tigers won 88 games in the regular season, tied for the least of all the playoff teams, and good for seventh in the American League. They advanced despite winning fewer games than both the Angels and the Rays. Based only on that, you’d assume that the Tigers are a team with vulnerabilities, and indeed, vulnerabilities they’ve got. Infield defense is a known weakness, although so far in the playoffs Jhonny Peralta has decided to just play all positions at the same time. And then there’s the bullpen. There’s a lot of chatter these days about the Detroit Tigers’ bullpen.

And there’s chatter for a reason. In Game 2 of the ALDS against the A’s, the Tigers’ bullpen gave away a late lead. In Game 4 of the ALDS, the bullpen did the same thing. In Game 1 of the ALCS, a 4-0 lead in the ninth turned into a 4-4 tie in the tenth. The Tigers, clearly, have survived, winning their first series and winning the first two games of their second, but now there’s a lot of distrust. There’s a lot of pressure on the Tigers’ starters, because people are wary of the relievers behind them.

Read the rest of this entry »