Archive for Teams

Things to know before we proceed with this article about B.J. Upton:

(1) B.J. Upton is set to become a free agent after the end of this season, and he is newly 28 years old.

(2) Yesterday, in the last game of a series between the Rays and the Rangers, B.J. Upton slugged three home runs. They were his 19th, 20th, and 21st home runs of the year.

I was tricking you before — this article about B.J. Upton began with the word “Things”. Now let us move on to the rest of it!

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There was a handful of crucially important series over this past weekend, and among them was Dodgers vs. Giants in San Francisco. The Dodgers came in four and a half games behind the Giants for first place in the NL West, and they were looking to make up ground in a hurry. They emerged five and a half games behind the Giants for first place, and according to Cool Standings, the Dodgers’ playoff odds dropped from about 23 percent to about 22 percent. That isn’t a very powerful sentence, let’s try again. According to Cool Standings, the Dodgers’ odds of winning the division dropped from about 12 percent to about four percent. Yes, that’s much better.

Plenty of things happened in the three-game series between rivals, as tends to be the case when you’re talking about three games. Some of them were a lot more significant than others. At one point, on Sunday, Buster Posey hit a home run off of Joe Blanton. The home run meant little at the time, and it meant next to nothing in hindsight. Posey batted with the Giants up 3-0 in the sixth, and he put the Giants up 4-0. The Giants won 4-0, and Posey’s dinger had a win probability added of about three percent. In many of the game recaps, Posey’s homer was given just a passing mention.

Yet what I want to talk about here is Posey’s homer. It wasn’t the homer itself that was the most impressive homer, although it did fly out to straightaway center field. It was more about the process that led up to the homer. I’ll let Joe Blanton explain before I start to explain.

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Most people will remember the bad out call of Mark Teixeira by Jerry Meals from Saturday’s game against the Orioles. While Teixeira was obviously safe on replay, but perhaps the entire thing could have been avoided if Teixeira had simply run through the bag instead.

There have been a multitude of scientific studies on the merits of running through the bag or diving, including this recent one from ESPN’s Sports Science. The video is worth watching, but the conclusion is definite – running through the bag was 10 milliseconds faster on average than diving, and the difference can be significantly larger if the dive results in too much kinetic friction due to landing in the dirt too early. How good was Teixeira’s dive? Let’s take a look.

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On Friday night, Stephen Strasburg took the mound in Nationals Park for the last time in 2012. Since I live about six hours from DC and I hadn’t seen him pitch in person yet, I figured I shouldn’t pass up on the opportunity to see him for myself, so I made the drive up on Friday afternoon. As you’ve undoubtedly heard, Strasburg wasn’t particularly sharp on Friday, getting removed after throwing just three innings, and so the Nationals decided that Friday was his final start of the year, moving his shutdown up one start and ending his season at 159 1/3 innings.

It’s obviously a rather controversial decision, and I’ve advocated for the position of more aggressive usage, skipping starts and manipulating the off days to try and make him available for the postseason. Watching him struggle in his final start didn’t disuade me from believing in the merits of that kind of approach, and I do think that perhaps there were alternative ways of handling his workload that might have allowed him for pitch deeper into the season. However, the unavoidable reality of this situation is that everyone is dealing with a great quantity of unknown variables, and for any of us to say that one decision is distinctly better or worse than another is probably an on overestimation of our own knowledge.

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Last week, a number of chat questions about Kansas City Royals Bubba Starling earned me comparisons to ESPN’s Skip Bayless for statements perceived as outlandish. Yes, Starling was a top-5 overall pick in one of the deepest drafts in recent memory. Yes, he was a two sport athlete with the assumed ceiling of not only a big leaguer, but National Football League quarterback as well. And to complete the trifecta. the young centerfielder was drafted by his hometown team and grew up only a half hour outside of Kansas City. There’s a movie script here. Damn me for ruining the happy ending.

Video after the jump

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The Blue Jays acquisition of Colby Rasmus last season was considered a steal by many. Though the team surrendered five players in companion deals with the White Sox and Cardinals, Alex Anthopolous brought in a young, cost-controlled centerfielder for three relievers, a starter that was never really meant for them in the first place, and Mark Teahen’s contract. Rasmus was worth the risk as a change-of-scenery candidate, as he had proven himself productive in spite of well-publicized spats with his manager.

However, since joining the Jays last summer, Rasmus has failed to live up to the production standards he set with the Cardinals, and he has realistically been one of the least productive players in that span. Over the last two calendar years, Rasmus has the 13th-lowest wOBA, 14th-lowest wRC+, and 18th-lowest WAR out of the 115 qualified players.

Which is why the Blue Jays supposed focus on negotiating a contract extension isn’t immediately regarded as a given, an obvious move for a team taking important steps towards winning baseball’s toughest division. The Jays have been fiscally responsible in the Anthopolous era and have locked up a number of core players recently. Richard Griffin is reporting that Rasmus is on deck in this regard, and it seems that many within the organization value his contributions. It’s just tough to determine what those contributions are, as Rasmus hasn’t hit well, hasn’t fielded well, and with four years of service time under his belt at the end of this season, he isn’t likely to come cheap anymore.

Keeping Rasmus around for another couple of seasons is a decision with some merit, for sure, but the Jays need to be careful here. Rasmus hasn’t shown any true sign of turning the corner or improving his productivity, and he simply isn’t the same player that topped 4 WAR with the 2010 Cardinals.

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Wednesday, we all thought at the time, was the worst day. Wednesday, during a start against the Angels, Brandon McCarthy was hit in the head by a line-drive comebacker. Though McCarthy managed to turn his head away before impact, all that did was spare his face; a line drive still struck him in the skull, and McCarthy went down to the ground, hitting his head. It’s just a nightmarish sight every time that this happens, and McCarthy, of course, was removed from the game. But he walked off under his own power, and immediate reports were positive. It sounded like McCarthy had avoided serious injury.

Thursday was the actual worst day, for the public. Thursday, we all found out that, Wednesday night, McCarthy had undergone two hours of brain surgery. The terms were chilling: epidural hemorrhage, skull fracture, brain contusion. Really, “brain surgery” was sufficient. Doctors needed to go through McCarthy’s skull to relieve pressure on his brain, pressure that could’ve killed him if left untreated long enough. Wednesday brought the incident, but Thursday brought the grisly details.

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Life has not been good for Red Sox fans the past couple of months. Misery seems to follow manager Bobby Valentine. No matter what descriptor you choose to use, it hasn’t been pretty. And while the year is approaching historically awful territory for the franchise, it isn’t quite there yet, as there have been five other modern Red Sox seasons that were worse. What’s more, “historically awful” has a different meaning for the Red Sox than it does for other franchises.

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We’ve reached Threat Level Midnight. With last night’s victory over the Yankees, the Orioles are now tied with New York American League East lead. Whatever one makes of the Orioles’ chances, this is surprising for pretty much anyone who made a serious attempt at being objective prior to the season. When is the last time a team coming off of a sub-70-win season that got their old GM fired could turn around and parley (among other things) a couple of good pitchers, a breakout performance from an young outfielder, some “luck” with respect to their run differential, and Joe Saunders into a (potential) divisional championship?

Actually, as you may have guessed already, something very similar happened last year in Arizona.

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It was a really big deal when, on Tuesday, the Orioles beat the Blue Jays and the Yankees lost to the Rays, causing a tie atop the AL East standings. Just weeks earlier, the Yankees had had a ten-game advantage, and losing that kind of edge — to the Orioles! — was unimaginable. Then, Wednesday, the Orioles lost to the Blue Jays and the Yankees beat the Rays, restoring for New York a slim lead. So it was a really big deal when, on Thursday, the Orioles beat the Yankees in Baltimore in a series opener, tying the division once more. The Orioles clearly aren’t going to go away, and while we can’t actually know that, it sounds good, and it gets people amped for the stretch run.

Those who didn’t follow along will see that the Orioles beat the Yankees 10-6. In so doing, the Orioles slugged a half-dozen home runs, and remember that the game was not played in Yankee Stadium. Those who have taken a closer look, or those who watched, will see that the Orioles pulled ahead in the bottom of the eighth after the Yankees staged a massive rally in the upper half. A 6-1 game turned into a 6-6 game, which turned into a 10-6 game. After the Yankees tied it up, they probably felt good about handing the ball to David Robertson. Minutes later, they felt a lot worse.

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