Aroldis Chapman threw 105 mph. I'd think that would be sufficient to fill the stands in Cincinnati.

Angels thoughts:

Torii Hunter has 9 SB and 12 CS. Not sure if he's going for some sort of awful record.

Scott Kazmir became the worst pitcher when? And why?

philliesphhan wrote:
Scott Kazmir became the worst pitcher when? And why?

injuries

JoePoz is amazing. I wish I could write 1/10th as compellingly.

phdave wrote:

I never found that quote from Polanco about refusing to play third base. But I'll keep searching. I'm sure it's down there somewhere, let me take another look.

thanks for checking. if i had access i would have done it myself. i found all those article titles, but couldn't open them.

if there is an incrimating quote, it's supposedly from the courier-post, according to a 3/20/2005 citizen's blog post which rips polanco based on what he supposedly said. however, i suspect that it's only what we've already seen. polanco was understandably unhappy with the way things worked out, as too was manuel.

that kind of thing is eternally held against a player by the crank fans who hate any player who doesn't smile and kiss the behind of every philly fan daily out of thanks for being able to play in philly no matter what. no player may never, ever, ever dare to complain because they are being paid money to play baseball and that means that complaining violates some kind of sport-related class warfare rule. something along the lines of: i pay for tickets and beer, and you get paid with that money to do something i wish i could do, so you must give up human emotion and be a happy robot or you are deserving of hate and scorn.

and, yes, i resent the philly fan bashing by the national media as much as the next person, because i know that all towns have their own collection of such fans. but it sure is nice that they mostly stay away from this board, and it sure is irritating when one shows up.

philliesphhan wrote:Angels thoughts:

Torii Hunter has 9 SB and 12 CS. Not sure if he's going for some sort of awful record.

One year (2000?) Jose Offerman had 0 SB, 8 CS. My main fantasy league uses SB-CS instead of SB, so his owner was quite displeased.

jerseyhoya wrote:JoePoz is amazing. I wish I could write 1/10th as compellingly.

That really is a wonderful article.

Swiggers wrote:

philliesphhan wrote:Angels thoughts:

Torii Hunter has 9 SB and 12 CS. Not sure if he's going for some sort of awful record.

One year (2000?) Jose Offerman had 0 SB, 8 CS. My main fantasy league uses SB-CS instead of SB, so his owner was quite displeased.

In 1976 Duane Kuiper stole 10 bases and was caught 17 times. I'm not sure this is even a particularly outrageous example of base stealing futility. It's only been recently that folks have paid really close attention to caught stealing.

The reason I know about Kuiper is because one of the first Bill James articles I ever read was his article on how terrible a ball player Kuiper was and he used his stolen base inability as one of his exhibits (Kuiper stole 52 bases in his career and was caught 71 times). People thought Kuiper was pretty good because he was a shortstop and he sometimes hit .280, which was an unusually high average at the time for a shortstop.

The article was a real eye opener. (Kuiper very famously only hit one home run in his career and had a career slugging percentage of .316).

Hunter's line is very old schoolish. There used to be lots of guys with lines like that. In the olden days a "good" base stealer was a guy who stole a lot of bases. They didn't even keep track of caught stealing for many years. I don't know if Bill James was the first guy to study caught stealing and to realize how much damage they did to your offense. But after reading his study on the issue, it was certainly the first time I had thought of it. I don't think I was alone.

One of the early "greatest base stealers of all time" was, of course, Ty Cobb. The year he stole 96 to set the modern record, he was caught 38 times. The year Rickey Henderson stole 130 bags, he was caught 42 times.

jerseyhoya wrote:JoePoz is amazing. I wish I could write 1/10th as compellingly.

Eh, I usually like Joe Pos, but I found this one particularly uncompelling in its second half. What he says about Nolan Ryan is interesting. What he says about Ichiro? Not so much.

On Ryan, it basically boils down to this: Ryan pitched for the strikeout, and he got it more often than anyone else. This means he also threw a lot of pitches out of the strike zone, which means he walked more guys than anyone else and threw more wild pitches than anyone else. These three things combined - the strikeouts, walks, and wild pitches - meant he was difficult to hit, but all of it put together results in a less-good pitcher than you might expect, given the raw strike out total and H/9 numbers. Interesting.

But I think the flaw with the Ichiro part of the article is that he starts from a false assumption: he seems to assume that we (i.e., the readers, baseball fans, etc.) assume that since Ichiro gets a lot of hits, he must be among the greatest "offensive forces" in baseball. Posnanski doesn't bother to deny that Ichiro IS in fact "one of the greatest hitters in baseball history" (a term which he interprets in the strictest sense). More, while Posnanski begins his Ryan segment with some very compelling numbers demonstrating the weakness in Ryan's approach, showing Ryan's overall walk rate - 4.63/9!!!!!!!!! - and how far out in front he is over the second-place guy (Carlton), what are supposed to be analogous arguments with Ichiro aren't really at all. Ichiro ISN'T the all-time leader in "rate of singles," or even second or third. And, more to the point, leading in "rate of singles" isn't like leading in walk rate. Singles may not be home runs, but they still help the team, particularly when you consider Ichiro's marvellous base-stealing/base-running abilities.

So what's his point about Ichiro? It seems to be, "He's no Albert Pujols."

Well who the fuck is?

I thought his comment that Ichiro is a first ballot Hall-of-Famer was a bit of a cop out. His argument is easy to follow, that Ichiro is great at one skill (hitting singles) but that's he's not as valuable as he appears. He usually finishes outside the TOP 50 in batting runs each year, basically informing us that his offense is vastly overrated by looking at his hit totals. But then why is he Hall worthy? He just says "Oh he's great at defense and baserunning." Well, here's a bunch of OFs from this era who are on the same level or better: Carlos Beltran, Manny Ramirez, Barry Bonds, Carl Crawford, Brian Giles, Lance Berkman, Jim Edmonds, Bobby Abreu, Vlad Guerrero, Andruw Jones, Gary Sheffield. There's also Grady Sizemore and Matt Holliday who in a few years, will likely surpass what Ichiro has done. I just wish he hasn't thrown that line out there. It's a classic qualifier in these types of articles... "I absolutely love X player, and think he should have been MVP in year 20XX and is a Hall of Famer, but... "

He is what we thought he is.

Complete broadcast of game 7 from 1960 World Series found

This is pretty awesome and I look forward to this December.

Polar Bear Phan wrote:Complete broadcast of game 7 from 1960 World Series found

This is pretty awesome and I look forward to this December.

Already posted, but still just as exciting.

Rangers sign a THREE BILLION DOLLAR DEAL with Fox for TV rights.

$3 BILLION

http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/the-r ... v-deal.php

I guess they'll be keeping Cliff Lee

The Eeming Tree wrote:Rangers sign a THREE BILLION DOLLAR DEAL with Fox for TV rights.

$3 BILLION

http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/the-r ... v-deal.php

It would be interested to know how that is structured as I doubt the $3 billion is spread out evenly over two decades.

what the fuck. holy shit. this is like the inverse of the A-Rod contract

So uh, when is the Phils' TV deal up?

I bet in 20 years, the average annual MLB TV contract will be worth over $150million.

If I ran the Rangers, now that I have 150 million guaranteed, I'd go with a league minimum payroll and profit.

Well yeah, what with EARTH SHATTERING INFLATION OBAMA HITLER TAXES HEALTHCARE SOCIALISM IMMIGRATION JOEY VENTO BANKRUPTING THE FUTURE and all