thephan wrote:

Trent Steele wrote:Tiger Stadium had fallen into a complete state of disrepair (maybe even structural issues from neglect). Detroit isn't exactly flowing with money to fund upkeep.

I went to a game in the last season. The park was in disrepair then. I thought that someone/some organization would step up to preserve it for its historical significance. I am not sure if anything is there today other then another empty lot in a series of empty lots.

There are currently no plans for redevelopment at the site. However, Tiger Stadium's actual playing field remains at the corner where the stadium once stood. Since the spring of 2010, a volunteer group known as the Navin Field Grounds Crew--composed of Tiger Stadium fans, preservationists, and Corktown residents--has restored and maintained the field.

In Spring of 2011, Detroit Free Press reported that Motor City Blight Busters volunteers cut the grass, removed trash and prepped the ballfield for play.

mrittenhouse84 wrote:Padres Designate Jorge Cantu For Assignment

Pittsburgh police say a man attacked the wife of Pirates catcher Chris Snyder in a traffic dispute while Snyder sat in the car, unable to get out because he'd had back surgery.

Investigators say Carla Snyder and the scooter-riding man, Subhash Arjanbhi Modhwadia, nearly collided Wednesday. The 44-year-old Modhwadia followed her to a gas station, kicked the vehicle and swung at Carla Snyder. Authorities say he ripped a mirror off the car.

A passer-by and an off-duty police officer subdued him. Police say Modhwadia bit the bystander and threw punches with keys between his fingers.

Police say the Snyders' two children were in the car.

Modhwadia is being held on $25,000 bail.

A Pirates spokesman tells the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette the team is thankful bystanders stepped in to keep the family from harm.

joe table wrote:So the Brewers are looking pretty solid. I think their top 3 starters are as good as any non-Phils NL staff. Their lineup is one of the best in the NL just on the force of its 4 good to great hitters (although McGehehehehe is having a horrid year so far). Their pen does blow, they're probably going to look to add some help. I think they're as good and maybe a bit better than the Barves though

Doug Drabek didn’t become an excellent pitcher until a few years after his debut, but he was league-average from the get-go, which is more than his son can say after washing out of the AL East this season. Drabek looked fine in three September starts for Toronto in 2010, but he lost the strike zone in 2011, leading the league in walks and sporting a sub-1.00 strikeout-to-walk ratio. It’s become clear that Drabek isn’t going to be a wizard at whiffing batters, despite his filthy stuff and expectations of acehood (he entered the season as the most talented of Toronto’s top 11), so it’s imperative that he avoid putting them on, something he couldn't do after making the club out of spring training.

In January, Kevin Goldstein indicated that Drabek had put some earlier makeup concerns behind him, but the righty seemed to unravel when faced with his failings on the mound once the season started, making emotional displays in the field and post-game comments in the clubhouse that raised red flags for the Blue Jays’ brass. He’ll have ample opportunities to confront failure in Las Vegas, even if he stays away from the casinos, since Toronto’s Triple-A environment is a punishing environment for pitchers.

BigEd76 wrote:

Pittsburgh police say a man attacked the wife of Pirates catcher Chris Snyder in a traffic dispute while Snyder sat in the car, unable to get out because he'd had back surgery.

Investigators say Carla Snyder and the scooter-riding man, Subhash Arjanbhi Modhwadia, nearly collided Wednesday. The 44-year-old Modhwadia followed her to a gas station, kicked the vehicle and swung at Carla Snyder. Authorities say he ripped a mirror off the car.

A passer-by and an off-duty police officer subdued him. Police say Modhwadia bit the bystander and threw punches with keys between his fingers.

Police say the Snyders' two children were in the car.

Modhwadia is being held on $25,000 bail.

A Pirates spokesman tells the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette the team is thankful bystanders stepped in to keep the family from harm.

Hi Bill. Zack Greinke has a 11.8 K/BB ratio, yet his ERA is 5.23. It's early, but this strikes me as odd. Is this just a sample size thing, as K/BB ratio often indicates future success?
Asked by: Anonymous
Answered: June 17, 2011

Yeah, it's two things. . .it's sample size, and it suggests that he may be having some trouble with that changeup. Greinke, you know, changes speeds extremely effectively; he'll mix in a 58-MPH curve with a 96-MPH fastball and a 90-MPH slider, it's one of the things that makes him effective.

When a pitcher has a good strikeout/walk ratio but is getting bad results, that's almost always a changeup. The reason for this is that the changeup is the one pitch that gets both strikeouts and hard contact--strikeouts, if the batter doesn't read it, and hard contact if he does. When Greinke had the bad year in 2005 he wound up almost entirely ditching the change for a year, and launched his comeback just working with his hard stuff. Then, when he got back on track, he gradually brought back the change. I SUSPECT, although I haven't seen him pitch this year, but I suspect he may be having some issues with batters reading the change again.

I just spent the last hour looking at old pitchers on YouTube. They all had huge windups, with the glove going over and behind the head, followed by a big leg kick. Marichal actually got his leg up HIGHER than his head. When and why did these big windups stop?
Asked by: Anonymous
Answered: June 16, 2011

Pitching coaches. Pitching coaches were first hired about 1950. . .I think the very first one was in Cleveland in 1948, but don't quote me. From the moment that pitching coaches were first hired they began urging pitchers toward more streamlined, efficient, and consistent deliveries.

Well, first let me confirm that what you are saying is absolutely true. If you look at video of Bob Gibson pitching, it's like there are rockets going off all over the place. He's got arms, legs, knees and elbows firing off in every conceivable direction in mid-delivery. Without any exaggeration whatsoever, any modern scout would see Gibson and immediately file a report saying that his delivery was horrific and that he would HAVE to go to the bullpen and it would take three or four years to refine his delivery to the point at which he might be usable. Which was not untrue; it DID take Gibson until he was almost 30 to gain command of his high-energy delivery.

Long before Gibson, you can find quotes from pitching coaches urging pitchers to eliminate waste motion from their deliveries and to be more consistent in their set up, more consistent in their release point, more consistent in their follow through. But even at the time of Gibson, teams had A pitching coach. Teams now have squads of major and minor league pitching coaches. We really have three or four major league pitching coaches per team, although the rules don't allow you to call them that, but you have a bullpen coach and an organizational pitching co-ordinator, etc.

These are very bright and effective people, or at least the ones that I know are; really good people, and I like them. But these squads of pitching coaches are supported by instructional videos that every 12-year-old pitcher sees, by legions of amateur coaches, and every city larger than 10,000 has a couple of ex-players who make a living by doing private coaching for kids trying to make the high school baseball team. The consequence is that the conventional wisdom of pitching coaches--which is essentially the same as it was in 1945--is now a thousand times more powerful than it was in 1945. This conventional wisdom has gradually "sanded off" almost all of the. . .I don't know what you would call it, almost everything unconventional about a pitcher's delivery.

I'm not in any way suggesting that these pitching coaches don't know what they're talking about. They know a thousand times more about what they're doing than I do. At the same time, it is an extremely interesting question: what if you had a Bob Gibson or a Juan Marichal now? Even Koufax would look pretty extreme by today's standards. Are we really convinced that Bob Gibson's way of doing things wouldn't work now? Are we really SURE that it was all that wrong? I don't know.