A great story happened in baseball last night. A no hitter is an exciting story no matter who throws it, but add the element of a young pitcher coming back from cancer and it becomes historic. Getting away from baseball for a second, it is great for those that are battling cancer to see something like this accomplished. It can only buoy their internal outlook to see that you can come all of the way back from this dreaded disease. It is also a neat side story that Mike Lowell (another cancer survivor) was about 75 feet away from him to share in the accomplishment. Maybe this will erase the picture of Dave Dravecky's arm breaking on the mound during his comeback from cancer.
Kudos to Terry Francona for not being a slave to the pitch count as well. Too often baseball decisions are reduced to formulas. Being a math person myself, I am an advocate of the use of numbers to inform decisions, but I hate when decisions are pre-determined based on pitch count, or innings allowed in a year, etc. Francona understood the moment that was before him.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Things that make you go hmmmm...
I heard on a sports talk radio show earlier this afternoon that this was the year of the pitcher. They were comparing what is happening this season to 1968 when Bob Gibson and Denny McLain dominated baseball. While there are a lot of big name sluggers that are struggling, the same could be said for some big name pitchers. As of this afternoon, May 6th, you could make up an all-star team with batters hitting at or below the Mendoza line:
C- Ramon Hernandez
DH- Jason Giambi
1B- Ryan Howard
2B- Robinson Cano
SS- Troy Tulowitzki
3B- Richie Weeks (I know he plays mostly 2B now, so you could substitute Casey Blake hitting .202 and make the same point)
LF- Scott Hairston
CF- Andruw Jones
RF- Jose Guillen
Not too shabby right?
Well some big name pitchers are doing poorly too. Let’s take a look at pitchers that have an ERA above 6.00. How about a starting rotation of Justin Verlander, CC Sabathia, Barry Zito, Kenny Rogers and Bronson Arroyo? What about a bullpen of JJ Putz, Jason Isringhausen, and Trevor Hoffman?
You put the salaries of the players listed above and it would total approximately $130 million for 17 players. I even left out the likes of Eric Gagne who nobody thought was going to be successful anyway (except the Brewers) and if I had written this posting a week ago I could have included the likes of Big Papi, David Ortiz.
For some reason there are a large number of big name players having a horrible first month of the season. My guess is that numbers will even out for the most part over the course of the season, but being the season after the Mitchell report, is anyone else wondering???
C- Ramon Hernandez
DH- Jason Giambi
1B- Ryan Howard
2B- Robinson Cano
SS- Troy Tulowitzki
3B- Richie Weeks (I know he plays mostly 2B now, so you could substitute Casey Blake hitting .202 and make the same point)
LF- Scott Hairston
CF- Andruw Jones
RF- Jose Guillen
Not too shabby right?
Well some big name pitchers are doing poorly too. Let’s take a look at pitchers that have an ERA above 6.00. How about a starting rotation of Justin Verlander, CC Sabathia, Barry Zito, Kenny Rogers and Bronson Arroyo? What about a bullpen of JJ Putz, Jason Isringhausen, and Trevor Hoffman?
You put the salaries of the players listed above and it would total approximately $130 million for 17 players. I even left out the likes of Eric Gagne who nobody thought was going to be successful anyway (except the Brewers) and if I had written this posting a week ago I could have included the likes of Big Papi, David Ortiz.
For some reason there are a large number of big name players having a horrible first month of the season. My guess is that numbers will even out for the most part over the course of the season, but being the season after the Mitchell report, is anyone else wondering???
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