Category Archives: Baseball

Three games in …

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Jays fans are really experiencing the gamut of emotions here and it’s only three games into the season. 159 crazy days and nights to go (and more, if all goes according to plan … but it’s too early for that!).

We’ve played three games, and they’ve lasted the duration of four games plus an inning. Thirty-seven innings of baseball down at Progressive Field, and all of them with their fair share of high drama.

The first, a sixteen-inning marathon on Opening Day, looked like it was headed firmly and speedily downhill with Ricky Romero’s 43-pitch, four-run second inning. Joey Bats’ first homer of the season put the Jays on the board, but that was it until the ninth, when Toronto exploded to score three runs and tie it. It wouldn’t be resolved until the top of the sixteenth — J.P. Arencibia, with two runners on, thought he saw a bunt sign that wasn’t there, fouled off the bunt, and then crushed a home run to seal it 7-4 after five and a quarter hours. On the first day!

We expected nine innings in Game 2 (how naive); Morrow and Jimenez had a couple of perfect game bids going and then things blew apart in a hurry. JPA’s throwing error ended up allowing Kipnis to smack a two-run tater, and Jimenez ruined his bid by walking Johnson and Lind; Lawrie cashed in right away to tie the game. A lead, a blown save, some more extra innings, and the Jays took it with the same score the second game in a row.

Last night, of course, ended with the highest of dramas: down a run in the ninth inning, two outs, bases loaded, Jose Bautista at the plate. Unfortunately for wildly hopeful Jays fans (and very fortunately for Cleveland closers), he popped out, and the game ended in nine instead of stretching onward, with the Jays losing their first of the season.

TONIGHT: what will surely be a wild and crazy home opener at the ‘Dome versus the (hilariously) 0-3 Boston Red Sox, fresh off an extra-innings loss to the Detroit Tigers last night. Young Henderson Alvarez takes the mound for the Jays to face Boston’s Félix Doubront at 7:30. It’s gonna be loud!

BASEBALL

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Ladies and gentlemen: the 2012 MLB season has arrived.

(photo by Bobcatnorth on Flickr)

For some reason I agreed to join my coworker’s fantasy league this season, even though I have no idea how to play fantasy baseball–if any of you have great tips, I’m all ears.

Tonight, a ridiculous start to the season (who’s counting those A’s/Marlins games in Japan? NO ONE): Kyle Lohse has a no-hit bid through six innings, and Jose Reyes — glad I drafted him — broke it up in the seventh. At Marlins Park. Those poor fans.

In “this doesn’t mean anything but I hope it totally means something” news, though, the Toronto Blue Jays finished off the preseason at a disgusting 24-7-1. That is a .774 record in spring training, destroying the Grapefruits and leading all of the Major Leagues. I know it’s spring training, but look at how awesome this is:

The Jays win the AL.

Note that St. Louis, who led the National League, finished at .640. Our rotation had better hold strong (happy thoughts, Drabek, happy thoughts), because it’s gonna be a good year. Also note the positions of New York and Boston. God, so wishful.

TOMORROW: The Blue Jays open the season at Progressive Field with Romero vs. Masterson, 3:05 PM ET! FINALLY!

Lately

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Well, the MVP announcements came and went and only a few things were surprising. Justin Verlander predictably took the AL MVP, and Jose Bautista came in a criminal third — criminal mostly because he received one vote each in sixth through ninth place. NINTH PLACE? Are you kidding me? On top of that, this asshole decided he would vote Michael Young for MVP and slot Bautista in seventh. Good joke, except not a joke, somehow.

And in the National League, Ryan Braun won out over Matt Kemp despite Kemp basically being better than Braun at everything on a team that didn’t have Prince Fielder on it. But hey.

BREAKING: BBWAA still dumb.

Unrelatedly, my band Del Bel is finally doing an honest-to-goodness album release party in Toronto and you should seriously consider coming. The record, Oneiric (listen here), will be available on CD and on white vinyl. And we’re playing with some sweet bands.

In case you’re not convinced, here’s the leadoff track from the album. Flash required, but you can also listen here.

Two eulogies

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First, for the 2011 Texas Rangers, full of pitching gaffes and managerial woes, but also full of crazy, great baseball moments — like Nelson Cruz’s walk-off grand slam, for example. Or Josh Hamilton’s two-run homer in Game 6, or Mike Napoli’s two-run double in the bottom of the 8th in Game 5, giving the Rangers a 3-2 stranglehold in the series. Or Adrian Beltre’s home run to tie Game 5 in the sixth inning. Or everything else Mike Napoli did.

The St. Louis Cardinals came out strong, and after the absolute madness of Game 6, they outplayed the Rangers to win the World Series fair and square. I do love a good narrative, and the Cardinals’ is among the best – 10.5 games back of the wild card behind the Atlanta Braves, sneaking into the postseason after the greatest baseball day ever (sorry, it was totally still better than Game 6), winning the World Series after being a strike away from losing so many times … it’s a great story, and I’m glad it finished so well.

But I’d love to see the Rangers win one day soon. Two losses in a row isn’t easy, and they’re a fun team to watch when they’re not walking six batters, two with the bases loaded, in Game 7 of the World Series. It was a tough way to go, falling apart at the seams like that – they were dominated by the Cardinals for a large part of the series – but when they win their first championship, it will have been well-earned and long overdue. Shape up and come back swinging, guys — and here’s to a good run.

And second, in a total 180, to Steve Jobs from his sister, Mona. After the amazing outpouring of grief from around the globe, from everyone who had ever used an Apple product and who had been inspired by them, and by him, it was hard not to be a little desensitized. Flowers at a computer store seemed like overkill after a few days, something entirely too first world. This piece is beautiful and human, and I dare you not to tear up when you hit the end. It reminds me of why we need people like Jobs, whether he was a tyrant or not. We need to remember how to imagine all the time, and how to make everything we do count.

[...]He explained that he worked in computers.

I didn’t know much about computers. I still worked on a manual Olivetti typewriter.

I told Steve I’d recently considered my first purchase of a computer: something called the Cromemco.

Steve told me it was a good thing I’d waited. He said he was making something that was going to be insanely beautiful.

I want to tell you a few things I learned from Steve, during three distinct periods, over the 27 years I knew him. They’re not periods of years, but of states of being. His full life. His illness. His dying.

[...] We all — in the end — die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many stories.

Hers is one you should read.

Cardinals 10, Rangers 9 (11th)

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Photo: Major League Baseball
You’ve got to be kidding me.

Game 6 was like Baltimore vs. Jonathan Papelbon twice. The Rangers found themselves one strike away from winning the franchise’s first World Series ever TWO TIMES, and both times gave up some runs instead. You’d think after getting a second chance they’d be able to do it, but the Cards just could not let it go. I have to hand it to them, even though I was yelling in total disbelief for most of the last three innings.

Also in “WTF”, the Winnipeg Jets beat the Philadelphia Flyers earlier yesterday in another insane display of screw-uppery. The Jets led 5-1 and then 6-2 — until they imploded, with the Flyers tying the game at 6. Then everybody just kept scoring, and Winnipeg’s game-winner came with a whopping 1:20 left in the third. Flyers goalie Ilya Bryzgalov was quoted as saying he was terrible and had no confidence in himself; I’m sure Ondrej Pavelec is only feeling marginally better about life.

Per that article, it was the first time the Flyers have given up 9 goals at home since 1993, when they played … the Winnipeg Jets.

What happened last night?!

Tonight: awesome and terrifying Game 7, manager vs. manager. Nobody’s going to have any bullpen left and Tony La Russa is probably going to try to argue that Mark McGwire can totally pinch-hit for somebody late in the game. Grab some popcorn on the way home.

The eternal battle for MVP

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So I was talking with a friend of mine about the MVP battle yesterday – well, battle in the American League, anyway. As far as I’m concerned, Matt Kemp has the NL MVP all tied up and the Cy Young is gonna be Clayton Kershaw or Roy Halladay, so there’s nothing to worry about. Justin Verlander is clearly winning the AL Cy Young. That leaves AL MVP, the big ol’ debate.

The front-runners are Jacoby Ellsbury (BOS) and Jose Bautista (TOR). To compare them, here’s five sets of stats. They are kind of arbitrary, but they’re the ones that are often thrown around in the AL MVP debate, so I threw them in here. They’re batting average, runs batted in (RBI), home runs, on-base plus slugging (OPS), and wins above replacement (WAR), source Baseball-Reference:

Ellsbury Bautista
Avg .321 .302
RBI 105 103
HR 32 43
OPS .928 1.056
WAR 7.2 8.5

Ellsbury leads in batting average (by 19 points) and RBI (by two). Bautista leads in home runs and the sabermetric stats of OPS and WAR.

It should also be noted that two of Bautista’s leading stats – HR and OPS – are actually the highest in the majors (the highest OPS in the National League was Ryan Braun’s .994, and Curtis Granderson trails in home runs by two at 41).

To me this table alone yells Bautista for MVP. First of all, it’s 2011, and batting average is way less important than sabermetric stats. Batting average doesn’t take walks into account, and Bautista’s walks are astronomical — 132 BB (also leading the majors) versus Ellsbury’s 52. This means Bautista walked an insane 25.7% of the time, while Ellsbury walked 7.8%. Joey Bats did have four times as many intentional walks, but if you factor those out, it comes out to 21% versus 7%. This is a no-brainer.

Second of all, RBI is a flawed measurement. It does measure how well you hit with teammates on base, sort of, but it also measures how well your teammates get on base for you. In Ellsbury’s case, 20 of his homers were solo shots, and 27 of Bautista’s – both coming out to 63%. We’d have to analyze this a bit with the RISP numbers and maybe the preceding plays and I’m not going to do that, but clearly this is a bit of a problematic stat, especially since they’re both obviously great hitters and went over 100 RBI and are still hitting two-thirds of their home runs without anybody else on base.

OPS isn’t a perfect statistic (it weighs slugging and on-base equally, which is awkward) but at least it takes into account reaching base in any way, which I think is vastly more important than looking at RBI in a vacuum. Both of these guys have really high OPS, but Bautista’s (also league-leading) slugging percentage is almost .200 higher than Ellsbury – .608 against .452.

So … Ellsbury was more likely to get a hit in a given at-bat, and ever so slightly more likely to bat in a run. Bautista walked in one out of every four plate appearances (that’s pretty much one walk a game), hit more home runs, hit for more bases, got on base more often, and earned his team one 1.3 more wins. Oh, and he gives one hell of a staredown.

Now that the Boston Red Sox are climbing out of the rubble of the worst September collapse in history, Jacoby Ellsbury no longer has the aura of contending-team edge surrounding his shot for MVP. It’s a ridiculous consideration – good players are good players, even if their teams keep letting them down – but it’s always been a part of the MVP discussion, and one that would undoubtedly have robbed Bautista of a win had the Red Sox won one more game. But now … looking at these numbers, it’s virtually impossible to understand how someone could not pick Joey Bats.

And anyway, how could the award go to someone whose nickname is Tacoby Bellsbury?

The old ball game

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This year was my first season as a baseball fan. I didn’t even catch it at the start of the season – the first Jays game I watched was this one, and I knew so little about the game that I was confused when Casey Janssen came out to pitch the eighth instead of Jesse Litsch, and was really confused when neither of them took the mound the next day (it was Kyle Drabek, I believe). In my mind pitchers were like hockey goalies. You probably had two of them ready to go, right? And they probably pitched every day?

I’ve come a long way since then.

Now I follow a veritable army of baseball bloggers on Twitter and argue with people about WAR and have read Moneyball and seen Moneyball, and despite the fact that I grew up a hockey fan (and still am one, thanks very much, Flames home opener is playing right this very moment) would probably be able to play fantasy baseball one heck of a lot better than I do fantasy hockey. It happens.

It’s already been a bit of a wild ride, but nothing beats September 28th, the final day of the regular season and the night that they’re calling the best day in baseball ever. I am pretty glad I managed to jump on the bandwagon in time to witness September’s madness, culminating in some of the most intense sports drama I’ve ever seen in my life.

If you haven’t watched the MLB recap video just do yourself a favour and watch it right now. I mean now. Look, I’m even posting it here for you.

This is the kind of thing that keeps me coming back to baseball. Coming from hockey, a 162-game season is mind-boggling to me. Add the fact that that many games can still lead to such high drama on the final day of the regular season — a tie in both the American League and the National League for the wild card, a ridiculous comeback from a 7-0 deficit through seven innings to win in extras and take a playoff spot, two of the worst collapses in September history … well, things got pretty awesome this season.

Of course, the Rays were the first to be knocked out of the ALDS (despite hating them in the regular season, I was quite heartbroken), but it was a great story while it lasted, and Evan Longoria’s walk-off home run isn’t going to be easily forgotten. Nor is the Dan Johnson tying shot that hit a dude in the nuts. Oh yeah.

Coming up sometime: more baseball talk like the 2012 season, free agent freakouts, Yu Darvish, Adam Lind, you know — all the good stuff. Stay tuned.

Edit: Joanna over at Hum and Chuck has written a nice little post about the end of the season and the Red Sox collapse, so go check it out here.