2011 MLB Season

[Dave James]

Jim, you're starting to sound like Dan did back in the dog days of May. The Yanks are hitting the ball extremely well right now and Texas just happens to be the "beneficiary". I see Feliz was touching 100 MPH on the gun tonight. That's some major heat unless the ball doesn't move. Tonight, it didn't.

[Chalupa]

The Marlins are in a MAJOR free fall right now. They came into Philly yesterday having lost 13 out of 15 games and promptly got shellacked 9-1 and 8-1 by the Fightin's. Things were looking better for them in the nightcap of today's doubleheader when they took a two run lead into the 9th after getting to Doc Halladay for 4 earned runs. But the Phillies came back to tie the game in the 9th and won it on a Carlos Ruiz single in the bottom the 10th to send the Marlins to their 16th loss in 18 games! They have won one game so far this month. The Marlins reward for all of their outstanding play?? Cliff Lee(who has been throwing smoke lately) tomorrow afternoon to finish out the series.

Edited June 16, 2011 by J.H. Deeley

[JSngry]

Jim, you're starting to sound like Dan did back in the dog days of May. The Yanks are hitting the ball extremely well right now and Texas just happens to be the "beneficiary". I see Feliz was touching 100 MPH on the gun tonight. That's some major heat unless the ball doesn't move. Tonight, it didn't.

Inconsistent pitching drives me crazy while the game's going on. Not getting strike three. Not getting outs one or three. Just getting payed like a punk. MAkes my already high blood pressure go even higher. When I calm down and look at what was expected from this rotation at the beginning of the year & then what they've done often enough to this point, and then remind myself that these are mostly still kids w/o a whole lot of real starting experience under their belts yet, and that every start, good or bad, is a learning experience, well, that makes it better. Better but not ok. And getting for all intents and purposes raped by the most-hated team in my baseball world (at this juncture in our history) is truly maddening. I'm judging this years's Rangers starters like they're this year's Phillies starters, which is really not fair to anybody, especially my sanity, but...you see glimpses from these guys, all of them, and then they put together a nice little run for a week or two like they've done, and then, when it cools off, it's kinda hard to swallow that these guys AREN'T the Phillies starting 4 of seasoned battled-savvy vets, these are some kids trying to grow into the role becuase they have to, they're all we've got. The potential for success is immense, or so it seems at times,, but so is the potential for abject ruinous failure it seems at times (like since last Friday). And when the offense fails (and it did fail tonight,too many LOB, even with Nova looking pretty damn good when eh needed to)...

This is not a team with a "proven track record", a "great tradition" to instill in its players. Their is no "Ranger Way", at least not yet.. At least not one to encourage. This is a team that is pretty much inventing itself as it goes along, and when they stumble, there's no proof that they'll get back up and get back on. Last year is over. What happened last year may or may not happen again this year (not the series, though, that's gonna be Phiily & Boston, barring divine intervention), but even if it does happen, even if the team springs to life and plays consistently well, it's not going to happen like it did last year. The worst mistake they can make, and I swear I see some signs of it here and there, is thinking that hey, we'll be ok, we just need to "stay the course" (ugh) and everything will be ok.

No, it won't. Last year was last year, this year is this year. ADJUST, BITCHES!

Hope, I have plenty of, fragile though it may be. Patience, I'm working on it. But love for these guys? Plenty of it. Plenty of it.

[JSngry]

This, however, this is the kind of thing that really drives you nuts:

http://www.brooksbaseball.net/pfxVB/szoneCDB.php?pitchSel=all&game=gid_2011_06_15_texmlb_nyamlb_1/&innings=yyyyyyyyy&s_type=3&sp_type=1&h_size=700&v_size=500&reParsed=0&extraStr=|06/15/2011|Texas%20Rangers%20@%20New%20York%20Yankees

If I understand how to read this thing,, green = balls, red = strikes. Rangers pitcher had 11 pitches called balls (green triangles) that were either within or on the fringe of the strike zone. Rangers pitchers also had, it looks like, six pitches calla strikes that were outside of the strike zone. Yankees' pitchers. otoh, had only two pitches called balls that were in the strike zone, and four pitches that were called strikes that were outside the strike zone. This umpire clearly was squeezing the zone down, up, and out (probably just for right-handed hitters), and of course, it is the duty of players to adjust to what the ump is calling, but look at the bottom of that zone. Clearly there was some inconsistency there, I one of those called balls, I'm pretty sure was Strike 3, Out Three in the Yankee 5th, the "extra" strike that resulted in the "extra" out, that resulted in two runs. That's what pitchers have to deal with, a strike zone that the umpire keeps adjusting, and when you get a strike down earlier in the game and now it's a ball, well, you gotta bring it up just a little, just a little to now it's much more hittable.

Veteran hitters and veteran pitcher get these breaks. some say that the Yankees get a more favorable call at home, but I find that hard to be true, at least on a consitent basis. Howver, when you see men in socring position and what looks like to be a no-brainer strike three get called a ball, you gotta wonder what the game being played really is. Of couse, the ultimate responsibility lies with Holland, he's got to find that place inside him that will deliver that pitch to that batter that gets the out no matter what. At some point, I suspect, you don't really know what is going to be what anymore and just make your "best pitch", which usually ends up being hittable heat, and..there you go.

I've been looking at these charts on and off since the beginning of the season, and most of the time, almost all the time, there's a few errors but nothing really egregious. But this one here, this one just looks bad, and although I'll not say that bad umpiring made Derek Holland pitch badly, I will say that it might have pushed him to deliver a little fatter stuff in tight counts than he ordinarily would. Chalk it up as yet another "learning experience", but geez, sure this is not the best umpiring the game can get, is it?

I hear rumples along the same lines from other cities as well. How are things in your town?

[ghost of miles]

The word "greeter" is all "Rock and Roll Heaven" and stuff. Like Clemente will be standing there to shake your hand or something, like there really is a "club".

Clemente is dead, and there is no club, except in the overripe imagination of fans.

Now, if you want to use the word "club" non-literally, as a term to group people of a certain statistical subset, fine. I do that myself all the time. But when you introduce the notion of having a "greeter", that makes it something else, something more than statistical. That's like all Field Of Dreams and shit, which, ok, yeah, I was touched by that movie and all that, but c'mon...emo stuff like that is good for the moment (sometimes), but then let it go and get back to reality, please. There is no cornfield, and the diet Pepsi commercial is fake.

Besides, "greeters" are servants, unless they are hosts. Is it The Roberto Clemente 3000 Hit Club now? Smilin' Bob welcome you in and instructs the staff to take care of you, take your coat, fix you a drink?

3000 hits is a damn significant accomplishment, and it puts you in rare company. But there ain't no club and there ain't no greeter, multi-faceted attempts to manipulate consumer emotions notwithstanding.

Nobody thinks there is some literal "club" of dead athletes. It's a metaphorical concept, and if you can't even see the symbolic weight of Clemente's clock having forever stopped at 3000 hits--that in a tragic, unintended, but perhaps ultimately poignant way he now represents that illustrious benchmark better than anyone else--and choose to interpret it as some kind of quasi-racist claptrap instead, then you're getting the same weird bitterness out of things that you're putting into them.

And "Emo baseball?" Suddenly you're perturbed that there might be some streak of sentimentality invading the realm of baseball? Heaven forbid, that's never been a part of the game at all! But let's slap some modern-day wussy-equivalent term on it and suddenly posture as if "real baseball" is beyond all that? Or beyond narrative, remembrance, and feeling? That's all but the soul of the game!

[ghost of miles]

Of course, it's not just NYC, it's the whole country, we're either too damn corporate or too damn stupid now, sometimes both, hardly ever neither. But NYC, as the self-proclaimed "greatest city in the world", hey, they do it better than anybody else, so let them have it, and that includes the latter-day Yankees, of which we've had that discussion before, so let's let that dog sleep in a laying down position.

Really? I thought Texas was the place that prided itself on doing everything bigger and better than the rest of America--so I suppose under Nolan Ryan's ownership, they're perfectly positioned to lead the way forward in the manner of which you speak.

Edited June 16, 2011 by ghost of miles

[JSngry]

I have zero use and/or need for metaphor, symbolic weight, "forever stopped" (yeah, that's what happens when you die), tragedy, ulitmately poignant,, or illustrious. Those are all just words.

Get me some pitching. Some good pitching.

Sentimentality is not part of the game. Sentimentality is part of fandom.

[JSngry]

Of course, it's not just NYC, it's the whole country, we're either too damn corporate or too damn stupid now, sometimes both, hardly ever neither. But NYC, as the self-proclaimed "greatest city in the world", hey, they do it better than anybody else, so let them have it, and that includes the latter-day Yankees, of which we've had that discussion before, so let's let that dog sleep in a laying down position.

Really? I thought Texas was the place that prided itself on doing everything bigger and better than the rest of America--so I suppose under Nolan Ryan's ownership, they're perfectly positioned to lead the way forward in the manner of which you speak.

Texas prides itself on thinking that it does everything bigger and better.

John Daniels needs to pride himself on getting some more pitching, Nolan Ryan on keeping his good players under contract. If they do that, we're cool.

If they won't do that, hey, fuck them too. Them and the Yankees. I don't need a sports-love in my life, I just enjoy having one around when it works out. When you have a need for shit like a sports team to "love", or a certain type of music, or a drug, you're an easy mark for the peddlers, and you can be sold bullshit way too easily. "Love" requires discipline and self-respect. "Fandom" requires believing all kinds of bullshit.

I'm an equal opportunity "fuck them"-er,, and I recommend it for everybody. If we don't uphold our own standards for ourself, we're all but grist for somebody else's mill..

Edited June 16, 2011 by JSngry

[ghost of miles]

I have zero use and/or need for metaphor, symbolic weight, "forever stopped" (yeah, that's what happens when you die), tragedy, ulitmately poignant,, or illustrious. Those are all just words.

OK--you have no use for literature. I don't agree, I don't even think that's where you're really coming from, but that's how it "reads."

Get me some pitching. Some good pitching.

I'd like that as well. We'll see how Brian Gordon works out for NY--a converted outfielder (and former Ranger) who I think has appeared in all of 3 MLB games as a reliever.

Sentimentality is not part of the game. Sentimentality is part of fandom.

I didn't even find Kepner's quote particularly sentimental (but I guess that's because I'm all "emo" or something), but (1) baseball's probably the most sentimental of all American athletic games and (2) fandom is part of the game, which goes beyond the immediate, statistical/physical happenings on the field. Now if you want to be a dry, soulless statistician about things (again, seems to me that's not at all where you're coming from, but dammit if that's not how you're sounding), then yeah, you can write fandom out of it entirely. But the passionate, emotional, and philosophical connections that fans make with players, teams, and the game in general are a huge part of why baseball has endured for as long as it has.

[JSngry]

1 - Sports is not literature. Literature is literature.

2 - Alexi Ogando is a former outfielder turned pitcher as well. This give me little comfort about the Rangers facing Brian Gordon.

3- Sports, like jazz, is played in the moment. Some people enjoy the moment more than the re-living, re-contextualizing, re-whatever tha happens after the moment. In sports, and in jazz. I'm one of them. Although I enjoy a good story as much as anybody.

The thing is the thing, not the memory of the thing.

Too many things always going on to get distracted by the memories.

A lesson can be either learned or memorized. Once you learn it, you can move on. If you just memorize it, you have to keep remembering it.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get to work.

[ghost of miles]

1 - Sports is not literature. Literature is literature.

Nothing is just what it is, unless you’ve well and truly traveled all the way through the Zen wormhole. You can choose to enjoy something like baseball at the pure level of performance, mechanics, and execution/expression, and nothing else. But you yourself talk frequently in your posts about players’ character, about narrative patterns that are emerging in games, etc. It’s “literature” in its own way whether you acknowledge it as such or not. The “contexts” are just one more level of appreciation that one can choose to enjoy or not.

2 - Alexi Ogando is a former outfielder turned pitcher as well. This give me little comfort about the Rangers facing Brian Gordon.

Gordon is pure untested goods at this point. A great record in AAA minors this year, but a bit of a desperate crapshoot for the Yanks. However, Bartolo Colon and Freddie Garcia were a bit of a desperate crapshoot as well, and they’ve paid off… desperate crapshoots sometimes do.

3- Sports, like jazz, is played in the moment. Some people enjoy the moment more than the re-living, re-contextualizing, re-whatever tha happens after the moment. In sports, and in jazz. I'm one of them. Although I enjoy a good story as much as anybody.

The thing is the thing, not the memory of the thing.

Too many things always going on to get distracted by the memories.

A lesson can be either learned or memorized. Once you learn it, you can move on. If you just memorize it, you have to keep remembering it.

?? Tyler Kepner writing about Roberto Clemente in relation to Jeter’s approaching 3000 hits is some sort of wallowing in memory? If baseball acknowledges its past, its history, it’s engaging in some sort of unhealthy fetishizing of such? Geez, last time I checked the 2011 season was ongoing, and everybody—you, me, Tyler Kepner, everyone else—seems to be following it with great interest.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get to work.

Yes, I did the same two hours ago and am now on a nice, short little break…enjoying the moment! When I return to work, I’ll be resuming ongoing preparations for the future, while continuing to take the past into account, since a moment is a moment and so much more than that at the same time.

Speaking of the future and various possibilities:

Yankee players weigh in on possible realignment

Edited June 16, 2011 by ghost of miles

[Matthew]

"You hear realignment and that definitely hits everybody's ears," Nick Swisher said. "I don't know, man, this game is so amazing the way it is. I'm not really in favor of a lot of changes. You're messing with the greatest sport ever invented. I don't think we need to change a thing."

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/yankees/2011/06/14/2011-06-14_realign_yankees_sound_off.html#ixzz1PS0uiBdy

First time evah, that a Yankee has made sense...

[JSngry]

Tyler Kepner writing about Roberto Clemente in relation to Jeter’s approaching 3000 hits is some sort of wallowing in memory? If baseball acknowledges its past, its history, it’s engaging in some sort of unhealthy fetishizing of such?

Acknowledging the past is fine, of course. More than fine, actually.

But - the notion of some sort of "gatekeeper" , symbolic or otherwise, to a statistical grouping starts to make my stomach turn. You find it a beautiful concept.

We appear to have different concepts of "sentimentality", different degrees to what we find healthy, and different tolerances thereof. A (very) little goes a (very) long way for me. You seem to enjoy it a lot more than do I.

Simple as that, and fair enough. I promise to try to not puke on your shoes, if you promise to try to get out the way when you hear the churning sounds.

[JSngry]

It's "literature" in its own way whether you acknowledge it as such or not.

Just read this, and, sorry, but it's bullshit. You can't say that sports is "literature" in it's own way whether you acknowledge it or not unless you are the Great Analogizer God.

Are you? If so, do you get paid extra, or is it a volunteer gig?

Either way, it's literature in its own way for you. Not for me. For me, sports is sports. Music is music, literature is literature, etc. Music is not skydiving, Literature is not cooking, sex is not auto-assembly, etc. No matter how may parallels you find. And there are many. But when I want to experience baseball, I watch a game (would that I was still fit enough to play one...), I don't read Melville . And when I want to catch a whale, I look for something else to do. ASAP. Not a big fan of harpoons and stuff like that.

Enjoy what you find, but don't think that what you find is something that everybody else has to see.

Edited June 16, 2011 by JSngry

[JSngry]

Sorry, that came off kind of curt, didn't mean it to be that harsh...but I'm reminded of a sax lesson I had a long time ago, this cat gave me these leaping interval studies that were just all over the place. I played through them slowly and said, man, that's like Superman having a manic-depressive episode or something...to which the guy looked me dead in the eye and said, I don't care what you think it's like, what it is is playing the goddamned notes right.

Lesson learned.

[ghost of miles]

Tyler Kepner writing about Roberto Clemente in relation to Jeter’s approaching 3000 hits is some sort of wallowing in memory? If baseball acknowledges its past, its history, it’s engaging in some sort of unhealthy fetishizing of such?

Acknowledging the past is fine, of course. More than fine, actually.

But - the notion of some sort of "gatekeeper" , symbolic or otherwise, to a statistical grouping starts to make my stomach turn. You find it a beautiful concept.

One more time--to me Kepner was simply saying that Clemente's being at 3000 hits exactly has a kind of poignant symbolism to it. Why that is such a big freakin' offense against the Aesthetics and Proper Enjoyment of Baseball is beyond me, but whatever.

We appear to have different concepts of "sentimentality", different degrees to what we find healthy, and different tolerances thereof. A (very) little goes a (very) long way for me. You seem to enjoy it a lot more than do I.

Simple as that, and fair enough. I promise to try to not puke on your shoes, if you promise to try to get out the way when you hear the churning sounds.

Why you've found it necessary to make this a personalized, insulting conversation is beyond me, and why you can't even seem to understand what I'm saying--and apparently I don't understand what you're saying either--is depressing (ooooo, I'm getting all "emo"), but I promise not to give up nor to bother you with any sort of offboard communication about it, since the whole discussion seems increasingly pointless. A great example is the above of defining "sentimentality" with all of its icky implications, telling me I enjoy it much more than you do, and talking about puking on my shoes. I promise not to gag on the fumes of self-righteousness coming at me either!

[JSngry]

Dude, chill out, it ain't all that. We're just wired differently in that regard, that's all. Nothing more.

Besides - there's a game on in less than an hour!

[JSngry]

depressing

You know what's really depressing? Getting a spread sheet with a buttload full of data that's not been properly formatted, just slaphazardly copied and pasted in any which old way, extra spaces in the cells, hyperlinks left intact, no standardization of capitalization or dates or anything, you name it, it's sloppy. Having to clean up all that nonsense because people aren't aware of even basic spreadsheet etiquette and in fact appear to be intimidated by it so they really really don't want to make an effort to learn (or, more likely, just use that as an excuse for being lazy...), that's depressing!

And that's what I'm going to be doing while watching the Rangers play in less than half an hour. You think I'm being an asshole now, wait until if they fuck this one up like they have the last five....grrrrrrrr.....

(self-imposed pre-emptiveness about going into Level 2 asshole mode now activated)

[ghost of miles]

It's "literature" in its own way whether you acknowledge it as such or not.

Just read this, and, sorry, but it's bullshit. You can't say that sports is "literature" in it's own way whether you acknowledge it or not unless you are the Great Analogizer God.

Are you? If so, do you get paid extra, or is it a volunteer gig?

Either way, it's literature in its own way for you. Not for me. For me, sports is sports. Music is music, literature is literature, etc. Music is not skydiving, Literature is not cooking, sex is not auto-assembly, etc. No matter how may parallels you find. And there are many. But when I want to experience baseball, I watch a game (would that I was still fit enough to play one...), I don't read Melville . And when I want to catch a whale, I look for something else to do. ASAP. Not a big fan of harpoons and stuff like that.

Enjoy what you find, but don't think that what you find is something that everybody else has to see.

Who said that I did? Did you really even read my post? Seems to me that you're the one here who's on the mission to "define" for everybody else, and to level judgment accordingly. There are levels to everything, whether it's a saxophone solo, a baseball game, a book, a meal, or what have you. To each his own and all that. You're leveling a reductive definition on everything that isn't even in sync with how you approach things in general, far as I can tell... this has degenerated into a semantic shouting match. Sound and fury signifying nothing and something at the same time.

[JSngry]

Play ball!

[ghost of miles]

Sorry, that came off kind of curt, didn't mean it to be that harsh...but I'm reminded of a sax lesson I had a long time ago, this cat gave me these leaping interval studies that were just all over the place. I played through them slowly and said, man, that's like Superman having a manic-depressive episode or something...to which the guy looked me dead in the eye and said, I don't care what you think it's like, what it is is playing the goddamned notes right.

Lesson learned.

I'm taking away a lesson from all of this, but it's being inadvertently delivered & not what you think it is. Thanks regardless, and as the Chairman sez:

That's Life!

[JSngry]

Sinatra's dead too.

That's life!

[Chalupa]

This has all the makings of a Dan/Goodie flame war.

Oh damn it looks like they made up already.

[ghost of miles]

Sinatra's dead too.

That's life!

So are John Coltrane and Dizzy Gillespie. (That's a freighted allusion, as well as a simple matter-of-fact statement.)

Play ball!

But how can you tell?

I mean, a pitch is just a pitch.

A sigh is just a sigh...

As time goes by!

[Dan Gould]

Let's just see the MFY lose so I won't have to stress quite so much about tonight's game against David Price. I have a feeling that this one will end up about 12-11 unless the Rangers manage to pitch or the Yankee bats are just too tired to keep hitting balls all over the place.