July 2008 - Posts
Two weeks after the All-Star break here are some names making news around the majors.
TIM LINCECUM: He went head-to-head with Brandon Webb last Saturday. Lincecum allowed two runs over seven innings in which he struck out 13 and walked none. This slender right-hander with the slacker look is pure man on the mound. He is 11-3 for a horrid team, has struck out better than one batter per inning (156 strikeouts in 142 innings pitched) and is simply the premier young NL pitcher in the National League. Question: Will the Giants shut him down as he approaches 200 innings?
MIKE PELFREY: Want a shock? The Mets' best pitcher in the last two months has been Pelfrey. The Mets are undefeated in his last nine starts. Pelfrey is 7-0 with a 2.67 ERA over that stretch. Suddenly the Mets are not pitching-poor and they have developed young starters (Pelfrey, John Maine and Oliver Perez) rather than relying on the fading Pedro Martinez and broken-down Orlando Hernandez.
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Less than a week to the trade deadline and we know one thing: Milwaukee is the winner.
Credit to Brewers general manager Doug Melvin for striking first and fast. Acquiring CC Sabathia early in July may prove a masterstroke and a new trend in midseason trades.
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Allow me to share a moment in the life of instant replay: Stanford hosts Notre Dame last November. It’s the third quarter and Notre Dame throws a pass on which the receiver makes a diving fingertip catch, curling his hands just underneath the ball at the moment of impact with the ground. The game officials immediately signal touchdown. There is little objection from Stanford. Next comes a replay that is shown on the stadium scoreboard and most agree it is a touchdown.
But then the dreaded moment that too often brings college football games to a grinding halt struck. The referee was buzzed from above and the play was subject to booth review.
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A major Hall of Fame injustice will be righted Sunday with the induction of Rich Gossage. Sixteen years after Rollie Fingers, four years after Dennis Eckersley and two years after Bruce Sutter, Goose will stand alongside his peers in Cooperstown.
Like Fingers and Sutter, Goose helped define the original art of closing. Two stats stand out: In one of baseball’s most famous games, Gossage retired the last eight Red Sox batters to clinch the 1978 AL East title and 52 of Gossage’s saves were of at least seven outs or more.
With his kind of credentials why did he have to wait nine years to make the Hall of Fame after his name first appeared on the ballot? Was the last act of his career, a half dozen years of slow fade into his mid-40s, held against him?
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What the heck has happened in the NL West? Last fall it was the division of youth, the division that sent two teams to the playoffs and both made it to the NLCS. It was the division that highlighted baseball’s new era of youth over age, development over open-market spending and sound judgments over rash decisions.
And now the second half of the season started without a team over .500 in the NL West. The team that was unanimously picked to finish last, San Francisco, and was uniformly derided as being painfully slow in adapting to the aforementioned formula, has the best record over the last seven weeks and is in third place.
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Page 219 of the Mitchell Report buries Eric Gagne. One passage lifted from the report of a Red Sox scout acknowledged that steroid rumors had dogged Gagne from his glory days in Los Angeles and would always make him a risky acquisition.
So how is it that the Red Sox traded for Gagne last July and then Milwaukee bestowed a $10 million contract upon Gagne this winter?
How is it that anyone would expect Gagne to repeat his three-year brilliance (2002-2004) -- a run unlike any ever produced by a closer, 152 saves and a sick 0.69 WHIP in 2003?
Then again, how did Gagne demonstrate a passing resemblance to that pitcher in the first half of 2007?
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THE NATIONAL LEAGUE – NOTHING’S CHANGED: Just as in 2007 -- when one torrid three-week streak enabled an average team, the Rockies, to represent the NL in the World Series -- the NL is again stuck in “parity.”
There’s one real good team (Cubs), several weak sisters and everyone else is jumbled in the middle. Some clubs may play well for a week or so and thrust themselves into contention (see the Mets) but the only the test of time will determine whether the NL can produce a legitimate World Series contender.
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TROY PERCIVAL, RAYS: The Rays have had a terrific bullpen in the first half but now they enter the “Pennant Race Zone” and they will have to hold off two teams, the Yankees and Red Sox, who feature Mariano Rivera, the greatest closer in the majors and Jonathan Papelbon, the next greatest closer in the majors. The Rays also have a road-heavy schedule in the second half. Can Percival hold up as the Rays’ closer? Or is Grant Balfour a possible option for that role?
MANNY RAMIREZ, RED SOX: Wrist injuries are debilitating thus David Ortiz getting healthy from his must be considered a question mark for the second half. So Ramirez needs to regain his form and turn on fastballs just like he did on a key pitch from Francisco Rodriguez in Game 2 of last year’s ALDS.
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Mark Shapiro of the Indians is regarded as one of the game’s bright general manager. His trade a couple of days ago of CC Sabathia to the Brewers is a deal which reinforces that belief.
Remember the domino effect that affected Sabathia’s future. It was mentioned in this blog last winter. It started with Barry Zito’s ultra lucrative free-agent deal with the Giants in 2006, which effectively ended Johan Santana’s Minnesota career because the left-hander who was to become a free-agent-to-be after this season became too pricey for the Twins to re-sign given the loot Zito walked off with from the Giants.
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Will the Indians trade the ace of their starting rotation C.C. Sabathia, who is in the final season of a multi-year contract? That appears to be the biggest question to be answered before baseball reaches its trading deadline on July 31.
No one can tell how the AL Central, which is not the powerful division most expected it to be, will play out in the three weeks leading up to the trading deadline. Can the Indians give up on their chances to finish first? Not if control of the division hasn’t been grabbed by another team.
Will Indians general manager Mark Shapiro hope he can pull off a trade like the one he made in 2002 with Montreal that ranks as one of the greatest deadline deals. Shapiro acquired Grady Sizemore, Cliff Lee and Brandon Phillips for Bartolo Colon. It is a trade that has been a standard-bearer for all July deals and a curse because it can likely never be repeated.
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It struck me while recently watching the Giants in person in San Francisco. Left field looked different. No Barry Bonds. No larger-than-life presence on the field. No at-bat that commanded everyone’s attention and riveted eyeballs for an inning.
And the Giants are better off without Bonds.
In fact, they should have cut bait with the controversial slugger two years earlier.
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