This win, a Washington Nationals 5-4 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies in ten innings, was even more improbable than Friday’s walk-off 8-4 bloodletting. With Philadelphia leading in the bottom of the ninth and with two outs and two strikes on Ian Desmond (and the Philadelphia buses starting their engines in the parking lots), the Nationals’ young shortstop put an Antonio Bastardo offering into the second row in left field to tie the game.
The Desmond home run gave the Nationals a reprieve from what seemed an almost certain loss. The Nationals took advantage of the extra inning — loading the bases in the 10th on a Ryan Zimmerman double, an intentional walk to Michael Morse, and a Jayson Werth single. After Danny Espinosa struck out, Phillies’ reliever Brad Lidge hit Jonny Gomes. Lidge’s mistake gave the Nationals an unusual HBP walk-off — and a 2 of 3 series victory.
The stunning Nationals’ win overawed the solid pitching of starter Chien-Ming Wang (five hits and three earned in 5.2 innings), the toughness of the Nats’ bullpen (one earned run in 4.1), and the solid performances of the up-the-middle combination of Ian Desmond (2-5 with an RBI) and Danny Espinosa (3-5, two RBIs and a home run — his 18th). “Those two guys up the middle are very talented, and unfortunately I think a lot of people forget how young they are sometimes,” Ryan Zimmerman said following the victory. “It’s not easy to learn at this level, but they’re doing a great job with it.”
Those Are The Details, Now For The Headlines: Phillies’ bloggers are not taking this well. After making an insultingly stupid joke about Chien-Ming Wang prior to the game, The Good Phight told his readers that today’s game shows that baseball isn’t football. Brilliant . . . Phillies Nation said they were “a little shocked” by the loss, then crowed that “Phillies Nation” won in Washington because of the thousands of Phillies’ fans at Nationals Park . . .
The headline on the Washington Nationals’ website is all about John Lannan, and how he struggles against the Philadelphia Phillies. But the story on Saturday night, when the Nationals were dumped by the Ponies (by an it-wasn’t-even-close 5-to-zip score) had little to do with Lannan — and an awful lot to do with Roy Oswalt.
Oswalt, who’s suffered through a 2011 campaign with a bad back, was at his best on Saturday, scattering eight hits over eight innings while shutting out a Nationals’ team that couldn’t put together any kind of offense. Oswalt’s outing was good news for the Phillies, who will depend on their starters in the post-season. “He’s back,” Phellow Phil Cole Hamels said. “I think that’s pretty much it. He’s back. When he has the velocity, you know it’s game time.” The only threat against Oswalt came from Ryan Zimmerman, who was 3-4 and continued his rocket-like ascent into the top tier of N.L. hitters.
Facing off against Oswalt, Lannan was just average — which wasn’t nearly good enough. The Nationals lefty, who has compiled a good season (8-9 with a 3.61 ERA), couldn’t keep the heavy hitting Phillies off the base paths. That said, his five inning three earned run outing deserved better, as the team played poorly behind him. The resulting loss came at the hands of Wilson Valdez, whose triple scored two and Hunter Pence, who parked one in the left field bleachers.
Those Are The Details, Now For The Headlines: The Nationals packed the ballpark on Saturday (setting a single game attendance record), as busloads of Phillies’ fans came down from the north to root for their best-record nine. The Nationals are 22nd in attendance this year, which isn’t all that bad when you consider their record. The Nationals have put people in the stands at a much better clip than other (better), teams . . . including the Diamondbacks, Blue Jays, Rays and Indians . . .
It wasn’t so long ago (the Nationals were playing out in Los Angeles, to be specific) that we wrote about walk-off grand slam home runs. They’re really, really unusual — a walk-off grand slam that results in a single run victory has happened (by our count) just 25 times in major league history. A two out walk-off grand slam is even more unusual. And, as we noted in our previous post, an inside the park walk-off grand slam home run has happened just once.
Which makes last night’s walk-off grand slam off the bat of Brian Bogusevic in Houston (albeit, on a 2-2 and not a 3-2 count, but wouldn’t that be something) even more special. The fact that thousands more watched it live than normally would have (during an MLB “live look-in”) is stunning.
The GWRBI (GS) came off the arm of Chicago reliever Carlos Marmol and sent the fans in Houston into ecstasy, and it was a bomb: Bogusevic scorched the ball to dead center and it hit above the yellow home run line in Minute Maid Park. A shot. The grand slam gave the Astros a 6-5 victory.
That’s five walk-offs in a single night in baseball, equaling the season record of five set back in late May. Still . . . still, the Houston walk-off was the most uplifting (so to speak) and jaw-dropping. Oh, and Bogusevic’s walk-off grand slam was hit by a pinch hitter . . .
Despite being atop the AL Central for most of the 2011 campaign the Cleveland Indians may have been showing their true colors over the past three weeks. After a blistering April (18–8) and a decent May (14–12) the Tribe rolled into June with their chests out as they sported a 12-games-over-.500 record and a solid five game lead over second place Detroit.
Descriptions of Manny Acta’s Boys as being this year’s version of the 2010 World Champion Giants: a collection of youngsters, wily veterans and reclamation projects that just might be for real — seemed to have some merit. At the time the Indians were pitied as being “the-best-team-in-baseball-that-no-one- went-to-see” — given that their attendance numbers were near the bottom of the league. Maybe Clevelanders knew something we didn’t.
June came, the weather warmed and the Indians cooled. They’ve lost eight of ten and 15 of 20 (and that was before their two most recent losses in a three game set with the Tigers), but actually they haven’t even looked that good. During those 15 losses they were shut out six times and in their last five victories they won two games by a 1-0 margin. Their lineup has been anemic since the middle of May and for the year they are hitting just .250 as a team. That ranks them tenth of 14 A.L. teams. Their pitching and defense rankings are only average (8th in both categories) and their unearned run total of 23 (a measure of how often their errors hurt them) is also smack in the middle of the pack.
Were it not for the fact that, other than Leyland’s boys, there isn’t a team in the division within a whiff of .500 (well, okay the Pale Hose are three games under .500), the Indians wouldn’t have looked so strong early on. Actually, their play against those central division bantamweights is an uninspiring 12-11. Add it all up and the Indians are, well, average. Given that Cleveland’s payroll is 26th out of 30 teams “average” probably isn’t all that bad. At least they can say they’re not the Cavaliers.
(Top: Photo of Cleveland’s Manny Acta by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images North America)
Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez was the hero again on Sunday in New York, providing a clutch single in the 11th inning to give his team a 3-2 lead, as the Washington Nationals went on to seal a 7-3 victory. Laynce Nix padded the lead with a three run home run that put the game out of reach. The win allowed the Nats to exit from a tough New York series with a 2-1 edge in games, and brought their record to 4-5 on the season. The Nats will take Monday off, before facing the Philadelphia Phillies in Washington beginning on Tuesday. It looks as if “Pudge” could be shaping a new role on the team — not only as back-up to Wilson Ramos, but as a player you have to bring to the plate when the game is on the line.
Guess Who’s In First Place? Yeah, okay — the Phillies. But over in the AL Central the Cleveland Indians have compiled an astonishing 7-2 record and lead the Pale Hose by a full game. The Tribe, it seems, is hitting on all cracked cylinders: off-season acquisition Orlando Cabrera is hitting .375, youngster Michael Brantley is hitting lead-off (and getting on base), fleet footed shortstop Asdrubal Cabrera is racking up hits (and strike outs), and yesterday righty sophomore Josh Tomlin threw 6.2 in taming the Seattle Awfuls. This will make former Nats’ great and Cleveland manager Manny Acta feel good — he was telling anyone who was listening in Spring Training that the Indians were a sleeper and that they would compete for the top spot with the Twinkies and Konerkos. So, break up the Indians — right? Well, not just yet.
NL Least fans will remember that, back in 2009, the Florida Marlins began the season 11-1. That was their record on April 19. Everyone around the league was oohing and ahhing about the Fish, with some commentators saying that they were “the team to beat” in the National League. And it’s true: the Marlins were on fire, they were playing well — but not well enough. On April 27, the Marlins still had 11 wins, but with 8 losses. On May 8, they were 16-14. They were a solid team, even a very good team, but they weren’t great and they certainly weren’t the team to beat in the National League. They had come back to earth. On May 23, they were six games under .500. We all breathed a sign of relief: the sun rose in the east, set in the west — and the Florida Marlins were still the Florida Marlins. Of course (Marlins fans will claim), their team went on to have a pretty good year: they finished in second place in the NL East, which was good enough for . . . ah, second place in the NL East.
The same thing could happen to the fast-starting Indians. But it’s doubtful: they aren’t an average team, they’re a franchise that’s rebuilding. They won’t be 16-14 on May 8, they’ll be 14-16, or worse. They aren’t even the very good 2009 Florida Marlins: they’re the not-very-good 2011 Cleveland Indians. The Indians have some “good young players,” including underrated right fielder Shin-Soo Choo, who’s one of the best young players in baseball. Which is to say: when sports yackers tell you that a team has “some good young players,” what it means is “they better have, because they don’t have much else.” Of course, we can’t be totally negative. If the Tribe finishes the year at .500, it will be one of this year’s most dramatic stories. One thing’s for sure: back in 2009, the same columnists and baseball writers that said that the Marlins were the team to beat had forgotten all about them in September.
You can understand why some baseball writers never particularly liked Bert Blyleven. “I’m not going to kiss the asses of the writers,” Blyleven said a few years back. “I put numbers up that are Hall of Fame numbers. Until they recognize that, you can only look at January 6th and say ‘it’s another year.’” Well, it’s now January 6 — and Blyleven is finally in the Hall of Fame. The announcement came yesterday as Blyleven (this was his fourteenth time on the ballot) and second sacker Roberto Alomar (who was picked on 90 percent of the ballots) were elected to the Hall and will be inducted in July. There’s been a continuing and surprising argument over Blyleven’s qualifications, but there’s never been any question (or, at least, we think so) over his abilities. The most compelling “case for” was made in December 2004 by Rich Lederer, who quoted Blyleven critics as giving three reasons why the slick righty “didn’t belong”: he didn’t win a Cy Young award, he wasn’t a dominant pitcher in his era — and he wasn’t any better than Tommy John or Jim Kaat. Lederer demolished these arguments.
Blyleven’s stats are impressive. He’s tied for sixth all-time in the number of 200-strikeout seasons, is ninth in career shutouts, is fifth all-time in career strike outs (who would have guessed that), was third most on the day he retired (behind Nolan Ryan and Walter Johnson), won 38 1-0 ball games, and has stats similar to Don Sutton, Gaylord Perry, Ferguson Jenkins, Tom Seaver and Early Wynn — all of whom are in the Hall. Longevity is always an important, if incomplete, “metric” of pitching solidity, and Blyleven had it: 22 seasons, a 3.31. ERA. He was in the top ten in strikeouts in 14 seasons and was in the top ten in innings pitched in 11 — in two of those seasons he led his league. The question is not whether Blyleven deserves to be in the Hall, but why he wasn’t in sooner. Oddly, perhaps, I’d pick 1985 as his best season, even though he was traded by Cleveland to Minnesota that year: he threw in 37 games, completed 24 of them, and led the league in innings pitched and strikeouts.
So why did it take Blyleven fourteen years to reach the Hall? My sense is that if Blyleven had played in New York (or even Oakland), he wouldn’t have had to wait so long. This has nothing to do with “big team, big city” preferences (well, as least I don’t think so) — but rather to that fact that Blyleven consistently pitched for mediocre teams and received terrible run support. As one statistician has noted: from 1970 to 1977, Blyleven notched 82 quality starts (two earned runs or less in six innings, three earned runs or less in 7, 8, or 9 innings — 4 earned runs or less in 9+). In those starts he compiled a 2.19 ERA. His record? 0-53! In 1974, for instance, Blyleven (17-17 for the year) was 17-9 in 27 games and 0-8 in the others. In those 0-8 games he posted an ERA of 1.80. It would be tough to run those numbers over all of baseball’s pitchers post-1900, but I would bet they’re damned near unprecedented.
But what the hell: let’s suppose that the pro-Blyleven crowd actually has a point — that Bert was late to the prom because he didn’t pitch in New York (or Boston, or Atlanta — or even Oakland). The only way to show that that might be true is to compare him to Hall of Famers who did, but whose numbers are comparable or (arguably) worse. Like? Like Catfish Hunter: who won fewer games (224 vs. 287), had fewer strikeouts (2012 vs 3701), fewer shutouts (42 vs. 60), and fewer complete games (181 vs. 242). Of course, Hunter won a Cy Young, and Blyleven didn’t. But then again, a Cy Young is given out by baseball writers — the same cadre that kept the big righty out of the Hall all of these years.
It’s a well-known story, but bears repeating — particularly now that Nats’ ace Stephen Strasburg’s name is being mentioned in the same sentence as Herb Score’s. On Wednesday versus Kansas City, Strasburg eclipsed Score’s MLB record for strikeouts in a pitcher’s first four MLB starts. Strasburg has 41 strikeouts in his first four starts — Score had 40. But it will take some time for Strasburg to equal Score’s considerable achivements, even if the former Cleveland hurler (he passed on in 2008), battled injuries nearly his entire career. Like Strasburg, Score made his mark as a rookie phenom; he came up with Cleveland in 1955 and set the American League on fire, going 16-10 with a 2.85 ERA. But unlike Strasburg, Score was surrounded by a team of All Star hitters and pitchers — Bob Feller and Bob Lemon had already made their mark on baseball, and Feller was a legend. The Tribe of ’55 were a powerful mix of slap hungry hitters and long-ballers: Vic Wertz, Bobby Avila, Ralph Kiner, Larry Doby. Score struck out 245 hitters that first year, a mark that stood until it was broken by Dwight Gooden in 1984.
In one of baseball’s well-known in-game incidents, in May of 1957, Score was hit by a Gil McDougald line drive that broke his cheekbone and sent him to the DL. It was said that Score never recovered his pitching motion and remained intimidated by the batted ball — the reason for his fall-off in production. But Score set the record straight in an interview with a baseball writer in 1987, saying that his career was cut short not by McDougald, but by a torn tendon in his pitching arm. “The McDougald line drive had nothing to do with my career ending prematurely,” he said. Score took a year to recover, but when facing the Senators in a game in 1958 a tendon in his arm snapped. Score visited a specialist in Baltimore and took three weeks off, then came back — again against the Senators. “I went in as a reliever, struck out five or six and ended the game on a popup to the outfield,” Score recalled. “But I hurt my arm again on that pitch. After that pitch, I was never the same again. My pitches never had the same movement on them. I had no snap.” Score was out of baseball after 1962. He spent 35 years as a Cleveland Indians radio announcer, before dying in his home town in Ohio in 2008.
Score had two good seasons — his rookie year in 1955 and his sophomore campaign of 1956, when he was 20-9. Mickey Mantle said that he was the toughest left hander he ever faced. It is said that Mantle tried everything against Score, alternating batting righty and lefty against him, but nothing worked. He could never touch his fastball, even after the McDougald incident. Score’s amazing rookie season (227 innings, 245 strikeouts) is a kind of touchstone for baseball statisticians, a model of what it means to be a phenom. But Score was not the only rookie pitcher to have set a league on fire. Dwight Gooden’s 276 strikeouts in 1984 (in just 218 innings) blasted past Score’s mark and Gooden was (arguably) even better the next year, when he fanned 268. Gooden matched this with a head-spinning 1.53 ERA. No one has equaled Gooden’s rookie strikeout record, though Kerry Wood came close, striking out 233 in 1998. Score, Gooden, Wood, Grover Cleveland Alexander, Don Sutton, Gary Nolan, Mark Langston and Hideo Nomo are the only rookie pitchers of the 20th century to strike out over 200 batters in their rookie campaigns.
It’s going to be virtually impossible for Stephen Strasburg to match Gooden’s feat, but only because it’s doubtful he will have a chance to pitch as many innings. St. Stephen is due to pitch every fifth day (not every fifth game) and will likely be shut down in mid-September. Plus, he’s on a strict under-100 pitch-per-game count, monitored by Nats’ skipper Jim Riggleman. Then too, it’s unlikely Strasburg will pitch much over 170 innings in his rookie campaign– if that. This ought to be simple arithmetic (ought to be), but it really isn’t. The Nats know what every Nats fan knows: that if Rizzo and Riggleman had their druthers, Strasburg would pitch fewer strikeouts (and not more) because, arguably, fewer strikeouts mean fewer pitches. Which is to say: Rizzo and Rigs are not so worried about a “McDougald moment” (there’s nothing anything can do about that), they’re worried about a “Score moment” — when a young pitcher throws that one pitch that (cumulatively) snaps that tendon and sends a good arm into early retirement.
Still, Strasburg’s first three outings are not only historic, they’re in the Herb Score/Dwight Gooden range. And better. Strasburg has 41 strikeouts in just 25.1 innings and sports a 1.78 ERA and 0.95 WHIP. He’s averaging 14 strikeouts per nine. That’s better than Score (9.7 per nine) or Gooden (11.4 per nine) or Wood (12.6 per nine). In fact, it’s unheard of. So logically (arithmetically), Strasburg could slap aside Gooden’s ’84 record if he could pitch as many innings (Gooden pitched 218). He won’t. St. Stephen would likely shrug all of this off (as he has, and consistently), by saying that baseball is about winning, not personal records. That’s refreshing (and true), but baseball fans are nuts about statistics not simply because records are there to be broken, but because numbers tell us important things about players. And Strasburg’s statistics tell us that, at least to this point, St. Stephen is a Score/Gooden/Wood once-in-a-generation pitcher.
