Pirates quick hits
A couple of thoughts from the Giants series....
I've been worried all year that Jose Mesa would pitch just well enough that the Pirates would hire him back for next season at a higher salary. Mesa was simply atrocious last season, and there was no reason to believe he would be significantly better this year. Despite the odds, Mesa has pitched pretty well (though not great, as some in the Pirates media would have you believe.) I was greatly disappointed that they didn't trade him at the deadline. I doubt he has any trade value at all, but I really felt that even a crappy prospect for Mesa would be a decent deal. Regardless, it now looks like things are unravelling a bit for Mesa, having blown 2 games in the
Giants series and 3 of his last 6 save opportunities. When you consider that Mesa is 38 (listed age) going on 42 (probable age) and the potential logjam of competant pitchers in the bullpen for next season, I can only hope that they let someone else overpay in the offseason for all his saves.
There's no other way to put this....Craig Wilson is clueless at the plate right now. Even though he hit a couple of HR in the series, he looks totally lost at times. I think its more of a mental funk, than anything else. It's something that all players go through, you would just hope that Wilson will eventually find a way to work himself out of it. I think he will.
Why is it that John Grabow seems to get the important innings out of the bullpen, and Mike Gonzalez seems to often be a last resort? Maybe its my imagination. Anyway, there's alot to like about Grabow's strike out numbers (50 k's in 47 ip) but the league is batting .312 against him, he walks 4.5 batters per 9 ip, and he's given up a miserable 8 hr. Meanwhile, Gonzalez
has only given up 19 baserunners in 24 ip and has a sparkling era of 0.74. Maybe his numbers wouldn't be as great if he had to face more right handed batters, but isn't it time to find out?
After a very good start to his career, Sean Burnett has been roughed up a bit in his last 3 starts. What should we expect from him from here on out? A look at his peripherals tells the story. Nobody expected Burnett to strike out many batters, that's not his M.O. But Burnett has a terrible k/bb rate so far. In 62 ip, he's only struck out 27 batters, yet he's walked 24. Ouch.
He's going to either have to figure out a way to miss more bats, give up fewer free passes, or else settle for being a pretty mediocre pitcher. Additionally, the league is currently hitting .289 against him which seems high. But that's a pretty typical number for someone who doesn't strike many guys out. One thing in his favor is that he seems to be able to keep the ball in the park. He's given up 6 hr so far this season, but 4 of those came in the same game, and 2 in another. That means that in 9 of his 11 starts, he didn't give up any hr. That's a crucial stat for a pitcher like Burnett who will give up a lot of baserunners by virtue of his lack of k's. What I
think this means is that if Burnett can keep the ball in the park, we have a near .500 pitcher with his current k/bb rate. However, if he can somehow improve his k rate or reduce those walks (this wouldn't be unprecedented for a pitcher of Burnett's style) then we might have something significantly better.
5,000 club
Great win tonight for the Bucs. Those in attendance got everything they could have hoped for...plenty of runs, a home run from Bonds, Craig Wilson going deep, and a 9th inning game winning hit from Mackowiak.
I saw several mentions of the fact that the first inning walk to Bonds was the 5,000th time he's reached base. A lot is made of the 3,000 hit barrier. However, we are in a new era of the recognition that OBP is more important than batting average. With that in mind, it should have been a big deal that Bonds was approaching his 5000th time on base. I wonder how many players have achieved that milestone. Let's do some quick 30 second research, courtesy
baseballreference.com.
For the purpose of this exercise, I'm going to ignore the instances that batters reached base on errors, fielder's choices, catcher's interference, and the other assorted ways that don't get factored into OBP. I don't know if these were counted for Bonds.
Here is the list of guys with 5,000 times on base (h+bb+hbp):
Cobb - 5,532
Rose - 5,929
Aaron - 5,205
Musial - 5,282
Yastrzemski - 5,304
R.Henderson - 5,343
Barry Bonds - 5,000?+
Guys who didn't quite make it:
Gwynn - 3,955
Ruth - 4,978
T.Williams - 4,714
Speaker - 4,998
Mays - 4,791
Look how tantalizingly close Ruth and Speaker got. This is by no means a comprehensive list of the guys who are close, but I think I got everyone who made it. Looking at that list, a couple of things stare back at me....
1. Pete Rose played really well for a really long time.
2. Any list you can contrive of career hitting stats will always include Hank Aaron and Stan Musial. You better believe those 2 are underrated.
3. Ted Williams would likely be the only member of the 6,000+ club if he didn't serve his country in 2 wars.
4. Yastrzemski quite possibly doesn't get the credit he deserves, when you consider that his peak years were during the era of the pitcher.
5. The fact that Tony Gwynn didn't even make 4,000 says a lot about how hard it is to get to 5,000, and possibly how overrated Gwynn was.
Anyway, do you think I can convince anyone to celebrate the 5,000 on base club, rather than the 3,000 hit club? I hope everyone who attended last night's game will tell their children that they were there the night Bonds reached base for the 5,000th time.
A Gammons moment
#7 on Peter Gammons reasons why Nomar had to leave the Red Sox:
"The fact that Mia was training for the Olympics and away for most of the season may have intensified the hardening of his feelings toward the Red Sox. He missed her and her strength."
Ugh....make me wanna puke. Give me a break.
FYI....I'm counting the number of times this season the words "Pirates" or "Pittsburgh" appears in a Peter Gammons article on ESPN.com. Tally to date: 3. Just another reason why ESPN is less and less relevant.
Sorry...
...for the rash of political posts lately. This is first and foremost a baseball blog. However, as the election nears, I can't help but stray from the topic of baseball on a semi-regular basis. There's so much out there to talk about.
Blogs are doing alot of the heavy lifting in this political campaign. I think the major media outlets are tied by their symbiotic relationship to the 2 parties. In order to maintain their access, most major media outlets water down the reporting. There really is no such thing as an 'investigative reporter' anymore. The outlets simply regurgitate the day's sound bites and talking points. That seems to be what the public likes to read anyway. Then the late night talking heads spin spin spin.
It's no different in the sports world, in fact it's much worse. I find that I can no longer tolerate many of the major sports outlets, such as SportsIllustrated, ESPN, or even the local newspaper columnists. If the mainstream reporters write anything negative, they risk losing their access. So it's left to the independant writers, the bloggers, to come up with the interesting angles and in-depth analysis that the newspapers and cable networks aren't reporting. Casual sports fans will stick with the major outlets, but the real fans are gravitating to the blogs. (Not this one....but the Aaron Gleemans and Will Carrolls of the world.)
