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Chase Utley steadily improving _______________
Never before
under the modern
rules _______________
Carlos Zambrano: Did he sneak one past the Cubs with
his new contract? _______________
Totally
different team in the second half _______________
Observations on the Mitchell Report _______________ “
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Snippets from
2007 columns Utley’s Climb to Stardom (July-10-07) Chase Utley has raised his batting average each year, and
is on his way to making it the fourth straight year he has raised it over 15
points. 2003 .239 I figure at this rate he'll be a .400
hitter around 2012. Ha! One thing
that has made him a .300 hitter is learning to hit lefties. Prior to 2006 he
hit only .222 off lefties or almost 70 points less than against righties.
He's hit .319 off lefties in 2006-07 (339 ABs). What makes his steady climb in
hitting for average so impressive that he doing this while continuing to grow
as a power-hitter, raising his number of extra-base hits each year. 2003
13 Going
into the All-Star break Utley is leading the majors in extra-base hits
with 52, which is a pace for 96. The
only second baseman in history to have over 92 extra-base hits in a season is
Rogers Hornsby way back in 1922. [Utley went on to miss 30 games
with a broken hand which limited him to 75 extra-base hits, but he did
continue to raise his average to finish at .332.] Thoughts on the Rangers 30-3 Game (Aug-23-07)
Boy did I spend a lot of time looking at that fascinating boxscore.
Fourteen RBIs from the last two guys in the batting order? A reliever earning
a save after coming into the 7th inning with an eleven-run lead? (The save
rule ignores the run differential if the pitcher finishes the game and has
protected the lead for 3 innings or more.) I love stuff like that –
incredible things I’ve never seen before. I've
already gotten a couple questions about the other times a
team scored 30 runs (eight total), and how this feat differs from those
other games which happened over 100 years ago. The Rangers are unique in that
they are the only team to do it under the modern rules. The two most recent
times before yesterday are in 1893 and 1897, and back then all foul balls
were like a 2-strike foul today; they were nothing. The modern foul strike
rule begins in the NL in 1901 and in the Generally
when a team has a huge day at the plate they are a really great offensive
team having a particularly good day. That's what makes the Rangers' outburst
so amazing. The Rangers have had a really down year offensively and
going into this doubleheader were on pace to score their fewest runs per game
since 1992. When the Chicago Colts had their season with the record
setting 36-run game their overall offense was scoring about 50% more runs per
game than the An Interesting Question About Zambrano's 5-year Contract Extension (Sept-11-07)
When Carlos Zambrano signed his extension, all the
stories were about how Carlos was showing loyalty to the city and the Cub
fans by leaving money on the table that he could have gotten if he played out
the final six weeks of his contract and gone on the free agent market. But from the moment
I heard the news, I wondered whether Zambrano and
his agent were thinking about something considerably less altruistic. The guy
had just had his worst back-to-back starts of his season. The Reds
had just kicked his butt all over the yard while he failed to strike out
a single batter in seven innings. Maybe Zambrano
and his agent knew his arm had gone dead and rather than risk hurting
his value with a poor finish, they quickly took the deal on the table -
which was actually quite good. After signing
the deal Zambrano tagged on another three horrible
starts - including giving up a season-high eight runs against the less
than scary Dodger lineup. It's great for Cub fans that he finally won a game
in his last start and that he may be shaking off what ailed him, but five
losses in a row with an ERA near 10 almost certainly killed whatever chance
he had of getting a similar deal as a free agent. It looks more like a smart
move by Zambrano and agent Barry Praver than a loyal one. A Quick Reflection on the Rockies [following the first round of play-offs] (Oct-17-07)
I have to say that the four NL playoff teams
were the most unimpressive final four I can remember. I watched all their
playoff games and only The 22-year-old Tulowitzki made a big leap forward in his power-hitting
in the second half, and he did this without sacrificing his average or
ability to make contact.
(I also want
to add that Tulowitzki is one of the best 22-year-old
defensive shortstops I have ever seen. I think you can make a case that he
was the best defensive shortstop in the NL.) Seth Smith,
who had a huge triple in the tie-breaker playoff with the Padres did not even
make his big league debut until September, and besides being a key
pinch-hitter down the stretch, he was 1 for 2 in the pinch in that first
playoff round. But the
biggest unexpected pluses in the second half were from pitchers, and that's
to be expected as the improvement in their ERA was a much bigger factor in
the second half than the small rise in the runs scored by their offense. The
Rockies went into the All-Star break with a team ERA that was 43
points worse than the league average (4.71 vs
4.28). In the second half they led the NL in ERA! That was especially
tough to do given their home field is the best hitters park in the majors. In
the second half their ERA was 73 points better than the NL average (3.86 vs 4.59) which means they knocked off over a full
run from their ERA in the second half relative to the league
ERA (1.16). Part of it was
steadily improving performance from their 24-year-old closer Manny Corpas who didn't really take over the closer role until
the break, and he responded with a 1.59 ERA compared to 2.51 in the first half. Twenty-three-year-old
Ubaldo Jimenez was called up in mid-July and went
into the rotation to give them 15 strong starts. (Even without calculating in
the park effect, his 4.28 ERA was 31 points better than the league mark.) Twenty-one
year old Franklin Morales came up in August and made 8 strong starts with a
3.48 ERA. Being able to add two strong starters proved to be
a boon to the bullpen as well. When a bullpen is less extended, folks get to
settle into more regular and favorable roles, and as a result nearly everyone
in the bullpen pitched better in the second half. A seven game
series can't really tell you which is the better team, but there is no doubt
in my mind that the Rockies are a better team than the Diamondbacks, and if
they reach the World Series they'll be a tough opponent for the AL champ,
although I would favor both the Indians and Red Sox over the Rockies. Observations
on the Mitchell Report (Dec-15-07) We have such an assumption
about why players use performance enhancing drugs (PEDs), that I wonder if we
are missing a subtlety about the breadth of the motivation. If you didn’t
already know it, the evidence was already there that PEDs are not the sole
province of sluggers. Awhile back ESPN did an analysis of the group of
professional players suspended by Major League Baseball for testing positive
for PEDs – which at that point was 157 players. Over half (55%) were
pitchers, and among the position players the most over-represented position
was one that rarely produces sluggers. Slightly more than 1 out of every 4
position players suspended for a positive test was a catcher. The percentage of pitchers specifically
associated with PEDs in the Mitchell report was quite a bit less than 55%,
but still a goodly number (31 of 85, 36%), and pitchers were unusually
well-represented in the accounts where names were not given, including the
account of a former catcher with the Montreal Expos alleging that every
pitcher in their bullpen was using some form of steroid. And the number of
catchers specifically linked to PEDs in the Mitchell Report was again out of
proportion relative to other position players. Rather than 1/8 of the 54
position players mentioned, which would be 7 players (6.75 for those not
bothered by a fractional player), the report tabbed
a dozen catchers. Now what do pitchers and catchers have in
common? They play the positions with the most injuries, and they face the
greatest challenge in wearing down physically as the season plays out. We
tend to focus solely on the motivation of using PEDs to enhance the quality
of performance, but we may not be giving enough recognition to the motivation
to enhance the durability of performance. Indeed, wasn’t this the
driving force of the abuse of amphetamines in the 1960s and 70s? Understand
that I am not offering this as any sort of defense for the use of PEDs. But
there is a chance that a better understanding of all the motivations
involved might help folks find more effective ways to fight the invasion of
PEDs into our game.
Most
of the players linked to PEDs in the Mitchell report did not test positive
for steroids when the testing program began. I find it interesting to look at
the differences between these players and the ones in that ESPN study of the
players who have actually tested positive.
For example, you have a lot more top players being linked to these
drugs in the Mitchell report. It is hardly a surprise, but this suggests that
money and fame can get you better help in using PEDs without testing
positive. Another
difference is what pharmaceutical culture the players are connected to, or
where they get their PEDs. ESPN found that the players testing positive are
predominantly foreign born (54%), and players from the I
haven’t actually broken down the country of origin for the players linked to
PEDs in the Mitchell Report, but just a surface glance brings out that the
majority are American born. And in the individual stories the sources of
their drugs tend to be in the |
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The Diamond Appraised baseball column is dedicated to
Eddie Robinson |
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