An Old Fashion Pennant Race

We are two weeks into the college football season and the NFL has just completed its first week. If you are not in contention in your fantasy baseball league or your favorite team does not have playoff prospects you are probably not following baseball all that closely at the moment. But there are some interesting races coming down the stretch. There is even an old fashion pennant race!

In the American League, it’s all about the Texas Rangers. They are hanging tough in the AL West hovering 4.5 games behind the Anaheim Angels for the division lead and 4.5 games behind the Boston Red Sox for the Wild Card. With only 19 games left to go they are running out of time BUT they have 7 games left against the Angels (yes – 7 out of their 19 games left are against one team – who made that schedule?) and that makes this one not over by a long shot. It should be an interesting final three weeks.

In the NL East the Philadelphia Phillies lead the Florida Marlins by 5.5 and the Atlanta Braves by 6. The Braves have 3 games left with the Phillies and the Marlins have 5 games left with Phillies. Since the NY Mets are not the team in the lead a collapse is not likely, but stranger things have happened and it’s too early to give up faith if you are a Marlins or Braves fan. Your odds aren’t good but you do have a fighting chance to close the gap directly when you play the Phillies. Also, it’s not likely but there is an outside shot that the Marlins or Braves can still grab the Wild Card spot as they are the same number of games out from that as they are from the Division lead (but they have more teams to climb over).

On to the NL West where some real baseball like it ought to be is being played. The Los Angeles Dodgers and Colorado Rockies are tripping over themselves all tied up and the San Francisco Giants are only 3.5 game behind. It hasn’t gotten a lot of press nationally (it’s gotten some here) but if the Rockies win the division it will be the greatest comeback in MLB history (in terms of the number of games) as they would have come from more than 15 games back to catch the Dodgers. The Rockies and Giants have 2 more games left with each other (tonight and tomorrow night) and then they each play 3 games against the Dodgers.

The Giants have some momentum after Tim Lincecum (in line for back to back Cy Young Award's) pitched another gem last night over the Rockies striking out 11 in the Giants 9-1 win. This one is not over by a long shot and is clearly the most interesting race in baseball. Assuming no one backs in here, the runner-up in the division has a real shot at being the Wild Card representative so it’s not all or nothing for any of them. - Paul Leume

Paul Leume is a MLB columnist from Montreal, Canada. Paul, a one-time beat writer covering the Montreal Expos for the Montreal Gazette is a proud grandfather of 3 girls and now spends his time offering his thoughts and prospective on Major League Baseball on a variety of blogs and websites throughout Al Gore’s internet.

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July 4th Baseball

For years, baseball was as big a part of the Fourth of July as fireworks and picnics. Every team in baseball played doubleheaders, giving fans a long day at the park. It marked the midpoint of the season and set up the rest of the summer.

In the 1970s, the doubleheader went the way of the dinosaur, and baseball and this week’s holiday are not as linked as they once were. Still, baseball gets a large audience on the Fourth as fans settle in on a day off from work to see how their team is doing.

The holiday has been the date of many magic moments in baseball history. I know that many of you are not from the NY Metropolitan area, but much of baseball history involves NY teams. Here is a look at some Fourth of July New York baseball moments ranging from the tragic to bizarre (if any of you have some famous Fourth of July moments from other parts of the country we’d love to hear them):

ATLANTA MARATHON

At 4:01 a.m. (I know it was 4:01 a.m. because like an idiot I stayed up to watch the game until it ended) on July 5, 1985, the fireworks finally went off over Fulton County Stadium. The Mets and Braves had just played a game that featured two rain delays and six hours, 10 minutes of playing time. When Ron Darling struck out Rick Camp at 3:55, the Mets 16-13 victory was complete.

It was Fireworks Night, and even though only about 100 people were left in the stadium, the Braves decided to set them off. Atlanta residents, asleep for hours, panicked that the city was under attack.

It was a fitting finish to a bizarre night. The game had 19 innings, 29 runs, 43 players, 114 outs, 615 pitches, 45 hits, 23 walks, 22 strikeouts, five errors and 37 stranded base runners.

The Mets had taken a lead in the top of the 18th inning, and they were ready to go home. Then Camp, a relief pitcher with a .060 career batting average, came to the plate. He hit a two-out, two-strike Tom Gorman pitch out of the ballpark for his only career home run to tie the game.

The Mets broke through in the 19th to put the game away and Darling closed it out. Keith Hernandez hit for the cycle in the game, and Gary Carter caught all 19 innings - 305 pitches.

IRON HORSE SAYS GOODBYE

It is the most famous speech in the history of baseball. Lou Gehrig, dying at age 36, stood before 61,808 fans at Yankee Stadium on a day in his honor on July 4, 1939.

“Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break I got,” he said. “Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. I have been in ballparks for 17 years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.

Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn’t consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day?”

The Yankees retired his No. 4 that day, the first major-league number to be so honored. His streak of 2,130 straight games had ended more than two months earlier, but this day would become the iconic image of Gehrig.

RAGS BAGS BOSOX

It had been 27 years since a Yankee had thrown a no-hitter when Dave Righetti did it on July 4, 1983, against the Red Sox. When Wade Boggs struck out on a slider to end the 4-0 Yankees victory, Righetti jumped in the air.

Righetti started the afternoon by striking out seven of Boston’s first nine batters. Righetti, 24 at the time, issued four walks in the game and had nine strikeouts. Only two of the 27 outs were hit hard.

DRESSEN GETS THE HOOK - TWICE

Three months later, the Giants and Dodgers would play one of the most famous games in baseball history. But on July 4, 1951, the pennant race was just getting started. The two teams met at Ebbets Field for a crazy doubleheader.

The Giants built a lead on home runs by Don Mueller and Willie Mays in Game 1. Brooklyn came back in the eighth, getting a pinch-hit homer from Roy Campanella, a home run by Pee Wee Reese and a single from Gil Hodges in the ninth to tie the game, 4-4.

In extra innings, Bobby Thomson homered in the 11th to move the Giants up by one, but Preacher Roe laid down a squeeze bunt to give the Dodgers the 6-5 victory.
In the second game, Dodgers manager Charlie Dressen got thrown out for arguing balls and strikes in the second inning. After he was tossed, Dressen took a seat behind the dugout, drawing the umpire’s anger and earning his second ejection of the game.
Ralph Branca won the second game, 4-2, with homers from Hodges and Duke Snider. The victories gave Brooklyn a 61/2-game lead that would dissolve as the summer progressed.

LARY STRIKES AGAIN

Tigers pitcher Frank Lary was known as “The Yankee Killer” because of the damage he did against the team in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He had a lifetime 27-13 record against them and went 7-0 in 1958.

On July 4, 1961, Lary broke the hearts of Yankees fans with not just his arm but his bat. Before 74,246 fans, the largest Stadium crowd since 1947, the Yankees won the first game of the doubleheader 6-2 behind Whitey Ford.

In the second game, Lary allowed three runs and pitched into the 10th inning. With the score tied at 3, Lary came to the plate in the 10th with men on second and third. He laid a bunt down the third-base line that scored Steve Boros and gave the Tigers a 4-3 victory that cemented Lary as the all-time “Yankee killer.”

TRAGEDY AT THE POLO GROUNDS

Bernard Doyle was just getting to his seat on July 4, 1950, for a doubleheader between the Giants and Dodgers when a bullet hit him in the forehead, killing him instantly. The bullet had been fired from a nearby apartment rooftop randomly by a teenage boy. Doyle was at one time a fight manager who was credited with starting James J. Braddock on his ring career in 1926.

Reports the day after said as the body was removed from the upper tier of the Polo Grounds, the standing-room-only crowd fought over his vacated seat.

DICKEY FIGHTS BACK

In the first game of a doubleheader on July 4, 1932, at Griffith Stadium in Washington, Bill Dickey got into a fight for the ages.

Senators outfielder Carl Reynolds slid hard into the Yankees catcher on a squeeze play. Dickey took offense to the slide and punched Reynolds, breaking his jaw. Dickey was fined $1,000 and suspended for 30 days. - Mike Cardano

Mike Cardano is the founder of Around The Horn and Ultimate Franchise Baseball ™.

A safe, enjoyable happy 4th of July weekend to all.

Please Everyone, Stop Using Catcher ERA

The Nichols Law of catcher defense states the inverse relationship that exists between offensive abilities and perceived defensive performance. Take Paul Bako. More than 2,300 plate appearances with an OPS in the .620s. He is not, nor has he ever, been a good offensive player. Bako's longevity reigns from, uh, well...Greg Maddux. After Eddie Perez, Maddux's personal catcher, went down in 2000, the Braves acquired Bako from Florida. Maddux absolutely loved Bako, probably because Bako was the bottom in the relationship and easily manipulated to calling whatever it is Maddux wanted to throw.

So after a season and a half as Maddux's personal caddy, Milwaukee scooped Bako up and gave him nearly 260 plate appearances. The Brewers saw their pitching staff benefit greatly from Bako's game calling and presence. They improved their FIP from 4.9 to 4.86. Woo. If every 10 runs is worth 4.5 million, and Bako was worth 0.04 runs per nine, well, you get the point. Bako wasn't very valuable, but teams kept giving him shots.

Fans seem to fall in with reserve catchers. I don't know why. I suspect it has to do with the mystique of being a defensive stalwart, one immeasurable by metrics known to man. Perhaps having to sit in the bullpen and warm pitchers up is something worthwhile. These guys are usually horrible hitters, the worst bats on the team that actually get paid to hit. Why? Because if they hit well, they would be playing.

So, you have a player on each team who has writers, fans, and television folk talking up his game calling abilities and whatnot because saying that his entire value comes from squatting for four hours a week isn't something you take pride in. Eventually it melts in. People start looking for things that feed this confirmation bias of Johnny McBackstop being a human computer. It becomes mainstay knowledge, and now every team in the league needs one of these veteran catchers, good at absolutely nothing outside of history lessons.

People have tried measuring the defensive contributions of catchers and it usually goes nowhere. The most common being Catcher's ERA. Perhaps even more flawed than pitcher ERA. Consider all of the variables thrown in:

1. Ballpark

2. Pitcher

3. Defense

You get the point, but let's take it a step further. Jason Varitek is the role model for catcher's defense. Creating a list of compliments and flattering comparisons for Varitek's apparent savvy would take a while. Michael Barrett has almost never been praised for his defensive ability. He's been known to get into fights with his pitchers, so un-Varitek-like, he's never lead his team to the title, and he's not wired like a computer.

Using both of their top 10 catching time seasons, we get these CERA:

The averages over these 10 seasons are pretty minimal in difference, same with career averages. This is ignoring that Barrett played on worst teams and that Varitek caught in Fenway, and so on. These results would make Tim McCarver go into convulsions. There's not a member of the BBWAA who would accept the idea that Michael Barrett and Jason Varitek handle pitchers on a similar level. That's good, because sometimes it takes an extreme case to get a point across.

Don't use Catcher's ERA. It's useless. We know this from studies in the past, not just from anecdotal comparisons.

The above post was submitted by reader R.J. Anderson, Not Sure Where, Didn't Say