All I kept hearing on the radio today was about how “Un-LA-like” the crowd was at Dodger Stadium when Uribe hit that homer in the 8th. It was being compared to Yankee Stadium. It must have been awesome for Dodgers fans present!
What did they mean by that?
Dunno. I just finished reading the book “Out of My League” by Dirk Hayhurst which chronicled the season where he made it to the bigs, and he has a passage where he talks about LA being the toughest stadium to play in because of the intensity of the fans. *
Maybe they think it’s like Laker games and most of the fans only care about the team when it wins? Maybe they didn’t understand that the drop in attendance at the end of the McCourt era was a fan boycott and not apathy? Maybe its because we tend to leave in the 8th no matter what is going on in the game? Yeah, its probably that last one. They dont understand LA traffic. 
*It’s a fantastic book, I highly recommend it.
Ye of little faith. 6 innings, 3 hits, no earned runs, 6 strikeouts.
If it had failed, Greinke on regular rest the next game.
I’m sorry for Nolasco, but he really tailed off - if we can skip him, we should.
Go Blue!
The As/Tigers series is super enjoyable. Probably because I like both teams so have no problem with either one winning. (Slight preference for the As.)
Dang that Tigers game raised my blood pressure. Good to see the kitties’ bats come alive, notably Jackson’s.
That the LA crowd was usually not sold out, not that excited and more interested in killing SF fans…(OK, I made that last part up and it was lame).
It was just a general report of the excitement level in the stadium by Ricillo and Van Pelt. They claimed there’d never been anything like it that they’e seen.
Note to Joe Maddon: Yes, Boston can be lovely this time of year.
Why not pay a visit, do a little sightseeing, have a nice dinner at Legal Seafood, maybe even take in a ballgame?
Well, once again, Melancon delivers for the Bucs. Been a good season. Would have been a better one without Melancon’s collapse and Hurdle’s stubborn insistence on using him.
GO CARDS! However, I don’t see Crawford and Ellis going 1-for-38. Lots of positives for us too, though. I have a feeling one team is going to romp, but I have no idea which one.
Wow. That was one collapse that will not soon be forgotten.
I know the game was over, so i’m not as upset as i would be if he brought Melancon in with the game tied, for instance. But when your set up man is giving up a home run almost every time out, you don’t bring him in to pitch. You just don’t.
Melancon’s effort took any chance the Pirates had and flushed it, but I honestly didn’t think they were going to score even the 2 runs they needed to tie the game. However, i still had hope, and a walk or single brought the tying run to the plate. But after Melancon’s 3 run 8th, the Pirates were done. No 5 run inning was coming… That type of thing kills you psychologically. The mountain was too big to climb.
He gave up a run in each of his last 5 or 6 appearances this year, including the regular season. His ERA for those games down the stretch has to be around 18 or so. After i have a few days to process this loss, i’ll go back and figure out what his ERA was over the last few weeks. One of the strangest collapses I can recall any relief pitcher having. I hope the offseason permits his mental state to recover. If not, the Pirates will be looking for a new set up man.
The Pirates generated zero offense in two games, which is eerily similar to how they went out against Atlanta in 1991. Up 3-2, and going back the Pittsburgh, the Pirates scored exactly 0 runs in those 2 games (i think).
With all that said, I am very happy with their effort this year. The team finally broke that string of losing, and actually won a few playoff games. And although i thought if they played the 5th game against the Cards they were in trouble, the Pirates almost pulled out game 4 but ran into a brilliant pitching performance against the rookie Wacha. It left me little hope against Wainwright.
I think the Pirates will be a contender again next year, so I am looking forward to next spring.
Thank you Pirates! I forgot what it was like to be excited about October baseball, and man did I enjoy being reminded!
Melancon allowed no runs on Monday, nor two games earlier on Friday. Nor in the penultimate (last meaningful) season game with the Reds.
Congrats to the Cards. I had a bad feeling going into game 5, so I’m not as upset by the loss as I might have been otherwise. The Cards seemed to have a better offense, and Wainwright & Wacha were very tough to score on. Now, until Spring training, I will dream of a Cuban-defector first-baseman, Polanco & Taillon coming up and making an impact in June, Wandy getting off his ass and earning his paycheck, and other such happy thoughts.
Thanks for a great season, Pirates.
The big joke out here is how Dodger fans habitually show up at inning 3 or 4, then leave bottom of sixth, top of the seventh. I found it quite odd to see the stands full at the beginning and end of each playoff game. Even when they played the Phils in '08, stadium seemed to be about half full at the beginning and end of each game in the ravine.
I understand it though. The parking lot is a living nightmare.
Didn’t melancon give up a run in game 3, getting the win and causing Liriano to lose it?
I stand corrected on game 4.
Here are his stats for the 5 games against the cards…
Game 1 - DNP
Game 2 - 1 inning, no runs
Game 3 - 1 inning, 1 run (hr to beltran)
Game 4 - 1 inning, no runs
Game 5 - 1 inning, 3 runs (3 hits, HR TO Adams
Ok, he wasn’t as bad as i thought, but he was still bad for a set-up guy.
I think my memory has been compressed with melancon. He pitched great in Grilis absence, then when Grilli came back, he was kept in the closer role until he blew two straight saves, then grilli was moved back into the closer role.
So, my memory on Melancon is bad. Ive blown up his ERA and overstated his ineffectiveness. I guess i remmber all of the bad and none of the good, which is unfortunately the way i tend to remember relief pitchers.
Sorry about that.
Ok, this statement bugged me, because my recollection of Melancon dow the stretch was that he was horrid. So, i had to go back and see how bad my memory was. Here’s what I discovered.
I first checked the St. Louis series:
For the 5 game series with St. Louis, his ERA was 9.00
He did not pitch in the WC win.
The last meaningful series against the Reds, he indeed gave up no runs. However, if we look a bit more closely at those games, we find that he only pitched 1 inning in those three games. On Sept. 28th, he pitched 1 inning in an 8-3 Pirate win. The 8th inning to be exact, with the score already set.
So iI was wrong in saying he gave up runs in the final series.
Before this series, however, he didn’t pitch for quite a while. His last regular season appearance was against the Cubs, ON SEPT. 23th, and he pitched 1 inning. He pitched the 8th, with the Pirates leading 1-0.
He pitched 1 inning, gave up 1 run, and got the win, since the Pirates scored in the 9th and Grilli got the save. Charlie Morton, who pitched the first 7 innings and gave up no runs on 3 hits was who got screwed out of the win in this game. (I have a big problem with how MLB assigns wins and losses, but thats a discussion for another time and another thread).
Ok, so what about before that?
We have to go back to Sept 20. Liriano pitched 8 innings, and gave up 2 runs. Melancon came into the 9th, and gave up 3 runs on 3 hits, and recorded only 2 outs. He faced 6 batters in this outing, and gave up 3 hits, recorded one strike out, and there was an error behind him, turning his runs into unearned runs. Even though the runs were unearned, he entered the game with a 3 run lead and gave up 3 hits as the closer. Thats not good pitching. His stat line is officially:
0.2 innings pitched, 3 hits, 3 runs, 0 ER, 1K
The Pirates went on to lose the game 6-5 in the 10th. Melancon, as mentioned, entered the 9th with a 5-2 lead. This is the second game he blew for Liriano in my little walk down memory lane.
The game he appeared in before this implosion was Sept 18th, where as closer, he entered the game in the 9th with the score 2-1. He gave up 2 runs in 4 hits… And this time both runs were earned. Charlie Morton pitched 8 innings, gave up 1 run on 2 hits and gets a ND. Melancon gives up twice as many hits and runs in 1 inning of work, and blows the game.
Hmm. Maybe my memory isn’t as bad as i thought.
His last save was recorded on Sept. 15th. And thats about what I thought I recalled. He pitched well in relief until he imploded against the Padres on the 18th. So here are Melancon’s stats down the stretch, from the day he imploded until last night. I have skipped no games (that I know of) in this stretch.
Sept 18 - 1.0 innings, 2 runs, 4 hits, 2 earned. - ERA 18.0 pitched 9th, Blown Save, (BS) loss
Sept 20 - 0.2 innings, 3 runs, 3 hits, 0 earned - ERA 0.0 BS
Sept 23 - 1.0 innings, 1 run, 2 hits , 1 earned - ERA 9.0. BS, win
Sept 28.- 1.0 innings, 0 run, 1 hit, 0 earned -ERA 0.0 pitched 8th inning, of 8-3 Pirate win. No save situation.
So, my memory wasn’t as bad as i thought. In 3.2 innings pitched down he stretch, his ERA was an ugly 7.36 (3 earned runs in 3.2 innings), and 10 hits, 3 blown saves, one loss and one win (getting both the win and loss on blown saves).
Thats NOT good pitching. He followed that up with his performance in the NLDS, which I’ve already covered.
So, although i misspoke about the last series in Cincinnati, my recollection wasn’t exactly upside down. The man last saved a game September 15th, and with the exception of 1 scoreless inning in the regular season of a blowout win, he was absolutely unreliable down the stretch.
His performance in the NLDS was slightly worse, with a 9.0 ERA in 4 appearances.
He pitched a scoreless 8th inning of a 7-1 blowout, gave up the tying run in the 8th inning of game 3, a scoreless 9th in the game 4 loss, and a three run home run in the 8th of game 5.
There. That’s the last I discuss this or Melancon this year.
But he was terrible down the stretch and in the post season. There is no other interpretation I can make with what I saw and the data in front of me.
Stink Fish Pot, I highly recommend Baseball Reference in the future. Go there, and plug Melancon into the search bar at the top. Then click on his name (in case there were multiple Melancons throughout the history of baseball). Scroll down to his pitching stats, hover over “Game Logs”, and select “2013”. There’s a log of all of his games this season (well, regular season). Now, to do something really cool, click on one of his games (say, #62 on 9/2), and then, while pressing “Shift”, click on the last game. That’ll sum all of those games.
Either way, you cannot pull 3.2 innings out of any pitcher’s history and make any generalized statement.
Shiny! Thanks for that.
Thanks for the tip. That HAS to be easier than how I did it.
And sure I can make a generalized statement out of those 3.2 innings! In fact, i can make a specific comment. He stunk. :smack: However, up until those last 3.2 innings, he was fantastic, and I believe I pointed that out somewhere in this thread or somewhere else on the board.
He took over the closer role when Grilli went out with an injury and pitched almost flawlessly until Grilli came back. In fact, even after Grilli came back, Hurdle kept Melencon in the closer role. It was only after that second bad outing that Grilli was finally put back into the closer role. But for whatever reason, he couldn’t seem to get back on track after Sept. 18th.
For the record, i don’t think you can minimize his contribution to the Pirates this year. It’s also debatable whether or not the Pirates even make the post-season without him, as he stepped in for Grilli and they hardly missed a beat for a while.
No, I am not that myopic. However I do think that pitching him in the Cards series was not the best idea in the world, and his 9.0 era in that series points that out. But when you look at the statistics of ANY player over a short span, they can be either incredibly great or bad, depending on if they were in a groove or not. Hitters can have a bad week, and hit .097 in a playoff series. That doesn’t mean every player that does this should never play again.
Melancon should be back in a Pirate uniform again next year, and i hope so. He was an excellent set-up man, and who knows what was going on with him at the end of the year. Jeff Locke, an all-star this year with the Pirates had an awful second half of the season and was left completely off the post-season roster. His was a terrible implosion. I hope he figures out what went wrong, because he could be a great arm for the Pirates for years to come.
We shall see. This will be an interesting post-season, because there will be a number of changes to the team. I will be curious if any free agents of note come to Pittsburgh after seeing/hearing the crowd during the playoffs. I wasn’t in attendance, but everyone interviewed said the sound was amazing, and pumped up the players. Even the Reds and Cards were impressed with the noise. I assume the Pirates will say good-bye to Mourneau and Byrd, Burnett will most likely retire, and other changes will occur. But for the first time in a decade, I’m interested in the hot-stove.
So, i have decided to root for the Cardinals over the Dodgers. I have a number of reasons for this, but they aren’t relevant to anyone else, so i’ll keep them private.
As for the AL, i will root for whoever wins the Tiger/A’s series to beat the Red Sox. For the longest time, the Red Sox were my favorite team behind the Pirates, but after they won the first W.S. in the 2000’s, something turned me off. I honestly think it is the coverage they receive from ESPN more than anything, as those east coast bozos that run that network, living in Connecticut and NYC, have done their best to convince the world that Yanks/Sox is must-see TV. So, i’ve become over-saturated with them, and their fans, I guess.
I don’t really care about the game, but I’ll pull for the Tigers over the A’s because of Jim Leyland.
If it ends up being the Tigers and Cards, I’ll have a hard time deciding who to root for. But one step at a time.