Did they ever explain what the deal is with the Pearl Jam? I mean, I like Pearl Jam, but they don’t really have anything to do with either team or baseball.
Maybe it has to do with the fact that GWB used to own the Rangers and Pearl Jam hates GWB, hence their song “Bushleaguer”. Dunno…got nothin’!
papi !!! on the wall !!
Theo Epstein, the Red Sox former GM, was/is a huge Pearl Jam fan and is friends with Eddie Vedder or something like that. He was always being photographed at concerts (once in a horrible trucker hat and mustache disguise) and rumors floated of Pearl Jam doing a concert at Fenway, though that never came to fruition. So it used to be kind of a thing, but of course Theo’s been gone since 2011. I dunno.
SOX just are not hitting enough. Oh, and throwing the ball in the stands too. :rolleyes:
red sox lose… le sigh.
Le YAY
I don’t like the Cardinals much but there’s no way I am rooting for an AL team, even though the team beard solidarity is highly entertaining. Go Cards!
Two games down, some great pitching, some not so great…some abyssmal fielding and some outstanding fielding. 1-1.
The two next games will not finish with fewer than 20 runs combined. They’ll probably split the first two, then bring back Wainwright and the best the Sox can offer for a 2-1 game, then back to Fenway for the coup de gras, one way or t’other.
I’m not gonna lie - I was a little relieved every time the Cards cleanly fielded a ball last night.
Any thoughts on why Matheny isn’t starting Miller?
Just for yucks, the Boston and St. Louis Symphony Orchestras get into it: Orchestral World Series: BSO vs SLSO - YouTube
So far this is a World Series largely characterized by defensive ineptitude. The most heroic moment last night was the home run by the guy on the losing team.
So, on a really minor note, am I the only one wondering what the Official Scorer has been doing with regards to errors?
Game one, the Cardinals shortstop barely got to a fairly slow hopper, going back and to his right, with speedy runners at the plate and first base. Ball came out of his glove, but, really, had he held on, stopped, turned, and thrown back, in time to get a play at either second or first, it would have been a highlight-reel play, not exactly ‘ordinary effort’. But it’s scored an error. Well, OK, everybody knows that’s the way errors work: if you don’t want an error on a barely-reachable ball, just pull a Jeter and dive ten feet short of it.
However, when we get to the slow, high pop-up that stays in the air long enough for the catcher and pitcher to amble over, make some small talk about each others families, take a smoke break, and re-tie their shoes before letting it drop directly between them, why is that not an error?
Then back to last night, why did the Red Sox catcher get an error for electing to stay at the plate and reach for a throw with a runner coming home? He missed it, but no harm done, since he wasn’t going to make a throw to third in time to get the runner anyway, and the pitcher was right there to keep the ball from getting away. Sure, the pitcher then made a runner-advancing error by throwing it over the third baseman’s head, but why is there an error on the catcher?
I don’t get it either. I obviously agree with the first error on Kozma on the botched double-play (and that it should be scored FC E6). I probably would have scored the second error on Kozma as an error as well; it was not an easy play to actually get the runner, but he should have been able to control the ball and make the throw even if the runner is safe. I totally agree that I don’t understand why that popup was a hit and not E1, nor do I understand why last night it was E2 on Saltalamacchia. It’s an obvious E1 on the throw to third.
Conversely, there was a great defensive play on the losing side in the previous game.
If you watch the replay, you’ll see that Jay was diving back into second base when the throw came to the plate. He doesn’t break for third until after the ball skips by Saltalamacchia. So if the catcher catches the ball cleanly, Jay doesn’t go to third. In the meantime it isn’t on Breslow that Jay reaches third; it looked to me like Jay had the throw from Breslow beat, though I could be wrong. So the reasoning would go something like this:
–error on the catcher permitting Jay to reach third
–error on the pitcher permitting Jay to score and sending Descalso to third.
Jay was actually so far off second when the ball was caught I wonder if the better play might have been to throw to second to double him off–the ball would’ve gotten there before Kozma could have crossed the plate, ending the inning. Well, 20-20 hindsight.
Fly balls or popups where two fielders miscommunicate have never been scored as errors, ever. So the reason that that wasn’t scored an error is that such plays have never been scored as errors, so the official scorer can’t start a new precedent just for kicks.
Of course, this simply is one more data point to demonstrate that errors and fielding percentage aren’t a very meaningful stat. There aren’t really enough of them to matter much in comparative terms, they do not capture a lot (or even most) defensive mistakes, they are subjective and scored really weird, and they don’t even capture a lot of plays that players make correctly. (An outfielder who cuts the ball off in the gap and holds a player to a single instead of a double, for instance, is scored as having made no play at all.)
Who would you give the error to on the pop up? The pitcher and catcher are pretty much equally to blame.
Yeah, Salty got the error on mis-handling the throw because the runner advanced from 2nd to 3rd on it. If the runner had stayed put, no error would have been charged.
Craig Breslow had been so strong throughout the postseason up to last night. Things could not have gone worse for him. He seemed very rattled by Kozma on 2nd base and walked the freaking 9th batter.
Was that Red Schoendienst who fist-bumped Carlos Beltran as he was introduced and came out of the dugout?
thank you for the link, that was fun.
mister rik, your comment caused a small le smile.