New Mariners franchise record, 15 losses in a row! They were .500 when the bottom dropped out. Will they win another game the rest of the season?
Their current record’s about as good as I thought they would be. It was an illusion when they were at .500. They really are a .400 team, they’ve just gotten there in a weird way.
I don’t have the skill to figure it out but I wonder if the Mariners aren’t the most consistently terrible offense ever fielded. Even after socring 8 today they’re still about 25% worse than the league average in scoring runs, as they were last year.
Their Pythagorean record is 44-56, only one game better than their actual record, so they’re about where they should be based on runs scored and runs allowed.
I think they will get swept by the Yankees and then break the streak against the Rays, who are less of an offensive buzzsaw than their AL East counterparts.
If he wants to keep pitching in the US, I’m not sure what choice he has. He can’t break his contract and sign with another MLB team. The union certainly wouldn’t allow a player to forgo the money he is owed.
Also, I tend to doubt that anyone else would really care to take a shot on him. Minor league pitchers in their 30’s with middling numbers aren’t usually in high demand even if cheap. It is kind of odd that the Yankees haven’t outright released him. My only guess would be that he still brings in enough attention/revenue from his nationality to be worth the roster spot.
The Reds won two games in a row for the first time since…the middle of June? Jeez. And they are 50-51 and still in the hunt…with three teams ahead of them.
How bad are the Astros? If the Mariners lose another ten straight, and the Astros win their next ten, the two teams will have identical records.
I would guess that the Yankees had hoped he’d walk away from the contract and go back to Japan. The union can’t stop Igawa from doing that, and quite rightly probably wouldn’t care.
If the Yankees release him they’re stuck with most of the bill. If Igawa gets on a plane and goes back to NPB, they’re off the hook. Their rather abrupt handling of him suggests to me that that’s what they’re going for but that Igawa’s too stubborn, pissed off, or both to let them get away with it.
I found the story kind of sad, really. Igawa doesn’t sound noble of determined to me; it kinds of reads like he’s hurt and depressed and very lonely. (I don’t know him, I’m just going by the story.) The Yankees gave up on him awfully quickly. The two sides seem to be holding onto each other out of spite.
They’ve tried to send him back to Japan and he doesn’t want to go. The fact that they didn’t deal him to San Diego in 2007 isn’t necessarily spite; ownership may not have wanted to admit they blew it at that point or they might have wanted to give him another chance to improve. The fact that he has not been called up doesn’t seem spiteful to me. He just doesn’t have the stuff to get major league hitters no matter what his record was in double and triple-A. Given the choice to call up a guy who’s had some major league success or a guy who might develop, it makes sense to sign or promote them over Igawa. His contract makes him untradeable, but if you looked at his stats and didn’t know who he was, you wouldn’t call him up.
He pitched in 14 games in 2007 and was awful. He pitched in two more games in 2008 and was worse. It’s true they haven’t cut him, and I’m not really sure why that is.
Yeah, the NL Central is getting interesting, with currently a three-way tie for first place (Pirates/Cards/Brewers) and Cincinnati still in the running. The Astros, meanwhile, have easily the worst record in MLB, but at least they, unlike the Cubs, were never expected to be contenders.
The Rangers are killing the Twins tonight, 20-5. The Twins now have Michael Cuddyer pitching in the 9th inning tonight.
And Cuddyer got out of it without allowing a run!
I love it when that happens. Mike McCoy pitched a scoreless ninth for the Jays a few weeks back.
The Rangers had three guys - Kinsler, Cruz and Napoli - with four hits apeice. Yikes.
I wonder what the cumulative ERA of position players is over the last, say 10 years, because I’ve been a bunch of scoreless innings from them recently. The phrase “effectively wild” comes to mind. Of course, the sample will be almost entirely drawn from blowouts and games that go past the 15th inning.
Maybe before he retires Tony La Russa will field a team of just position players and make everyone pitch an inning.
Just woke up after sticking it out for 14 innings to watch the Royals beat the Red Sox in an unlikely pitcher’s duel.
I’m wondering if Terry Francona has some sort of Pete Rose thing going. Thanks to a botched pick-off, the Bosox had a guy on 3rd with one out, and he tried to steal home plate. Saved the Royals’ bacon right there. What a crazy, crazy night.
This site: Non-pitcher with Pitching Appearances | Baseball-Reference.com
lists all the nonpitchers who have pitched in the majors. It’s a very interesting list, heavy on players from baseball’s early days and heavy on utility infielders and obscure backup catchers.
The list doesn’t specify the years in which the players did it, so I can’t quite answer your question. But when I looked for players who played during the 2000s and began their careers in 1995 or afterwards, here’s what I found:
*There are 39 players in this group (assuming I counted correctly).
*Together they pitched 48.2 innings (assuming…) The only one to pitch more than 3 innings was Aaron Miles, with 5.
*They gave up 41 earned runs, for a 7.58 ERA.
However–
11 of those runs were given up by Cincinnati shortstop Paul Janish over 2 innings in 2 games. If you eliminate him you get 46.2 IP, 30 ER, and a more reasonable 5.79 ERA. Still far from great, but…
And 9 more were allowed by Keith Osik in 2 innings. Eliminate Osik too and you get 44.2 IP, 21 ER, and an ERA of 4.23.
And 28 of the pitchers didn’t allow an earned run, vs. just 11 who did–so your observation is not wrong. 23 of the 28 pitched at least 1 inning, too.
Fun stuff.
Unless you count Rick Ankiel—which you shouldn’t; he doesn’t really belong on the list any more than Babe Ruth does.
I remember three of those innings pitched (1 by Felipe Lopez, who may have exacerbated an arm injury, and 2 by Joe Mather) in a 20-inning Cardinals-Mets game from last year.
I wonder how the fact that pitching by non-pitchers, when it happens, tends to happen late into extra-innings games, affects their pitching effectiveness. And the fact that opposing batters don’t know what to expect.
That was a suicide squeeze attempt. The batter (Scutaro) missed the sign.
Right–I should’ve specified I was leaving Ankiel out, since he was a professional pitcher (and a pretty good one too) when he got his innings in.
Damn, they just delayed the Yankees/Mariners game in the top of the 6th with one out because of rain. Sabathia has a no hitter going, and has struck out 7 straight.
11 ks of 16 outs but the rain will end any chance of a perfect game sadly. Very disappointing. There is still a great chance he picks up win 15 at least.
ElvisL1ves:
Ah, the stuff MLB Gameday doesn’t tell you…
Re: Sabathia - can’t he keep his arm loose while waiting for the rain to stop? He can’t take a few warm-up tosses every so often? Why does this absolutely have to be the end?