I still don’t understand why they haven’t adopted Bill James’s idea of handing out votes based on where you finish in each ballpark. (I guess now you’d have to account for the online vote as a separate park, or parks.)
So if each Royal finished first in Kaufmann Stadium voting, they each get ten points, no matter how much they win by. Meanwhile, the second place finisher gets 6 points, or whatever, come up with your own point system; what it would do is elect the players who get broad support across the league.
Why? KC fans are taking the time to vote within the rules. Infante is pretty obviously not an All-Star, but the local talkers are trying to fire the troops up to try and get him in, also.
Then if Ned starts a Royal’s pitcher . . . (I assume that Trout is safe)
KC is a small market - if the other teams can’t get their fans to vote, it doesn’t reflect badly on the Royals.
If it happens, I assume that MLB will change the rules next year.
The sleeping giant of baseball fandom has awakened. Of course it’ll be ridiculous as an all-star lineup if it holds, but it just goes to show what a great post-season run can do for a city.
There’s no doubt that the BABIP is low, but whether that indicates bad luck is unclear. Ortiz’s ground ball percentage is up by about a third over last year and the year before, and the ratio of “hard-hit” balls is down considerably for him as well. If those long booming fly balls are becoming weak grounders, then the BABIP drop might not be something that would be cured by a little better luck.
As for the shift, Ortiz certainly USED to be known as somebody who wasn’t much affected by shifting, partly because of his ability to hit tons of homers and doubles over the outfielders’ heads and partly because he did go to the opposite field. So if the shift is bugging him now it sounds like he has become a different type of hitter. (BTW, if one out of ten balls Ortiz hits is an out because of the shift, as you suggest, that would by itself completely account for the .200 drop in OPS since last year–trouble is that they shifted on him a ton last year too, didn’t they?)
Voting is now online-only - no more paper ballots at the ballpark.
Let’s all just admit that starting 7 Royals would be both awesome and terrible. There are 3 deserving candidates - Perez, Cain and Escobar, with Gordon a very close vote if it weren’t for his early-season injury. That’s great - it’s been a long time coming for a tortured fan base. And it would be terrible because we know that Bochy is simply going to have Bumgarner be the ASG starter, and repeat the last 5 innings of Game 7. And if you hate the idea of this many players from the same team starting, it’ll be sweet justice - and maybe some motivation for Manfred to adjust the rules next year.
Only 2 balls hit out of the infield all night, and struck out the side in the 9th. And he had 2 hits and 2 RBIs
He’s a rookie, who was supposed to start the season in Sacramento (AAA), and was only called up due to Matt Cain’s injury. He hasn’t quite been Cy Young caliber, but he’s making it very difficult to think about sending him back down when (if?) the Giants get some of their starters back from injury.
Indeed, the shift has been employed consistently against Papi for about a decade now. I think he’s not beating it as much because pitchers are getting better at pitching to the shift. His Oppo% has been down the last 3 years.
Going into today the Blue Jays had scored 27.4% more runs than the average AL team, which is an astounding figure. (They scored 7 runs today so that will be up a tiny bit.) It would be almost impossible to keep up such a pace - it is very unusual for a league to have a team score that many runs relative to the league average. I can’t find the last time an AL team did that. The 1927 Yankees were about that good.
What’s stunning is that this astounding offense is on a team that’s 31-30. If they don’t catch up they’re wasting the best offense in the history of the franchise.
Their +58 run differential is 2nd best in MLB, which is also kinda weird considering they’re barely .500 record.
Separately, I’m going to nominate Rick Sutcliffe as worst baseball color commentator working today. Pair him with Adnan Virk and you’re in for one annoying baseball game.
Looks like it’s crybaby double header day. First up , Torri Hunter who is likely facing a suspension for his temper tantrum and ripping his uniform off and throwing his jersey after being ejected for arguing balls and strikes. Way to hurt your team, ass clown.
The second whiny baby award goes to David Ortiz. He was benched against Baltimore leftie Wei-Yin Chen. Ortiz has been awful against lefties this season and he’ll probably continue to sit against left handers unless he breaks his slump. It’ll be interesting to see how Ortiz reacts going through the rest of the season.
Ortiz and reporters have not been getting along lately, that’s for sure. I gave him a pass the other day when a reporter asked him if he’s washed up.
Don’t be surprised to see him benched regardless of whether the pitcher that day is RH or LH. He’s got an option for 2016 that vests at 425 plate appearances.
Note, the Sox used Alejandro De Aza as lefty pinch hitter last night instead of Ortiz.
I noticed that use of DeAza, but I thought that was strictly because they knew they would need the pinch-hitter to go in and play outfield afterwards, and why burn two players when you can get away with only using one. I hadn’t known about the vesting option, though; that seems to add an extra dimension. As I said before, I guess we shall see.
It is kind of fun to watch the Bluejay offense score all these runs. Josh Donaldson really is having a wonderful year, isn’t he? Sports writer Joe Poznanski has written several times that Mike Trout is actually a lot better than we even think he is, because not only does he play his home games in Anaheim, But he plays 18 games a year in Seattle and Oakland, where pitching also tends to be dominant. I’m not sure I completely buy the argument, given that Trout also plays 18 games each year in Houston and in Arlington, And for some reason Poznanski never seems to apply the argument to anybody else… But when Donaldson was traded to Toronto I remember thinking, not only is he replacing the Coliseum with Rogers Centre, but he will also benefit from replacing Seattle and Anaheim with Baltimore and Boston… Anyway, I am not terribly surprised by how well he is doing.
On the other hand, I thought the Nelson Cruz signing was a disaster in the making, so my ability to prognosticate may not be the best.
The Giants play the Mets tonight at 7:10 in New York, then get to jump on a plane for a cross-country flight back to San Francisco, where they have a game tomorrow against the Mariners.
Today it was announced that their July 5 game in Washington will be changed to an 8 PM start, so they get to take another redeye to prepare for a home game the next day.
I know that the game times are in large part dictated by TV, but that’s a little ridiculous. As is the case that the team had an off-day to travel from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia last week, and another off-day this week to get from Philadelphia to New York, but no travel day at all to get from NYC to SF.
