I’d be surprised at any pitcher that threw a ball anywhere close to the plate if a batter was going for dinger #5. In fact, he might catch one in the ear, depending.
Four finger salute.
I’m actually surprised anyone was allowed a chance at four.
Throwing at a batter when it’s 11-1 or whatever would be the height of poor sportsmanship. Christ Jesus. Be a man and throw it in there and see if you can get him out.
A surprising number of 4-homer games were in close games, actually, so those guys weren’t getting free bases anyway. In two cases, Delehanty and Horner, their team somehow LOST the game. The Mike Schmidt game was surely the most entertaining; it ended Phillies 18, Cubs 16. At one point the Cubs led 13-2.
Another interesting one was the Carlos Delgado game, also a close one. Interestingly, Delgado could not have hit five homers because even though Toronto scored ten runs, Delgado only came up four times. He remains the only player to start and finish a full 9-inning game and hit a home run every time he went to bat.
And now comes the apology.
Meh. I remember when Korean women were dominating golf and the LPGA made up a new rule that you couldn’t play on the LPGA unless you could speak English. Its just what we do in this country. Especially wrt Asians.
Yeah, Gennett is certainly not the first player on the Reds that would spring to mind if someone said to me “One of the Reds players hit four homers last night!”. My mind would immediately gravitate to Duvall or Votto. Interestingly, if you take out one of the “n’s” in his last name and add an “i” to the end, that’s exactly how my last name is spelled. It’s pronounced the same too, except with the long “e” sound at the end of mine.
Dumb(?) question - - do American ballplayers playing in Japan use translators?
(emphasis added)
How about them…Astros. Last I checked, 42-17. They throw a lot of off-speed pitches but can light up the radar when needed. Good offense in a hitter-friendly park. As a Cardinals fan I remember that Houston’s not a fun place to visit in the post-season. That crowd is noisy and pitchers just never feel comfortable in that park.
p.s. I know there’s a smart-assed White Sox fan out there thinking “Oh yeah, well it didn’t bother us, huh huh?”
42-18 now, lost to KC last night.
The acquisition of Brian McCann was very wise.
This was a couple days ago, but did you see Carter’s home run off Drew Pomeranz on the ugliest swing in the history of baseball? The dude did not turn his hips at all, threw the bat out with one arm just trying to reach the pitch on the outer half, and smacked it over the LF wall. Unreal.
Yeah, I’m surprised how much attention that got. Baseball announcers say stupid things all the time.
In light of recent discussions about strikeouts being way up, I thought this was a good article about how Josh Donaldson is ruining the game of baseball. Ok, that’s taking the theme of the article way overboard, but it’s interesting that Donaldson has found an approach that works for him but is apparently detrimental to a lot of other (lesser) guys.
I don’t know Mike Trout’s “launch angle,” but I bet if he wanted to be Wade Boggs and hit .360 with half as many strikeouts, he could do it. Buster Olney’s point, I think, is that there are guys in MLB today who *should *take that approach but are sold on the idea that it’s all about homeruns.
The logical problem here is that the only person taking Josh Donaldson’s approach is Josh Donaldson, and it works VERY well for him.
The evidence presented isn’t terribly convincing. At this stage of the season a hitter’s “Launch angle” could be way high because he’s just having a crap year, has a loop in his swing, and is hitting more infield popups. What would be somewhat convincing would be to show a hitter who had success slapping for average, made a conscious effort to hit more fly balls, and sucked as a result.
According to Bill James, Willie Wilson fell victim to this mindset, but that was in like 1984.
In any case, Olney prevaricates a little. As he points out,
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The unwillingness of batters to adjust to shifts is an unopened opportunity for many more hits, and
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We’re seeing a lot of pretty awesome pitching, and that’s a natural shift.
I’m not really convinced that’s true.
With only a very few exceptions I can think of, the way a guy hits is basically the way a guy hits. By the time you’re Mike Trout’s age, your hitting approach will never change that much. Trout is a power hitter, Boggs was a contact hitter. Trout could put more emphasis on contact, but I don’t think he’d ever be successful trying to bat .366 with 8 home runs. Asking someone to alter their approach at this age is a request usually doomed to failure. That’s especially true when a player is a Trout or a Boggs, and is already performing at the highest level; any alteration from that level of success is likely to make you LESS effective. That’s as opposed to say, Jose Bautista’s 2009 swing alterations, which were alternations to an approach that was producing only middling results.
Pete Rose once said he could have hit 25 home runs a year but he’d have batted .240. That’s actually believeable - he hit as many as 16 homers a year in a time when that wasn’t so easy, I could see him bopping 25 if he’d swung for the fences, but he was pretty clear headed as to how much worse a player he’d be if he tried to change what he was fundamentally good at.
The point about awesome pitching these days is indisputable. Pitchers just keep throwing harder and harder and then top that off with more specialists.
And maybe I should clarify about Trout. Obviously, he shouldn’t change his approach. And I don’t know that he could wake up tomorrow and decide to be Wade Boggs. But if he came up with that approach, I think he could have Boggs-like stats. Similarly, if Boggs was willing to strike out 100 times a year and hit a measly .290, I think he could have hit 30 HRs.
At the end of the day, look at Boggs’ top 5 OPS or WAR seasons and they’re pretty darn similar to Trout’s. So I guess if you’re that good a hitter, you can take whatever approach you want.
And another last night. I hope he gets on a good run long enough to flip him when Bird gets back. That would be great.
If Ty Cobb was to be believed, he could have had Babe Ruth-like stats by abandoning his get-on-base-at-all-costs approach and swinging for the fences instead.
Cobb did have a three-home run game late in his career (1925), supposedly after telling a sportswriter he was going to show what he could do by going for the long ball (he totaled 5 homers over two games).
Also, a couple of the guys who shouldn’t be hitting are - no way are Marwin Gonzalez and Jake Marisnick 900+ OPS hitters. I figure the team settles down and finishes on mid-upper 90s wins.
If Ty Cobb could have lowered his batting average just 22 points but hit 714 home runs, he would have.
Cobb could crush it but the ball just didn’t go very far in those days and guys didn’t swing the way they do now.
Nats went 7-2 on their California road trip. Swept the Giants, and took two of three from the Athletics and Dodgers. Then we returned home and beat the Orioles tonight in a make-up game. We’re 38-21, leading the Braves by 11.5 games in the NL East.
You’re welcome for the 4 game sweep by the Reds. Now we go west to visit LA and the Dodgers, a scenario I feel will not play out well for the oldest team in baseball. We never seem to succeed out West. And I cannot watch the games because they start so damn late…