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Category Archives: Baseball
Two 15-team leagues?
There also is a lot of work being done on creating two 15-team leagues, which is tied up with the sale of the Astros because Houston is the club most likely to be moved from the NL to the AL to even the number of clubs in each league….
That is one reason why the sides want to go to two 15-team leagues. Because it likely would mean clubs from different divisions would play more similar schedules, thus, making the competition for wild cards across divisions fairer. Also, there would be six five-team divisions, which would mean all clubs would be competing against the same number of opponents within their division to make the playoffs.
I’ve said my piece already (many times) about the league adding a second wild card, which Sherman outlines elsewhere in his column. But I’ve noticed some resentment among fans for the idea of two 15-team leagues because it would mean constant interleague play. But best I can tell, there would be a way to do it while actually reducing the total number of interleague games.
Right now, there are 252 interleague games a season, all of them bunched into specific weeks and weekends when all but two teams play against an interleague opponent.
But if there were always one interleague series being played (as necessitated by 15-team leagues) but never more than one, there would actually be a lot fewer interleague games in total — about 162, obviously.
Every team would play three or four interleague series randomly distributed throughout the course of the season, as opposed to the five or six series they have now.
Naturally the league could wind up keeping to 252 games or expanding, since nowhere has anyone said two 15-team leagues would mean reduced interleague play.
Obligatory Moneyball review
I didn’t intend to weigh in on the Moneyball movie because almost everyone else in the whole world already has, but a few people asked me about it so here goes:
I thought it was kind of boring. I didn’t hate it, I just never got all that excited by anything happening on screen.
Granted, I generally prefer movies where stuff explodes and tough guys crack wise and something crazy happens in front of a drunk guy who then looks down at his drink like, “whoa, this is good stuff.” Obviously none of that happened in Moneyball, but none of that happened in The Social Network either and I enjoyed that one.
I guess I should consider the movie’s perspective from the point of view of someone who hasn’t spent countless hours discussing and arguing over the fallout from and subject of the book. From that standpoint, though, I think I might be left wishing the movie more overtly connected some of the theoretical dots, baseball-wise. It shows that Billy Beane and Paul “Peter Brand” DePodesta wanted to acquire inexpensive players with good on-base percentages, but doesn’t really include much detail about why that stat was undervalued elsewhere or how it contributes to winning.
But then I guess I’m only interested in that stuff because I enjoy baseball the way I do. The movie glosses over some of the technical nerdery in favor of sort of 21st-century Robin Hood story, with the cunning and charming Beane and his band of Not Particularly Merry Men (Man, actually — Brand seems to be the only person in the A’s organization on board with Beane’s plans) working to undermine the wealthy (and not depicted) Sheriff of Yankeeham.
And I guess in a way that did happen, and those types of stories always resonate with people (perhaps especially, I should say, in this economy). But the movie seemed more focused on why he did it — a series of internal and external conflicts — than how he did it. I guess acquiring Scott Hatteberg doesn’t exactly necessitate a heist, but hey, it’s Hollywood.
Oh, and the movie spent a lot of time further exposing just how hot Brad Pitt is, which I guess is a tough thing to avoid if you’re making a movie starring Brad Pitt. But at times Moneyball seemed like a film about Brad Pitt’s arm muscles with a baseball subplot.
The movie produced a couple of hearty laughs — many of which were included in the previews, and Chris Pratt was notably good as Hatteberg. Pitt and Jonah Hill were just fine, and Philip Seymour Hoffman was believable enough as Art Howe to make Mets fans everywhere cringe.
The Moneyball movie was a sort-of faithful adaptation to a book that was itself sort-of faithful to what actually happened. It held my interest for most of its two-plus hour run time, but I never got lost in it the way I do in my favorite movies or the way I do, for that matter, in great baseball games.
TedQuarters singularity: Achieved
In the bottom of the seventh inning in the first game of the double-header between the Mets and Phillies on Saturday, Valentino Pascucci crushed a game-tying pinch-hit homer off Cole Hamels.
Look at it. It’s beautiful.
I was listening to the game in my car when it happened because I was on my way into Manhattan to pick up about 15 pounds of pork. I had to pull over to watch the highlight on my phone.
Our man Catsmeat grabbed the obligatory Cole Hamels reaction shot, which has been added to the archive so we never forget it.
Bold Flavors Snack of the Week
I’m going to be honest: I intended this new weekly feature to be part of a weekly fantasy football post. The idea was to chart the guys most frequently named “great plays” by various fantasy gurus, then come back on Monday or Tuesday to see if there’s any consistency to fantasy football guruism.
But really the whole thing would’ve just been an excuse to post a photo and description of something I ate while watching football the week before, the Bold Flavors Snack of the Week — named of course in loving tribute to the @DadBoner Twitter account.
I decided I don’t want to spin the fantasy spin into some sort of meta fantasy web, so here’s the snack alone.
These are bacon-wrapped cream cheese-stuffed jalapenos:
Many variations of these can be found in barbecue cookbooks, often under the name “Dragon Turds.” Supposedly pitmasters prepare them, throw them on the smoker and eat them while they’re waiting for their meat to finish.
Though I actually had my smoker going on Sunday, I made these in the toaster oven (I was hungry and knew they’d cook a lot quicker that way). Very easy to do.
You need:
Bacon (I used pepper bacon because I’m like that)
Cream cheese, softened
Jalapenos
Toothpicks (IMPORTANT!)
I tried making these a couple weeks ago with cheddar cheese and without toothpicks and everything went haywire. The bacon unwrapped from the peppers and the cheese melted out everywhere, so I just wound up with bacon-wrapped jalapenos not really stuffed with anything. So they were still amazing, but not as good as the ones pictured.
To make them:
1) Preheat the toaster oven (or regular oven, I guess) to 400-degrees (Fahrenheit. This is America, dammit).
2) Cut off the stems from the jalapenos and slice them down one side. Remove the seeds and pith. Wear gloves if you plan on touching your eyes anytime within the next 10 hours. Or don’t wear gloves and suffer through the agony of taking your contacts out with your eyes on fire, which is what I do because who has gloves?
3) Spoon cream cheese into the jalapenos. I used about a heaping teaspoon of cream cheese per jalapeno, but I’m working with pretty small jalapenos. Fill those bastards up, you’re going to want that cream cheese.
4) Wrap the jalapenos in bacon and secure with a toothpick. I used about half a slice of bacon per jalapeno, taking special care to cover the top of the jalapenos where the cheese is most likely to spill out.
5) Lay the jalapenos on a toaster oven tray and bake until the bacon looks delicious.
6) Remove jalapenos from tray and make some perfunctory effort to let them cool before eating them, then get impatient and bite into one like a minute later even though you know molten cream cheese will scald your mouth.
They’re delicious. I only made five because I only had five jalapenos, plus because I’d prefer not to die. But five was pretty much as many jalapenos as I can eat. These things are spicy, fellas.
Watching Moneyball with Bill James
I thought it was a terrific movie. Among all the baseball movies of the last generation, this was the baseballest.
– Bill James.
Bill James attended the Moneyball premiere, meaning James watched a movie based on a book based on a series of events inspired by his own book. BusinessWeek’s feature about James watching the movie is good, but I imagine watching just about anything with Bill James would be pretty interesting. Would Bill James figure out a way to objectively assess Wipeout competitors? What does Bill James think about SpongeBob SquarePants?
Via Tangotiger.
Baseball Show with Marc Normandin
Marc writes about the Red Sox at Over the Monster and Tweets @marc_normandin. Here’s me getting shticky:
The meanest players in baseball react
The Batting Stance Guy catches up with SI.com’s meanest players in baseball:
Why baseball is awesome, part ten billion
Yesterday evening, in the ninth inning of a long game delayed over two hours by rain, nearly six hours after the Mets and Cardinals were set to start playing, with the long-since mathematically eliminated Mets losing by two runs, Ruben Tejada worked the count full after falling into an 0-2 hole to Fernando Salas with the bases loaded and one out.
Tejada smacked Salas’ next pitch, a fastball, into left field and just beyond the reach of Shane Robinson. Two Mets scored, tying the game. On the Metro-North train, I involuntarily and very audibly whooped.
Around this time of year — seemingly every year now — people ask me why I keep tuning in to every Mets game. The team is essentially done, “folded up” even by its own manager’s account. Several of the club’s most entertaining and promising young players are injured. There are more important games being played elsewhere.
Am I watching in hopes of seeing the club’s first no-hitter? Jose Reyes’ pursuit of the batting title? At-bats for Val Pascucci? Home runs by Lucas Duda?
No. Wait, actually: Yes, but only insomuch as all those things represent aspects of baseball. Awesome, awesome baseball.
I laugh and tell people I can’t pull myself away, but it’s not quite that. I could easily have entertained myself last night watching the season premieres of NBC’s excellent Thursday night sitcoms instead of a few innings each of the Blue Jays and Angels’ marathon and the Rays’ shellacking of Yankee pitching.
I didn’t because I know my TiVo will keep those shows for a drowsier time. By next week there’ll be much less baseball and no Mets baseball whatsoever. In a little over a month, Major League Baseball will crown its champion and then there’ll be no sniff of on-field action until March.
So I keep tuning in, because sometimes the Mets come back from four runs down in the ninth inning to beat an actual playoff contender. And though wins for the Mets don’t really mean a damn thing at this point, they can apparently still be exciting enough to make me yell out in a crowded train car.
It’s not something I need to justify. Baseball rules.
The bargain-bin closer
At Amazin’ Avenue, Chris McShane takes a look at some pending free-agent closers likely to be inexpensive due to recent injury troubles. I especially like this idea:
Jonathan Broxton: The Dodgers, specifically Don Mattingly, may not want Broxton back next year after he spent the grand majority of 2011 on the disabled list with bone spurs in his elbow. He’s had surgery to get rid of the bone spurs, and if his recovery goes as well as other pitchers who had the same procedure, he could be ready for spring training.
Prior to the injury, Broxton was dominant, striking out over eleven batters per nine innings in his career. He’s still only 27-years-old and will turn 28 in June. There was some concern about Broxton’s drop in average fastball velocity in 2010, a 2.5 mph drop, but he still managed a pretty good year out of the Dodgers’ bullpen. If the best Broxton can get this winter is a one-year, incentive-laden deal, he seems like a no-brainer for the Mets.
I mentioned Broxton as a potential fit for the Mets on the Baseball Show a week ago, and the odd comments from Mattingly make it seem less likely Broxton will return to the Dodgers. As McShane notes, Broxton was dominant in the Dodgers’ bullpen as recently as 2009 and still pretty damn good (by peripherals, at least) in 2010.
Broxton also holds the distinction of being the single largest human I’ve seen in a Major League clubhouse. He is listed at 6’4″ and 300 pounds, and in person he appears to be at least that. Maybe his presence in New York would let Lucas Duda feel a little more comfortable in his own frame or give the Jets another option to investigate should they suffer any more injuries on their offensive line.
Tedquarters 