Category Archives: Baseball

Ruben Tejada can’t get into the bar yet, but he can treat you to the laser show

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Ruben Tejada went 3-for-4 last night with a pair of doubles, including a walk-off job against Brewers closer John Axford. It looked like this:

Since I wrote the epic post titled, “I don’t think Ruben Tejada is as bad at hitting as everyone else does,” the diminutive infielder has rewarded my faith by posting a .333/.394/.500 line across the tiny 30 at-bat sample, raising his OPS for the season to a still-bad .577.

There was a discussion on the post-game show last night over whether the Mets should enter Spring Training penciling in Tejada as their starting second baseman. Bob Ojeda said they shouldn’t even give Tejada the slightest inkling that he’d be considered for the job, and that, though maybe he could compete for a spot in Spring Training, he certainly hasn’t earned anything.

Ojeda’s right, of course. Tejada still needs to improve before he should play regularly at the Major League level for a team with any aspirations at contention, especially at second base (as compared to shortstop, where a .577 OPS is ever-so-slightly more palatable).

If the decision-makers for the 2011 Mets decide the team is unlikely to contend, and that Tejada is a real part of the team’s future and his development doesn’t stand to be hindered by his playing at the Major League level, then, sure, let him compete for a job.

It seems to me that the best and safest route, though, would be to sign a Major League stopgap like the ever-frustrating Felipe Lopez to a one-year deal and let Tejada, Daniel Murphy, Justin Turner, Reese Havens, Josh Satin and whoever else I’m missing battle to eventually unseat him.

After the departure of Alex Cora and with the team reportedly finally ready to cut bait on Luis Castillo, the Mets will need middle infielders anyway, so they might as well sign someone with some sort of reasonable track record while the younger players work to prove their merits in Spring Training and then Triple-A. In other words, let one of those guys force his way into the lineup instead of forcing one of those guys into the lineup.

RBI Baseball, when Vince Coleman was fat and white

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Good writeup from Jon Bois at SB Nation looking back at the Nintendo classic. I never played as much RBI Baseball as I did Bases Loaded and especially Baseball Stars — I played a TON of Baseball Stars, since it was the first Nintendo game I knew of where you could actually create players and manage rosters and stuff like that. How come only that game could save data? 

Exit Sandman?

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“I never listen to that type of music,” Rivera said about “Enter Sandman,” “I didn’t know the song before. Once (Metallica) came and I met the singers. But I like gospel music, Christian music.”

He doesn’t like “Sandman,” but says nothing. He lets them play the song.

“I just don’t care,” Rivera said.

– Filip Bondy, N.Y. Daily News.

With most players, I wish they cared more about their warm-up and walk-up music, even if I realize that becoming a Major League baseball player requires so much time and effort and focus that you probably have to let pursuits like developing awesome taste in music, or spending lots of time considering your at-bat music, fall to the wayside.

With Rivera, though, I kind of like that he just doesn’t care about what song they play when he runs in, and I like that he says it that way, too. I think a big part of the Rivera mystique is that he’s totally unflappable. Of course he doesn’t care. You could play Peter Cetera’s “You’re the Inspiration” and he’d seem just as intimidating to opposing hitters, and he’d still come in and throw his unbelievable pitch over and over again.

What’s happening now happens every now and then it seems, and Yankee fans always freak a bit and wonder if this is finally the end of Mariano Rivera. It isn’t. He allows a couple of singles and a few stolen bases and people allow their short-term memories to overwhelm 15 years of dominance.

Just look at his season line: 235 ERA+, 0.857 WHIP. Both better than his career rates. And he’s 40. The dude is ridiculous.

The only minor cause for concern for Yankee fans might be the hiccup in his strikeout rate — Mo’s whiffing only 6.8 batters per nine innings this season as compared to 9.6 over the prior three years and 8.2 for his career. But even if that holds, if that’s not just a small-sample blip and it turns out he’s been a tiny bit lucky to maintain an ERA so low this year, he still doesn’t walk anybody or allow home runs, and still induces groundballs at a rate above 50%, so he’s likely to continue being awesome. Doubting this man is a fool’s errand.

Kiner’s Korner Revisited: Richie Ashburn

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Fun stuff about the 1962 Mets. Stay tuned ’til the end when he calls batting average overrated, like a good sabermetrician. Easter Egg: Shirtless photo of Jay Hook.

For what it’s worth, I just ventured to the 1962 Mets’ baseball-reference page to gawk at just how bad they were. Holy hell. They managed a team OPS+ of 82 and ERA+ of 82, meaning they hit like 2009 Omir Santos and pitched worse than the late Jose Lima.

Somehow, the 2010 Pirates actually have a team OPS+ of 82 and ERA+ of 81.

Ike Davis stuff

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The founder of the group, Dan Brooks, said the organization began with six people and has grown to about 1,000. The mission is to educate people about the Holocaust by telling the stories of their families, to provide a forum where the grandchildren of survivors can connect, and to fight intolerance and ethnic violence wherever it exists. They have had speakers from Darfur and Rwanda address the group in the past. The meeting with Davis, Brooks said, was exhilarating.

“The fact that he would take the time to meet with us and share his story was great,” Brooks said. “It really means a lot that he’s willing to do this.”

One member, Leora Klein, said she was the grandchild of four Holocaust survivors and mentioned to the group how important it was that Davis was willing to identify himself with this cause because he was “young, successful and hot.”

– David Waldstein, N.Y. Times.

Excellent feature from Waldstein in the Times about Davis taking time out to share the story of his great aunt, a Holocaust survivor, with a group dedicated to Holocaust awareness.

Davis also told the group how his paternal grandfather, as a member of the U.S. Armed Forces in World War II, helped liberate a concentration camp, and how it warmed him up to the idea of Davis’ father bringing home a Jewish girlfriend.

For what it’s worth, my own grandfather helped liberate a concentration camp, too, and I’m pretty sure was one of the contingent of American troops ordered to march the citizens of Dachau through that camp to show them the atrocious things their government had done. I think. I get his stories jumbled up in my head with a lot of the books I’ve read, since there’s plenty of overlap, and since he really only shared war stories when we had to beg them out of him for school projects. He always preferred to talk about baseball, which I totally respect.

Speaking of: Davis’ strong finish has pulled his OPS+ up to 116, just shy of the Major League average 120 for first basemen, and an impressive mark for a 23-year-old with only 55 games above A-ball before the season started. Factor in Davis’ Gold Glove-caliber defense, the likelihood that he’ll improve at the plate as he develops, and the fact that he’s still a couple years away from even hitting arbitration and he looks like a keeper for the Mets.

Someone asked me earlier this season if I’d trade Davis in an offseason package for the Brewers’ Prince Fielder, an excellent young hitter a year away from free agency. At the time Davis was slumping badly, but even then I was uncertain — reminding the person that a trade for Fielder would be, in truth, a trade for the right to sign Fielder at market rate.

Now, it seems like a no-brainer: No. Sure, there’s a lot more evidence to prove that Fielder can hit like a Major League first baseman than there is for Davis, and it seems unlikely Davis will ever be the same type of offensive force as Fielder, but when you consider Davis’ superior defense and especially the difference in contracts, Davis looks like a more valuable commodity.

Plus Leora Klein thinks he’s hot.