metirish

Question on Mike Scott, the article credits Roger Craig with teaching Scott the split-finger pitch helping Scott go from an average pitcher to Cy Young award winner, don't some people and some Mets believe that Scott "doctored" the ball that year?

Paul DePodesta has four finalists that will interview for the Dodger job ]DePodesta Identifies Four Candidates for Manager Collins, Royster, Trammell and Lovullo will interview for Dodger job. An unidentified fifth person is in the mix. By Steve Henson, Times Staff Writer Four of the five managerial candidates to be interviewed by the Dodgers next week will be Terry Collins, Jerry Royster, Alan Trammell and Torey Lovullo, General Manager Paul DePodesta said Wednesday. DePodesta would not divulge the fifth candidate because he has been unable to reach him. The person is employed by another team not in the playoffs. Collins and Royster work in the Dodger farm system, Trammell was fired last week as manager of the Detroit Tigers and Lovullo was manager of the Cleveland Indians' double-A affiliate in Akron. DePodesta said he has a secondary list of candidates and that additional interviews might be conducted before a decision is reached. The Dodgers would like to hire a manager before organizational meetings are held during the World Series. Jim Tracy, the manager the last five years, left the Dodgers by mutual agreement Monday, one day after the team finished with a 71-91 record. Tracy, considered the front-runner for the Pittsburgh opening, had a lengthy telephone conversation with Pirate General Manager Dave Littlefield on Wednesday, but now might have competition from Ken Macha, who could not reach an agreement to return to the Oakland Athletics. Macha, who lives near Pittsburgh, was a finalist along with Tracy in 2000 when Lloyd McClendon was hired as Pirate manager. DePodesta has scheduled one interview each day from Tuesday through Saturday. Collins, 56, the Dodger director of player development, managed the Houston Astros from 1994 to 1996 and the Angels from 1997 until he was fired late in the 1999 season. Royster, 52, is manager of the Dodgers' triple-A affiliate in Las Vegas. He managed the Milwaukee Brewers in 2002. "[Terry] is very familiar with our personnel," DePodesta said. "Jerry made sense for a lot of the same reasons." Trammell, 47, posted a record of 186-300 in three seasons with the Tigers, one of the worst teams in baseball for many years. He was 43-119 his first year, and the team showed dramatic improvement in 2004, finishing 72-90. "He had a phenomenal career as a player and has a sterling reputation in the game as a person and as a baseball man," DePodesta said. "When he was let go, we spent a lot of time on his name." Lovullo, 40, led Akron to an 84-58 record and the Eastern League title. He has won championships in each of his four seasons as a minor league manager. "He's a guy I've been interested in sitting down with for a while," DePodesta said. "We considered him for farm director position last year and he is a potential rising star in the game." Lovullo is the only one of the four who has not been a major league manager. "It helps that somebody has been through the rigors before and understands everything that comes with being a manager," DePodesta said. "But it won't be a hard requirement." He said there are internal candidates beyond Collins and Royster on the secondary list. Jim Fregosi is hoping he is on that list. Although he hasn't managed since 2000 and is a special advisor to the Atlanta Braves, Fregosi has a strong interest in the Dodger opening. "He's looking to change the culture and improve the franchise and get it back to the respectability it had," said Alan Meersand, Fregosi's agent. No Bobby V?, his team is in the Playoffs in Japan.

Well I only nailed it thanks to google, still not something I ever really thought about, and there have been times when the announcer would call a pitch and I would wonder if he's kinda half guessing at the pitch.

This is an interesting topic 62 and I believe I have found a better article on the subject, a forkball according to these experts is a slower version of the splitter.. http://www.barons.com/nm/publish/barons249.shtml ]Throwing an effective Split-Finger pitch is tricky. Most times a splitter is not thrown for strikes, it is thrown to tempt the batter to swing where he thinks the ball is, but it �disappears� as it breaks hard, down and away from the hitter. The pitch is thrown a lot like a two-seam fastball (the speed is about 4 to 6 mph slower) and a batter may read fastball at release. The difference is the splitter grip has the fingers spread just outside the seams instead of along the seams, changing its rotation. Roger Craig became a very successful coach and manager in the 80�s by teaching this pitch to his players. By learning the split-finger pitch, one of Craig�s students Mike Scott went from a below average pitcher to Cy Young award winner. The splitter works because splitting the fingers has a big effect on the rotation of the ball. If you are watching on television, the ball seems to �fall off the table� when it gets to the plate. The forkball is the slower version of the splitter. Like the splitter, the forkball is not thrown for strikes. The late downward movement is meant to fool hitters. The fingers are split even wider, which takes some speed off the ball. A good forkball can make hitters look very bad. Bruce Sutter popularized this pitch in the late 70�s.

I see what you mean now 62, but I have heard other announcers say Contreras has a forkball, a google search says both the forkball and splitter are pretty much obsolete and have evolved into other pitches. http://www.sptimes.com/2005/05/17/Sports/Here_s_the_pitch.shtml Pitchers still throw the splitter don't they?

Angels are not tired, they lead 3 to nil.

I don't think they usually call splitters a forkball but Jose Contreras does throw a forkball IIRC.

I think only for his crazy quotes , can't be for his views on life and people...

MFY's pack up in the Bronx.. Poor Al looks like crap...

My cable TV is out, service interuption in the area, Cooby any problems with your Suscom?

i remember reading this a few months back.. http://www.slate.com/id/2124605/

White Sox here, 1917 and all that.

I have no rooting interest, just hoping for seven great games.

I just started this..]FROM THE CRITICSPatrick Smith - BusinessWeekJohn Le Carre's The Constant Gardener ranks with The Russia House as the best he has produced since hitting his peak. If this new book is craft rather than art, it is craft of the very highest caliber. It is no mean feat to entertain while also making a reader think. Yet Le Carre pull this off admirably, weaving together several themes�corporate power, underdevelopment, globalization�that will resonate with a wide audience. Book MagazineA young, beautiful Englishwoman, Tessa Quayle (think of Princess Diana's looks and Mother Teresa's missionary zeal) has been gruesomely murdered near Northern Kenya's Lake Turkana. Tessa had been traveling with Dr. Arnold Bluhm, a black African physician and fellow missionary who has since vanished. The police and Fleet Street have cast the attractive, charismatic Bluhm as her lover and murderer. Yet Justin Quayle, Tessa's devoted and much-older husband, a career diplomat at the British High Commission in Nairobi, has other suspicions. A decent, though not extraordinary, man, Justin is so devastated by his wife's brutal death that he begins a dangerous odyssey in hopes of understanding the mystery of her final days. Relentlessly following a trail of clues through Africa, Italy, Germany and Canada, Justin uncovers secrets about a multinational pharmaceutical firm and its new anti-TB drug, Dypraxa, which has been rushed to market in Africa despite serious side effects. Though the novel has a surfeit of beautiful women and not enough ambiguity between good and evil, Le Carr� (author of The Russia House) delivers a deeply compelling and complex story, full of deceptions and betrayals. �James Schiff

Klapisch on Rodriguez.]Klap: A-Rod comes up short Tuesday, October 11, 2005 By BOB KLAPISCHSPORTS COLUMNIST ANAHEIM - Alex Rodriguez' eyes had the sort of shimmer that suggested he'd just been crying - or was about to. Either way, there was no mistaking the misery of the Yankees' most talented, but least clutch player in the failed Division Series."I played like a dog in these last five games," Rodriguez said quietly, getting no argument from anyone. In a roomful of culprits, including Hideki Matsui and Bernie Williams, it was the third baseman who represented everything that is both rich and empty about the new millennium Yankees.It's been five long years since they've won a world championship, and to hear the Yankees talk about their 5-3 loss to Angels in Game Five Monday night, the drought might as well be 100 years.Everyone made sure to say they were disappointed and frustrated. Those were the key phrases being thrown around. But no one was angry, not really. Beside Joe Torre, who admitted he'd never taken a loss as badly as this, no one had the burning desire to tear up the room, if not their own skin, while the Angels were outside partying like it was the end of the world. For all the money George Steinbrenner has sunk into his team - nearly $1 billion since 2000 - no one had Derek Jeter's back in the final game. It was the captain who launched a seventh-inning home run that gave the Yankees hope, bringing them to within 5-3. It was Jeter who led off the ninth inning with a single off Frankie Rodriguez deep into the leftfield corner, bringing A-Rod to the plate as the tying run.It's been an awful Series until this point - no RBIs in five games - but here was the third baseman's chance to pay off his debt to greater New York. One swing and all would've been forgiven. The Angels, all of them, took a deep breath as K-Rod went to work on the AL's soon-to-be-anointed Most Valuable Player.Anaheim's infield played back; third baseman Chone Figgins wasn't anywhere near the bag at double play depth. He was merely trying to keep any grounders from getting through, hugging the line to prevent an extra base hit into the corner.And then the impossible happened. A-Rod chopped a one-bouncer directly at Figgins, as if there'd been a magnet sewn into his glove. Before A-Rod could escape the batter's box he'd been sucked into the vortex of a 5-4-3 double play that killed the Yankees' season.Jason Giambi followed with a double. Gary Sheffield's infield single put runners on first and second. But it was too late. Rodriguez got Hideki Matsui to bounce to first to end the game, but the closer had already won the most important battle of the inning, getting A-Rod to succumb one last time.How? Why? The summer's impressive body of work - .a 321 average, 48 homers, 130 RBIs - is just air now. A-Rod's .133 average in the Division Series makes it two consecutive empty Octobers. He's 4-for-32 since Game Four of last year's collapse against the Red Sox, his legacy in fast decline.Rodriguez was man enough to answer every last question about his failure. He deserves credit for that. When reporters finally drifted away, A-Rod sat at his locker, waiting for anyone else who had a follow-up question or needed a clarification. No one came by.After all, what else was there to ask when the game's best player says, "I have to take a long look in the mirror. I just didn't show up in this series."Even if Rodriguez wins the MVP award, as expected, he's still running from his ghosts, the ones who make him grip the bat too tightly and swing too hard with runners in scoring position. Such poisons will eventually leave Rodriguez with the ultimate "loser" tag, and although there's still time to re-write that epitaph, Rodriguez can't travel this road indefinitely.Already, it appears the Yankees will be re-making themselves in 2006, beginning a sixth year of searching for the intangible that once made them champions. Tom Gordon and Bernie Williams will be gone. Tino Martinez will likely retire. GM Brian Cashman might walk away from his contract once it expires on October 31.Rodriguez isn't going anywhere, of course, not at $20 million a year. But the Yankees must be re-thinking whether he's the player to take them to the promised land. The Rangers came to that same disturbing conclusion three years ago and were thrilled to finally move his contract into Steinbrenner's waiting hands.A-Rod craved the big city's energy, but no amount of glitz could save him from missing a easy ground ball in Game Two, leading to a 5-2 loss. And nothing could spare A-Rod from hitting .000 with runners in scoring position, and even worse, failing to get the ball out of the infield in those situations.Obviously, he's not the only reason the Yankees were drummed out of the playoffs in the first round. The middle-relief corps needs a complete make-over, evidenced by that Torre could only trust Randy Johnson on two days' rest when Mike Mussina was knocked out in the third inning.But while the Unit kept the Angels quiet, no one really stepped up. There were just different degrees of failure. If the Yankees take cue A-Rod's cue and look in the mirror, they'll see the ugliness of Matsui's .200 average; Williams' .211 mark, and the five runs Mussina allowed despite being the only Yankee not fighting jet-lag.Five years without a ring, they're instead all being fitted with asterisks - but none as pronounced as A-Rod's.The Invisible Man, is what October now cruelly whispers in his ear.1Billion since 2000, that's some money.

Tracy hired by the Pirates. http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/4981982

Great work Yancy....

Yup that was the very man.

Who cares about the MVP, I'm sure Rodriguez has a fat clause in his contract for more money if he gets it, but it don't mean shit, he batted what in this series, under .200?

SK I'm with you, we can now enjoy baseball again, I now don't care who wins the WS , although Chicago would be a great story..

Oh Happy days, I'm not sure what makes me more happy, the fact that the Shanks lost or that Rodriguez sucked in a big way, yeah he had six walks but who cares... Santana was brilliant,great pitching by him.

K-Rod to close this out, come on you Angel....

Wow, tomorrow I'm going to contact the Baseball Hall of Fame about that...good job Greg.

K-Rod in for the Angels.

A Houston baseball writer today on PTI on ESPN was asked by Michael Wilbon where he rates this game, he said the 86 game was far better in his opinion, he covered that game and felt that whole series had a different feeling than this one, he didn't get a chance to explain more.