Frayed Knot

I really wish network announcers (and others for that matter) would stop touting things like "most RBIs ever in Inter-League Play" as if it's a meaningful stat.

* What's the number of pickoffs for Reyes this year? Gotta be at least 4 or 5. Those should be considered when evaluating his Steals/CS numbers - currently at 35 & 8 - when figuring how much his baserunning is really helping. Let's say it's 5 pickoffs, then he's stolen 35 bases at the expense of 13 caught (73%) ... only marginally helping really. * I guess this ends our 'Quality Start' streak? * Today's first 6 innings were longer than Friday's entire game.

The Giants, in their game with Oakland Friday night, ran out of position players AND catchers at the same time. They finished the game using 3Bman Pedro Feliz behind the plate, Pitcher Noah Lowry in the OF, and Randy Winn from the OF to 3rd. Giants had double-switched their starting catcher out in the 5th inning then got burned whent he replacement got hurt in the 10th. Oakland then immediately scored twice (no apparent relation to the position changes) and so they only had to play that way for the remainder of the inning as they didn't score in the bottom and therefore lost. Would have been cool to see that one go another few innings.

Roger gives up 1 in the top of the 1st: 2 singles, WP, 2 Ks but the Yanx come back w/3 in the bottom. Jack Wilson is a really good SS ... until today; and Jason Bay may be a good hitter but has a lousy throwing arm. Pirate pitcher Maholm deserved a bit better than what he got.

Dave Studeman of the Hardball Times takes Bissenger to task for some selective use of stats in that article (and also on some apparently related radio interview) saying, among other things, that; "Baseball Prospectus's Clay Davenport took a more systematic look and found that major league pitchers who debuted in 1973 had pitched 423 innings in the minors, while pitchers who debuted last year pitched 434 minor league innings."

Dodgers get to be on the other end of the BSOTD award following their Thursday meltdown: Trailing 3-2 after giving up a run in both the top of the 9th and the top of the 10th Jeremy Accardo pitching for Toronto (in the absence of BJ Ryan): - Tony Abreu walks - Olmedo Saenz 2R HR Thanks for coming and please arrive home safely.

What Sosa did in his previous good year and is doing again now is keep the ball in the park. He served up 12 HRs over 134 IPs w/the Braves in '05, then they dumped him mid-way through '06 after he had given up 20 in just 87 IPs and he went on to give up another 10 in barely 30 IPs with the Cardinals. Maybe Rick's 1st commandment of [u:d429c1654e]Thou Shalt Keep the Ball Down[/u:d429c1654e] is paying off here. His K rates are about where they've always been (5-6 per 9 IPs) and his walk rates (3/9) are roughly the same as a year ago too (although better than in his early years). The hits/9 are way down and there may be an element of randomness to that that'll come back to bite him at some point - although the reduced HRs are certainly part of that.

Well, he's still young, has a good arm, and has had success in the bigs before (even if not lately) so it's not like he's totally out of the blue. In the meantime, just have him tip-toe past those banana peels until Pedro is ready.

Sosa - 5.25 Delgado - 1.6 Wright - 1.4 Gomez - 0.4 Wagner - 0.7 Beltran - 0.4 Reyes - 0.25 Defense deserves some suds tonight too.

Soriano's 3 HRs were all in the first 4 innings. He was intentionally walked in AB #4. Braves batting now in bottom 6, Cubs lead 6-1 Being the road team also means that he won't lose a potential 9th inning AB Yanx-Pirates tied at 4 thru 7 -- X Nady with an early HR

In keeping with our tradition of thoughtlessly Anglicizing foreign names (a la Joe Table or Hank White) Guillaume Leduc: Billy the Duck

Sheffield's been ridiculously hot (and absurdly stupid) over the last week. It could be worse as we do miss facing Verlander Sunday's starter Miller was the top college pitcher out of last year's draft (UNC). He & Bazooka Joe Smith are two of just 4 from that draft already in the majors. He's potentially a front of the rotation-type pitcher.

Not that this is going make us all feel any better this morning ... but we weren't even the worst botched 9th inning yesterday. Astros leading 6-4, (ex-Met) Dan Wheeler in for the 9th: Kaz Matsui Doubles Matt Holliday Singles (RBI) 6-5 Todd Helton Singles (1st & 3rd) Garrett Atkins Walks (Loaded) Brad Hawpe - Sac Fly (1st & 3rd) Tie Game Troy Tulowitski Singles ... Rockies Win

His velocity doesn't seem to be down. Nor would an injury explain why he's had as many good outings as bad, or why the non-perfect ones all seem to snowball until they become mini-disasters.

Maine - 3.2 Delgado - 1.7 Wright - 1.3 LoDuca - 1.2 Johnson - 0.3 Gomez - 0.3

Met fans seem to have found their new whipping boy in Aaron Heliman. Right now, he's the guy taking the brunt of the anger on talk shows and elsewhere - even to the point where his facial expressions and psyche are being dissected a la Johnny Franco - with many ready to cut ties with him immediately if not sooner. But something's not adding up here. Dude's got a 1.02 WHiP and a .210 BAA -- numbers which don't seem to add up to either a 4.28 ERA or being scored upon in 1/3 of his (usually short) outings. HRs are one of the explanations; 4 this year vs all of 5 all last season The other is his tendancy this season to either be perfect ... or perfectly awful. 27 appearances this year: Been perfect in 14 of them (some as short as 1 out) But in the other 13, he's given up runs (16 in total, 13 earned) in 9 of them. IOW, virtually everytime he puts someone on base that guy (and often several of his friends) come around to score. He's been bunching his hits & walks to the point where only twice has he had an appearance where he's given up just one baserunner. So that's 14 times = no baserunners; Twice = 1 baserunner; 11 times = multiple runners And, not surpisingly, those multiple runners often lead to multiple runs. He's actually given up 2 or more runs more often than just 1 and more than half his total runners have eventually scored. I'm not quite sure where I'm going with all this or how to "fix" it. One view might be to look at it and figure that he's been somewhat unlucky, that a more random distribution of his hits & walks would yield better results even if only by accident. Another fits into the "pysche" theories; the ones about him not performing well because he's unhappy in his role (the same role he was in while the best reliever in baseball over the 2nd half last year) and needs a change in scenery.

He apparently already has one, a torn tendon in his leg. The thing about it is that I heard it described as a "useless tendon". In fact it's the one they take out of your leg to re-weave into the elbow during "Tommy John" surgery and, out of the awful lot of 'TJ' procedure survivors, I haven't seen any of them limping around. The other thing is that in a week where Wagner, Heilman, Smith, Feliciano and Mota all got hit, I'm not sure it's 'let's dump on Schoeneweis' time. He hasn't been good, but he's also got a 3-year contract and is going to be around for a while.

#123 -- Stephen Clyne; RHP, Clemson #153 ** A Position Player** -- Richard Lucas; 3B, Jacksonville, Fla HS #183 -- Zach Lutz -- 3B; Avernia College (PA) Now we just have to fill those other 7 positions.

A call to arms: Pick #77 -- Scott Moviel; RHP, Ohio HS #93 -- Brant Rustich; RHP, UCLA #99 -- Eric Neisen; LHP, Wake Forest

Endy DL'd (to no one's surprise) 4 - 6 weeks is the estimate. Valentin activated. Green claims he'll be ready to go on Sunday, the first day he's eligible. So far that's merely his opinion and nothing official. Milledge supposedly another 3 weeks away. Who da hell knows about Alou.

What I saw of the TV portion of the draft (very tail end) was definitely a case of more equaling less. - First, the 5 minute rule stretched the 1st round out to 3 hours. It was probably less than 1/2 hour before the kids from Bristol did the Bristol stomp all over it. - Then, the kicker to the whole deal was that they virtually ignored the picks after that. Even the crawl at the bottom of the screen wasn't listing picks beyond #31. I mean, Geez, you get a virtual exclusive on the "event" and then choose to not show what going on. - And then they junked it all to watch Schilling no-hit try. Understandable, but then didn't even try to play catch-up with what they missed. Either go back to having the whole thing via conference call or cut the time per pick down to about 2 minutes. Baseball "Draftniks" (to the extent they exist) must have been pulling their hair out over this. P.S. According to that bio info above, Vineyard (hope he doesn't marry a girl named Martha) is a 20 y/o HS senior. WTF?

Top half of Round 1: 1 - Tampa - David Price; LHP Vanderbilt Univ 2 - KC - Mike Moustakas; IF, Calif High School 3 - Cubs - Josh Vitters; 3B, Calif HS 4 - Pirates - Dan Moskas; LHP, Clemson 5 - Orioles - Matt Wieters; C, Ga Tech 6 - Nationals - Ross Detwiler; LHP, Missouri State 7 - Brewers - Matt LaPorta; 1B, U Florida 8 - Rockies - Casey Weathers; RHP (RP), Vanderbilt 9 - D'Backs - Jarrod Parker; RHP, Indiana HS 10 - Giants - Madison Bumgarner; LHP, NoCar HS 11 - Mariners - Phillips Aumont; RHP, Canadian HS 12 - Marlins - Matt Dominguez; 3B, Calif HS 13 - Indians - Beau Mills; 3B/1B, Lewis & Clark Univ 14 - Braves - Jason Heyward; OF, GA HS 15 - Reds - Devin Mesoraco; C, Penn HS

Johnny Dickshot wrote: Hey here's a switch -- Braves take a Georgia high schooler. Amazing how often that happens. There's a real top notch academy that's run out of Atlanta's northern suburbs and the Braves seem to always wind up with the best talent out of that area: Francoeur, McCann, etc. It's like the old days in NYC-area basketball. I remember seeing an old newspaper cartoon captioned: 'Louie Carnaseca's recruiting budget' and it was nothing more than a man's hand full of subway tokens. This year's guy was expected to go earlier and it's like all the other teams parted ways just to get him to the Braves.

metirish wrote: Are there drunken fans hooting and hollering?... Please ... baseball fans have more sense than that. Sounds like each team is using their entire 5 minute allotment (and for no reason whatsoever) so they'll get to the NYM picks around midnight or so.

Does anyone else's sound suck on SNY? No problem hearing the announcers or anything, but the background crowd-type noise comes through in a rising/falling pattern, sounding somewhat like cars wooshing past your open window on the highway. It's not something that's sent me running to the radio (like Fran used to do) but it's annoying and occurs almost constantly despite happening on no other channel meaning it's not my TV or my cable system.