Marco's Baseball Blog-O-Roonie 2021: HOT HITTERS

 

MARCO’S BASEBALL BLOG-O-ROONIE 2021: HOT HITTERS

There’s almost nothing as fun in baseball as when some hitter goes cosmic and starts getting a hit 3 or 4 times a game for like a week. A no-hitter is riveting for that one game...miraculous fielding plays are ooh and ahh for a while, but when a player just goes bonkers at the plate and starts unloading extra-base hits and hitting walk offs right and left...that’s the game at it’s exciting peak.

‘Oh boy, here comes this guy again...Don Mattingly has now homered in seven straight games...whoops! Make it eight straight!”

“Rennie Stennett of the Pittsburgh Pirates has just gone seven for seven in a ballgame at Wrigley Field.”

“Joe DiMaggio has just gone 3 for 5 to extend his hitting streak to fifty-six games!”

“Big Papi Ortiz gets on base 19 times in 25 plate appearances for OPS of 1.948 and is named MVP of 2013 series.”

“Chris Taylor of the Dodgers hits his third home run of this playoff game!”

“Yordan Alvarez goes 4 for 4 with two doubles, a single and a triple to lead Houston over Boston.”

Baseball is such a random thing that it’s almost unpredictable. All we really know is that the law of baseball averages tends to keep batting averages under .500 over any fifty game span no matter how hot the hitter. And sometimes he’ll bat Mendoza level (under .200) for a season. (Cody Bellinger? Are you still there?)

Chris Taylor of the Dodgers was an All Star in 2021 but in September he hit .104 with an on base of .154 and slugged .188. That’s really, really low. Then in the Playoffs he went off like a Roman candle and won big games with big hits. What happened?

Well, to put it succinctly, Chris Taylor is a good fundamental hitter with an aggressive style who never met a fastball he didn’t want to swing at and the opposing pitchers, for some reason...thought they should pitch him fastballs up. He had a great time blasting long drives into the stands or off the walls for the whole playoff run.

Kike Hernandez of the Red Sox was also white hot...at least until Game 4 of the Divisional Playoffs against the Astros. Then he went stone cold at the plate because Dusty Baker decided to watch him try to hit sinkers and sliders instead of change ups and fastballs. Suddenly, no more chest high straight meat to deposit over the Monster.

It’s my contention that Taylor and Hernandez are both examples of happy circumstance: The pitchers were throwing it where they wanted to hit it. And when you’re that hot, your long drives bounce off the fence just inches above the left-fielder’s glove and your wounded duck broken bat mis-hits fall just in front of the center fielder who had just been moved back to defend against your awesome display of recent power. Tends to inflate the average.

Most of Taylor’s hits were pulled. Most of Hernandez’ hits were pulled or to center. No shame but neither of these guys is really that good a hitter.

Eddie Rosario hasn’t looked like a good hitter for his career. He was non-tendered by Minnesota two years ago, then traded for a washed up Pablo Sandoval by Cleveland just to dump his salary. He found something he liked in Atlanta and he’s proved to be their Big Noise in this season’s playoffs. Rosario is not being fed pitches he likes. From what I’ve seen he’s spraying the ball all over the lot. He’s a leftie who’s pulling the inside pitch for homers and slapping the ball down the third base line against the shift. He’s getting the barrel on the breaking balls he’s seeing and not futilely trying to pull them with power. Very impressive. His lifetime OPS is .782 but for some reason it’s .903 since he got to Atlanta and is off the board this playoff season. He’s also hitting like a demon in the clutch. He beat the Dodgers with his bat and his glove in Game 6.

Eddie reminds me of Harold Baines, although Hall of Famer Baines was a better hitter for average. Harold also had a twenty year career with high numbers.

Yordan Alvarez is the fourth Hot Hitter that has taken a turn at being the Man as THE offensive player of this year’s post season. And Yordan is the one guy that I would have to say is a real HITTER now and in the future. He was rookie of the year when he came into the league in 2019, had knee issues in 2020 and hit well this year. His playoff OPS is .938 and he was MVP of the ALCS this year.

Yordan has something going that these other hitters don’t: he can hit the ball to Beaumont. His kind of power (he’s 6’5” and 225 lbs.) let’s him swing easy at pitches off the plate and still hit it over the fence. Anything over the plate is likely to wind up over the center field wall. So far, the Red Sox and Braves have the same remedy for the Alvarez situation...Ball Four! Also, they’re not letting him bat against a right handed pitcher. This guy scares people. He’s the second coming of Willie McCovey.

Good hitters who also hit with power are a special breed. Alvarez is still developing, but he’s already a must to avoid for pitchers. The truly great hitters in baseball history come in differing types. Now these are the guys who would get hot and stay hot season after season. I’ve run this down before so I’ll keep it short:

Scientists: hitters who study the game and maximize batting average over the long ball.

Ty Cobb, Rod Carew, Tony Gwynn, Wade Boggs, Ichiro. They all could hit .350 in their sleep. But don’t expect more than fifteen homers a season out of them. All of them used the opposite field to maximum effect.

Beast Savants: not really the thinking types, these guys overpowered the other team by hitting the ball out of the yard until the outfielders had to move back and let their singles drop in. The result? 40-50 home run guys who also hit .350+. Babe Ruth, Jimmy Foxx, Hank Greenberg, Lou Gehrig, John Mize, ..and more recently since pitching got much deeper, faster and trickier and outfielders got more athletic and gloves got more high tech and hitters faced a new pitcher every at bat...Papi Ortiz, Miguel Cabreras, Albert Pujols, Manny Ramirez, Mike Trout.

Special Cases: Rogers Hornsby...he won two triple crowns as a three time .400 hitter with 40 homer power. He was a Scientist AND a Beast. As was…

Ted Williams… probably the ultimate Scientific hitter of all times. His power kept the outfield deep. He could have hit over .400 a couple more times if he’d been content to go to left against the shift. But he would have had to sacrifice home runs and be content with 60 doubles a season off the Monster.

Joe DiMaggio combined a brainy approach to the game with raw, God-given talent. At his best, Joe would just destroy pitching staffs single handedly.

Stan Musial hit in the .350 to .370 range year after year and hit 39 homers a couple of times. He was so blessed with great eyes and quick hands that he barely had to study pitchers...he could just hit them. A spray hitter first and foremost, he could turn it on when he played in a friendly park like Ebbet’s Field and be an ultimate bomber.

Mickey Mantle combined the threat of on base speed with the biggest power bat in baseball. Speed gave Mick the ability to beat out an extra twenty infield hits a year that gave him averages of .353 and .365 in his prime while still being a 50 homer threat. Willie Mays was close to the Mick in power and had years of .345 and .347. Aaron and Frank Robinson were similar power/average hitters with good speed.

George Brett...A real Science hitter made the choice to hit .330 and above with 20 homers instead of .290 with 35. This was mostly because of the home park he played in. Kaufmann was Yellowstone.

Rockies: a couple of Colorado Rockies had big seasons in the 1990’s and 2000’s. I’m not sure how to score them because of the Mile High effect and the steroid era but Todd Helton and Larry Walker both had multiple seasons where they batted above .350 with 40+ home runs. It’s not their fault if they were hitting in Colorado.

Other hitters of the steroid years will not be discussed here. I’ve already mentioned Manny Ramirez and I’m not sure about some of the others. Broke my own rule dammit.

SHORT PLAYOFF NOTES:

TWO SONGS FOR THE BOSTON RED SOX:

...”I’m Sittin on Top of the World” games two and three of the ALDS. “Nobody knows you When You’re Down and Out” games four and five and six.

THE STOLEN BASE RETURNS: Teams got tired of waiting around for another home run and went out and played some real baseball with steals and productive outs, just to get something on the board. Result...40 steals and 2 caught stealings. (Or something like that.)

BUT NOT THE BUNT: the Red Sox , desperate for a run, had runners on second and third with nobody out and failed to score. They even had a right handed batter up with nobody on the shifted right side and had a strike out instead of dropping any kind of bunt down. If it’s on the first base side it’s an automatic run. No dice.. Renfro mght finally do something except strike out ...nope.

Astros in 6...my pick.

Later...

MARCO'S BASEBALL BLOG-O-ROONIE 2021: PLAYOFF EDITION..."UNDEAD!"

MARCO’S BASEBALL BLOG-O-ROONIE 2021: PLAYOFF EDITION---UNDEAD!

High up in the Carpathian Mountains north of Albania the Tampa Bay Rays have a dark castle on a rocky crag. The peasants thereabout bar their windows and hang ropes of garlic on their doors. Beneath the castle in a moldy crypt is where they keep the pitchers.

The bodies are pale white and tall...none under 6’ 6”. The Rays keep them on ice and every other year or so they thaw a couple out and pour some steaming warm wolf’s blood on their elbows and chant the encantations...”Let There Be Sliders!” Then they release these lanky golems and ship them off to Florida, to wreak havoc on the American League. They all look twenty. They will always look twenty.

The Red Sox continued their adventures by scoring 14 runs against the (formerly Devil) Rays (and now we know why!) in Game 2 of the ALDS, including 5 homers by the visitors. They could have used some of those runs in Game 1 when they got shut out by the Dracs and suffered the indignity of a straight steal of home by Randy Arozarena. That steal was pretty great, as is Arozarena. (The Cardinals gave him away just like the Cubs traded Lou Brock to them in ‘64… like the Dodgers failed to protect Roberto Clemente...like Boston traded Jeff Bagwell...like Tampa Bay absolutely violated Pittsburgh in the Archer trade… it’s the hard truth that sometimes stardom is hard to recognize but how do you miss somebody like Randy A?)

The favored Rays looked fantastic in Game 1, but removed their second game starter after a brief two innings and let the Bosox ravage their bullpen for the rest of the game. Could have been a mistake. Now the Red Sox know they can deal with the Rays’ bullpen.

The Giants don’t seem to mind facing the Dodgers. They calmly went about their business in Game 1 and sat back and watched as their young stud starter Logan Webb carved up the stacked Dodger lineup with about 10-12 slider/change ups per inning. The Dodgers never figured him out. The commentators kept rhapsodizing over Walker Buehler and his ten strike outs. Hey, this is the National League and at least three of those Ks per game are token at bats by feeble National League pitchers! An American League pitcher with ten per game is actually much more impressive.

Webb was a quarterback in school and he kind of reminds me of another tough monkey QB who used to play for the Washington Politically Incorrects back in day...Billy Kilmer. Same jutting jaw and thin lips. Just flat out tough looking. Anyway, he’s going to be a star if he keeps pitching like that.

It’s fun to watch the Giants/Dodgers because there’s all these MVPS on the field and a bunch more gamers who COULD be MVPs. Pujols,Bellinger, Betts and Kershaw are the annointed Dodgers and the Giants add Posey and Kris Bryant. The could have beens or still could bes are Evan Longoria, Brandon Crawford, Tre Turner, and Justin Turner.

Los Angeles vaulted into the Divisional series by walking off with a Wild Card victory when slumping Chris Taylor pulled one into the seats. It was a glorious ending that the game deserved. Both the Cards and the Dodgers fought hard and I’m glad somebody didn’t drop a pop up or something like that to end it.

It’s Game 2 of the Divisionals...already! I’m waiting for Mookie and Trea to start running crazy. If the team doesn’t hit, they better run. And can’t there be just ONE bunt down the third base line when the extreme shift is on?

What an absolute Fogey! Still waiting around for somebody to bunt!

Later...

Marco's Baseball Blog-O-Roonie 2021: "ACTIVATE JUJU!...ENGAGE!"

MARCO’S BASEBALL BLOG-O-ROONIE 2021: “ACTIVATE JUJU!... ENGAGE!”

No more messin’ around with no more Wild Cards. It’s time to get serious. We now enter phase two of the 2021 Playoffs, when the contenders separate themselves into contenders or pretenders. These are the fateful five game playoffs. The divisional champ with the best record overall plays the winner of the Wild Card game and is assumed to have an edge since they have been able to line up their pitching staff for the long Playoff road ahead.

Of course this advantage is usually countermanded by taking five days off to cool down the offense and any momentum they may have had.

The AL participants this year are the Division winner Tampa Bay and Wild Card winner Boston... still flushed with victory goose pimples from defeating their nemesis, the Yankees. (Who are probably still suffering PTSD from seeing Aaron Judge being sent home to his death on a single off the wall by Stanton; the third base coach Nevin whirling his arm to beckon him disastrously onto the Siren rocks of the catcher’s mitt, filled with a relayed baseball inscribed “Greetings from Xander...Welcome Home!” )

The other game tonight (Thursday Oct.7) is between the Central Division champion Chicago White Sox and the Western Division leading Houston Astros. These teams are pretty evenly matched. They each feature:

1/ a strong offense with lots and lots of power.

2/spectacular defenses

3/lots of fragile and/or psychotic pitchers

They also have managers who take turns being Ahab or Moby Dick every other decade. Tony LaRussa is managing the White Sox, just like he did forty-odd years ago. Dusty Baker came back from retirement to manage the Astros. These guys have managed against each other in 208 games and have each won 104. They are in their seventies now and they make the game of baseball much more interesting with their august presence.

I give the Astros the edge in this series. They’ve been to see the elephant often in the last few years and I think they’ll handle the hype better. Also, their hitting stars include crafty vets like Altuve, Gurriel, Brantley and Bregman to help young guns Tucker and Yordan Alvarez stay focused. They also have home field advantage in this series.

The Sox have vet Jose Abreu to lead but their young guys Luis Robert and Eloy Jimenez have to get hot for them to stay with Houston. Also, two of their top pitchers have health issues. Lance Lynn, their first game starter, was on the injured list with a bad right knee in September. No-hit fireballer Carlos Rondon has had arm problems lately.

As far as the Bosox and Rays? Boston hasn’t been able to stay with Tampa this year. The Rays bullpen is strong and they use it wisely. The Red Sox will need Nate Eovaldi to be Madison Bumgarner circa 2014 to beat the Rays. And Nate doesn’t pitch again until Sunday.

---------------------------------------------------*****----------------------------------------------

Playoffs? Who said anything about Playoffs?

The first playoffs to break a regular season tie and decide the World Series participant was in 1946. The thing to remember about playoffs is that in the National League the Dodgers have been in all of them...at least before the Wild Card era.

I know you remember 1951 and “The Shot Heard Round the World.” It was a three game decider and the Giants’ Bobby Thompson decided it with one of the most famous walk-off home runs of all time. Dodgers lose. Unlucky Dodger hurler Ralph Branca crying on the dugout steps.

But the Dodgers were back in 1959...this time representing Los Angeles... to take two games against the defending pennant winner Milwaukee Braves and win the World Series over Chicago’s White Sox that year. Then the now San Francisco Giants won a classic two out of three against L.A. in 1962. The Dodgers lost again in 1980 when the Astros won a one game playoff after the Dodgers had swept them in four straight at Chavez Ravine to end the season tied.

So, the Dodgeheads have suffered mostly a grim fate in these games. Just as they did in the very first playoff in 1946, when the St. Louis Cardinals came from behind to tie the Brooklyns on the next to last day of the season. Then both teams lost their finales.

St. Louis won the first game at home when Musial tripled in the eighth and Joe Garagiola knocked him in with his third hit of the game. Cardinal starter Howie Pollet pitched with a pulled muscle in his side and went 9 gutsy innings to win 4-2. The Dodger losing pitcher? Ralph Branca...Destiny’s Darling.

At this point, the Dodgers pitching staff was in shreds. Ebbets Field couldn’t save them. St. Louis got 3 triples and 2 doubles and won going away 8-3 in Game 2. The Dodgers went home and the Cardinals played an epic series with the Boston Red Sox, decided by Enos Slaughter’s famous “Mad Dash” to score from first on a double by Harry (“The Hat”) Walker.

An interesting footnote in the “For want of a nail” department:

The Red Sox complained to the Commissioner about the best of three playoff format making the Boston team sit around waiting to play the winner in the 1946 Series. They had to schedule an exhibition game just to keep their players tuned. Ted Williams played the outfield in this game and banged into the outfield wall, hurting his elbow. The Bostonians blamed this injury on The Kid’s 5 for 25 performance in the Classic. All singles including one bunt laid down against the shift by a wounded Splinter. The Red Sox brass demanded a change to a one game playoff for future tie breakers. The American League agreed and voted yes. The Senior Circuit kept their best of three format so they could continue to torture the Dodgers.

Two years later, in 1948, the American League played their first ever tie breaker series when the Cleveland Indians tied up the Red Sox and went to Fenway for the now one-game playoff. Knuckle Baller Gene Bearden pitched a complete game for the Tribe and player/manager Lou Boudreau went 4 for 4 with 2 homers over the monster. The Clevelanders won 8 to 3.

Ted Williams went 1 for 4 with a single and dropped a fly in the outfield for an error that cost them a run. Maybe if the Sox were in a best of 3 format, they might have come back and won. Maybe Ted would have redeemed himself somehow. But that AL format change after the 1946 series killed that option and Ted got to play in only one World Series in his career, and had to play it with a bad elbow.

The Red Sox got beat by the Yankees on the last day of 1949 and they never got close again.

So the consequences of the 1946 Playoffs reverberated in the career of one of baseball’s greatest players.

But don’t cry for Ted; Stan Musial never played in another World Series after 1946 either!

MARCO'S BASEBALL BLOG-O-ROONIE 2021: PLAYOFF EDITION...A SHORT, FEARLESS PREDICTION

 

MARCO’S BASEBALL BLOG-O-ROONIE 2021: PLAYOFF EDITION

FEARLESS PREDICTION:

According to widely distributed punditry the Los Angeles Dodgers absolutely CANNOT lose tonight.

HERE IS WHY THEY WILL!

PROBLEM NUMBER ONE: The home plate umpire tonight will be Joe West, dean of all MLB umpires. Record holder of most games officiated all time. That’s a whole lot of games. And as everybody can tell you, Joe is one tough grumpy Horned Goblin of a Grey-Grouch if ANYBODY dares get in his face about his calls. He has a sense of humor if approached right but a really short fuse if somebody...even old pros he’s known for a decade … start jawing and spitting on his shoes. He’s Joe West dammit, and it’s his damn baseball field. Joe West and the honey badger don’t give a shit.

PROBLEM NUMBER TWO: Joe West is almost the worst umpire in baseball. He’s number one in controlling the game but number 96 (out of a hundred umpires) in call accuracy. That’s right, the longest tenured ump has almost more blown calls than anybody else. Hey, he’s old and grumpy and that chest protector is hot and he has to stand up all game and he’s fat and sweaty and the hell with it, that sounded like a strike. Who can tell with sliders anyway?

PROBLEM NUMBER THREE: Joe West LIKES the St. Louis Cardinals. Especially Adam Wainwright and Yadi Molina. Those guys are like him; they’ve been around forever. They’re good and they know the game. (Joe is sentimental...the Dodgers should start Albert Pujols instead of the human attic fan, Cody Bellinger.)

Wainwright doesn’t bother disagreeing with Joe on ball/strike calls because he knows it will just make trouble for himself. He gets a hurt expression and walks slowly to the back of the mound when Joe blows yet another call, but he doesn’t stare in or anything. Meanwhile, Yadi Molina is the best catcher in the game (or close to it) at framing pitches. Waino will throw those ridiculous slow curves up to the plate and Yadi will twist his glove just so to get the strike called. Now, Joe can’t really follow those curves that wind up in the dirt, but if Yadi catches it, he’s likely to get the call from Joe West. That’s because Yadi is also great at blocking wild pitches and Joe hates to get hit with errant fastballs and bouncing sliders. Yadi will protect Joe and Joe likes catchers who protect him. He’ll even let Yadi yell at him because...”well if Yadier thinks it’s a strike it probably is, so I’ll wink and give him a make up call”. Which is why…

PROBLEM NUMBER FOUR: ...Will Smith, the Dodger catcher, will suffer by comparison. Now Will is pretty good and he’s learning fast in only his second full year. “But, Son, I know Yadier Molina. I’ve worked with Yadier Molina. Son... you’re no Yadier Molina.” And so when Scherzer unleashes those sharp, nasty sliders at 95 mph, and they dive into the opposite batter’s box from where they started out, Will is going to miss framing them a few times and Joe isn’t going to call them strikes. And that’s going to piss off…

PROBLEM NUMBER FIVE:... Mad Max Scherzer. Max is going to be amped to the Max. (See how nicely that works?) It’s a win or go home game and Max loves that. He will be up to his eyeballs in adrenaline ‘cause that’s how he rolls. Lots of heavy breathing and grunting. And Joe is going to make bad call after bad call until Max can’t stand it anymore and he’s going to blow. Max and probably his catcher Will Smith and maybe even manager Dave “Beaming Buddha” Roberts will very likely all get run out of this game when they finally complain once too often about Joe West’s very approximate strike zone. The sponsors who are in the tank for the Dodgers will cringe but Joe West don’t give a shit. Spit on my shoes or say the magic word and you’re gone. “You boys get your asses into the clubhouse. I’ll be behind the plate chewing up this cobra.”

Meanwhile Yadi and Adam will cruise along with Peace in Our Time.

The Dodgers will have trouble scoring because they’ll have to be swinging at all the garbage Wainwright will be throwing their way. Either that or get rung up when Yadi makes Adam look like Leonardo da Vinci. Max will be grooving fastballs in frustration by the fifth after walking six Cardinals on all those overamped sliders.

The Dodgers will sorely miss their leftie home run bat Muncie. I see them scoring a couple of runs when either Mookie Betts or Trea Turner or both top a dribbler to third and get on and proceed to steal a base or two and score on another dribbler to third. Speed will be their only offense.

And, just like the other favorites of Madison Avenue, the New York “is that the Yankees wearin’ Spankies?”, the Los Angeles Dodgers will crater and usher in the New Age of the Robot Umpire to call balls and strikes.

Remember to thank Joe West.