MARCO’S BASEBALL BLOG-O-ROONIE 2025: ROBOTS RULE
“MACHINES! MACHINES! THEY KEEP RIGHT ON A- GROWING…”
--Lothar and the Hand People
It’s time to tally up the toll and pass out the lollipops to the winners of Man vs. Machines, baseball version 2025.
Many of us thought that the issue had been settled with the acceptance of video replay. Now everybody likes video replay and it’s easy to see why. It’s because the machines have brought us confirmation of what our slow-ass eyes can’t quite register...is his foot on the bag? Ball is two inches away from hitting the first baseman’s mitt: SAFE!
Now that play and every other close play is immediately exposed in slow motion. We’ve entered the realm of robotic confirmation. And it works. We are getting the calls in the field right. We should be making the replay call quicker but at least we’re getting it right.
But when we come to the strike zone the called pitches are fairly random and subject to umpires calling their own personal conception of a strike zone.
Our umps are really good but they are only human and they can’t see the superimposed line in the sky where the Statcast robot ump is freezing the baseball image and proving beyond question that called strikes and balls have been, are currently, and will go on being called wrong about 12 to 20% of the time.
The robots are ready. I think players and fans will adjust quickly, just like the minor leagues have. The umpire will still make the calls but if the batter or the catcher disagrees on a call they can call for Statcast to provide a robo call. If you are right the call is changed and your team keeps the option. If you miss on the replay call your team loses the privilege of another robocall. This discourages overuse and also umpire embarrassment. (And hopefully discourages the use of “That’s my strike zone” as an excuse for frankly ridiculous calls.) Rhubarbs between batters/catchers/pitchers/ managers and umpires? Still an (occasional) part of the game...if you don’t mind lost causes.
Here is a vote I’d never thought I’d make. Time for the robo home plate ump to call strikes and balls in conjunction with the men in black. The TV replay is now exposing just how badly the human eyeball can distinguish the diff between a strike and a ball. Let’s do all we can to get the call right. And may the ghost of Bill Klem ( Father God of all umpires) forgive me.
THE LEFT ARM OF GOD
The lineage of “fastest fastball ever” starts with Amos Rusie...”The Hoosier Thunderbolt”, who came to the New York Giants in 1890 at 19 and terrified hitters as a wild leftie. The rules specified that the pitcher’s “mound” was set at 50 feet in those days. But with Amos Rusie bringing Hoosier Heat it soon became obvious that if that continued somebody was going to die, so the Fathers of the Game moved the pitching rubber back to 60 feet 6 inches, which provided sufficient length to make a game of it again. Rusie struck out 195 in 444 innings. He also walked 200 hitters and had a 36-13 won lost record in 1894. Rusie mowed down the league.
Other speed-ballers of the dead ball era? Rube Waddell ( led AL in K’s 6 straight years—high of 349 in 383 innings in 1904), Cy Young (he posted 4 to 1 strikeout to walk ratios over an endless career while saving his best fastballs for use in a pinch), and Smoky Joe Wood. Smoky Joe from Colorado baptized Fenway Park in 1912, the first year of the grand place, by going 34-5 with 258 strike outs and an ERA of 1.91.
Somebody named Walter Johnson said about Smoky: “no one ever threw faster than Smoky Joe Wood.” Of course Wood thought the same about Johnson. So did most everybody else. Walter was a Kansas schoolboy who came off the farm with a frightening sidearm catapult for an arm and played 21 years for the feeble Washington Senators. He had sub 2.00 ERAs in 11 of those seasons, 12 years when he led the AL in strike outs ...2 seasons over 300 total K’s... and had an average yearly WAR of 7.2!)
Johnson became the standard of all arguments about pitching in general and fastballs in particular. The “Big Train” became his moniker. His only real weakness was being too much of a nice guy to pitch inside and scare hitters off the plate. Walter was afraid one of his pitches would get away from him and kill somebody, so that gave the great hitters of the day (Ty Cobb for instance) a chance to hit him. Walter just kept lashing out with fastballs. That’s the only pitch he needed for the bulk of his career. His arm should have been studied for signs of mutation... Walter never ran dry.
The next pitcher is one of the best who doesn’t get his due. Lefty Grove came out of the minors at age 25 throwing gas and winning 7 consecutive strike out titles in the heart of the most potent offensive period in baseball history…the lively ball days of the twenties and thirties. If Lefty wasn’t the greatest all time pitcher he had to be in the top 5 at least. He was top ERA man in 9 seasons.
The next wunderkind to challenge for the title of fastest fastball was a 1930s version of Johnson… Bob Feller… “Rapid Robert...the Heater from Van Meter”. (it’s a wide- place- in- the- road type town in Iowa.) Feller started his first game for Cleveland when he was 17 and he struck out 15...a record. His next start was a 17 strike out performance and another record. Feller won 4 K titles in a row from 1938 to 1941, then became the first American professional sports figure to enlist after the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Four years later he came back home and won 3 more K titles in a row. Those 4 years in the navy would have been his absolute prime….something that’s often forgotten when you’re talking about the greatest pitchers of all time. His fastball was once credited with cracking 104 mph. (*I’ve explained
this many times before but here goes a catch-me-up. All mph declarations are best guess up until the 1980s when the current contraption measures the velocity of a pitch about 10 feet out of the pitcher’s hand. Before that the radar provided a reading of the pitch at ten feet from the plate. Thus Nolan Ryan’s best reading on the old gun was 102 which translates to a rather remarkable fastball of 108 mph or so when adjusted for the most recent gun. That’s the fastest pitch we can reasonably identify.)
In the early 1950s three young Lefties started careers in the minor leagues as teenagers. The word got around quickly.
“Have you seen Karl Spooner throw?”
“How about that Koufax kid?”
“Steve Dalkowski...best fastball I’ve ever seen!”
Three teenage lefties ready to challenge for the title.
Spooner made it first, brought up by the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1954. His first start was a shut out. He struck out 15 for a NL rookie record. His second start was another complete game goose egg. In this one he struck out 12 . That’s 18 innings, no runs, 7 hits, 7 walks and an incredible 27 strike outs. Another Feller they called him.
And that was it. Karl pressed a little too hard and tweaked his arm. Over. A forever injury. He’d pitch another 98 innings in the majors after Brooklyn let him go but he didn’t have it. Karl the comet was done.
In a spring training batting practice session long ago in 1956, Ted Williams is standing around the cage (talking about hitting I’m sure) and Ted begins to notice the batting practice pitcher:
“Who’s the rookie, Earl?” he asks Earl Weaver, minor league coach for the Baltimore Orioles.
Earl replies “Name is Steve Dalkowski.”
Williams grunts. “Sonuvabitch can bring it!”
Weaver deadpans: “He’s the fastest pitcher in the history of baseball.”
Ted Williams laughs, then cusses a little bit more, then grabs a bat and moves into the cage. He takes three power cuts with that classic swing and steps up to the plate. He nods to the quivering figure facing him.
“Go ahead!” says Ted.
Dalkowski is 5’11’, 170 pounds, and wears thick bi-focals. He’s about to pitch to Ted Williams.
Steve doesn’t take a windup. He just takes a short step toward home and snaps it like a buggy whip. The ball jumps and whizzes just under Ted Williams’ chin.
Ted drops the bat and exclaims “What the hell? I never even saw it! (after much more cussing… Ted was a master of it) Who is he again? “
“Steve Dalkowski”.
“That’s the fastest goddamn pitcher I’ve ever faced! I never want to see him again.”
Ted steps out and stomps off. Dalkowski smiles ruefully.
Steve Dalkowski is the real life model for Nuke LaLoosh , the famously wild pitcher of the Bull Durham movie. He was never able to pitch in the majors. Not even one batter did he face . He spent a long, lonely career in the minor leagues. One year he pitched 170 innings. He struck out 262 batters... and he walked 262 batters. I repeat...262 and 262. He once struck out 27 batters in a game and lost when he walked 16.
Almost every baseball person who ever saw him agreed that Dalkowski was the fastest pitcher they had ever seen. With the worst control. Some of them had an idea how to fix him. Earl Weaver and coach Harry “the Cat” Brecheen stood just off the mound and about 6 feet apart so Steve had to throw between them toward the plate, concentrating on just not hitting them. He could control his pitch when they were there but fell apart when they left. There was one event in the past that haunted him. In high school he once beaned a boy who took a head-shot that he never really recovered from.
Dalkowski’s life was a few tantalizing innings of spectacular, overpowering stuff interspersed with supreme, incessant psycho-wildness.
The Orioles used Steve as a freak show attraction to entertain the fans. “Come see Dalkowski throw a fastball through a wooden fence“. In that elephant man atmosphere they sent Steve over to the army base to test his fastball against a new gizmo that measured velocity. This was the day after Steve had pitched (and lost) a complete game. (What were his managers thinking? They would lead him to the mound and hope that if they left him in long enough he’d spontaneously heal himself?) Dalkowski once lost a game in which he threw 283 pitches.
Steve took 40 minutes of maximum effort before he finally got a pitch where the machine could measure it. He also was throwing from a flat surface by then…no mound that would increase his reading by at least 5-8 mph. The final conservative estimate by the army? Steve’s final pitch traveled at about 105.
Ironically, Steve Dalkowski was coming off his best performance in years when he fielded a sacrifice bunt and tripped as he tried to throw a runner out. Something went pop in his elbow. Tolling Bells. He was soon let go by the Orioles. He was kicked around in the minors trying to get back up, but...
...In two years Steve was an out of control alcoholic surviving as a migrant farm worker and living in booze soaked, miserable poverty and dementia. He made many efforts to turn it around but, like so many lost souls, Steve Dalkowski never tamed the demons. He died of Covid in Connecticut in 2020. They name him in a special wing of the Hall of Fame.
Almost famous.
Koufax was more like Steve D. in that he entered baseball and didn’t have control of his natural talents. Sandy came up as a high school basketball star. He never pitched seriously until he was 19!
Sandy was a bonus baby because of the twisted finances of the majors in the late fifties. That means he had to be carried on the Dodgers roster and couldn’t be sent down for minor league seasoning. He had to learn basic pitcher responsibilities like covering bases, backing up throws, signs, controlling the running game and strategy. When he was on, which was rare, controlling the running game didn’t matter...there were no base runners! Fastball, curveball, fastball... thank you. Take your lumber back to the dugout.
His incessant proclivity to extreme wildness caused his manager, Walt Alston, to park him at the end of the bench for two or three weeks at a time. This caused him to actually almost quit baseball more than once. That would have been a terrible loss of a player who Branch Rickey said was “the greatest arm I’ve ever seen”.
As Sandy pitched more, he also had a lot of elbow pain from throwing too hard and experimenting with sliders and just throwing too many pitches.(If he was on, Alston kept him in games in which he topped 200 pitches)
Sandy was scheduled to pitch in a Spring training game in 1961 and one of the other starters expected to go a few innings missed the bus. Alston wanted to save his bullpen from too much extra work so he purposefully tells Koufax to be ready to throw at least seven innings to save the other arms. Sandy starts the game wild as usual and it looks like he just can’t get it done.
The bases are loaded in the fifth when Sandy’s catcher , Norm Sherry, comes out to the mound.
“Look, we don’t really care that we’re losing, we need to save the bullpen.
Ease up so you don’t overthrow and just lay it in there.”
Sandy proceeds to strike out the side.
After the game Norm tells Sandy this: “When you don’t tense up and try to throw it 110 mph your fastball actually comes in even faster! So just relax ...you weirdo!”
And you know the rest of the story. 5 years of ultimate pitching greatness.
Put Sandy Koufax in the Hall of Fame and let it be said, he had “The Left Arm of God.” (Norm Sherry can be the 3rd string catcher of God.)
OTHER (POST KOUFAX) BIG TIME FASTBALLS:
Sudden Sam McDowell: 6’5” of left handed disaster for hitters. Best nickname of all time. Saw Dalkowski pitch and always maintained that Steve was the fastest that he ever saw.
Steve “Lefty” Carlton: number two to Ryan in all time strikeouts. Had one of the best sliders ever to go with an awesome fastball. Known to use Eastern yoga and meditation techniques to keep fit.
JR Richard: at 6’8” he was frankly terrifying. A stroke kept him from ever showing his true greatness. (*The Astros had JR and Nolan Ryan on the same starting squad ...and neither one was considered the Ace of the staff! That would have been Mike Scott and his unhittable split finger/emory ball.)
Nolan Ryan: His fastball was so evil that it had a name...”The Ryan Express”. Listen to Reggie Jackson… “...when we were going to play Houston I spent a week just prepping for Ryan.” 7 no-hitters? 11 one hitters? Are you kidding me?
Randy Johnson: He was another lost cause wild man at a leftie 6’10”. Then Nolan Ryan spent one afternoon with him (a supreme and laudable act of sportsmanship) and Randy got his feet right. After that he scalped the league.
...AND NEVER FORGET:
“Cyclone Joe” aka “Smokey” Joe Williams: Half Black, half Comanche, he was a legend from 1905 to the 1930s Negro Leagues. Ty Cobb said Joe would have been a sure-fire 30 game winner in the majors. His only rival was…
Satchel Paige: Pitched for 5 decades in about 2500 games. Had so many trick pitches that you forget he was credited with the best arm of all time. He named his fastball “Long Tom” and was a legend by the mid 1930s. Bob Feller and Dizzy Dean barnstormed with him and both called Paige the greatest pitcher they ever saw. Joe DiMaggio agreed. Rogers Hornsby (3-time .400 hitter) struck out 5 times in one game against Satch. Paige attracted a crowd of 65,000 for a special night game in Cleveland welcoming him to the major leagues. He was mid-forties by then!
Coined a phrase for the ages….”Don’t Look Back... something may be gaining on you.”
BONUS COVERAGE FROM THE
DEPARTMENT OF UNDENIABLE DATA:
The Athletics are a last place club with these players on the roster:
Nick Kurz: (“Big Amish”) 33 homers/ .294 batting/ .616 slugging /4 home runs plus a single and a double in one game
Brent Rooker: 30 homers/ 40 doubles
Shea Langeliers: 30 bombs
Tyler Soderstrom: 24 taters
Lawrence Butler: 20 big flies /21 steals
Jacob Wilson: 13 4 baggers/ .320 batting average (2nd in majors)
Now how is that a last place club? Like this: Their pitching is a blank tablet of despair and they gave up their bullpen star Mason Miller.
The Red Sox started the season with a bunch of gold glove caliber outfielders. Cedanne Rafaela was the gold glove favorite in center and Wilyer Abreu had won one in 2024. Jared Duran was one of the favorites in left.
But...their infield was so bad the Sox are finishing absolutely last in errors frequency.
Wunderkind Pete Crow-Armstrong started the season like Mike Trout redux. Hit, hit with power, one of the fastest players and one of the best arms. A superb centerfielder. By the end of the year one key stat leaps out at you. PCA strikes out 5 times for every walk he takes. That’s cause he swings at EVERYTHING and the pitchers of the world got hip. Why throw a strike?
Meet you at the pass for the Playoffs…
Marco
