alifeofknuckleballs
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It’s throw-the-ball-away night in Houston!
Posted in Athletics Baseball, Baseball, Blue Jays Baseball, Knuckleballs, Odd plays on August 3, 2014
How about those “contending” Toronto Blue Jays, falling for a second consecutive night against the lowly Houston Astros at Minute Maid Park?
I guess Brett Oberholtzer and his “mediocre” ERA – a term referenced on tsn.ca’s game preview – was better in the August 2 contest than counterpart R.A. Dickey, huh? (That’s the R.A. Dicky, who by the way had an earned-run average which is not that different from the Astros left-hander at the start of the day….but what does tsn.ca really know about baseball?)
Anyway, the momentum in the game changed thanks to a pair of Blue Jays errors on a pickoff play in the middle of the contest.
With the score tied 2-2 in the fifth inning and Altuve on first base, the knuckleballing Dickey tried to pick him off but the throw instead bounced past first baseman Danny Valencia down into the foul territory in right field. With Altuve hustling around the bases, Valencia chased the ball down and eventually got to it, and then fired a throw to third base to try and get the Astros’ All-Star second baseman. Alas, the throw rolled away from Steve Tolleson, allowing Altuve, who had just slid into the bag at third, to quickly get up and score the tie-breaking run without a throw.
One big run on two errors (Dickey and Valencia), and DH Chris Carter homered moments later to give Houston a two-run advantage. The Blue Jays couldn’t recover, and the Astros’ four-run eighth inning put the game away, as Houston went on to the 8-2 victory.
This reminds me of a game between Oakland and expansion Tampa Bay during the 1998 season, with another knuckleballer involved in an error-filled play that gave the opposing team all the momentum it needed to pull out a victory.
On May 26, 1998 in Oakland, the Athletics had Tom Candiotti on the mound while the visiting Devil Rays had rookie Rolando Arrojo looking to improve to 7-3 on the season for the first-year franchise.
The A’s gave Candiotti a 2-0 lead in the first inning on a two-run homer by Matt Stairs, but everything fell apart for the veteran knuckleballer in the top of the third.
Devil Rays shortstop Kevin Stocker led off with a single, bringing up second baseman Miguel Cairo. With the count 2-and-1, Cairo dropped a bunt down the third-base line, and A’s third baseman Mike Blowers charged in to field the ball. Unfortunately, Blowers’ throw to first base went past Jason Giambi and rolled toward the Tampa Bay bullpen. Stocker, who was running from first base, scored easily.
A’s second baseman Scott Spiezio finally tracked the ball down and threw to third base to try and get Cairo…only to realize nobody was covering. With the ball scooting away, Cairo scored the Devil Rays’ second run to tie it at 2-2.
Two errors on the bunt play, and Tampa Bay had two runs on the board.
Two innings later, Quinton McCracken homered off Candiotti to put the Devil Rays ahead to stay, and the A’s went on to a tough 7-2 loss.
The key play, according to Candiotti, was the bunt that the A’s bungled. “I haven’t seen a bunt turned into a home run before,” he noted afterward [1]. Wade Boggs, the Devil Rays’ third baseman who like Candiotti also threw a knuckleball, agreed with that last statement, saying: “It was more like my son’s Little League game, the way they were throwing the ball around.” [2]
“A lot of things happen with the Oakland A’s you haven’t seen before,” Stairs added [3]. Ahhhh, yes… those were the A’s from a different era, one that would finish last in the AL West in 1998 and also lead the league in errors.
Okay, the A’s misplays in the Tampa Bay game from 1998 were probably worse than what was seen in Houston by the Blue Jays on August 2, but hopefully Toronto will keep throwing the ball away and finish the 2014 season in disappointing fashion.
Getting back to tsn.ca, good job, by the way, with the headline of the following recap in the Mets-Giants contest:
[1] Steve Kettmann, “Errors Add Up to Loss for A’s,” San Francisco Chronicle, May 27, 1998.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
Who says the Yankees have given up?
Posted in Baseball on August 3, 2014
Once again a ridiculous column has surfaced on tsn.ca’s website, and this time it appears they’re taking shots at the New York Yankees.
Of course, the Detroit Tigers and Oakland Athletics made the big headlines by improving their pitching rotations with the additions of David Price (Tigers) and Jon Lester (A’s), respectively, and since the Yankees didn’t do anything significant, it is assumed the New York has given up on the season.
According to former Mets general manager Steve Phillips, who contributes weekly to tsn.ca, “the Yanks and Rays and Red Sox are going to retool for next year” – implying the American League East race is only between Baltimore and Toronto.
Really.
That means it is assumed that the Yankees have given up on the 2014 season, huh? That the club is just going to let Derek Jeter’s final big-league season be a non-playoff year, where the Yankees will simply play out the string and not compete for a shot at the postseason?
C’mon, let’s get serious.
So, was New York supposed to get either Price or Lester? Or maybe the Yankees were supposed to get a broken-down Cliff Lee, right?
First of all, the top pitchers who got moved – Price and Lester – came from the American League East. Did anyone seriously believe the Tampa Bay Rays and Boston Red Sox would trade their left-handed ace to a division rival? (Obviously, the writers at tsn.ca did so, with a couple of them writing nonsense in recent weeks about how the Blue Jays were seriously involved in talks with the Rays and Red Sox for those two pitchers – with the distinct possibility of landing either one of them. Yeah, as if those two clubs were really going to make that kind of a trade within the division. Again, let’s get serious here.)
Secondly, the Yankees didn’t trade for the Phillies’ Lee, which is a good thing because he might be gone for the rest of the season. Lee, who had just came off the disabled list after the All-Star break and would have drawn interest from several clubs in an August waiver deal, might not throw another pitch in 2014. Speaking of Philadelphia, it appeared the Phillies wanted a king’s ransom for outfielder Marlon Byrd, so the Yankees were wise to not pull the trigger on that deal.
Third, the Yankees DID make deals to improve their roster days earlier, when they picked up third baseman Chase Headley from San Diego (July 22) and right-hander Brandon McCarthy (July 6) from Arizona. A week prior to the trading dealine, they also acquired veteran lefty Chris Capuano from Colorado. The point is, New York general manager Brian Cashman is always trying to make his team better. When the Yankees had some pitching holes to fill earlier in the month, they picked up Jeff Francis from Oakland as a stop-gap measure, and when that deal didn’t work out, they shipped the left-hander out of town. Cashman then picked up righty Esmil Rogers off waivers from Toronto, as well as Martin Prado in a separate trade with the Diamondbacks, with the versatile Prado able to play outfield for the Yankees.
So far, McCarthy has pitched well for the Yankees (3-0 with a 2.55 ERA in four starts), and Headley has delivered some big hits since his arrival (.429 in his first four games with New York, helping the Yanks win each contest, and .270 overall). Who knows? Perhaps Stephen Drew (picked up from the Red Sox for second baseman Kelly Johnson) might deliver a key hit down the stretch. Maybe the same thing for Prado.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the Yankees – a team that I don’t even like or root for – finished ahead of the Blue Jays in the East. And perhaps they might even pick up a few more pieces in August to bolster the lineup. But to suggest that New York has given up for the season….that’s simply ridiculous. Only according to tsn.ca.
Flashback to 1995: A 1-0 gem featuring few, few pitches
Posted in (Baseball) Life Ain't Fair..., All About Innings, Athletics Baseball, Indians Baseball, Low-hit Gems on August 1, 2014
I was interested in the Cleveland-Seattle game from July 30 because of the major-league record Felix Hernandez was potentially about to break, but as it turned out, it was the Indians’ starter that was making the headlines.
Corey Kluber, who is now the ace in Cleveland after the Indians traded Justin Masterson earlier in the day, threw an 85-pitch shutout to defeat Hernandez and the Mariners, 2-0. In his previous outing, the 28-year-old right-hander had taken a perfect game into the seventh inning against Kansas City back on July 24 in the Indians’ eventual 2-1 loss to the Royals.
According to Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports, Kluber’s gem against Seattle marked just the seventh major-league shutout on 85 or fewer pitches in the 21st century [1].
That stat – so few pitches in a shutout – reminds me of a game in particular, one that featured Greg Maddux against his former Cubs teammate, Mike Morgan. It was an ESPN Sunday Night Baseball game back in the 1995 season, where the Atlanta Braves beat the St. Louis Cardinals 1-0 in a contest that took under two hours to complete.
That night, Maddux tossed a two-hit shutout to outpitch Morgan, who allowed only six hits and a walk over eight innings [2]. A quick search on Baseball-Reference.com reveals that that game took place on August 20, 1995, with Maddux throwing only 88 pitches – 66 for strikes – in his nine innings.
As for Morgan? He threw 84 pitches – 55 for strikes – over his eight innings of work. It might have been his best start of the season – and he did come within two outs of throwing a no-hitter against the Montreal Expos over a month earlier on July 3.
A tidy, efficient game for both pitchers, with the only run of the game coming in the third inning when Marquis Grissom led off with a double, moved to third on Jeff Blauser’s sacrifice but, and came home on Chipper Jones’ grounder to second base. That was all the scoring for the night, with the game lasting only an hour and 50 minutes.
Any baseball fan knows about Maddux’s dominance that season – where the Braves ace right-hander went 19-2 and captured his fourth consecutive Cy Young Award – so I won’t talk much more about him.
Let’s talk a little bit about Morgan, who went just 7-7 despite a respectable 3.56 ERA in 21 starts. Apparently, if you made him throw enough pitches – something that the Braves didn’t do – you were going to get to him in the late innings. More specifically, Morgan was virtually unhittable in his first 75 pitches in 1995, but became a batting practice pitcher on his 76th pitch onward.
That’s what Dodger third-base coach Joey Amalfitano told first baseman Eric Karros before he stepped up to the plate to face Morgan in the sixth inning on August 9, 1995. Next thing you knew, Karros stroked a two-run homer on the Cardinals right-hander’s 76th pitch of the night, and the Dodgers – with knuckleballer Tom Candiotti on the mound – went on to beat St. Louis, 4-2.
Speaking of Candiotti, he himself also once tossed a complete-game 1-0 shutout where he threw only 85 pitches. The knuckleballer fanned three and didn’t walk a hitter in the four-hit shutout. But that was a spring-training game back in 1987 between the Cleveland Indians and the Oakland Athletics, though the A’s did have their everyday players in the lineup that afternoon. According to an old San Jose Mercury News story from March 28, 1987, Tony Phillips (0-for-3), Carney Lansford (0-for-3), Jose Canseco (2-for-3), Reggie Jackson (0-for-3), and Mark McGwire (0-for-3) all played in that game.
Ahhhhh…great memories, and it’s thanks to Corey Kluber, the new ace of the Indians.
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[1] According to that same Yahoo! Sports story, Kluber faced one batter over the minimum in nine complete innings for his second straight start, which marked the first time it had happened in big-league history.
[2] Poor Morgan. He was also the losing pitcher in Dennis Martinez’s perfect game against the Los Angeles Dodgers in July 1991, dropping a hard-luck 2-0 decision. He gave up only four hits in a complete-game effort, with both runs off of him unearned.
Thinking back some 22 years ago, Canseco, Canseco, Canseco…
Posted in (Baseball) Life Ain't Fair..., Athletics Baseball on August 1, 2014
The July 31st trading deadline in Major League Baseball in 2014 featured a couple of blockbuster deals which first saw the Oakland Athletics acquire left-hander Jon Lester and outfielder Jonny Gomes from the Boston Red Sox for slugger Yoenis Cespedes, and then the Detroit Tigers stunning the baseball world hours later with the addition of former Cy Young winner David Price from the Tampa Bay Rays in a three-team trade which also involved the Seattle Mariners.
Outfielder Austin Jackson, who was part of the Price deal and had been traded to the Mariners, was actually patrolling center field for the Tigers when he was pulled in the seventh inning of Detroit’s afternoon contest against the Chicago White Sox.
That reminded me right away of the Jose Canseco trade back in 1992, when the A’s slugger was standing in the on-deck circle in the bottom of the first inning with teammate Jerry Browne at the plate facing Baltimore Orioles right-hander Mike Mussina on the night of August 31 in Oakland. Canseco, who was hitting third in the lineup and playing right field for the A’s that night, was called back to the dugout by skipper Tony La Russa while Browne was still batting.
Lance Blankenship, a utilityman who played all three outfield positions as well as first base and second base for Oakland in 1992, was sent out to replace Canseco [1].
What happened was A’s general manager Sandy Alderson had just pulled off a trade with Texas, sending Canseco to the Rangers in exchange for outfielder Ruben Sierra and pitchers Bobby Witt and Jeff Russell.
So, the 1988 American League MVP was out of the game, after having played the top of the first inning in right field.
Okay, so not quite the way things unfolded in Detroit in 2014, with Austin Jackson being pulled while he was still on the field, but still… kind of a similar situation, being traded in the middle of the contest.
At least that was the first thing that came to mind when the details of Jackson’s departure from the Tigers-White Sox game was announced.
And getting back to Canseco, the trade of Cespedes to the Red Sox reminds me of that 1992 deal as well. Cespedes, who is of Cuban decent just like Canseco, has just gone from a team that is considered a potential World Series contender to a club that’s not going to make the playoffs. Just like how Canseco went from the first-place A’s in ’92 to the Rangers, who would finish a disappointing fourth with a 77-85 record despite Juan Gonzalez’s 43 home runs and 37 victories posted by the duo of Kevin Brown (21-11) and Jose Guzman (16-11). 
Going from a contending team to an also-ran… obviously is very disappointing. That exact same thing, incidentally, also happened later to Sierra, one of the players picked up in the Canseco trade, as the moody outfielder would be dealt from the first-place New York Yankees in 1996 to lowly Detroit in exchange for another slugger, Cecil Fielder. The Yankees went on to win the World Series that year, denying Sierra of a shot at a ring.
One last thing about Canseco. Remember back on July 29 when Cubs catcher John Baker took the mound in the 16th inning of their marathon against the Colorado Rockies? Baker got the pitching victory and even scored the game-ending run in the bottom half of the 16th, but Canseco was not so fortunate in 1993. With Texas getting blown out in Boston, Canseco persuaded Rangers skipper Kevin Kennedy to let him pitch the eighth inning, and he wound up blowing out his arm which eventually required Tommy John surgery. Ironically, DH Chili Davis of the Angels also pitched during that 1993 season, in a blowout loss to Texas. Davis had better luck too, working two hitless innings but hitting Canseco with a pitch.
Ahhh….baseball back in the good old days….
Obviously, these trades in 2014 are very exciting to A’s and Tigers fans, but certainly it brought back some memories from seasons past. And, oh, of course, trades can still happen after the July 31st deadline – but players would have to clear waivers – so we’ll see if any other interesting moves take place down the stretch.
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[1] Blankenship also played third base for the A’s in each of the previous two seasons, and would appear in two games at shortstop for Oakland in his final big-league season in 1993.
Thank you, King Felix!
Posted in Baseball, Baseball Biography on July 29, 2014
Well, an update on the release date of Tom Candiotti: A Life of Knuckleballs…
The index for the book has been completed and the final edits have been done. McFarland will be sending the book to the printers by August 24, 2014, pending those edits and the index that I will be sending over to them.
Here’s the funny part: Before I can send anything, I have to wait and see what Seattle Mariners ace right-hander Felix Hernandez does in his next start this week.
Why is that? Well, it’s because on July 25, “King Felix” tied a long-standing record in the Mariners’ 2-1 loss to the visiting Baltimore Orioles. In that outing, Hernandez fanned 10 Orioles and allowed just one run over seven innings. It was his 13th straight start with seven or more innings and two runs or fewer allowed, tying Hall of Famer Tom Seaver’s 1971 record.
What does that have to do with Tom Candiotti: A Life of Knuckleballs? Well, check out the following image from Page 1:
So, it’s a matter of waiting to see what Hernandez does in his next start so this page can be properly edited to reflect what has happened in 2014. You just never figure that a record like that would be matched – and potentially broken – at an inopportune time like this! Murphy’s Law, I suppose.
Other than that, everything has been completed! Now it’s time to see what “King Felix” does in a couple of days – ironically against one of Tom Candiotti’s former teams, the Cleveland Indians.
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