Overrated Baseball Statistics – Pitcher Wins
August 4, 2013Scott Raab on Jimmy Haslam, Roger Goodell, the Plain Dealer, Riley Cooper and Danny Salazar – WFNY Podcast – 2013-08-06
August 5, 2013While We’re Waiting is the daily morning link roundup that WFNY has been serving up for breakfast for the last several years. We hope you enjoy the following recent collection of yummy and nutritious Cleveland sports-related articles. Anything else to add? Email us at tips@waitingfornextyear.com.
“Cleveland, despite years of failures on the football field just as painful as those of the teams on the diamond, is a Browns Town.
It can be a Tribe Town too, though. There are no reasons it can’t or shouldn’t be. The fans just have to be behind the team and support it, through thick and thin, just as Browns fans have remained loyal to their football team despite losing records in 12 of 14 years since their return to the NFL in 1999. In just three years have the Browns lost less than ten games in their 16-game schedule. Just once have they advanced to the postseason.
Is it really that hard to juggle an allegiance between Major League Baseball and the National Football League? Even when the NFL regular season gets rolling next month, how many times will Browns football games interfere with your ability to view Indians games? Only the first quarter of the Browns schedule overlaps with that of the Indians, and it accounts for just four September Sundays (barring an Indians postseason appearance, of course).” [Toth/DTTWLN]
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“The wonderful thing about baseball is that even the impossible is still possible. For example, during the Midland Rock Hounds (Oakland A’s) Double-A battle against the Corpus Christi Hooks (Houston Astros) on Friday night, Rock Hounds third baseman Vinnie Catricala pulled off something so rarely seen, I had to triple check to make a sure it actually existed.
In one single pitch, Catricala struck out against Nick Tropeano. You read that correctly. One pitch.” [Townsend/Big League Stew]
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Very interesting read. “A quick story. The week I bought the Mavs I was asked by Nellie if I wanted to bag the season in order to get the best draft pick that we could. My response was “No. At some point this franchise has to learn how to win and develop a culture of winning. You don’t create that culture by tanking the season. I don’t know how many games we can win, but we are going to try to win every one of them.” Thank goodness we didn’t tank the season It wasn’t a very good draft. And that turn around for the rest of the season helped define who we were and are to this day.” [Cuban/Blog Maverick]
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Buckeye fans, get your photo fix from 2013 camp here. [Eleven Warriors]
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College all stars beating a pro team? It happened. “After all, Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers were not supposed to lose to a group of talented but untested college football players, exhibition game or not. In the history of the contest — originally called the Chicago Charities College All-Star Game and started by Chicago Tribune sports editor Arch Ward in 1934 — the amateurs beat the pros only eight times prior to that day, with most of those victories coming before 1950, when college football was more dominant.
Half a century later, the upset is still seared in the players’ memories.” [Loverro/Sports on Earth]
13 Comments
I completely understand the need for that rule and perhaps that batter deserved the 2nd strike called. But, giving less than 10seconds between the first strike call and the strikeout call? That reeks of the umpire also going overboard.
I didn’t know about that rule though and love the intricacies that we learn.
Nice look back at the old College All-Star game.
Speaking of which, in 1958 the kids crushed the Detroit Lions 35-18. The two big stars for the college team in that game were both Browns draft choices: QB Jim Ninowski, who we had drafted in the 4th round, and halfback Bobby Mitchell, who we drafted in the 7th round. Pretty cool.
http://www.mmbolding.com/BSR/The_Chicago_All-Star_Game_1958.htm
Mark Cuban is an extremely smart man. His main flaw is that he wants everyone else to know it too. I am sure his fans appreciate knowing his reasoning, but why is he telling us? Maybe he just figures other teams won’t really care and continue to do it their way. And, they probably will.
I agree with him that the more teams that follow the “tank and build” philosophy, the harder it becomes to actually accomplish it. Just take a look at the upcoming season with all of the teams “potentially” tanking. It did open up the opportunity for a team like the Cavs to obtain quality veterans as those teams didn’t even consider guys that might help them get a few extra wins like Jack, Clark, and, the risky-one, Bynum. And, as he mentions, there is a very real possibility that teams continue to try to blow things up and pass off veterans in the upcoming years. It’ll be interesting to see what side we end up being on these deals (hopefully, obtaining the final pieces toward a championship run behind our current corps).
We of course couldn’t hear what the batter was saying to the umpire. Depending on the degree of disrespect, we could probably throw time out of the equation as a meaningful variable.
It is quite amazing that in all the tens of thousands of innings of baseball we have played and watched that a particular scenario like this has never occurred or even been a knowable outcome!
Never read Cuban’s blog before. Very smart man. Doesn’t read like a guy who is risk averse in the slightest. And love the concept of establishing a “culture of winning” as soon as it is feasible. Hoping Gilbert’s thoughts align with this.
sorry, didn’t see your comment before posting mine. Agree on all.
I don’t know. “reasonable opportunity” seems to indicate some measure of time to me. if the umpire asked him to get back in the box and he told him off, then that would be a good reason for the first mark, but it was still under 10seconds total before the called third strike. I want my umpires level-headed and it seems too quick there no matter what was said.
and, completely agree on the amazement.
If major league umps would make any attempt to enforce the rule average length of games would be shortened to closer to 2.5 hours, like before strolls between every pitch became the norm. Watch a classic game form the ’60s or ’70s and it’s startling – batters keep a foot in the box as they look for the sign and then quickly set for the next pitch. Hargrove’s pulling on each gloves and touching his helmet wouldn’t be deemed a “human rain delay” today, his OCD would be considered normal.
Nomar Garciaparra is nodding vigorously.
I think the ump was too quick with strike 2, but then the batter completely disregarded him after that. Batter should have made some effort at that point to get back in the box. At that point, the ump (I think) was determined to call him out, and was arguably within his right to do so after the further delay.
Having said that, though, I’m not entirely sure that this is why the rule was written. The rule states (at least as reported) that it can be invoked if a batter “refuses” to take his position in the box. I didn’t see that happen.
I don’t disagree. But I think the level of vitriol/disrespect could justifiably lessen the threshold of a “reasonable opportunity”, especially at the amateur level. The problem is, we don’t know what was said, nor do we exactly have a large corpus of past instances to use as a reference point!
Nomar rulez! Baseball was never meant to be short television dominates enough sporting events like when you are at a football game and you see players standing around until the guy clad in orange oven mits waves his arms signaling it’s okay to play again.
Manny Corpas?