Slow learners

Whilst we're on the topic of baseball owners and management, it would seem that there are several of them out there who are, as a Florida baseball buddy of mine would say, not the sharpest knives in the drawer.

Despite him having left the Yankees under a cloud and despite him having wriggled his way out of his contract in Pittsburgh, the Angels decided, on May 29, that the notoriously unreliable and turbulent Raul Mondesi would be a great addition to their ballclub.

Two months later and, oh, quelle surprise, the Angels have terminated Mondesi's contract, after he failed to show up for a rehab assignment.

Maybe Mondesi is the ace that Mets GM Jim Duquette has up his sleeve ;-)

Trading places

The first spin on the trading merry-go-round seems to be over. At ESPN.com Buster Olney gives us his thoughts and I would tend to agree with his analysis - the Marlins get much-needed help behind the plate (Lo Duca) and in the bullpen (Mota), as well as Encarnacion, who has already played for the ballclub. The Dodgers, however, are another story - MLB.com's John Schlegel says that Los Angeles has made bold moves, but I would go so far as to suggest that their boldness is bordering on the foolhardy. Remember that we're not talking about a team in third place with an outside shot at making the postseason - as things stand the Dodgers have a 3 1/2-game lead in the NL West, and Dodgers' GM Paul DePodesta is taking a huge risk by trading key elements of a successful ballclub. Penny will be a good addition to the starting rotation, but getting him has meant trading away Lo Duca, who has been a driving-force of the Dodgers' team.

Lo Duca himself was devastated by the announcement:

"It's hard to see why or what. I'm sure I'll wonder all night what brought it on. Knowing this could happen is always in the back of your mind. But I always dreamed about being a Dodger for my whole life, having a 20-year career, but I guess it didn't happen. It's tough, so many friends I've made along the way. The fans in L.A., they treated me so well. It's tough."

However, he played down the 'heart and soul of the club' aspect:

"A lot of guys can do that (lead). I think they'll be fine. As long as they get it to the big guy (Eric Gagne), they'll win games. I'm not saying I'll be the missing link. They've got plenty of players."

DePodesta had this to say about the trade:

"The team knows we're trying to make them better and push them over the top. The worst thing we could have done was nothing with a first-place team. Are there risks? No question. I felt the risks associated were acceptable and what we needed to do to get there. When you talk of standing pat, you only get in this position so many times. We don't want to be done. We want to do something more."

What stands out when I read that is: "The worst thing we could have done was nothing with a first-place team". No doubt I'm being overly simplistic about the whole thing, but isn't there an old cliché that says "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"? I'm sure DePodesta knows his job and does it a thousand times better than I ever could, but it does seem as if he's got caught up in the whole trade deadline thing and felt almost obliged to make moves, whether they're 100% necessary or not. However, nothing is ever as simple as it seems - Jayson Stark says that the moves the Dodgers made are simply a precursor to bigger moves on the horizon.

The Mets' trade seems to be a little more puzzling - they seemed to have given up on trying to win it all this season, yet they go out and net the two best-pitchers-on-the-trade-market-not-called-Randy-Johnson. In the process, they gave up third baseman Ty Wigginton and, possibly more crucially, top pitching prosepct Scott Kazmir. Mets fans in blogland (can somebody explain how it is we all end up using words like "blogland" and "blogosphere", however hard we try to fight it?) are not happy about the deal, although Flushing Local seems prepared to give Duquette the benefit of the doubt, suggesting that he might pull another deal out of his hat before the 4pm deadline. We'll see. If he doesn't, it really will look like the Mets sold their soul to the Devil for an outside shot at success this season, and that's not good, even for fans who would like to see their team win it all and put one over on their crosstown rivals.

David Pinto has a good take on the Mets trade, and references the New York Times article that deals with the trade:

Impersonating the Yankees, who traditionally sacrifice minor-leaguers for veterans, the Mets promptly dealt their best pitching prospect, Class AA left-hander Scott Kazmir, to Tampa Bay along with Class AA relief pitcher Joselo Diaz. Besides Benson and Zambrano, the Mets got two minor leaguers in return - Class AAA relief pitcher Bartolome Fortunato from the Devil Rays and Class AA second baseman Jeff Keppinger from the Pirates.

Heading into this season, the Mets advertised their plan to build from within. Owner Fred Wilpon even called Kazmir "untouchable." But in one day, the Mets gave up their two best pitching prospects in Kazmir and Peterson, and their best catching prospect in Huber.

"Untouchable", huh? This blog was recently praised for being "refreshingly free of cynicism", but this kind of deal unfortunately brings out the cynical fan hidden deep inside my pure baseball soul. How do you know when a baseball owner is lying? Easy - his lips are moving...

Lawn of Dreams

Every time I've watched Kevin Costner plough under his corn in one of my favourite movies of all time, I've thought how great it would be to have a ballpark like that in your back garden. So you can guess how delighted I was to receive the two pictures below from a friend who had been trawling the Internet looking for pictures of batting practice / wiffle ball:





Given the size of the park, I'm not sure the wall in left-field could technically be called the "Green Monster" - it's more of a "Green Large Fence" - nor am I sure the dimensions of the park would be enough to bring back Shoeless Joe, but but the idea is still a nice one.

After further enquiry, I discovered that the images come from the Travis Roy Foundation website. So, in fact, not only is the mini-Fenway a nice idea, but the Vermont Wiffle Ball Tournament helps raise money for a very worthwhile cause.

"I have seen the future of baseball..."

How ESPN's Jim Caple envisions the trade deadline (courtesy of Replacement Level Yankees).

Dizzy Miss Lizzy

All this trade talk is starting to make my head spin. My brain has trouble keeping up with all the possible deals that might happen, but check out Jayson Stark, who has the latest on who might be on the move this weekend. I'm not going to spend hours analysing the possibilities - I'll just sit back and watch things unfold. Whatever happens, it will all be much clearer by tomorrow evening.

A breath of fresh air

As a die-hard fan of the game, I'm never going to get bored of baseball, but there are times during a season when I get tired of trying to understand why the Phillies can't figure out the Marlins or where (if anywhere) Randy Johnson and other assorted stars are going to end up. At those moments, I need a refreshing left-field look at the game, and one of my favourites is Dan Hoyle's Vendor Chronicles on SI.com. This week's column examines what he calls the Bonds Factor: no, not how to pitch him, or how to shift the infield to counter his hitting, but rather how Bonds makes it hard for poor old Dan to make a living. Enjoy!

Coco's pop

There's been little time to blog over the past couple of days, but I thought it only right to mention that one of the The Baseball Desert's favourite players had a great night last night. Coco wasn't content to make a great catch at the wall in the top of the second inning, he followed it up with a grand slam in the bottom of the same inning. If only baseball were that easy every day of the week...

14 and 14

A great performance by the Big Unit last night once again counted for absolutely nothing. Randy Johnson struck out 14 batters, only to see the Diamondbacks' bullpen blow the lead and send the team to its 14th consecutive defeat.

Maybe this will finally push Johnson to leave Arizona and head to a team that has a chance of winning something.

Fightin' at Fenway

It sounds like they played one helluva game last night in Boston. I only caught the last three innings or so on the radio, so I can't make any real comment about the festivities, except to say that the Boston radio commentators seemed to echo the thoughts of almost every article I've read today: if this rollercoaster of a game doesn't light a fire under the Red Sox, then nothing will. However, Beth, as ever, has a great take on the game.

It doesn't seem to matter what the situation is - Yankees / Red Sox is always going to guarantee great entertainment. I'm glad about that, because the next time the two clubs meet is in September, and I have tickets to see them. Okay, so the chances of my trip to the US actually materialising are fairly slim, but do I have the upper-deck tickets for September 19, so that's at least half the battle. If you're even vaguely interested in the happiness of an English baseball fan stranded 4,000 miles from major league games, keep your fingers crossed that I can find a way to make the trip happen...

Footnote: Just a thought on Friday night's game. A-Rod came through with the game-winning hit in the ninth and had this to say:

"When the game ended, I felt like that was my first official big hit to make me a Yankee," Rodriguez said. "It felt pretty good."

However, I'm just wondering how many Yankee fans were just as pleased to see him go head-to-head with Varitek last night. I don't have the stats to hand, but A-Rod doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who gets ejected a lot (if anyone does have the stats, please let me know, as I'd be interested in seeing them), so for him to do so whilst 'defending the colours' of the Yankees is a pretty symbolic act.

NL (F)East

The Yankees are not the only New York team to have a big series this weekend, as the Mets play division rivals the Atlanta Braves. Only 3 games separate the top four teams in the NL East, and there are some interesting matchups over the next few days. This weekend the Mets play the Braves and the Phillies face the Cubs, whilst the Marlins should have an easier time of it in Montreal. Come Monday, the Mets will head off to Montreal, the Phillies and the Marlins will play each other and the Braves will play the Pirates. There are never any guarantees in the game of baseball, but it’s obvious that the division race could be much clearer by Thursday of next week. It’s certainly a key time for the Phillies, who, over the next ten or eleven days, will play three games against the Marlins and six games against the Cubs (who, although they trail division rivals the Cardinals by 10 games, still have a better record – 51-44 – than all the teams in the NL East, including the Braves). There ought to be some good baseball in store over the coming days.

King of New York

Well, not so much a king as a Duke – with every start he makes, the Yankees’ Orlando Hernandez makes the gamble the organisation took in signing him whilst he was recovering from injury look like an inspired one. Last night he came up big for the Yankees in a tight pitchers’ duel – he battled Toronto’s Ted Lilly, throwing seven shutout innings and striking out ten batters, which was enough to keep his team in the game until Ruben Sierra’s walk-off homer in the bottom of the ninth. I haven’t checked the stats, but the Bronx Bombers can’t have had that many 1-0 wins this year. In a game where their big bats were pretty much silent all night, El Duque’s performance was just what the doctor ordered.

After a two-game series against the Blue Jays, the Yankees now turn their attention once again to arch-rivals Boston. The Red Sox have been erratic at best over recent games (they’re 4-6 over their last 10 games) , and they need a couple of wins over the Yankees, not only to gain some precious ground in the standings, but to prove to their fans – and maybe even to themselves – that their wins earlier this season against the Yankees were no fluke. A series loss this weekend would not necessarily mean the end of their season (they’re 8 ½ games behind the Yankees in the AL East but still lead the Wild Card race), but it would make it that much tougher for them to keep striving forward.

More rookies

A's reliever Justin Duchscherer clearly hasn't been reading any Mariners blogs lately. Yesterday, Nice Guys Finish Third mentioned Bucky Jacobsen's 'Cerrano-esque introduction to the reality of baseball' - last night was clearly a case of "Straight ball, I hit very much", as he won the game for the Mariners with a walk-off homer in the bottom of the tenth. Bucky now has 3 home runs in six games with the M's - he's not going to be able to single-handedly turn Seattle's season around, but he's certainly giving Mariners fans something to cheer about.

The Wright to hype

It's difficult for a player to make his major league debut at the best of times, but when the debut is that of one of the franchise's brightest stars, he can probably be forgiven for being a little tense at the plate. Mets third baseman David Wright made his debut at Shea Stadium last night, going 0-for-4 at the plate in the Mets' 5-4 win over the Expos.

New York's win helped them to stay in the race for the NL East title - they're just three games behind the Phillies, who beat the Marlins 2-1, thanks to some heroics by Ricky Ledee.

The Sounds of Safeco

It says at the top of this blog that these are "random musings on the summer game" - well, today's post has more of a random musing feel to it than a summer game feel, although it is vaguely baseball-related.

After a long and tiring day yesterday, I sat down at around 11.30pm to write an entry on the blog. I clicked on MLB.com and suddenly realised that there was a whole host of day games being played across the country, so I thought it might be nice to wind down by tuning in to a radio broadcast, just like I used to do in the 'goold old days' before MLB.TV. My curiosity led me out to Safeco to catch the Red Sox / Mariners game, because I figured that a victory for either team would give them some welcome temporary respite from their different brands of misfortune.

Every now and again, as the Mariners' broadcasters did their play-by-play, I could clearly hear,  somewhere outside of Safeco, the sounds of passing trains blasting their horns. As much as we set store by our sensorial memories, we are often surprised by the hold those memories have over us, and last night that most ordinary of sounds managed to transport me 7,000 miles, from the suburbs of Paris to the state of Washington.

I don't know what it is about the sound of those big American freight trains that grabs me. I guess it's the fact that it's a quintessentially American sound, like the blaring horns of New York taxicabs - trains in France and the UK don't sound like that, and I suppose that it reinforces my childhood romantic, idealised image of the US and its Wide Open Spaces. It also took me back to a few years ago, when I spent endless hours talking to a friend in the US, and our conversations would be punctuated by the very same sound of trains going by. It was a tiny detail, but it was the one that always brought home to me the fact that I was talking to somebody on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. 

All in all, despite (or maybe because of) my state of advanced fatigue, it was a great late-night memory. I've never really understood what he meant when he sang it, but Paul Simon was right: "Everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance"...

Apologies for the digression, but I just needed to share my 'Kodak moment'. More-or-less normal baseball blogging should resume tomorrow ;-)

Career day

It looks like the Cardinals last night decided to reinforce the old baseball cliché of "It ain't over 'til it's over". They didn't let the little matter of being down 8-2 after 5 innings bother them - powered by a huge night from Albert Pujols (5-for-5, 3 HR, 5 RBI) they came from behind to beat the Cubs 11-8 and take a 9 1/2 game lead in the NL Central.

Whilst it might seem to the casual fan (i.e. me) that the Cardinals have sneaked up out of nowhere to take a commanding lead in their division, SI's John Donovan says that their performance really should come as no surprise.

Pinstripes and pop

If you're reading this post, which is hidden away in an obscure corner of the blogosphere, then you're probably one of two things: either a good friend of mine or a blog addict.

I love baseball, but over the past couple of years, I've also come to love the blogs that have sprung up around the sport. Baseball is highly conducive to analysis - the pace of every game leaves plenty of time to talk about what's going on on the field, and the fact that teams play 162 games a year gives us plenty of opportunity to follow their changing fortunes six months a year - and nowhere is the analysis more frank and interesting than on baseball blogs.

If you look on pretty much any baseball blog around, you'll find a list of other blogs that the author finds interesting, and The Baseball Desert is no exception. The list on the right is fairly small compared to the 'blogrolls' on other sites, but it's a deliberate choice on my part - I know that there are plenty of other worthy blogs out there, but the ones I have listed are the ones I read on a regular basis.

When I first dicovered the world of baseball blogs, I was like a little kid on Christmas Day, unwrapping fifty-seven presents all at once and not knowing which one to play with. However, after a couple of months of craziness, I realised that, unfortunately, there's just not enough time to read everything that's out there (even for a guy who almost never switches on the TV) - there are still only 24 hours in a day, and reading everything that I would like to read would leave me less time to follow the games themselves (or read or listen to music or spend time with the family or continue my own blog). So, choices had to be made, and I narrowed the list down to about a dozen blogs, all of which I read pretty much on a daily basis. What I like about the blogs is that there's no party line - people say what they want to say without looking for approval from the powers-that-be. I'm not saying that ESPN or MLB.com or Sports Illustrated are not worth reading, I'm just saying that blogs make me feel that I'm getting the 'real deal' - insider information, in the sense that it's coming from the fans at grass-roots level.

All of this is just a long-winded way of saying that it is rare that I add a blog to my 'daily-read' list, but it happened today. In one of those 'link-to-a-link-to-a-link' moments that we all know so well, I ended up on a Phillies blog called Shallow Center, and began to read. I liked the tone and I liked the style (two fairly obvious prerequisites for a good blog), but something else caught my eye, something so rare that I did a double-take before realising that my eyes weren't deceiving me - Shallow Center's author Tom lists the albums he currently has on his CD Changer, and amongst those listed was Waking Hours, by Scottish band Del Amitri. I thought I was the owner of the only blog in the universe to mention both baseball and Del Amitri, but it appears I was wrong.

Del Amitri are one of rock's best-kept secrets. They had precisely one hit in the US - Roll To Me - which, ironically, was both not representative of the band's oeuvre and, in my humble opinion, actually not a very good song. Outside of that, they've made a string of great albums, filled with fine tunes and clever, funny, bittersweet lyrics. Tom responded to an e-mail I sent by saying that Del Amitri were "criminally underrated", and I agree. So, in the absence of anything enlightening to say on the subject of baseball, I'll leave you with a little taste of melancholy, courtesy of Scotalnd's finest:

Surface Of The Moon

Snow in a soulless city covers up the cracks in the road
As a wastrel buys her cigarettes and wipes her pretty nose
Like a part-time Elvis imitator these streets I knew so well
Have been pasted beyond recognition with a temporary smell

Now the midnight train eases out leaving everyone marooned
And without her it might as well be the surface of the moon

From the well-swept streets of Jackson Heights to the dockside drudgery
Everything's now a replica of what it used to be
And since they tarted up the trenches and painted the bridges blue
It seems less like a home to me than just a place they bury you

Now we're lit up like a cathedral in our frozen concrete ruin
And without her it might as well be the surface of the moon

So I need her and I love her that is true
But I'm stuck here like some shipwreck still holding on to you
So when they beat out the tramps and patch up the slums
Everything will be fine
There'll be a new facade for us to hide behind

So on the ancient trails of our coupling in the places we used to meet
I am amazed by the lack of memories that I thought would flood through me
And the riverside where we first kissed has now been reduced
To a phoney old world market where only shoppers get seduced

Now your arms embrace me strangely in your unfamiliar room
And for all I care it might as well be the surface of the moon.

The plot thickens

MLB.com's Mike Bauman on the soap opera that is the Boston Red Sox.

Heaven on earth

First we had baseball and reading, then we had baseball and wine (see July 15 post below), now we have baseball and ice-cream. (Actually, it's mainly just ice-cream, but still, Baseball Widow is always worth a read).

Small silver lining

It's been a tough night over here - five hours spent at the hospital with my youngest daughter, who is being kept overnight and who will be operated on in the morning for appendicitis - but it's nice to know that not everyone was having a bad-hair day today.

I thought I'd just check the box scores before hitting the sack, and was pleased to see that a whole bunch of 'underdog' teams got wins today. The Tigers beat the Yankees, the Devil Rays beat the Orioles (thanks to a complete game from Mark Hendrickson), Pittsburgh beat Florida (to take their home winning streak to 10 games), the Brewers beat the Cubs and Seattle beat Cleveland.

OK, call me a romantic idealist (after all, it's only 0.617% of the season for the teams concerned), but when they all win on the same day, I go to bed a little happier, knowing that, for once, the 'little man' won out.

Analyze This

I was going to post something about New York baseball today - the Yankees' five-hit, five-home-run win over the Tigers and the Mets' 11th-inning walk-off win against the Phillies, but then I read Joe Morgan's latest column on ESPN.com and felt I had to say something. I know it's sometimes the done thing in the baseball blogging community to poke fun at Morgan's column, but it's not something I've felt the need to do - up until today, that is.

His latest offering deals with the All-Star Game and its associated festivities, and the main point is that he would like to see a return to the format which gives alternating NL / AL home-field advantage in the World Series, rather than it being decided by the outcome of the ASG. OK, so it's a step back towards the past, and there are other funkier alternatives being bandied about - notably by the players - but it's not really a surprise that Morgan's 'baseball was much better in my day' mentality leads him in this direction.

However, I couldn't help but appreciate the glaring irony of Morgan then going on to praise the Home Run Derby:

The Home Run Derby is probably the greatest innovation in all of Major League Baseball -- not just in the All-Star Game -- in the past 20 years. It's fantastic. Every year the stands are filled. ESPN's TV ratings are typically great.

Erm - hello??? So now we have Mr "I feel that the more we get away from tradition, the more the game suffers in the long run" Morgan advocating the most useless baseball gimmick ever invented, bar none.

I must be missing something here - I know I've said it already this week, but I really don't see where the tradition is in lining up baseball best sluggers and then feeding them batting-practice pitches to see how many they can hit out of the park. That's not baseball - it's a TV show. Baseball as a sport is almost the antithesis of good TV (I mean the spectacle itself, not the mouth-watering possibility it offers the networks to broadcast commercial breaks every half-inning) - it has three-hour games, lots of moments when 'nothing is happening' and requires a lot of patience and attentiveness to appreciate how things really unfold over nine innings - but the Home Run Derby is like some kind of artificial one-sided highlight-reel. I guess it's perfect for those fans who have an attention span of about three-and-a-half minutes.

Maybe this comes back to yesterday's post on baseball and reading - people don't have the time or the inclination to really read anymore. TV, movies and the Internet have taken up that vacant space, and all three offer some kind of instant gratification, just as the Home Run Derby does - instead of sitting patiently through nine innings of pitching, hitting, defense and strategy (you know, those traditional cornerstones of the summer game...), we get fifteen home runs in four minutes.

Still, to get back to Joe Morgan for a second, all is not lost - his column wasn't completely filled with calls to return to a long-gone era of 'traditional' baseball. In fact, there was a call for genuine innovation as regards the 'Midsummer Classic'. So, wthout further ado, The Baseball Desert would like to bring you "Joe Morgan's New All-Star Game Rule":

NO BOOING...

Yup, I kid you not - Joe was really upset by the booing at the All-Star Game (notably that of Astros' manager Jimy Williams). Now I'm a neutral fan of the game, but it's not that hard for me to put myself in the shoes of a die-hard Astros fan who has paid a small fortune for his season-ticket to Minute Maid Park and who is a little upset to see that his team's season - despite the high profile signings - seems to be going down the toilet. Of course, not all the blame can be laid at the manager's door, but it seems natural that Astros fans would want to vent their frustration on someone, regardless of whether it's the All-Star Game or not. In fact, doing it at the ASG seems logical, because it's one of the rare occasions on which managers and coaches are announced with the rest of the lineup.

I think Joe needs to get outside the broadcast booth a little more often and spend some time with some real baseball fans - not the ones who just turn up to watch the Home Run Derby, but those who turn out to watch Thursday afternoon games against the Expos. Baseball attendance is up all over the place, so people would seem to care about the game, and, more often than not, caring about the game means caring about your team. When the lineups were announced at Minute Maid Park on Tuesday evening, A-Rod and other players were also booed, but the only reaction he had was a wry smile. I'm not saying it's easy for anyone - and I know I wouldn't like it - but it comes with the territory: put on a Yankee uniform (Jeter), sign a huge contract (A-Rod) or be aloof and controversial (Bonds) and I can guarantee you will be enthusiastically booed around the country.

(Just to close the book on Jimy Williams, it would seem that Astros management were in agreement with the fans. They fired Williams the very next day, replacing him with interim manager Phil Garner. Unfortunately, the article doesn't say whether Joe Morgan filed a complaint with Major League Baseball that the firing was 'distasteful'...).

Beyond the foul lines

The All-Star Game seems to have given baseball bloggers a little time to think about the sport's place in the bigger picture. I can definitely relate to the two themes I've come across in the last couple of days: baseball and wine, from Will Carroll; baseball and reading, from Ed and Beth.

Enjoy!

Karma killer

Thomas Boswell on Roger Clemens's rough night at the All-Star Game.

zzzzzzzzzzz..........

If you're wondering about the title, that's the sound of me sleeping through the Home Run Derby last night. Home runs have their place in baseball, but taking them out of their game context and turning them into a stand-alone event is not something that has ever really turned me on. I don't really understand the appeal of seeing Bonds, Tejada, Palmeiro, and Berkman hit a bunch of batting-practice fastballs out of Minute Maid Park - I'd rather see them do it in a real game situation, even if it's on a wet Monday night in April against the Mariners.

What I do like to see, though, at the Home Run Derby and the All-Star Game, is the footage of the players just hanging out around the field watching the proceedings. My favourite moment from the Home Run Derby was seeing Manny Ramirez approach Don Mattingly to ask if he'd mind having his picture taken with Manny's son. Manny is a superstar, and one of the greatest hitters around, but at that precise moment he was just another fan trying to get Donnie Baseball's picture. Rivalry Row? Nah, this was all about a little r-e-s-p-e-c-t...

All change?!

I've recently been starting to feel the first symptoms of blogger burnout, so I figured that I would try to apply the maxim "A change is as good as a rest" to the blog, and modify the look and feel of the blog. Unfortunately, I screwed up when changing the template settings and didn't have a backup of the existing settings, so you'll need to bear with me whilst I restore some of the things that were on the blog before.

Hopefully things'll be back to normal before you can say "The All-Star Game is over"...

Silence is golden

A nice idea from Paul over at Nice Guys Finish Third - silence during a baseball game. OK, so those who watch the Expos are used to that, but for the fans of other teams, it could be an interesting experience. Paul has this to say about the virtues of silence:

One of the things I love most about watching [English soccer club] Arsenal on TV is that the English sports announcers know when to shut up - there's usually one guy doing the broadcast, both play-by-play and color, and he doesn't fill every single minute of air time with words. US sports could benefit from the same treatment - let people appreciate the game as they see it, not as an announcer wants them to see it. If nothing else, it would force people to focus more on the game, and that can only be a good thing - there's nothing like having to focus on the game to make yourself learn more about it and how it's played.

I couldn't agree more. A couple of weeks ago I watched a Tigers / Indians game on MLB.com, and there was obviously some technical problem with the broadcast, because all they were showing was a camera view from behind home-plate - there were no fancy camera-angles, no instant replays, and there wasn't even the now-standard graphic showing the inning, men on base, number of outs and ball / strike count. I have to admit that I was a little lost to begin with, but after a while I really started concentrating on what was happening on the field, just as I do when I go to watch my ballclub play.

I don't think that this type of pared-down broadcast would catch on in an age where we're used to seeing every play five times and from every possible angle, but it's nice now and again to get back to basics and just concentrate on each play as it happens. I should get in touch with Paul so that we can talk about marketing the concept:

Nice Guys Finish Third and The Baseball Desert bring you:

"Old-School: No Distractions...No Disturbances...Just Baseball"

El Duque

I logged on to MLB.com last night to watch the Devil Rays try to avoid a sweep in the Bronx, and was happy to learn (with apologies to Yankee fans who might be worried about his injury) that Mike Mussina wasn't pitching and that the Yankees had called up Orlando Hernandez to make an emergency start.

Although I'm not a big fan of the Yankees, I've always loved watching El Duque pitch, with that high leg-kick of his and an array of different pitches and speeds which allow him to always keep the hitter guessing. Hernandez gave up just five hits over five innings, which, combined with the 15 hits (including five home runs) that the Yankees rapped out, was enough to give him his first win in the majors since 2002. Whether he will prove to be the El Duque of old remains to be seen, but I'm sure that the Yankee management - given Jose Contreras's somewhat enigmatic showing so far - was delighted to see him give them some new options at the back end of the rotation.

Gagne (BS, 1)

It's not often that a pitcher gets a standing ovation after putting up a box score annotation like the one above, but that's what happened to the Dodgers' Eric Gagne in last night's game, when the two runs he gave up to the Diamondbacks in the ninth inning finally ended his streak of 84 consecutive saves.

The value and importance of this streak has been a hot topic for a while, since the save statistic, as defined by the rules of Major League Baseball, is, and always has been, a subject for debate. The rules say this:

SAVES FOR RELIEF PITCHERS
Credit a pitcher with a save when he meets all three of the following conditions: (1) He is the finishing pitcher in a game won by his club; and (2) He is not the winning pitcher; and (3) He qualifies under one of the following conditions: (a) He enters the game with a lead of no more than three runs and pitches for at least one inning; or (b) He enters the game, regardless of the count, with the potential tying run either on base, or at bat, or on deck (that is, the potential tying run is either already on base or is one of the first two batsmen he faces); or (c) He pitches effectively for at least three innings. No more than one save may be credited in each game.

You can make a good case for condition (3)(b) - potential tying run on base, at bat or on on deck - as that's the real pressure situation for a closer. The threat of losing the game is very real, and he has to get the job done. Condition (3)(c) is more subjective: how do you decide what "he pitches effectively" means? I'm not sure if the situation applies to Gagne - I'm not enough of a stat-head to check, but I don't seem to remember him having any three-inning saves of this kind. He seems to be a one- or two-inning closer, so the definition, though shaky, is not really a problem. What might be a problem, however, is (3)(a): entering the game with a lead of no more than three runs and pitching for at least one inning. There's no mention of the runners on base, so it's entirely possible for a pitcher to enter the game with a three-run lead and no-one on - a comfortable situation for pretty much any major league pitcher (except maybe this one).

I guess the feeling is that there are 'easy' saves to be had on the mound, whether for Gagne or any other closer for that matter, but that's just the way things are: sometimes you have a one-run lead, sometimes it's three; sometimes you get to face the bottom of the Expos' batting order and sometimes it's Derek Jeter, Gary Sheffield and Alex Rodriguez - it's all swings and roundabouts.

My own personal feeling is that, whether the save is 'easy' or not, you still have to get the job done, and Gagne did it 84 consecutive times. I remember Willie Mays talking about Mark McGwire's 70-home-run season and saying "I don't care if you play in Little League - 70 home runs is a lot of home runs", and this is the same thing - it's a remarkable streak, whatever the circumstances, and it deserves to be up there with Cal Ripken's 2,632 consecutive games and Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak.

So, The Baseball Desert tips its dirty, sweat-stained Dodgers cap to the Québecois:



"Chapeau !", as they say over here...

Can somebody please explain...

...how, after that fuss about the Spider-Man advertising a couple of months ago, New York still gets to host the Subway Series? :-)

OK - enough of my silliness. I'm gonna settle down with a beer (or two) and see if the Mets can make the Red Sox feel even worse by beating up the Yankees for the second night in a row. Jose Contreras goes for the Yankees, and it'll be interesting to see if he can duplicate the fine performance he had in his last start.

Update: There seems to be a problem with the Internet feed from New York, so I'm going to have to 'make do' with the White Sox / Cubs game from Wrigley Field. Life's a b****, huh? ;-)

No mar hesitation

The Boston Globe's Dan Shaugnessy is categorical - the time to trade Nomar and move on is now.

It would be a huge move, but maybe it would be the shake-up that Boston seems to need right now. Certainly, nothing else seems to be working - the Sox took another extra-inning loss last night, this time to the Braves. They need to turn things around any way they can, and trading Nomar could be the answer. At ESPN.com Bill Simmons' thoughts on the loss to the Yankees echo those of Shaugnessy:

And there was Nomar, the fading superstar who helped the team blow two games in Yankee Stadium, then showed little interest in even watching the third one. He's been declining steadily for three seasons now -- his body breaking down, his defense slipping, his lack of plate discipline a bigger problem than ever. He always seemed to enjoy himself on the field, almost like a little kid, but even that's a distant memory. Maybe his spirit was shattered by the rumored deal to Chicago last winter. Only he knows the answer to that one. For his sake, I hope he's getting traded this week. After last night's display, there's no going back.

Bring on the Pokey Era. Please.

Broken hearts in the Bronx

Even if it's only July, Red Sox Nation must be hurting this morning after last night's loss to the Yankees. Stepping back and looking at the bigger picture, Larry Mahnken has a great take on the game:

It was the kind of game that makes you a baseball fan until the day you die. [...] If it wasn't Yankees/Red Sox, if it wasn't such a crucial game for the Red Sox, it still would have been the best game of the year. That it was these two teams, that so much did ride on it for Boston, makes it one of the great games in Yankees history. It wasn't Bucky Dent, it wasn't Aaron Boone, but it was almost as exhilarating, almost as heartbreaking, and every bit as memorable.