Fenway Park always radiates with history, yet Boston’s latest home series had an extra special quality to it.  The Chicago Cubs were in town for the first time since the 1918 World Series. 

The two teams came off the field on 11 September 1918 with Boston celebrating their third World Series win in four years.  Red Sox fans would never have believed that their team would wait 86 years to taste such sweet victory again.  Cubs fans would have been even more incredulous at the thought that by 2010 – and counting – their team still hadn’t lifted a trophy to put that World Series defeat to rest. 

And who would have thought the sides would wait until 2011 before meeting again in Boston.  Watching the Cubs and Red Sox playing at venerable Fenway was a real treat, particularly on Saturday when they wore retro 1918 uniforms. 

We have interleague play to thank for that series.  On its own, it is a decent argument in favour of the format that was introduced in 1997.  However, there are still plenty of arguments against it and they always get a vocal airing when interleague play comes around each season.

Prior to 1997, American League and National League teams only met in the World Series, with players from both leagues also meeting in the All-Star Game.  The division of the teams into two leagues is a legacy of baseball’s past that in many respects no longer seems relevant.  They play by slightly different rules, but for all intents and purposes, it’s all MLB in the end.

Consequently, only allowing two teams from ‘rival’ leagues to face each other every year would be unnecessarily restrictive.  In an age when we’re all used to having more choice than we can cope with, not taking advantage of a fuller range of different match-ups would be foolhardy.

A possible 2011 World Series between Texas and Philadelphia wouldn’t be the least bit undermined by their recent interleague series.  If anything, it adds an extra layer of intrigue.  Fans could look at the series just gone with visions of it being a possible prequel to the World Series, while if that does transpire then there will be a short, but not insignificant, recent history to refer back to.

Interleague play should be something special, something unique to add an extra feature to the MLB regular season.  The question is whether that uniqueness is being lost?

Most teams play 18 interleague games in a season and that’s possibly at least three games too many.  The timing of the games also could be improved.  Playing them altogether, or in two distinct blocks, would make them stand out as events during the year.  The recent splash of three games make no sense, there’s no time for a build up and the teams immediately head straight back into normal play. It’s only the occasional unique contest, such as the historic Cubs and Red Sox set, that avoid becoming just another series.

And then you come to the actual fixtures.  The interleague rivalries were part of the big plan, allowing teams in places such as New York, the Bay Area and Los Angeles to face each other.  However, now these teams meet six times every year and, again, it becomes just another part of the season. 

Others have noted the unfairness that interleague play adds to the schedule and how this will be exacerbated if the number of playoff teams increases to ten next year, as seems inevitable.  

With the playoff expansion likely to take place, it’s a good time to make a wider assessment of the MLB schedule.  I’m all for keeping interleague play so long as it produces unique contests more consistently than at present. 

Breakfast time baseball

Checking MLB.com over breakfast is a daily ritual for me.  Normally it’s a case of being able to catch up on all of the games that had taken place while Britain slept, but occasionally we’re treated to some live breakfast-time baseball. 

We don’t get to enjoy it all that often, but every now and then a west coast game runs on for longer than normal and is still in progress as the kettle boils and cereal is sleepily poured into a bowl here in Britain.

I was able to munch down my cornflakes last Tuesday morning while watching the A’s playing the Angels.  The game was originally scheduled to start at 7.05 p.m. local time in Oakland, making for a less-hospitable 3.05 a.m. start here.  However, a 1 hour 25 minute rain delay meant that the game didn’t get underway until 4.30 UK time.

The A’s were trailing 4-3 as I logged on at 7 a.m. and my initial delight at having a live Oakland game on at breakfast time soon turned into thoughts that it might not be such a welcome surprise after all.  Watching your team lose to a fierce division rival before you’ve had time to finish a cup of tea is hardly getting your day off to a good start. With two outs in the bottom of the ninth, it seemed that my walk to work would feel longer than usual.

Thankfully, my fears were soon allayed in dramatic fashion.  Coco Crisp got on base with a single, stole second and was then driven home by Daric Barton to tie the game and send it to extras.  The Aussie Grant Balfour got three strikeouts to shutdown the Angels in the top of the tenth and Mark Ellis grounded-home the game-winning run in the bottom of the frame. 

A come from behind, walk-off win over breakfast: is there a better way to start your day? 

Seeing-eye singles

The rivalry between the Reds and Cardinals shows no signs of diminishing.  Even the commentators are getting in on the argument now, with the Reds’ Hall-of-Famer Marty Brennaman angering the Cards’ skipper Tony La Russa by branding Chris Carpenter a “whiner and excuse-maker”.  No doubt some killjoy – probably going by the name Bud Selig – will step in and try to take the spice out of it.  While it may make for a better corporate image for all concerned to act professionally, some petty, playground-style verbal jousting adds to the fun for me.

Bad news for the Indians this week as Grady Sizemore, Trafis Hafner and Alex White all went on the Disabled List.  Most have been waiting for Cleveland to cool off from their hot start and they can’t afford to lose too many players.  Still, a sweep of the Reds was a good way to make up for their losses, in the short term at least.

In more positivie injury news, Josh Hamilton and Nelson Cruz could both come off the DL for the Rangers today, while the Phillies may finally get to see Chase Utley start his Major League season soon as well.  Both teams can be forgiven if they are cautious in how they bring those players back into action.  They will be key players if their respective teams are to be successful this season and if that means taking a day or two off here and there during the end of May and start of June, so be it.

As fans in the UK, we’re used to focusing more on day games played in the States as those are normally the ones that we can catch live.  However, some night-game match-ups are too good to miss and that was certainly true last Tuesday.

The Phillies and Marlins were meeting in Florida, with Roy Halladay and Josh Johnson taking the mound.  What more could you ask for from a pitching match-up? 

It was the master against the apprentice; Halladay being the reigning NL Cy Young winner and Johnson watching Halladay’s bullpen sessions and picking his brain at last year’s All-Star Game.  A ten past midnight UK start was no hardship with those two pitching.

It is always helpful if games in the early hours move along at a decent pace, holding the need for sleep at bay for a few hours, and Jimmy Rollins grounding out on the very first pitch suggested that this game was going to go by quickly.

There are many factors that make Halladay and Johnson so devastating, but two of the most important are that they can throw all their different pitches for strikes and that they attack batters by pounding the strikezone, rather than nibbling at the corners.  Johnson is learning to do this more consistently this year and the results are there for all to see.  In the first inning, 9 of Johnson’s 10 pitches were strikes, for Halladay it was 10 from 12.

An unrelenting strike-throwing approach creates a fascinating dynamic between the pitcher and hitter.  If a pitcher is attacking the strikezone then there is some merit in going up there swinging, knowing that if you’re passive at the plate you will soon find yourself down 0-2. 

However, quick outs only hand a greater advantage to the pitcher who can carry that momentum forward and go deeper into games, and that’s what makes the likes of Halladay and Johnson so formidable.  It’s not that they simply throw strikes – strikes down the middle of the plate will be hit a mile in the Majors – they throw strikes on the corners that invariably the hitter can’t do much with even if they do make contact. 

Halladay was particularly impressive (as always) in this respect, while Johnson had to deal with a few more baserunner early on; however one person that Halladay didn’t throw strikes to was his opposing pitcher.

Halladay walked Johnson in the third inning.  It was the first time he had ever walked a pitcher (he has spent most of his career in the American League, of course) and he made his frustration clear by yelling “god dammit!”.  I had to laugh when the commentators kindly apologised to any viewers who had heard it.  It wasn’t exactly a vein-throbbing Wayne Rooney yelling an expletive directly down a camera.  Maybe we’ve found Halladay’s one weakness: he’s just not very good at being obscene.

Halladay also threw a wild pitch in the eighth inning which ultimately led to the Marlins’ winning run in a 2-1 final score.  It was a rare mistake from a great pitcher in what turned out to be an excellent game, one that was well worth losing some sleep over.

More pain for Morales

Walk-off home runs can be devastating for the team that has to trudge off the field as losers, but they shouldn’t be devastating for the team that crowds around the plate as the hero heads for home.

Kendrys Morales’ home run on 29 May 2010 has turned out to be a very hollow victory for the player and his club.  The Angels’ slugger fractured his lower left leg as he jumped onto the plate and missed the rest of the 2010 season.  Spring Training came and went without him returning to action and it was finally announced last Wednesday that Morales requires another surgical procedure that will rule him out for the whole of the 2011 season.

The Angels’ had a frustrating offseason, being outbid by the Red Sox and Rangers on Carl Crawford and Adrian Beltre.  Vernon Wells, the one player they did sign (in what can only be seen as a panic move), struggled through his first 35 games of the season before hitting the Disabled List with a groin strain. 

Despite all this and the absence of Morales, the Angels are firmly in the AL West race and their offence has been one of the better ones in the Majors. Mark Trumbo has performed admirably so far, but if he tails off during the season then you have to wonder what the Angels will do at first base as Morales’ return as an offensive force has to be in some doubt. 

A mid-season trade is unlikely considering that any potential trade partner will be asking for their outstanding prospect Mike Trout and/or Peter Bourjos to be included in any deal.  So that throws us forward to the offseason and the potential free agent first baseman Prince Fielder (and potentially Albert Pujols, although we’ll leave that matter to another day).  The Angels, Fielder’s agent Scott Boras and a lucrative multi-year contract for the Brew Crew basher don’t seem a likely combination judging by the way in which L.A. have refused to meet the high demands of top free agents in the last few years. 

Maybe recent disappointments on the free agent market and Morales’ continuing woes could make the Angels change their approach?

Seeing-eye singles

Jason Kubel had the Target Field crowd on their feet when he launched a three-run homer to give the Twins the lead against the Tigers on Wednesday.  It was a surprise to learn that this was the Twins’ first three-run jack of the 2011 season, although that reveals something about why they have started the year so poorly.  As did the way Jhonny Peralta reduced the crowd to a deathly hush when he put the Tigers back on top.

During the Giants-Cubs game on Friday, the commentators Len Kasper and Bob Brenly made an interesting observation about San Francisco’s starting pitcher Madison Bumgarner.  As Kasper noted, you often hear people talk of pitchers with a ‘short-arm’ delivery, yet Bumgarner is a model example of the exact opposite.  Whether new to baseball or not, it’s worth looking at Bumgarner’s pitching motion to get an idea of what a ‘long-arm’ delivery is like.  Worth also comparing it to someone like the Braves’ Tommy Hanson and how different motions can still be very effective.

I’ll never get used to the term ‘web gem’.  Let’s just call it an outstanding catch by the Washington Nationals’ (and Netherlands) outfielder Roger Bernadina.

Thursday was a great day for European baseball.  Greg Halman took the field at the Rogers Centre for the Seattle Mariners and became the latest Dutchman to make the Major Leagues.  Halman was born in Haarlem and developed his game as a youngster in the Netherlands before taking his career Stateside.

Halman went 0-for-4 in his debut, but it will still be an unforgettable experience for the player and the game will leave a trace in the baseball record books as well.

Ichiro Suzuki went into the game against the Toronto Blue Jays with 198 hits on the season.  With Halman watching from the Mariners’ dugout, Ichiro made it to 199 with a double in the third inning and then rounded it up to 200 with a single in the fifth (Halman led off both innings, striking out and grounding out). 

In doing so, Ichiro set a Major League record for consecutive seasons with 200 hits.  He’s achieved the feat in all ten seasons since arriving in Seattle from Japan.  Only the ‘hit king’ Pete Rose can match Ichiro’s ten 200-hit seasons and Rose’s longest consecutive streak was three years (1968-1970).  Halman won’t need to be told how lucky he is to be playing on the same team as such an extraordinary talent.

He was also in prime position to watch another historic hit, albeit one which was not so welcome to the Mariners. 

Jose Bautista hit his fiftieth home run of the season with two outs in the bottom of the first inning off Felix Hernandez.  It was one of only two hits that Hernandez gave up in the game and was the only run scored, so Bautista certainly didn’t get to fifty in a cheap way.

Bautista has joined an exclusive club, containing only twenty-six members from the history of the Majors, of players who have hit at least fifty long balls in a season. 

It’s interesting to look at how the membership has grown since Babe Ruth created the club in 1920.  The feat was achieved just seventeen times between 1920 and 1977 and only once more between then and the 1995 season (Cecil Fielder, Prince’s father, hit 51 in 1990).  However, Bautista’s shot meant that it has happened twenty-four times in the last sixteen seasons.

The shadow of steroids will rear its ugly head as an explanation and it’s possible that they may have been a contributory factor in some cases. However you could also list any number of other factors that may have influenced this power-hitting phenomenon: the design of new ballparks, the type of baseballs being used, and the better conditioning of players plus the medical care available to them to name just three.

Whatever combination you want to put it down to, it is a quite astonishing jump.

In relation to Bautista, the name from the more recent crop of the ‘50 club’ that stands out is Brady Anderson.  Both players reached the total despite having a relatively low season-high total before their breakout year.  Anderson reached the fifty mark in the final game of the Baltimore Orioles’ 1996 season and before then his highest total had been twenty-one in 1992.  As noted in last week’s column, Bautista’s highest total prior to this season was sixteen in 2006.  

Anderson went straight back down to eighteen home runs in 1997 and his best season total after that point was twenty-four in 1999.  It will be interesting to see whether Bautista follows a similar path or if he goes the other way and joins the even-more exclusive list of players (currently nine in total) who have hit fifty home runs in a season twice.

In any case, Bautista has now hit the fifty mark once and that alone puts him in the record books.  Maybe someday Greg Halman will earn a mention in there too.

Don’t think too much

My favourite home run of the past week wasn’t historic and it wasn’t particularly important either.  It came in the Friday day-game at Wrigley Field between the St. Louis Cardinals and Chicago Cubs. 

The Cardinals’ Allen Craig had worked a 3-2 count in the bottom of the first inning with two runners on base and the Cubs’ battery of Tom Gorzelanny and Koyie Hill was undecided as to what pitch to throw next.  Hill ran through several combinations of signs and was met by only a shake of the head from his pitcher.  The catcher got out from his squat and jogged to the mound, not only to talk it over with Gorzelanny but also to end Albert Pujols’ fun of staring straight in at the signs from second base.

After the routine, yet always amusing, sight of pitcher and catcher talking through their gloves, Hill and Gorzelanny returned to their positions.  With their deeply considered plan of attack agreed, Gorzelanny went into his wind-up and delivered the pitch.

And Craig casually golfed it into the bleachers for a three-run home run.

You can just imagine what former manager Lou Piniella would have made of it had he been in the dugout.  The phrase ‘better off out of it’ springs to mind.

The Colorado Rockies’ recent run ensured that their game against the Los Angeles Dodgers would make for entertaining viewing on Saturday evening.  Watching on MLB.TV offered the additional benefit of listening to the legendary broadcaster Vin Scully calling the action and, in particular, commenting on the recent form of the Rockies’ shortstop Troy Tulowitzki.

Scully has been calling Dodgers games for 61 years and counting and there’s no one better able to put historic feats or memorable performances into perspective.  There was a sense of wonder in Scully’s voice as he relayed the numbers that Tulowitzki had put up over the preceding fourteen games as he arrived in the batter’s box in the first inning.  Scully had just finished stating the stats when the Dodgers’ starting pitcher John Ely threw a change-up down the middle of the plate to Tulowitzki.

“Look out, he’s hit another one!”, exclaimed Scully.

So he had, and he would do so again in the fifth inning.  The two blasts made it fourteen home runs in fifteen games prior to Sunday, a sequence that began on 3 September against the San Diego Padres.  Tulowitzki had hit twelve home runs in the 2010 season before that point, nine of which came before spending five weeks on the disabled list between mid-June and the end of July.  Continue reading →