Category Archives: ‘Weekly’ Hit Ground Ball

Matt Smith’s Monday morning column, looking back at the previous week in MLB and looking ahead to the ‘early’ games scheduled for the week ahead

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: 2010 All-Star selections

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WhgbHlSqThe 2010 All-Star Game takes place in Anaheim on 13 April (starting at 1 a.m. on 14 April for us in the UK).  While it’s an exhibition game rather than an intensely competitive match-up, despite Bud Selig’s misguided attempts to ‘make it mean something’ by giving home field advantage in the World Series to the victorious league, it’s still a big event for baseball fans every year.

Part of the reason for its continuing appeal is that the fans decide who makes the starting lineups, basing their selections on whatever reasoning they wish.  Blatant bias towards their chosen team’s players, studying performance using advanced statistical metrics or simply a person’s favourite players regardless of how they are performing so far in 2010; each method is as valid as the other and there are no incorrect answers. 

By the team this column is online, the starting line-ups would have been announced.  Those lineups were chosen by baseball fans based all around the world thanks to the online voting system on MLB.com that allows everyone the chance to vote up to 25 times (for a reason I’ve yet to work out). Both fellow BGB writer Mark George and I only voted once each and these are the names we submitted on our ballots.  We agreed with each other on 10 of the 17 selections.  Feel free to share who you voted for in the comments section below.  Continue reading →

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Zambrano strikes again

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WhgbHlSqIf we needed baseball to be a diversion from other disappointing sporting events this past week, and we undoubtedly did, then once again MLB came to our rescue.

The D-Backs’ Edwin Jackson pitched the fourth no-hitter of the season, throwing 149 pitches and walking eight hitters in the process.  It should have been the fifth no-hitter of 2010, of course, had Jim Joyce made the right call on out number 27 for Armando Galarraga.  A mystifyingly bad call followed by demands for instant replay.  That sounds painfully familiar.

Yes, baseball brings us plenty of joy, but it is also capable of causing extreme frustration.  Just ask Carlos Zambrano.

It’s been a strange season so far for the Chicago Cubs’ pitcher Carlos Zambrano and his frustration came out in typically spectacular fashion on Friday during a day game against the White Sox.

The volatile Venezuelan has gone backwards over the last two and a half seasons since his Cy Young candidate form of 2007.  Zambrano got pummelled by Atlanta for eight runs in 1.1 innings on Opening Day this year and he was shifted to the bullpen three starts later, making thirteen relief appearances before returning to the rotation on 4 June against the Astros. Zambrano pitched a good game in his fourth appearance back as a starter against the Angels, one run conceded over seven innings, and many questioned whether this was a mere fleeting glimpse of the Big Z of old or if had he genuinely turned the corner?  Continue reading →

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Searching for starters

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WhgbHlSqWe’re not quite halfway through the season, but teams are already taking stock of how 2010 is shaping up for them.

Some teams are on the right course for a playoff place, many others can paint scenarios that will see them breaking into the October club, while several teams already have one eye on 2011.

Whichever group a team is in, they will be looking at their roster of players, looking at the other twenty-nine teams and giving serious thought to making a deal or two.  The initial trade deadline is six weeks away and a lot can happen in that period.  A good or bad run of form can turn a team from being a buyer to a seller and back again, while the ever-present shadow of injuries can force a team’s hand into going out and replacing a key player. 

Acquiring a new starting pitcher in particular can make all the difference, either by acquiring an ace, such as the Phillies did with Cliff Lee last year, or getting a guy off the scrap heap as the Dodgers did with Vicente Padilla. 

You can never be certain how a deal is going to work out.  Jarrod Washburn went 8-6 with a 2.64 ERA for the Mariners during the first four months of the 2009 season and was much sought after on trade deadline day.  Detroit won the battle to acquire Washburn, but he was hampered by a knee injury and ended with a 7.33 ERA in his eight starts with his new team and is now a free agent and contemplating retirement.

Still, that uncertainty is part of the fun as a fan (not so much for the General Managers).  Here are a few starting pitchers that could be joining contenders over the next six weeks.  Continue reading →

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Draft works like a dream for Washington

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WhgbHlSqMonday and Tuesday last week showed the MLB amateur player draft in all its glory.  The system is not perfect, and maybe a perfect system that meets everyone’s needs is not possible, but you’ll hear no complaints from Washington.

A franchise that has bordered on the hopeless for most of its brief existence now has more hope than most.

On Monday, the Nationals selected 17 year old Bryce Harper, as expected, as the number one overall pick in the 2010 draft.  They still have to agree a contract with his agent Scott Boras, but Washington are unlikely to let him slip from their grasp.  Harper, a Wayne Rooney-esque man-child, is the type of talent that scouts dream of discovering.  His superhuman home-run-hitting feats have already attained mythical status and only injuries seem capable of halting his ascendency to star status once he hits the Majors in three years or so.

Any killjoy wanting to dampen the excitement surrounding Harper (‘wait ‘till he has played in the Majors for a few years’ etc) was soon firmly put in their party-pooping place by the Major League debut of the Nationals’ number one pick from the 2009 draft.  Stephen Strasburg unquestionably lived up to the hype on Tuesday night against the Pirates, which is scary when you consider just how much hype there was.

This is what the draft is designed to do, to take a team that is in the doldrums and give their fans a reason to be excited once again.  Continue reading →

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Trembley the latest AL victim

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WhgbHlSqDave Trembley was sacked from his position as manager of the Baltimore Orioles last week, becoming the second manager to lose his job this season following Trey Hillman’s departure from the Kansas City Royals in May.  

As with Hillman, Trembley’s fate was widely predicted prior to the decision being made.  The team was playing poorly and there was little evidence that Trembley had any answers to prevent the slide from continuing. 

His ability to take the team forward was undoubtedly hampered by injuries and offseason additions that haven’t paid off.  Garrett Atkins has been terrible, while Miguel Tejada’s 2009 renaissance with the Astros looks like being one final flourish by the veteran rather than a sign that the decline he had showed prior to that had been reversed. 

Both outcomes were entirely predictable and General Manager Andy MacPhail therefore has to shoulder some of the blame; however the injuries to Mike Gonzalez and Brian Roberts have been a cruel blow to a team that could not cope with the absence of such important players.  Continue reading →

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: A pair of perfectos

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WhgbHlSqIt’s the final day of May and all baseball fans will be sorry to see the month end.  After Ubaldo Jimenez gave us a no-hitter in April, Dallas Braden and Roy Halladay turned this month into one for the ages as both pitched perfect games.

Logging on to MLB.com on Sunday morning, I did a double-take when I saw the news of Halladay’s perfecto against the Marlins the night before.  Following Randy Johnson’s perfect game against the Braves in May 2004, we waited just over five years before Mark Buehrle pitched the eighteenth perfecto in MLB history last July.  Less than a year later and that number has gone up to twenty. 

Perfect games are so rare that there will always be an element of surprise and wonder about them, but Halladay’s effort was slightly more predictable than many others because his dominating stuff and tendency to pitch deep into games makes him a candidate to pitch a no-hitter most times he takes the ball.  Continue reading →

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Going on a run

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WhgbHlSqThe confounding nature of the MLB season has yet again been preoccupying my mind.

It’s the schedule that does it.  There’s something endlessly captivating about the way teams play virtually every day.  Previously I’ve focused on the optimistic effect that this can have: allowing teams to write off a bad loss with the knowledge that they can turn things around the following day.  However, the MLB season doesn’t only allow a team to change its fortunes on any given day.  It also allows teams to carry forward their momentum in a way that no other sport can match.

Whether that is a positive or a negative depends on which way your momentum is heading.  Continue reading →

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Hillman heads to the hills

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WhgbHlSqBeyond the basic nine innings of play, any baseball game carries with it many storylines.  Some are obvious to the onlooker; some only become apparent once the action has come to a halt.

As I watched Kansas City Royals closer Joakim Soria pitching in the ninth inning with a 6-4 lead against the Cleveland Indians on Thursday, there was a sense that the potential victory would be worth more to the team than just an extra ‘1’ in the win column.  A demoralising seven-game losing streak needed to be snapped and reigning Cy Young winner Zack Greinke was in line for his first win of the 2010 season at the eighth attempt.

So when Soria threw a perfect pitch on a 3-2 count to Austin Kearns, knee high on the outside corner, only for the home plate umpire to mystifyingly call it a ball, manager Trey Hillman’s show of disapproval in the dugout was entirely understandable.  The game should have been over; instead Jhonny Peralta was stepping up to the plate as the potential tying run. It’s the kind of thing you come to expect when things are going against you and things had been going against the Royals for a long time. 

Too long for Hillman.  Continue reading →

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Castro a hit against the Reds

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WhgbHlSqOne of my aims with WHGB this season is to highlight just how much brilliant baseball Brits can follow live without needing to stay up all night.  I normally have plenty of material to work with because catching a ballgame or two is my favourite way to relax during an evening; however for one reason or another I didn’t have much time for that over the past week (some of those reasons involved other BGB-related work, so rest assured I haven’t been slacking off) .

This coming week’s schedule of early games gives me every reason to make amends for that and I’ll be previewing those contests in detail in a moment.

(I wrote this column on Sunday evening and then listened to the second half of the Rays-A’s game. If you’re not going to catch many games over the course of the week, you might as well end it with a perfect game! Congratulations to the A’s Dallas Braden)

Cubs calling for Castro

One story I did enjoy last week, although unfortunately not live, was the Major League debut of Cubs prospect Starlin Castro.  Continue reading →

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Tradition and innovation from Wrigley Field to England

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WhgbHlSqTradition and innovation often rest at odds with one another.  Do we value the past, the comforting wisdom of ‘how things have always been done’, or do we throw away the shackles of what’s gone before and embrace new ways of thinking? 

When two such conflicting ideas meet, human nature leads many to settle for a compromise.  A happy medium is reached by maintaining the core values and features that have made something popular while adapting so that it remains relevant as the world and the people living in it change. 

Take watching the Chicago Cubs over the internet as an example.  Continue reading →