Tag Archives: Roy Halladay

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Hope in Spring

‘Hope springs eternal’, but in baseball spring is an eternal source of hope.

The sun beats down onto the backs of returning ballplayers in Arizona and Florida, some of the recipients driven by a winter of frustration, some emboldened by the confidence of success from the previous year.

It is the sense of renewal that makes spring such a glorious part of the baseball calendar. Everything starts again and that means anything is possible; however the past is always present in the mind and every player will have something to prove on the back of the 2012 performance.

Here are six players whose 2012 seasons, for differing reasons, will make following their fortunes in 2013 all the more intriguing.

Mike Trout (Los Angeles Angels)

When we witness a player excelling at a young age it is too tantalizing not to look ahead and wonder just how good he will become. Sportsmen often hit their peak in their late-twenties, so it is natural to see Mike Trout’s incredible performance as a 20 year-old in 2012 as a starting point for our expectations.

Yet how realistic would that be? Whilst experience and physical maturity could hone Trout’s remarkable talent even further, the level of competition in MLB must put a limit on how far he can improve.

It’s possible that Trout could have a long and successful career and never quite top 2012. If we use Baseball-Reference’s Wins Above Replacement (WAR) as our measure then Trout’s season (10.7 WAR) is the joint-17th highest in a single season since the end of World War Two. Of all the many thousands of individual player seasons from 1946 onwards, only 16 have been better judged by WAR.

Upon considering that staggering fact, no baseball fan can help but be fascinated by what Trout will serve up as an encore in 2013.

Roy Halladay (Philadelphia Phillies)

Whilst Trout was dazzling as a young star in the AL West, Halladay was struggling as a veteran star in the NL East.  2012 arguably was his worst full season since 2000.

A tough year as a 24 year old can be recovered from, as Halladay’s exceptional career since shows. Fighting back from a disappointing season when you are 36 is a much more difficult task. Halladay was clearly hampered by an injury to his right-shoulder and he has entered Spring Training with a revised training regime, adjusted pitching mechanics and a positive frame of mind.

Every player is in ‘the best shape of their life’ coming into Spring Training and it could be overly optimistic to consider 2012 as a mere bump in the road, but Halladay’s previous excellence means he deserves the benefit of the doubt. If the Phillies are to challenge the Washington Nationals and Atlanta Braves in the NL East, they need ‘Doc’ to return to somewhere close to his previous form.

Jemile Weeks (Oakland A’s)

What a difference a year makes. Twelve months ago, Weeks came into the A’s Spring Training camp all set to become the leading face of the club. His impressive rookie campaign in 2011 had earned him an extremely rare compliment: the A’s General Manager Billy Beane described him as the one ‘untouchable’ asset on the roster that he wouldn’t consider trading.

In Oakland’s home season-opener against the Seattle Mariners, Weeks led off the bottom of the first inning with a single and the A’s TV commentators were quick to state that they expected big things of the second baseman in the season ahead.

Instead, Weeks played so poorly that he was demoted to Triple-A on 21 August and he was relegated to cheer-leading duty as Oakland secured a surprising AL West division title.

Weeks was defiant at the time of his demotion, stating: “at the end of the day, I’m going to be a star in this game, man. You’ve got to have your ups and downs. It just makes the story so much sweeter when you come back. I don’t want to expand too much on it, but you’re looking at a star, period”.

If Weeks is to live up to his own billing, he needs to have a big bounceback season in 2013. That includes simply winning a starting job during Spring Training.

Tim Lincecum (San Francisco Giants)

In 2012, Lincecum played his part in helping the Giants to their second World Series title in three years. However, the two-time Cy Young Award winner’s role was to chip in with 4.2 innings of relief pitching during the Fall Classic having lost his place in the starting rotation after putting up a 5.37 ERA over 33 regular season starts.

Lincecum will be a free agent at the end of the coming season and if he is to earn a lucrative new contract he will need to show that his disappointing 2012, and the declining speed of his fastball, was just a blip.

He turned up to the Giants’ Spring Training camp with his trademark long hair cut short, either as a sign that he is smartening up his act or that he is trying a reverse-Samson approach to regain his powers.

Aroldis Chapman (Cincinnati Reds)

Lincecum was temporarily moved from starting to relief pitching for the 2012 playoffs and one of the biggest National League stories in Spring Training will be the Reds’ plan to take the opposite approach with their ‘Cuban missile’.

When Cincinnati won the race to Chapman’s signature in January 2010, their offer of a 6 year, $30.25m contract reflected the scouting reports that he could become a dominating starting pitcher. So far they have harnessed his blazing fastball/slider combination out of the bullpen to great effect and he took to the role of closer superbly last season, striking out a scarcely believable 122 batters in just 71.2 innings (15.3 K’s per 9 innings).

However, a quality starting pitcher that can give you 200 innings in a season, plus a potential dominant postseason start or two, is more valuable to a team than 70 innings as a closer and the Reds have decided now is the time to find out if Chapman has what it takes.

With Cincinnati all set to be in a tight NL Central battle with the St. Louis Cardinals, it will be interesting to see how much patience they have before deciding to move him back to the closer role.

Carl Crawford (Los Angeles Dodgers)

Here’s a question for you: will Crawford come into Spring Training this year happier than he did two years ago?

Back in 2011, he met his new Boston Red Sox teammates for the first time flush with a 7 year, $142m contract and full of excitement about what he hoped would be a successful new chapter in his career.  From the outside, everything was perfect, but there was a lingering doubt as to how Crawford would adapt to playing in the media hothouse of Boston compared to his days with the underdog Tampa Bay Rays.

The dream turned into a nightmare as a poor 2011 season was followed by an injury hit 2012. Crawford recently admitted to his feelings of desperation, stating: “I knew with the struggles I was having, it would never get better for me. I just didn’t see a light at the end of the tunnel. It puts you in kind of a depression stage. You just don’t see a way out”.

Thankfully for Crawford – and for the Red Sox – the dollar-dispensing Dodgers provided an unlikely way out with their summertime mega-trade. The outfielder is still rehabbing from elbow surgery and may not be ready for Opening Day, but 2013 will offer Crawford a chance to get his career back on track.

Roy Halladay makes postseason pitching look easy on his debut

That’s one way to mark your postseason debut. 

Listening to the Reds-Phillies game via the WPHT Phillies radio commentary, I had ‘no-hitter’ on the mind as soon as Jay Bruce grounded out to end the top of the second inning.  ‘Six up, six down’ would normally leave you thinking that the pitcher had got off to a good start.  With someone of Halladay’s calibre on the mound, history was waiting to be written even before he had passed through the whole batting order once.

Halladay’s strong start appeared ominous after watching both David Price and Cliff Lee struggle to find their rhythm early on in the Rays-Rangers game.

Buck Martinez on the TBS coverage was throwing out the old line of teams needing to get to good pitchers early before they settle in.  The Rangers’ batters did that against Price, the Rays’ batters couldn’t quite do it to Lee (despite putting some good swings on the ball) and the Reds’ batters were not given the chance to do it to Halladay.

The Reds held Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, Ryan Howard and Jayson Werth hit-less and that may be something they can hold onto to give them confidence heading into Game Two tomorrow.  On the flip side, the Phillies have to feel good about getting a win despite their batting core being held in check.

Swinging on 3-0

The most notable moment in the Rangers-Rays game came in the third inning when Nelson Cruz launched a bomb on a 3-0 pitch from David Price.  It was a textbook case of a pitcher expecting the hitter to be taking all the way and just grooving a fastball down the pipe. 

It’s incredible how often that approach works.  There are valid reasons to be patient on a 3-0 pitch and to see if the pitcher can finally find the strikezone, but whenever you see the offering pass harmlessly over the plate, you get the sense that the hitter has missed out (or was pushed that way by his manager instructing him not to swing). 

The same topic came up on Saturday when the Oakland A’s Jack Cust took a 3-0 pitch from the Mariners’ David Pauley into the seats.  After the game, Cust told the waiting reporters that he wished he was given the green light more often in that situation.  “I wish I could swing every time 3-0. That’s a good count to hit in. I was trying to hit a home run”, said Cust. 

With all due respect, Jack Cust would not normally be held up as an example for all hitters to follow.  However, he’s on to something with his 3-0 approach.  Why give the opposing pitcher a free strike?  If it’s there to be hit, give it a whack.  At the very least it would keep pitchers honest and force them to aim for a corner, increasing the chances that they will deliver ball four.

It will be very interesting to see how the Rays pitching staff responds if Cruz gets into a 3-0 count again during this series.

Quick note: I’ll probably be concentrating on shorter-type posts like this over the next month or so due to other commitments limiting my ability to research and write longer pieces.  I’m sure the postseason will provide me with plenty of great moments to write about.

Weekly Hit Ground Ball: A pair of perfectos

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