Well, that sucked.
Try again tomorrow.
P.S., dear Mac, please, try to never bring in Mesa with a four-plus lead. Throughout his career he's been combustible in non-save situations. I don't know why but it's predictable. If we need to get him some non-save work, bring him when he can't blow a huge lead.
Tie game, runners on first and second, no outs, bottom of the seventh. Benson in the stretch, Bobby Crosby batting. The Pirates can't believe the A's are not bunting. They run through their signs and plays, but he's not bunting. So Benson pegs Crosby in the leg.
...so that leads to a big inning and the A's go on to win. Anyone who says a bunt has hidden value because "things happen" when you bunt, because it puts pressure on the defense etc., should keep in mind that "things happen" whenever you do something unexpected. The not bunting rattled the Bucs more than any bunting ordered this year by Tony LaRussa or Jimy Williams or Ned Yost.
We're in the midst of a horrendous losing streak, but these are excellent games for fans to tune into since the Bucs could really learn a thing or two from these A's. No doubt the Reds learned a thing or two they might try on their next division rival. I'm seeing some value in interleague play: it gets the team out of old habits and forces them to re-assess their worth, to see them in a fresh light, before they resume them with the usual playing style the break out on, say, the Cubs or the Cardinals.
A good thing about being in Oakland is listening to Lanny and Steve talk about Billy Beane's whole get-on-base philosophy.
Steve Blass plays dumb like he doesn't know what "a sabermetric" is and like he's never heard of OPS. C'mon Steve that's on the jumbotron. You can't score points by playing dumb - you just look dumb. Lanny speaks awkwardly on the subject, like a 65-year-old guy trying to use the slang of teenagers. He knows what the stuff is, but feels self-conscious talking about it.
Maybe Steve Blass hasn't read a book the last twenty years. He says this: "Bill James has done more to ruin baseball than any other living human being. He has put numbers in front of the game, replaced the game with numbers." Lanny lets out a huge "whoa" and remarks that he hoped they were taping this episode. Inning ends and they go to commercial.
Steve Blass calls it "cybermetrics" as we come back from commercial and he and Lanny get into it. Lanny obviously thinks Steve Blass is being outrageous, maybe even embarrassing himself. Lanny asks what numbers Steve Blass approves us and Steve answers: ERA, standings. Two innings ago, he said runs were the most important number. Two out of three is pretty good. He's not really an idiot, he just sounds like one sometimes.
It's another good night for a surprise win from the Bucs. Whenever it seems like they'll never win another game, they win another game. USAToday's Sheridan calls them 12-5 underdogs, which is absurd, but not as absurd as the 13-5 of that opening day at Wrigley.
Dayn Perry of Baseball Prospectus identifies Brad Eldred as a quality prospect today. (It's a pay article; if you have a subscription, you can get it here). Dayn notes that he has "excellent raw power potential."
This amuses me because earlier this week we received a letter from a regular reader, Clay R. McNerney, which I've been meaning to post somehow. Here it is:
From Ed Eagle's column "Lynchburg third baseman Brad Eldred hit his 13th home run and drove in a pair of runs in a 6-5, 11-inning victory over Potomac. He is second in the Class A Carolina League in home runs and tops the league with 51 RBIs."And I thought the only thing to do in Frederick was hit the Prime Outlets.I saw Eldred play up in Frederick about 2 weeks back...goofy build to him but he can smack the piss out of the ball and is quite quick on the basepaths...he hit 2 doubles that night as I recall...looking at his season stats he is a doubles or HR hitter...65 hits this season with 30 of them either a double or a Home Run...a lot of SO's to be sure, but good contact when he hits...I wonder if he will see Altoona this season...
Anyway, Eldred's not a third baseman but a first baseman. I'm not sure who's playing third at Lynchburg. The roster down there currently lists three shortstops and two utility infielders. Yesterday it was Avelino Asprilla.
Lanny on KDKA remarked in the preseason that the Bucs dumped their advance scouts and signed up with Inside Edge for this year.
I bring this up because Richard Mathews mentioned it at OnlyBucs.
Is this a step forward or backward for the team? The Bucs are often criticized for relying on scouting more than on statistical analysis. Inside Edge probably represents some cost savings over a network of retired baseball guys in all the different cities. Do you think it does a better job alerting the team to things they should know as they head, for example, to Oakland? Or would the Bucs be better served hiring some old guy to fly to Oakland, sit behind home plate, and make notes in a composition notebook?
Their second boy was born yesterday. Wow. He's one big kid and he arrived in a hurry.
Last I heard the names were narrowed down to Elroy, Pie, Howeth ("Ginger"), Deacon, Arky, Grimes, Smoky, Rip, and Mackowiak. I'm sure Bones will fill us in on the little guy when he returns from the generous Honest Wagner paternity leave.
The A's have the best pitching and the best defense in the Beer and Whiskey league. I hope the A's put on a clinic. After last night, it sure looks like the Bucs could use a little instruction in those areas. It'd be great if the Pirates won every game of the series by a score of 1-0. Or by any score.
They're talking more sense at Baseball Prospectus these days.
It's not brave to predict Jack Wilson is unlikely to finish the season as a .350 hitter. They could also predict that no one in Pittsburgh will win the Powerball this year. Zzzzzzzzzzz. Still, I appreciate the dose of perspective there at the end of that piece.
So ... what's the over/under on Jack Wilson's OBP at the end of the season? We've been hoping for .340 but I guess .325 is more likely. His career OBP is up to .299 and he stands at .350 right now. June has been brutal and walks haven't replaced some of the missing singles.
OK, it's going to be 9-3 when all them runners finish circling the bases. I'm heading for the virtual parking lot.
So Meadows gets tagged with the loss in game one. There's some good news in the box score. It wasn't all negative. For example, Simon had three hits and didn't ground into any double plays.
The Fallsman over at 'burghsportsguys has a review of some of the draft picks. Looks like he did some homework.
From Joe Rutter's report in today's Trib:
"I'm under the belief right now that with our young pitchers, the more rest they get the better off they are," McClendon said.The rainouts mean Perez will start tonight on a full week's rest.
Steve Novotney has an article describing Josh Fogg's opinion of the steroids issue. Fogg is talking sense.
Baseball America ran a draft day blog that loads easily now (very slow early this week) with comments about different selections. There aren't many comments about Pirates players. There's one - about Jason Quarles.
I enjoy reading Dominican Players, a weblog devoted to following the game from Santo Domingo. The latest here looks at Danny Almonte who is now 18. I was going to make a joke about his age, but it wouldn't be right ...
A few days after writing that I almost never read Rob Neyer, I learned (from Primer) that Neyer wrote an article about those comments we were looking at earlier this week. Of course I ran over and read it.
I'm sorry to see that he couldn't resist the opportunity to bash scouts for peddling irrationality - obviously when they say a man is built like a horse, they aren't expecting anyone to take them literally. Ditto for winning 15-20 games. Let scouts be scouts I say; why drain all joy from these things?
Nuts. Doubleheader tomorrow.
This time, it's Josh Fogg posing for the AP photographer in his boxer shorts.
Ed Eagle talked to Director of Scouting Ed Creech about the first day of the draft, and Creech summarized their selections with two words: power and speed. They got a lot of position players who "can fly" and a lot of pitchers who throw in the mid-90s. Creech said they didn't expect so much of that to be available and took what the draft gave them.
This tells us the average height of the Pirates is 6'0". Eyeballing the draft picks, they appear to be about 6'2" on average. Many comments call a guy "tall" and there's only one conspicuous shorty.
Maybe all the draft picks are big these days. You know, they shoot the cows up with growth hormones and that's gotta get into our milk. Still, someone should ask DL if the Pirates were making an effort to get taller.
Here's a little chart I made out of those ESPN roster pages.
| Pirates | 6'0" | 207 | 27.4 |
| Astros | 6'1" | 205 | 30.5 |
| Reds | 6'1" | 206 | 28.1 |
| Cardinals | 6'1" | 209 | 30.2 |
| Cubs | 6'1" | 210 | 29.6 |
| Brewers | 6'2" | 210 | 28.3 |
N.B. Simon is listed as 240 pounds. Other heavies include Brain Meadows, who is 6'4", Daryle Ward, who is 6'2", and J.J. Davis, who is listed as 6'5" and 250 pounds. The only pitcher under 6'0" is Torres, who's 5'11". Bobby Hill and Chris Stynes are 5'9" with Hill at 180 and Stynes at 207. Maybe if Hill put on 30 pounds he'd be more qualified to play third. Many guys are in the 5'10" - 5'11" range and no regular position players are over 6'2".
On further review, I guess there's nothing to this. Most of the NL Central teams have pitching staffs made up of tall goons with not too many 6'4" and taller position players. Looks like you gotta be pretty tall to make a staff in the NL Central. Since the Bucs took a lot of pitchers in the draft, of course they took a lot of tall guys. Rather than throw this post away, I'll throw it up there for shits and giggles.