The Bucs acquired Ramirez and cash considerations from the Brewers on Thursday in exchange for Minor League right-hander Yhonathan Barrios, providing a much-needed upgrade for the injury-ravaged left side of their infield.
Ramirez, 37, was hitting .247/.295/.430 with 11 home runs and 42 RBIs for the Brewers. After a slow start, Ramirez has hit .352 with two homers in July.
Ramirez is a member of the golden age of third basemen, players who could hit for power and vacuum up the ball at the hot corner. His best years are behind him, but joining the Pirates improves the team and gives him a chance to finally win a championship.
Barrios is a reliever who doesn’t strike out many batters, so I doubt his effectiveness at the major league level.
The Baltimore Orioles hit three home runs Thursday afternoon, all solo shots, but that was all they got as the Yankees completed the series sweep with a 9-3 win. Masahiro Tanaka and the Yankees bullpen held the Orioles to just five hits (all for extra bases) without allowing a walk. Tanaka has now allowed 15 home runs, but the low walk and hit totals means there is seldom a man on. The Orioles only had two at bats with men in scoring position in the game.
Baltimore now drops to fourth place, seven games behind the Yankees. The are four games out of the wild card pending the rest of the day’s results.
I am old. I’ve been ignoring that fact for a while, since I’m lucky enough to look somewhat younger than my age, but in recent years it’s started to hit home. Maybe it was my younger sister becoming a grandmother, her and her daughter having babies at perfectly respectable ages. Maybe it’s because I have an adult child who is older than many of the top players in the game. Maybe it’s because retirement age doesn’t look that far away. The only thing keeping me from feeling older is that my dad is about to turn 95.
I’m so old, there were only 16 teams in the major leagues when I was born. I came into this world just before the final season of that configuration, meaning I’m older than all the expansion teams. Of the original 16 teams, only two failed to win a World Series in my lifetime, the Cubs and the Indians. Of the 14 expansion teams, eight have failed to win the World Series, and two of them the Mariners and the Expos/Nationals, never even won a pennant. Of those expansion teams, the Astros have spent the longest in one place without winning a World Championship. (The Rangers franchise is a year older, but spent more than a decade in Washington as the second coming of the Senators.)
So given their failure to win a World Championship, and the age of the franchise (two years younger than me), I’m not surprised to see Houston going for it by trading forScott Kazmir. The Astros have two quality starters in Dallas Keuchel and Lance McCullers, but after that the rotation is weak. The bullpen is really good, so they’ve been able to cover the weakness in the rotation. Kazmir solves that problem much more directly.
Not only does this trade improve Houston’s chance of making the post-season, it increases their chances of winning in the post-season. The way they were configured, they would need to pitch two back of the rotation starters in a five game series, and three in a seven game series. Now they can use three pitchers with ERAs under 3.00 in each round. This trade isn’t about making the playoffs, it’s about winning the World Series.
The Yankees go for a sweep of the Orioles Wednesday afternoon as Ubaldo Jimenez faces Masahiro Tanaka. After a great June, Jimenez is backsliding in July. He allowed just three home runs in 35 2/3 June innings, but already gave up four in 16 2/3 July innings. Home runs are Tanaka’s weakness as well, with eight of the 12 he allowed coming at Yankee Stadium.
With proper travel planning, fans can see two games in New York today as the Dodgers visit the Mets in the evening with Clayton Kershaw facing Bartolo Colon. Kershaw is on his own scoreless inning streak. The Mets were the last team to score on him, the fourth inning of the July 3rd game. Kershaw’s streak is at 20 innings, and in his last two starts struck out 27 batters in 17 innings without allowing a walk. Colon owns a 6.00 ERA since May 10th, despite an impressive walk rate and overall good three-true outcome numbers. He’s just very hittable.
Missouri is on top of the baseball world as the Royals travel to St. Louis to play a previously postponed game. Chris Young takes on John Lackey. Both are 8-5 with similar ERAs. Young owns a 1.84 ERA on the road, where he allowed just 27 hits in 44 innings. Lackey owns a 1.91 ERA at home, where he allowed just three of his 10 home runs.
Freese, who is hitting .240 with 11 homers and 43 runs batted in, was hit in the hand by a Mike Pelfrey fastball in the fourth inning and replaced by Taylor Featherston. Initial X-rays showed a non-displaced fracture. The finger will remain in a splint for two weeks, and Freese hopes to return in three weeks.
The Cardinals recently demoted Matt Carpenter to seventh in the lineup. After getting off to a great start this season, Carpenter suffered fatigue, and hasn’t been the same since:
You may consider the first 27 games a small sample size, but it’s much more in line with his career than the last 61 games. The only thing that stayed consistent is the walks, indicating he hasn’t lost his batting eye, but the ability to hit the ball hard.
Note that the consensus at the time of the illness was that Carpenter was simply worn out from playing too much. Some players, however, are very sensitive to their role on the team. The Cardinals took Carpenter out of his comfort zone in the lead-off slot, where he batted nearly exclusively the previous two seasons. Instead of taking the same approach as batting first, Carpenter may have put pressure on himself to start driving in runs. Playing every day had not been a problem before, but coupled with a new role, did the mental aspect put him over the edge?
I’ve always found it fascinating that players in general care a great deal about where they hit in the lineup, and think they need to approach the game differently depending on where they hit. Maybe Carpenter is one of those players that just needs to be in the comfort zone of batting first.
Do I believe that? My first guess would be that there is an undetected, underlying illness that caused the fatigue and drained some strength. I would not be surprised to find out at some time, however, that part of it was the switch in lineup slot.
Alex Rodriguez just hit a monster home run, over the bullpen in left-center in Yankee Stadium. It hit the top of the wall above the pen more toward the centerfield end then the leftfield end. It’s the first time he reached 20 home runs since the 2010 season, when he hit 30. It’s the 16th season he reached that milestone. The 15 previous times, he hit at least 30 homers in 14 of those seasons. Seems like he’s headed back to that level.
The Yankees lead the Orioles 4-2 going to the top of the sixth inning.
Correction: I misread Alex’s career. He hit at least 30 homer runs in 14 of the 15 previous season in which he reached 20 homers.
The Tigers are off to an 8-0 lead over Seattle as the Mariners bat in the top of the fourth. I thought the injury to Miguel Cabrera would hinder the offense, but coming into tonight, the Tigers scored 76 runs in 14 games, 5.43 runs per game. That’s second in the majors since July 4th, the day after Cabrera’s last game. That will go up a little more after tonight’s contest.
Unfortunately, the pitching has not matched the hitting. The Tigers were 40-39 thought July 3rd, 46-47 coming into today. The offense rising to the occasion was not enough to make a run at Kansas City.
Yunel Escobar injured his wrist checking his swing Wednesday afternoon against a Noah Syndergaard pitch. The video is both amusing and scary. I remember watching a Yankees game many years ago when Ron Bloomberg torn a shoulder muscle swinging at a pitch. It’s amazing that those types of injuries can happen.
The Nationals came back late to beat the Mets 4-3 and take a three game lead in the NL East. As Matt Cerrone sums up:
The worst part is, though one loss, it feels like so much more, since it could have meant the Mets taking a series they hyped up to be super important. Instead of being 50-45 and a game out of first, heading home to face a tough Dodgers team, they’re 49-46, hanging their heads, three games back and set to face Clayton Kershaw…
Washington is probably at their weakest point so far. The injured players are mostly rehabbing. This was the chance for a great Mets staff to pitch them to a sweep and a one game lead in the division.
The Mets and Nationals play the rubber game of their series Wednesday afternoon with rookie Noah Syndergaard facing veteran Jordan Zimmermann. Syndergaard has yet to win on the road, 0-4 with a 4.73 ERA. While his strikeouts are good on the road, his walk and home run rates go way up. Zimmermann walked just seven batters in his last 55 innings.
Jose Fernandez takes on Robbie Ray as the Marlins play the Diamondbacks. Fernandez seems to have made a full recovery from Tommy John surgery, striking out 21 in his first 19 inning while issuing one walk. Ray has a chance to be the answer to Arizona trading Max Scherzer to Detroit. Scherzer found himself as the trade was made. Ray posted an 8.16 ERA in 28 2/3 innings for the Tigers last season with too many walks and too many home runs allowed. This season, those rates are way down and Ray owns a 2.29 ERA.
Choo, who had three RBIs, doubled in the second inning, homered in the fourth and singled in the fifth. When he came to the plate in the ninth he knew he had a chance to get the cycle with a triple against left-hander Rex Brothers. He drove Brothers’ 92 mph fastball off the wall in center and headed for third with his teammates cheering him on.
“It’s not an easy pitcher on the mound,” Choo said. “I hit it well and (thought) maybe he can catch that. I’m not thinking about it before contact.”
Choo turned out to be a huge disappointment for Texas, with the high OBPs he saw in Cleveland and Cincinnati gone. This will be a shining moment in an otherwise down two years for the Rangers.
Jason Vargas left the Pirates game against the Royals early Tuesday night with an elbow injury. That left the Kansas City bullpen to battle one of the best pitchers in the NL Gerrit Cole. The Royals pen was up to the task, keeping the Pirates scoreless until the ninth. The group struck out 10 and walked two in 7 2/3 innings as Kansas City won 3-1.
On the other side, did the Pirates leave Cole in too long? He was working efficiently, under 100 pitches going into the eighth. He had a shutout intact. He was facing the bottom of the Royals lineup for the third time. He would have gotten the first two batters out, except for a Neil Walker error. After that, three runs scored.
Both teams have excellent bullpens. It’s tough to pull Gerrit in that situation, but once he allowed the first single and was in trouble, a fresh arm might have done the trick. Instead, Cole allows three runs, two earned, and takes the loss.
The Rays beat the Phillies 1-0, the first interleague game in which the only run scored on a home run by an AL pitcher. Nate Karns went deep and pitched five shutout innings for the win.
Possibly more important, however, was the major league debut of Aaron Nola for the Phillies. He pitched better than Karns, going six innings, walking one, and striking out six. The home run was really his only mistake. The 21 year old is 14-7 with a 2.57 ERA in his two season minor league career. He averaged just 1.5 walks per nine innings as he rocketed through three levels to make the majors. He’s giving the Phillies some hope for the future.
I don’t see a nickname list for Nola at BREF, but I have to think someone calls him “The Big Easy.”
His Major League career lasted just two innings, the final six outs of a 15-5 loss in 1947.
His fame didn’t come until decades later, when his baseball career was well behind him. At 95, Ardizoia was the oldest living Yankee, spending his final years in San Francisco until his death Sunday night, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Monday.
My thoughts go out to his family and friends. His minor league career was good, going 123-115 with about a 3.23 ERA. He even posted good ERAs in the PCL, know for being a hitters league.
At the beginning, Greinke featured an exaggerated velocity gap. He subsequently pulled that closer to average, but then he just never stopped shrinking the difference. From greater than 10 mph, to roughly seven, to less than five, to barely three. The gap has gotten smaller every year. This year, Greinke’s changeup is faster; his fastball is slower.
We have pitch data on this site going back to 2002, so I made some use of it. I looked at individual starting-pitcher seasons, going back to 2002, and set an innings minimum of 50. Within the pool, here are the five smallest fastball-changeup speed separations:
2013 Felix Hernandez, 3 mph
2014 Felix Hernandez, 3.1 mph
2012 Felix Hernandez, 3.4 mph
2015 Zack Greinke, 3.4 mph
2015 Felix Hernandez, 3.6 mph
Hernandez is known for one of the best change-ups in the game.
The idea behind the slow change-up is that you thrown it with the same arm speed as the fastball, and the batter swings at the arm speed. Good hitters, especially the ones who keep the bat in the strike zone a long time (Tony Gwynn, Derek Jeter) probably have time to adjust to that pitch. The fast change-up likely looks like the fastball until the very end. The batter swings early, and it’s just too late to adjust. There’s probably a slightly different movement at the end, also. Cool.
The Mets and Nationals continue their series with Jacob deGrom facing Joe Ross as a sophomore faces a freshman. deGrom turned in a marvelous career so far, with 256 strikeouts and 64 walks in 254 innings. Ross is also off to a good start to his career, with 23 K and two walks in 20 1/3 innings. He’s just 22 years old.
The Twins get a potential playoff test as they take on the Angels. Kyle Gibson takes on Matt Shoemaker. Gibson is pitching great in July, with an 0.86 ERA in three starts. Shoemaker can’t win at home, 0-6 with a 4.60 ERA, but is 4-1 on the road despite a 5.01 ERA.
The Red Sox lost a double header to the Angels Monday night, resulting in a four-game series sweep by LAnaheim by a combined score of 22-4. The first two games were close, with Boston getting good pitching, but in the last two nothing worked. Here are the offensive splits for the series, and I mean that both ways. The team managed just one RBI, meaning three of their four runs came by other means. In 20 plate appearances with a man on first, they managed to hit into two double plays. They struck out 25 times in 95 at bats.
I suspect if there is a fire John Farrell movement, it is going to pick up steam with this series.
Update: With three home runs in the double header, Albert Pujols passed Mike Schmidton the career home run list. He’ll need quite the finish to his career to catch Bonds, but with six years left on his contract, it’s not out of the question.
The Pirates beat the Royals 10-7 Monday night as the teams combined for 31 hits, seven doubles, two triples and three home runs. It was a return to the 1990s. The Pirates had the game in hand early, but the Royals kept battling back to keep it close.
One of the interesting features of the game was that the Royals struck out just twice against A.J. Burnett, the only two Royals Ks in the game. This Royals offense reminds me of the 2002 Angels. The don’t walk and they don’t strike out, with the fewest in the AL in both categories. They have the second highest team BABIP in the league, so all those balls in play produce a lot of hits. It’s an effective offense, especially against teams with poor fielders.
The Pirates loseJordy Mercer for six weeks. Given his rather poor offensive numbers, .242/.289/.315, this could be addition by subtraction, although Brent Morel doesn’t seem to be much better.
By the way, what is this day off crap three days after the All-Star break? Allow me to be a grumpy old man for a minute. In the old days, there were no off days for a week and a half before the break, then none for two weeks after. I don’t know if I should blame the schedulers and interleague play, or the players for being babies.
The Red Sox and Angels start the day with the first game of a split admission double header, the result of an historic rainout:
The teams are scheduled to play a day-night doubleheader Monday, the first doubleheader to be played at Angel Stadium due to a rainout since Aug. 5, 1988, a makeup game for an April 14, 1988 rainout. The Angels also played a doubleheader here on Sept, 6, 2003, against the Kansas City Royals, the result of a rainout in Kansas City earlier that season.
Mike Trout was three years old the last time a game was postponed in Anaheim. Eduardo Rodriguez faces Hector Santiago in game one. The Boston rookie struck out 46 while walking just 16 batters in 52 2/3 innings. Santiago found his control this season, walking 34 batters in 108 1/3 innings. That’s helping him to a 2.33 ERA.
On the east coast, Matt Harvey leads the Mets into Washington against the Nationals and Gio Gonzalez. Two games separate the NL East rivals as the Mets try to gain ground in the division race. Harvey’s weakness in his return from Tommy John surgery is the home run ball. He’s already allowed twice the number of home runs he did in 2013, in 67 fewer innings. Gonzalez pitched seven shutout innings against the Mets the only time he faced them this season. Both these offenses are hurting, so this could be another pitching duel.
Finally, the Pirates try to tame the Royals as A.J. Burnett takes on Yordano Ventura. Burnett is pulling a Mike Mussina, trying to go out with one of his best seasons. Unlike Mike, Burnett can still bring the heat, with 100 K in 119 1/3 innings. Ventura owns a 2.63 ERA in four starts against NL teams. Against AL teams, his ERA stands at 5.77.
The All-Star breaks did not align between 2014 and 2015. The break happened in week 16 last season, instead of week 15 this year. With only 44 games played, the majors posted it’s lowest scoring week of the season, just 7.30 runs scored per game. That gives 2014 a 0.1 run advantage through 15 weeks, 8.28 runs scored per game last year, 8.18 this season. Hot weather is supposed to produce more offense, but the walks and the non-home run hits are not increasing. We are still seeing more home runs, but that can’t make up for 0.4 drop in batter reaching base per game.
I kind of blame the leftfielders. As a group, they are batting .256/.319/.403 this season. Leftfield is supposed to be a position that is pretty far toward the offensive side of the defensive spectrum, right next to first base. Leftfielders are the guys who can’t throw, who have all the plays in front of them. It’s where you stick sluggers in the National League who can’t play first base. It’s where the Red Sox stuck Hanley Ramirez, and Manny Ramirez before that. Why offense at the position is so bad is beyond me.
The Mets and Cardinals play 12 scoreless innings before either records a run. The Met take the lead in the top of the 13th inning, but Kolten Wong homers in the bottom of the inning to tie. They play four more scoreless inning until the Met score twice in the top of the 18th for a 3-1 win.
The Mets offense did dominate the game, as they collected 16 hits and drew 13 walks to 13 hits and five walks for the Cardinals. The Mets hitters went one for 26 in the game with runners in scoring position. That lowered the team’s batting average in that situation from .234 to .227. The Mets have no trouble setting up scoring opportunities, they just can’t deliver on them.
Hard-throwing Reds reliever Aroldis Chapman has set a major league record for the fastest to reach 500 career strikeouts.
Chapman, who routinely throws over 100 mph, reached the mark when he fanned pinch-hitter Giovanny Urshela to end the 10th inning Sunday in Cincinnati’s 5-3 loss to Cleveland.
The All-Star lefty needed just 292 innings to reach 500 strikeouts. The previous mark was by San Diego’s Craig Kimbrel, who got to 500 in his 305th inning on May 25.
With the continued specialization of the bullpen allowing relievers to throw hard for short periods of time, I suspect this record will do down for a while. Maybe not on the month scale, but I suspect by 2020 it might fall twice.
Dallas Keuchel throws seven shutout innings against the Rangers as the Astros take the win 10-0. Keuchel records his third 10-K game of the season, fanning 13. That the most he struck out in a game this year.
Keuchel strikes out a good number of batters, but he’s not in the top 40 in terms of K per 9 IP (90 IP). He worked nine inning in his other two 10-K games. To strike out 13 in seven innings, and not allow a walk, that’s something special. He’s looking more and more like a Cy Young winner.
Taylor Jungmann runs his major league record to 5-1 in eight starts as the Brewers beat the Pirates 6-1 Sunday afternoon. Jungmann’s strength continues to be his ability to keep the ball in park now having allowed just two home runs in 53 innings with just 15 walks allowed. That’s good for a 2.15 ERA. Today was his first win in front of the home fans.
The Pirates come back from the break to a sweep from the Brewers. That’s a tough way to start after taking three in a row from the Cardinals.
In addition to YMCA, here’s two more songs that might work for this type of analysis:
