On Rooting For Some Of The Bad Guys

There's a lot of talk swirling around the Tampa Bay Rays these days. They lost their GM to the Dodgers. They lost their manager, under weird circumstances, to the Cubs. They traded a former Rookie of the Year for prospects, they're making minor deals left and right, they DFA'ed their starting catcher whose pitch-framing genius never seemed to translate into getting above the Mendoza line at the plate, and they're the subject of persistent "maybe they'll move to Montreal" rumors.

RAUL! (And Charlie)

Word came down the pike this morning that Durham Bulls manager Charlie Montoyo is one of the finalists for the vacant managing job in Tampa, and this has me torn.

Go Charlie Go

Someone give Charlie Montoyo a major league job already.

The Five Stages of Grief, David Price Trade Edition

Denial - "There's no way the Rays are trading David Price. They're totally in this thing. Trading him would send the wrong message to the fan base. Really, they should be adding pieces to try to make a run. They're only four and a half games out, and all the TV guys on Baseball Tonight say he's not going anywhere!"

What's the right Price? Houston, we have a solution!

Since the mystery of Robinson Cano and Jay-Z has now been solved, we can turn our attention to the fate of Cy Young winner, David Price. At the ripe age of 28, Price is in his perfect prime. Tampa Bay has shown time and time again that it's perfectly happy to part ways and to inherit up and coming prospects, rather than pony up.

Why David Goes Down

Malcolm Gladwell's latest exercise in reverse-engineering hypotheses to fit his cherry-picked data is all about David and Goliath, but there's a key point he missed.

Durham Bulls Backup Catchers Strike Again

This guy. No, the one on the right.

Saturday night, it was Stephen Vogt. Tonight, it was Jose Lobaton, another guy who used to be a backup catcher for the Durham Bulls.

And by now, you should know the story. Next-to-last guy off the bench. Not exactly known for his hitting. In there, with two outs, against the closer who'd just had the single best season in the history of closing. (Yes, better than anything Mariano Rivera did. Ever. Look it up.) Hoping against hope to pick up his closer, who'd just choked up a hard-won lead. 

Naturally, he golfs it pretty much dead center, to the point where some butterfingers fan in what looked to be an Elliot Johnson jersey Bucknered the ball into the 10K gallon fish tank next door.

First postseason walk-off hit in Rays history. Fourth straight elimination game they've won. The conquest of the unhittable closer. All the stuff that's so unlikely as to never, ever happen.
Except it happens every year. Welcome to the playoffs.

Great Moments In Sports Talk Radio: Contract the 2009 Rays

Many of us, in our day to day jobs, are asked to do a little research. We are impressed with the importance of actually knowing what we're talking about when we're asked to get up in front of people - whether they be customers, co-workers, upper brass, or professional peers - and talk. Not taking this responsibility seriously (or, as professional peers of mine refer to it, "talking out your ass"), is the sort of thing that tends to bring negative performance reviews, audience disapproval, and occasional changes in work address.

One the Hard Way: Rays

This is how you do it the hard way.

You tie one hand behind your back by keeping your best prospect and probably second-best power hitter, the guy you traded your #2 starter and a key pen arm for, down on the farm for nearly half the season to tweak his service time clock, gambling that you won't fall entirely out of the race without him.

You go into the season with first base, one of your big bopper slots, manned by a guy who never was a serious threat to hit 20 homers, and whose offense has been sliding for years. This guy, whom you signed off the scrap heap, got let go by your biggest competition when they really didn't have any other options at first base.

You take chances on guys who are, frankly, jerks, because jerks come cheap, and you need cheap, and there's nobody better at straightening them out than Joe Maddon. And so Yuni Escobar arrives and appears to remove his head from his hindquarters, and Delmon Young comes back and shuts up and just hits like he never did in Philly.  

You run a shuttle back and forth between Tampa and Durham, cycling Archers and Torreses and Odorizzis and more back and forth and in and out while your former Cy Young winner's arm starts barking and your former Rookie of the Year falls apart, all the way down to A-ball.

You enter the final series of the season needing only to take care of business against the sad-sack Blue Jays, a team running on impulse power, and you promptly woof away a couple of games. Your best defensive outfielder makes a Charlie Brown play, and a huge lead evaporates, and suddenly it's the last day of the season and you need to win -on the road - to make sure you don't go home.

And you build another lead, and that one starts to evaporate, and everyone in baseball who loves your story and wants the underdog to win is thinking "oh God, here we go again."
But you pull it out, which earns you the right to go on the road again for another must-win, against a team that thumped you thoroughly in your home stadium, and that has what seems like more money invested in its pitching staff than you have in your payroll. And you send your former Cy Young guy out there, except he's got an ERA in their ballpark that looks like a Boeing jet designation, and they're getting their big bopper back off a 50 game suspension just in time to face you. You get there, and you take a lead, and then you get hit by an epic screw job of a bad call that costs you at least one run, and you're pretty sure you're going to need that run because this place is a launching pad, and the game is a long way from over.

Except your starter gets mad and just deals. Every pitch feels like it's coming from a place of rage. And your last-guy-on-the-bench outfielder, the speed-and-defense guy whose botched pickup of a routine grounder is what led to you being here in the first place, he steals a run for you in the 9th, and you win.

Which gets you the right to get on another plane, and fly to another team's stadium, and play another must-win.

Which you do, against a flamethrowing rookie and a deep lineup full of guys who have been there before, even if the team hasn't.You run a DH out there who couldn't hack it on the sinking ship that was the 2013 Phillies, and he slams a first-pitch home run, the fifth time he's done that in the playoffs. Nine playoff home runs for Delmon Young, five on a first pitch, and yet Ernie Banks never sniffed the post-season. Life, as they say, isn't fair. This time, though, the unfairness works your way. Your kid starter scuffs and ducks and dodges and gets double play balls when he has to, and then suddenly it's done. 

You've won. You've passed the wild card stage. And that gives you the right to get on another plane, to go to another city, to stare down the barrel of another loaded gun.

But this time you get a day off first. Sounds like heaven.

Game 163

It's not quite the postseason, the one game playoff to see who gets the chance to play a one game playoff to advance to the next round of the American League playoffs. The National League side has been reasonably set for a while now; only an impossible run from the Nationals combined with a complete collapse from one of the NL Central front-runners would have shaken things up. It was only a question of seeding, with the Reds and Pirates duking it out to see who got to host the Wild Card game, and the Dodgers and Braves cruising home with 10+ game leads.

18 Innings In

18 innings.
21 pitchers.
6 hours, 54 minutes.
184 pitches thrown for each team.
10 consecutive scoreless innings.
A game-winning RBI delivered by a guy who didn't enter the game until the 10th inning, and had enough time to go 2-4.
That's what the Tampa Bay Rays and the Baltimore Orioles did to each other last night. That's what you do when there's under 10 games left in the season and the wild card standings are packed tighter than salmon going upstream in a David Attenborough documentary. That's what you do when it's September and your roster has expanded and one loss can drop you from leading the wild card race to a half game out of the second spot. That's what you do when you're a couple back with not that many to go, and you're running out of chances to make up ground.
The storylines are everywhere. The win went to a guy (Jeremy Hellickson) who had to get sent down to Class A to get his head straightened out. That RBI in the 18th came from a guy (David DeJesus) who was traded twice this season, once to a team that expressly didn't want him. The losing pitcher (Bud Norris) was supposed to end up on the West Coast when he got ransomed out of 100-loss factory Houston for prospects; instead he wound up, to everyone's surprise, in Charm City. Super-rookie Wil Myers went 0-8 in the game. The guy who scored the winning run (Desmond Jennings), went 2-4 after getting into the game in the 9th. The Orioles' closer never entered the game, which may say something about the way Buck Showalter manages or may say something about the way Jim Johnson is pitching.
But really, the only storyline that matters is that this is what you do when the year's running out. You fire every bullet, including your Sunday starting pitcher, because this one game really does matter that much. There's no time for sunk costs any more, no saying sometime around the 13th "screw it, put the shortstop in so we can save the bullpen for the rest of the series". Because if you don't win this game, the rest of the series might be too late.
The game wrapped up around 2 in the morning.
And today at 1:05, they do it all again.

The Martyrdom of Saint Wil

I swear, you'd think they were gonna kill him.

That smile says "Send Help!"

For the last couple of months, one of the recurring themes amongst baseball types was the way in which Wil Myers was being kept against his will in the desolate hell-hole called Durham, North Carolina. To hear the way the seamheads put it, Myers was "trapped" in Cackalacky by the heartless and foolish Rays front office. Presumably, he was also being flogged regularly, fed nothing but gruel, and guest-starring on episodes of Beyond Scared Straight. No doubt the poor kid spent his days here digging his way out of the home clubhouse at the DBAP, possibly in the direction of Bull City Burger and Brewery, and covering up the hole with a tattered Rita Hayworth poster.

Great Moments In Amazing Expanding Strike Zones

On Monday Night, the Rays were mounting a comeback in the top of the 9th inning when this 4th ball pitched to Ben Zobrist was errantly called a strike to end the game:

What made this call so bad was that it was the third called strike of a six pitch at bat where no single pitch even came close to the strike zone. Rays Manager, Joe Maddon said in his post game presser "That can't happen in a Major League Game." Unfortunately, the Rays had to beat the 26th man on the Roster and he's a ringer...

This prompted me to consider the MLB worst calls of all time. Here are a few of my favorite bad calls:

2013 MLB Predictions - AL East Edition

"Past a diving Cthulhu. I'm telling you, Hastur, he's got to make that play"

And now, by special request, we turn our gimlet eye to the Junior Circuit, starting with the AL East

Toronto Blue Jays
Why They'll Win: They pantsed the bottom half of the NL East and took both their lunch money and their talent. Reyes, Johnson, Dickey, Bonifacio (when used properly) are a lot of talent. Melky Cabrera may be off the reindeer antler extract, but he's still better than what they were running out there last year. Jose Bautista is healthy. Edwin Encarnacion has left his E5 days behind him. Their bullpen is finally healthy. They have a manager who wants to be there. The Yankees and Sox are in down years, the Rays have James Loney at 1B, and the Orioles stood pat with a team that was luckier than a leprechaun in a horseshoe factory. Also, they stock the visiting clubhouse with poutine, to slow opposing players down.