Curveballs for Jobu 5/17/11

Curveballs for Jobu is Offbasepercentage's daily trip around the ballparks.

Today's honorary bat boy is Frank Menechino.

A's 5, Angels 4 (10).
It was another challenging night for the Angels bullpen as Jordan Walden blew a save and Fernando Rodney made me cry a little. Any rational baseball fan knows the only business Rodney has near the pitchers mound is replacing a rosin bag or etching the Angels logo on the back of it. But Mike Scioscia just keeps running him out there and losing games because of it. Rodney walked two and threw a wild pitch before allowing the Mark Ellis game winning hit. I threw some plastic lawn furniture.

Rangers 4, White Sox 0.
Colby Lewis tossed his first career shutout on 5 hits and 7 strikeouts. It was't that surprising considering how terrible most of the Sox lineup is at hitting baseballs. The Rangers moved back into first in the West and I don't recognize any of the people they have wondering their outfield nowadays.

Indians 19, Royals 1.
How bad was your day yesterday? Yeah? Well Vin Mazzaro's was worse. In the course of recording 7 outs, Mazzaro gave up 14 runs on 10 hits and 3 walks. After the game, he was demoted. So yeah, the deli messed up your lunch? Suck it up jerk.

Cardinals 3, Phillies 1.
Tony La Russa returned to the dugout after battling shingles and plugged Albert Pujols in at third base for the first time in nine years. Why not, I say. While your at it, if you could get Colby Rasmus some time at second base, that would be great. The middle infield of my fantasy team is a train wreck. Pujols went 0-4 but the Cards still managed to defeat Cliff Lee. Lee, uncharacteristically, walked 6 and gave up 6 hits while allowing all 3 earned runs.

Marlins 2, Mets 1 (11).
Josh Johnson had a short outing lasting only 5 innings after being hit by a Carlos Beltran liner. Hanley Ramirez went 0-6 and the game winning hit was delivered by Marlins reliever Burke Badenhop. It was a weird game. But the biggest news broke before the first pitch. An MRI revealed David Wright has a stress fracture in his lower back, crippling the Mets chances for 2011. That would have been funnier if the Mets had any chance at 2011 before the season started.

Brewers 2, Dodgers 1.
Shaun Marcum is quietly having a great season for the Brewers. Overshadowed by the Zack Grienke trade, Marcum improved to 2.54/2.63/3.25 (ERA/FIP/xFIP) after his 7 inning, 5 hit, 1 earned run performance on Monday.

Other games, but down here...
Rays 6, Yankees 5.
Blue Jays 4, Tigers 2. Jose Bautista homers 0
Red Sox 8, Orioles 7.
Mariners 5, Twins 2.
Nationals 4, Pirates 2.
Braves 3, Astros 2.
Reds 7, Cubs 4.
Rockies 7, Giants 4.
Padres 8, Diamondbacks 4.

Josh Willingham's Golden Sombrero

A golden sombrero is awarded to a player who manages to strike out four times in a single game (real golden sombrero not included). It's quite the feat unless you're Ryan Howard or Mark Reynolds. Unfortunately, no-hitters and Brian Wilson's beard are all the rage nowadays. Not for me, though. I will pour over the box scores to bring you the finest at swinging and missing.

Josh Willingham is a more productive player than he seems. He's a really good OBP guy setting a career high .389 last season and has 20+ home run pop. He's basically a 2.5-3 WAR player based solely on his bat so trading for him made plenty of sense for the offense starved Athletics. Unfortunately, Oakland has a way of just sucking the production out of bats. Willingham has 6 homers but just a .228/.308/.409 line, all well below his career marks. Things didn't get any better Sunday. He struck out so much that even high school you would have been embarrassed for him...

Bottom 1st: Willingham struck out swinging against Mark Buehrle. He worked the count full before going down hacking.

Bottom 3rd: Willingham struck out looking against Buehrle. This one only took three pitches and he only participated in the second one.

Bottom 6th: Willingham struck out looking against Buehrle. Another full count so he at least tried to get his money's worth.

Bottom 7th: Willingham struck out swinging against Buehrle Jesse Crain. He completed the Sombrero with, you guessed it, another full count.

I should probably being keeping track of all the pitchers striking out the same batter three times in a game if I could remember how to use Excel or Access or had a better filing system than a shoe box full of bar napkins.

Curveballs for Jobu 5/16/11

Curveballs for Jobu is Offbasepercentage's daily trip around the ballparks.

Today's honorary bat boy is Randy Knorr.

Blue Jays 11, Twins 3.
American League pitchers continued to throw batting practice to Jose Bautista as he hit three (3!) more home runs to give him 16 on the season. If my math is right, he should break Bonds' record by the All Star break. He also now sports a .368/.520/.868 line that makes me giddy like a schoolgirl. Other players did stuff in this game but, let's face it, it didn't matter.

White Sox 4, A's 3.
The Sox handed Trevor Cahill his first loss of the season knocking him around for 4 runs (2 earned) on 10 hits and a pair of walks. Juan Pierre and his .314 OBP continue to lead of because Ozzie is old school like that. On the other side, the A's just keep running out Daric Barton and a bunch of Quadruple A players. Just a really bad offense.

Red Sox 7, Yankees 5.
The Red Sox swept the Yankees to get back to .500 and just 3 games back of East leading Tampa. Curtis Granderson hit a home run off of Jon Lester for 13 on the season, 6against lefties. If that wasn't enough of a sign of the Apocalypse, Jarrod Saltalamacchia hit a homer. Make sure to tell your family you love them.

Reds 9, Cardinals 7.
The Reds swept their division foes by beating up on Chris Carpenter. Ramon Hernandez continued his hot streak with another home run. Aroldis Chapman continued his "I'm broken" streak walking 4 in a third of an inning. GPS couldn't help him find the strike zone right now.

Braves 3, Phillies 2.
Dan Uggla hit the go ahead homer in the 8th inning to ruin Roy Halladay's day. Halladay was a mess anyway tossing all 8 innings but allowing 8 hits, 3 runs and 2 walks while only striking out 7. He should be ashamed of himself.

Brewers 9, Pirates 6.
Ryan Braun (2-3, 2 BB, HR) bailed out Zack Grienke (5 IP, 6 H, 5 ER). I'm almost 83% sure that the Pirates Andrew and Daniel McCutchen are not related.

Other games, but down here...
Rangers 5, Angels 4.
Mariners, Indians PPD. This is the M's new strategy for the season. Rain outs.
Tigers, Royals PPD.
Orioles 9, Rays 3.
Nationals 8, Marlins 4.
Mets 7, Astros 4.
Giants, Cubs PPD.
Padres 8, Rockies 2.
Diamondbacks 4, Dodgers 1.

Sunday Night Liveblog: Yankees vs Red Sox

In tonight's episode with Diamond Hoggers, we test out our theory that Yankees-Red Sox produce negative ratings for our sites. The first sign is that in-house Yankee fan Derwood isn't even showing up for the chat. But there will be cocktails and Jeter jokes so join us at 8:00 p.m EST.

Juan Rivera's Golden Sombrero

A golden sombrero is awarded to a player who manages to strike out four times in a single game (real golden sombrero not included). It's quite the feat unless you're Ryan Howard or Mark Reynolds. Unfortunately, no-hitters and Brian Wilson's beard are all the rage nowadays. Not for me, though. I will pour over the box scores to bring you the finest at swinging and missing.

How about a little exercise in futility, kids?

Player A: 152 PA, 4 HR, .183 BA, .224 OBP, .303 SLG, .233 wOBA, -0.3 WAR
Player B: 137 PA, 2 HR, .217 BA, .314 OBP, .283 SLG, .277 wOBA, 0.2 WAR

I think we can agree that these are two terrible offensive players. Of course, Player A is making, for the sake of a round number, about $20 million more this year than Player B. Player A is Vernon Wells who recently hit the disabled list with an acute case of suck that has spread throughout his body. While Player B is Juan Rivera who the Blue Jays DH and bat cleanup to "protect" baseball's best hitter Jose Bautista. I think this sums up where these players are in their careers...



Rivera set out to prove that sound effect correct Saturday night. Let's go to the tape...

Top 1st: Rivera struck out swinging against Nick Blackburn. It was a strike 'em out, throw 'em out with Bautista involved so I'll, begrudgingly, give Rivera a little benefit of the doubt on this one.

Top 3rd: Rivera struck out swinging against Blackburn again. No excuses this time.

Top 6th: Rivera struck out swinging against Blackburn. This, new readers, is what I like to call the MTD Hat Trick. That's when a player strikes out three times, the same way, against the same pitcher. It happened last year way more than I thought it would. But still, tell your friends. I'm trying to make it a thing.

Top 8th: Rivera struck out swinging against Matt Capps.

Credit where it's due, Rivera had the decency to get the Golden Sombrero in before extra innings so it doesn't feel tainted.

Curveballs for Jobu 5/15/11

Curveballs for Jobu is Offbasepercentage's daily trip around the ballparks.

Today's honorary bat boy is Noberto Martin.

Angels 3, Rangers 2.
Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing something over and over again and expecting different results. Mike Scioscia keeps sending Fernando Rodney to the mound expecting him to get outs. Draw your own conclusion. Rodney allowed a hit to the lone base hitter he faced which scored the tying run blowing a win for Dan Haren. Maicer Izturis bailed the Angels out in the 9th driving in the go ahead run. Scioscia also continues to start Jeff Mathis but he did go 2-4 raising his 2011 slash line to .203/.221/.297.

Blue Jays 9, Twins 3 (11).
Jose Bautista hit a 2-run home run in the 11th to spark the 6 run inning. The homer was Baustista's 13th of the season and he's raking a .358/.517/.798 line so far. He's the best hitter in baseball right now and it ain't close. In other news, the Twins are awful this year.

Red Sox 6, Yankees 0.
Josh Beckett continued his nice season by shutting down the Yankees for 6 innings and striking out 9. CC Sabathia, on the other hand, gave up 6 earned over 6.2 innings. Then Jorge Posada said something. Or he didn't. I don't really know what happened but everybody on Twitter seemed enthralled by it.

Marlins 1, Nationals 0.
Livan Hernandez, who apparently will pitch forever, gave up just one solo home run to Mike Stanton over 7 innings and took the loss. Alex Cora went 0-3.

Reds 7, Cardinals 3.
The Reds moved into first place in the Central thanks to a strong outing by Johnny Cueto and a pair of Ramon Hernandez homers. Cueto allowed 3 hits, 3 runs (0 earned) over 7.2 innings, struck out 5, made a tremendous behind the back catch and incited zero brawls.

Diamondbacks 1, Dodgers 0.
Chad Billingsly allowed 1 hit and struck 8 over 8 innings and took the loss. That's gotta be a bummer.

Other games, but down here...
Mariners, Indians PPD. But the Indians still won somehow.
A's 6, White Sox 2.
Tigers 3, Royals 0.
Orioles 6, Rays 0.
Braves 5, Phillies 3.
Padres 9, Rockies 7.
Astros 7, Mets 3.
Brewers 8, Pirates 2.
Giants 3, Cubs 0.

The Great(est) Fan Escape

This video has already spread so fast over the Internet, especially Twitter, that I'm not even sure who deserves credit. Let's just pretend I found it. This fan breaks out his best parkour skills to evade the Minute Maid Park cops during what is now Carlos Lee's most interesting at bat of the year. I just wish it were set to Yakety Sax.



The only thing that would be more impressive than that is the Astros escaping last place in the National League.

Slade Heathcott Had A Big Day

The perception of Yankees prospect Slade Heathcott took a wild ride on Friday the 13th. In Gene Sapakoff's tremendous article in The Post and Courier, we learned about Heathcott's troubled past ranging from pulling a shot gun on his father to some rather extreme alcohol abuse both in high school and with the Yankees. Eventually, with assistance from the Yankees, Heathcott got the help he needed for his alcohol demons and appears to have righted the ship. It's a great story and I can't recommend the article enough.

Heathcott came into the season as the Yankees number 8 prospect according to ESPN's Keith Law. In 32 games for Single A Charleston, the 20-year-old outfielder is hitting .312/.396/.504 with 3 home runs and 11 doubles. But on Friday, the same day the article on his salvation came out, he ran into a little trouble at the ballpark.

Heathcott was hit with the second pitch of the game and promptly attacked the opposing team's (Red Sox affiliate Greenville) catcher. Which led to the following bench-clearing brawl...



That was a pretty sweet double leg takedown Heathcott snuck in there as the catcher was trying to get away. Also, I'm pretty sure I saw a guillotine choke applied by somebody. I'd hate to wildly speculate (that's a lie, I love it) but I can't imagine that it was just a coincidence that the article and brawl occurred on the same day. I bet the catcher said something to incite Heathcott's violent reaction aside from calling for a fastball up and in.

But that's just a guess. Heathcott might just be really embracing his Yankeeness and felt the need to deck the Red Sox minor league catcher while yelling, "This is for Zimmer!" Either way, I hope this is just an isolated incident and Heathcott stays on the path of a feel good story.