Today’s game featured Manny Acta keeping a reliever in to throw 11 straight balls and load the bases in the 11th inning of a 1-run game. That pitcher was Saul Rivera, and he had already pitched a scoreless 10th and given up the go-ahead run in the 11th to the eighth batter he faced. Naturally, Manny Acta kept him in to face 3 more batters, walking two and going to 3-0 on Rickie Weeks before getting a couple called strikes and escaping the frame.

In the bottom of the inning, Manny spoke with his bats. In a game that saw a Nats starting nine including Willie Harris, Aaron (Effin’) Boone and Rob Mackowiak batting 1st, 3rd and 6th (respectively), it would seem reasonable to expect some pop off the bench in extra innings. Instead, Acta marched out Boone and pinch hitter WIL NIEVES to end the Nationals’ hopes for holiday cheer. Yes, folks, instead of aiming high with the resting and restive Ryan Zimmerman or the potentially willful and walloping Wily Mo Peña, Manny called upon the catcher who began the season fourth on the depth chart. (For those of you new to the game, back-up back-up back-up catchers are not known for the punch they pack at the plate.)

Perhaps Manny was excited by the 30-year old’s success bashing his first career home run in April of this year, or maybe he had an eye toward Wil’s 51 career home runs launched in 1005 minor league games. Most likely, Manny was enamored of Nieves’ .327/.389/.429 line on 56 plate appearances this season. Just another example of a sense of futility permeating a team through managerial ennui.

Ever pine for the days of yore, when contract deals were made with a handshake? Lifelong baseball man Buzzie Bavasi (father of current Mariners GM Bill) passed away a few weeks ago, and he left behind a long and storied legacy. Perhaps his most famous moment was dealing with one of the first instances of concerted collective bargaining in baseball: the Koufax/Drysdale holdout of 1966.

Back then, you see, the reserve clause was still in effect, meaning players were under team control more or less in perpetuity. (It wouldn’t be until 1975, with the watershed Seitz decision, that free agency would become a possibility.) Hall of Fame pitchers Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale had other ideas, however. They decided, just after the 1965 season, that they could have some actual leverage if they made a pact: either both of them were satisfied by the terms of the contract, or neither of them would sign. This leverage wasn’t just imaginary.

In a piece written at the beginning of the 1967 season in Sports Illustrated (hat tip to their incredible new online archives, the SI Vault), Buzzie Bavasi details exactly what happened between the Dodgers and their two star pitchers. Be sure to check out the entire piece. It makes for some great reading.

I want to draw your attention to a few specifics, though. Of the barrel Koufax and Drysdale had him over, Bavasi notes,

To tell the truth, I wasn’t too successful in the famous Koufax-Drysdale double holdout in 1966. I mean, when the smoke had cleared they stood together on the battlefield with $235,000 between them, and I stood there With a blood-stained cashbox. Well, they had a gimmick and it worked; I’m not denying it. They said that one wouldn’t sign unless the other signed. Since one of the two was the greatest pitcher I’ve ever seen (and possibly the greatest anybody has ever seen), the gimmick worked. But be sure to stick around for the fun the next time somebody tries that gimmick. I don’t care if the whole infield comes in as a package; the next year the whole infield will be wondering what it is doing playing for the Nankai Hawks.

Now, in fairness to Mr. Drysdale, he was no slouch on the mound (or, for that matter, with the bat–in 1965 he hit .300 and slugged an NL-record 7 home runs). However, in Bavasi’s eyes, it was Sandy Koufax he couldn’t afford to lose. In retrospect, he was absolutely right, at least for 1966. That season, which would prove to be Koufax’s last, was a spectacular one (323 IP, 241 H, 317 K, 77 BB, 1.73 ERA, 27-9 record). At the end of the ‘66 season, Koufax would win the Cy Young for the second straight year, but narrowly lose the MVP to Roberto Clemente, despite receiving more first place votes (9-8). Drysdale, on the other hand, actually had an ERA worse than league average that year (for just the second time in his career), though he was coming off a season in 1965 when he had finished fifth overall in the Cy Young voting (which Koufax had won).

What is most striking to me about this trip in the wayback machine is Bavasi’s reaction to long-term deals. When asked by Drysdale and Koufax for a combined $1 million for three years, Bavasi scoffed:

As I recall, I said something like, “You’re both athletes, and what you’re selling is your physical ability, and how can you guarantee your physical ability three years in advance? If you guarantee me that you will both be healthy and strong and still winning 20 games each in 1968, I’ll give you a three-year contract.” Since not even Cassius Clay could make a guarantee like that, the meeting broke up.

Wise words. Either things have changed a great deal in baseball since 1966, or sometimes the apple really does fall far from the tree. Some bits of baseball wisdom just don’t travel well down through the years, I guess.

Dear barroom denizens the world over,

I write to you today to ask simply that you take up a modest question for your consideration. It is not a question of mere fact or mere opinion; rather, like all great questions it requires a careful balance of each. I trust your besotted sagacity and ale-soaked acumen will prove more than sufficient to resolve my dispute, though it may take until the end of baseball to be sure.

My question: “Is Greg Maddux the best pitcher of all time?”

On Saturday, the Mad Dog recorded his 350th career win (against just 217 losses). It was just another ho-hum 68-pitch six inning outing with no runs allowed. It was his 715th game started since he entered the major leagues in 1986. Since the Jolly Roger notched his 350th win on his bedpost career last season, it is very likely Maddux could be the last pitcher ever to reach that milestone.

Like all great players, Maddux has an aura around him. Men (not smart ones, mind you, but men nonetheless) have caught baseballs thrown by Maddux with their eyes closed. Maddux’s current teammate and Padres ace (and last year’s NL Cy Young winner) Jake Peavy named his childhood dog “Maddux.” Some even say he is supernaturally prescient–the tale that he can tell exactly where a batter is going to hit a ball, just by watching him set up at the plate, never seems to die. Earlier this year, Tim Keown wrote:

With the Cubs, the story goes, Maddux once sat in the dugout and watched José Hernández of the Dodgers set up in the batter’s box. After two pitches, Maddux turned to the guys around him and said, “We might have to call an ambulance for the first base coach.” On the next pitch, Hernández whipped a shot that hit first base coach John Shelby in the chest.

Creepy. His calm demeanor and bespectacled look belie his toughness on the mound. During his 1995 season, which capped his run of four consecutive Cy Youngs (a record), he struck out 181 batters and walked only 23. To save you the time of whipping out your calculators, that’s a 7.87 strikeout-to-walk ratio. For a whole season.

I could bore you with his accomplishments (never walked more than 82 batters in any one season, career 3.32 K/BB ratio, career 3.12 ERA, 35 career shutouts, 17 consecutive 15-win seasons). I could tell you that his 1.56 ERA in 1994 was the third-lowest single season mark since 1920 (behind only Bob Gibson’s 1968 and Dwight Gooden’s 1985–mythical seasons both, if there are any). You might start to snooze if I told you about his 35 career doubles (or his brief attempt to turn them into the long ball).

But maybe the single thing that speaks the most about Greg Maddux as a baseball player is his record (at any position) 17 career Gold Gloves. Were it not for a brief usurping at the hands of then-teammate Mike Hampton in 2003, Greg Maddux would hold an active Gold Glove streak of 18 straight awards. Since 1990, taking the pitcher’s National League Gold Glove from Maddux has been harder than solving the Riemann hypothesis. (Fortunately for Mr. Hampton, he was paid about $120 million more for the former feat than the $1 million standing offer for solving Mr. Riemann’s conjecture.)

Remember, dear stool-sitters, I am not asking you to answer the question specifically in the affirmative or in the negative. No, my task here has simply been to demonstrate the Mad Professor’s bona fides, which qualify him for inclusion in the discussion.

We must ask ourselves whether we are simply witnessing the greatest of a generation, or the greatest of all time. That, my friends, is a question for you all to decide.

Respectfully submitted,
Tommy

(Greg Maddux photo courtesy flickr user felicity redwell)

Cliché: “The best pinch-hitters are very aggressive fastball hitters.”
Verdict: False
Why: The idea that a pinch hitter should swing early stems from the false understanding of the pinch hitter as a man who comes up in a key situation with one job: to drive in a baserunner. This is a flawed conception because of the very status of the pinch hitter himself. If he is relegated to first-man-off-the-bench duties, he must necessarily be worse than any other options at his position. Furthermore, although we can safely assume he is situationally better than the batter he replaces (not a foregone conclusion, however), he is likely to be worse than the starting position player who is on deck. Therefore, why strive for an all-or-nothing plate approach when there is likely to be a better batter waiting in the wings in the event of a mere base on balls?

Jeff Pentland, hitting coach for the Seattle Mariners, expresses one flawed justification for this fallacy perfectly:

“When you come off the bench, the pitcher thinks you[’re] cold. That’s why they’ll see a lot of fastballs. Your best pinch-hitters are very aggressive fastball hitters. Generally speaking, the best pinch-hitters don’t let the first one go. They’re able to make good contact early. That’s a big key, so you don’t get into breaking ball counts.”

Locked up in this explanation are a few assumptions. First, the assumption that a pitcher is fresh and is throwing fastballs for strikes. Second, the assumption that batters who are “very aggressive fastball hitters” don’t get as cold or have as much trouble catching up to fastballs immediately off the bench. Third, the assumption is present that pitchers (and managers) don’t realize this, and therefore won’t adjust their strategies according to the approach of the hitter entering the game. Ultimately, the last part of this comment belies the absurdity of holding up one-dimensional fastball hitters as the epitome of pinch hitting. If any batter off the bench were talented enough to hit a big league breaking ball, who would choose Marcus Thames over him? Furthermore, if Edgar Renteria is on deck with two outs, who would send up a Thames to hack away at the first pitch he sees, rather than employing the best option to try to work a walk and give the superior hitter an opportunity?

In reality, the definition of the ideal pinch hitter as an aggressive, dead red hacker is an inversion of causes. Due to their limited ability, aggressive mistake-hitters are often relegated to pinch hitting duties, where they sometimes experience modest success. To say that their limited style is therefore more desirable than the ability to wait for a pitch to hit or draw a walk strikes me as an exercise in placating the sensitive egos of the Thames, Monroes and Dobbs‘ of the world, rather than a legitimate search for baseball truth.

With all due respect to Razor Shines, it has to be Shooter Hunt (let me warn you now I’m going to enjoy this). The Tulane righty has been climbing up draft boards all spring, and is now projected to go somewhere in the middle of the first round. While Tulane is in the Conference-USA (not a powerhouse conference like the SEC), some good players have come through their system, most recently Micah Owings and Andy Cannizaro. Having just ditched the temporary confines of the Shrine on Airline for their brand spankin’ new home, Greer Field at Turchin Stadium, the Green Wave look confident and classy. Hey, they even serve beer! (In a totally unrelated aside, if you’ve never been to New Orleans, you are cheating yourself.)

I had a chance to see Shooter in person this past Friday (like most top-flight college aces, he starts the first game of each weekend series, on Fridays). Tulane was matched up last weekend against a good UCF team. It wasn’t a good night in terms of weather, and in fact, there were four (count ‘em) rain delays, though none was more than about 20 minutes long. As you can see, there were many scouts on hand. Heck, even ESPN.com prospect guru Keith Law was there. Well, I can assure that all the attention is with good reason. This saber-scouting report from late March should give you an idea of Mr. Hunt’s arsenal. I am no scout, but the very first thing I noticed about Shooter was the pop he got from the catcher’s mitt with every fastball, even in warm-ups. The readings on the speed guns were regularly in the 93-94 range, with a few touching higher. He didn’t flash his secondary offerings (a hard curveball and a straight change) very often, though they looked like they had potential when he did. The breaking ball in particular looked sharp, even if he had trouble commanding it.

Through seven innings (which was approximately three hours after the start of the game, due to two of the rain delays), Hunt had given up just two hits (a single and a double), struck out six and walked two. I thought for sure he would get the hook after seven innings, considering that Tulane had tallied a 5-0 lead by this point. Instead, the Green Wave trotted their stud back out to the mound, and he proceeded to hit a batter, yield a stolen base, give up a single, yield another stolen base, and finally give up a double. His final line, including the bad inning, was 7 IP, 2 R, 3 H, 6 K, 2 BB, 1 HBP. In all, he threw 109 pitches, and if he had been taken out after the seventh inning (they use a DH, so pitcher’s spot machinations need not apply), he would have had another great day and probably would have saved a bit of fatigue on his arm. The full play-by-play is here.

In this game, when he did get into trouble, it was primarily because of his command and control. If there’s anything keeping him from being a top-10 pick in June, it’s because he needs to cut down on his walks. Take a look at this start against Memphis from about two weeks ago. Despite striking out 12 in seven innings, he surrendered five walks and four runs. He also threw 117 pitches.

My feeling with Shooter Hunt, like a lot of pitchers entering the draft, is that he has an outstanding fastball–it’s got zip, tail, life, whatever else you want to call it–and that he needs to be able to throw his secondary pitches for strikes. Were he to somehow master all three of his pitches, look out. Until then, we’ll have to wait and see which team decides to take him. With so many high-quality college arms in this draft (in addition to Hunt, Brian Matusz, Aaron Crow, Tanner Scheppers, and Christian Friedrich could all go in the first round), it is tough to pin too much down. However, Jim Callis thinks it could be as high as the Reds with the seventh pick. In any event, it looks increasingly likely that Shooter Hunt will get a seven-figure bonus come June.

Here are some other photos I took.

The first of four rain delays

Preparing the pitch

Cliché: “Good pitching beats good hitting.”
Verdict: True
Why: If you think about it, a truly good (starting) pitcher has the ability to get through the lineup multiple times without allowing many baserunners or runs. If a pitcher is incapable of retiring the best hitters (say, 1 or 2 through 5 in an order), he will inevitably run into problem innings. It is difficult to regularly produce quality starts while getting hit hard a few innings per game. Thus, a good pitcher is expected to be able to retire all but the most potent of hitters (e.g. Barry Bonds ca. 2004).
As for hitters, even the best are not expected to be able to turn on a nasty pitcher’s nastiest stuff. It is satisfactory (and often even preferable) for a hitter to leave his mark in the later innings, when the starter begins to fatigue or the (presumably less nasty) bullpen pitchers make their appearances. Nobody would point to a top flight batter and complain that his production is low in the third or fourth inning, when an ace is likely to have already settled into his groove.

Needless to say, even the best laid plans go awry with alarming regularity. But that is too generous; these plans were far from the best-laid. Melvin began by signing Eric Gagne, whipping boy of the otherwise placated Red Sox nation, to a one year, $10 million dollar note. Yep, the guy used to be real famous, so let’s bring him in. Hey, remember when Salomon Torres used to do his rubber arm routine as the closer for the Pirates? He must be good too. Sign him up. Oh man, I always liked Derrick Turnbow. He was a real nifty closer in 2005 before he burned burned burned us in 2006. But hey, when you can’t make the tough decision between the devil you know and the devil you don’t, take them both! Hey, David Riske is actually a decent pitcher, but more importantly, he spent April of 2004 getting carpet bombed by opposing hitters in ninth inning duties for the Indians. Three years at $13 mill should do the trick. What’s that? Seth McClung is available? Apparently Doug Melvin had a fantasy team in 2006, because nobody but a fantasy manager would remember McClung’s short-lived status as the presumptive closer for the Devil Rays entering the 2007 season. Alright, that one didn’t work out so well for Seth, but Doug Melvin decided to trade for him as a closer-in-waiting type to stash on his bench. Hell, even Guillermo Mota was a closer (for the Marlins in 2005, before his arm fell off). Plus his name is slang for marijuana in Spanish. (He got suspended for the hard stuff in 2006, though.)

The worst thing about compiling the most expensive bullpen in baseball is that relievers tend to be so damn fungible, and their performance so damn unpredictable to all but the most savvy of gurus. Add to that the sheer incompetence with which this bullpen has been managed, and you have a nasty little blemish on the chances of an otherwise competitive team.

I don’t know how many of you had a chance to see, or hear about, Max Scherzer’s 4.3 perfect relief innings two days ago against the Astros, but they were nothing short of sensational. He had seven strikeouts and there wasn’t a single Astros hitter he didn’t get the best of. For those of you who missed it, you can find highlights here.

I was so intrigued that I decided to run Scherzer through the pitch F/X mill to see what we could see. The Mizzou righty had a solid, if inconsistent, debut last season after signing late (one Diamondbacks scout I spoke with told me he went to bed the night before the deadline thinking the deal wouldn’t get done). This season, though, he broke out in a big way, posting this line at Triple-A Tucson: 23 innings, 12 hits, 3 ER, 38/3 K/BB ratio. Note that these stats were from just four starts. The Diamondbacks are confident he will still be a starter, and recently GM Josh Byrnes was quoted as saying, “We’re optimistic that he can be a quality major-league starter and probably prefer that that’s the focus at this point.”

For Scherzer to become a starter basically requires two things. First, he needs to show that he has an adequate repertoire of pitches, and second, he needs to show he can keep his command. As for the second point, I think he has quieted his critics a good bit by posting that 12.7 K/BB ratio (!) at Tucson. As for the first, well, I’m going to let the data speak for themselves. Scherzer’s two primary offerings are a fastball with sink and a hard slider. Here are his pitches from Tuesday night (click to enlarge).

The blue and green cluster in the upper-middle region is a straight fastball. He topped out at 98.3 MPH on the pitch F/X tracker, which is much more reliable than many of the inflated gun numbers you see on TV. Slightly below and to the left of that grouping are the sinkers. These were also all very fast, as none of them clocked in below 93 MPH. The fact that they are below the straight fastballs is how we can identify them as sinkers. (Those of you counting at home, we’re up to two devastating pitches.) Further down and to the left, we find the hard slider. The slider was working at 85-87 MPH, and while he didn’t use it much, he did get Miguel Tejada to whiff hard on one for strike three. Most curious to me, though, is the cluster of five pitches in the bottom right corner. I had heard he was working on a change-up, but this pitch is a solid 15 MPH slower than his straight fastball, and it breaks in the opposite direction of his slider. It looks like, instead of developing a change-up, he’s developed a splitter. He wasn’t able to locate for strikes as consistently as he could his other pitches, but he did get it across for called strikes twice in the game. If he can command that arsenal–straight FB, sinker, slider, and splitter–he will be a very good major league starter. If he cannot, he will be a very good major league closer. As a college product, he is fairly well polished and it looks as though he is ready to make an impact for the Diamondbacks immediately.

Max Scherzer photograph used under a Creative Commons license from flickr user tclifton.

I wonder if this effect would persist if you looked at just the most elite players. I suspect that among the very best hitters and pitchers, this factor reduces to random noise.

We each have the distinct honor of playing a significant role in one of the most astonishing anatomical feats known to man. Somehow, through miracles of windups, scap loading, arm speed, and raw torque, Cole Hamels and Tim Lincecum are able to pitch baseballs with extraordinary skill. Both the Phillies and the Giants need their young aces a great deal. In the Phillies’ case, Hamels is the only pitcher in which the team can have consistent confidence. In the Giants’ case, well, Lincecum is the only player that matters. That is why, despite the fact that we are non-sentient ligaments in the pitching elbows of these two star pitchers, we have taken it upon ourselves to question the wisdom of your decisions.

You see, we are not just any elbow ligaments. We’re the critical ligaments in each player’s pitching elbow (for Hamels, the left, for Lincecum, the right) that create the torque and affords them such remarkable arm speed: the ulnar collateral ligament. Sure, you may have heard of us. But you usually only hear our names invoked when a pitcher has torn us. (More commonly, we are not even referred by name but by our initials: UCL. We hate that abbreviation. We think it is ugly.) The result of such a tear, unfortunately, requires the eponymous surgery first received by Tommy John in 1974. Though great gains have been made since Dr. Frank Jobe first pioneered the process of replacing ligaments like us that have torn (or snapped) with ones from the non-pitching elbow or knee, it is still an all too common occurrence, especially among younger players. Research has shown that excessive pitch counts, especially ones above 100 for a single start, can have tremendous impact on a pitcher’s health.

For the twofold reasons that, a) we don’t want to tear or snap, and b) as baseball fans we do not want to see these young pitchers get injured, we have to ask that you be very careful with us.

Allow us to use two in-game situations to demonstrate. Mr. Bochy, on April 24th against the Padres, you had Lincecum in the game. He had cruised through six innings, allowing no runs and just three hits while striking out nine batters. Needless to say, though, all those strikeouts had taken a toll on Lincecum’s arm, of which one of us is a central part. Through those six innings, he had pitched a total of 109 pitches. This excess by itself would not have been a big deal. We are reasonable; we understand pitchers need to finish innings. But then you ran Lincecum out to the mound in the 7th. After an 8 pitch walk to Kahlil Greene, Lincecum was up to 117 pitches. And yet, no hook. In fact, Lincecum was left in for two more batters, finally leaving after surrendering a single to Tony Clark. In 6.3 innings, Lincecum finished with a total of 122 pitches. Let me tell you, as ligaments with inside information, this was not pleasant.

Mr. Manuel (I hope someday you’ll let us call you Cholly, like hard-workin’ ligament-guys), we are equally concerned with your decisions. Just the day before Mr. Bochy made his error with Lincecum, you made a similar mistake with Hamels in a game versus the Brewers. Your star on the mound had pitched well through seven innings, allowing three runs (all in the first inning), striking out 11 and walking just two. He reportedly asked to stay in the game for the eighth inning to face the thunderous heart of the Milwaukee order: Braun, Fielder, Hart. You, being a player-friendly manager, understood and probably even admired Hamels’ determination. But you must not let Cole sway you, for he knows not how he hurts us. He had already pitched 110 pitches through those seven innings. Nevertheless, clinging to a narrow 4-3 lead, you stuck with your ace for the 8th. In the next 11 pitches, Hamels not only lost the lead (after two hard hit drives to right center, one by Braun good for a double and the next by Fielder an oh-brother shot to the bleachers), but he also put unnecessary strain on the same elbow that cost him a month at the end of last season due to injury. As a part of that elbow, we can safely say that we are trying our best not to snap. We just need a little help.

So that’s why we’re asking you, as ligaments first and as fans second, to go easy on the young arms. Because while it is true that there are some pitchers out there with rubber arms who always seem to defy the medical odds, there is no way to know if Lincecum or Hamels is one of those pitchers without first crossing the point of no return. And sirs, there is no one who is less eager to find out than us.

Signed,
Ulnar Collateral Ligament of Cole Hamels
Ulnar Collateral Ligament of Tim Lincecum