Many of Dave Roberts’ decisions (or lack thereof) were questionable last night, but I am also of the opinion that players can make a manager look really smart or really dumb. Even Ray Charles could see that Tyler Anderson was not at the top of his game last night, but Doc evidently felt that pitching 6 innings was more important than giving up 7 runs! To me, that was bizarre!…
Bumsrap mentioned this last night, but in 1955 in the very first game Sandy Koufax started, he walked eight batters in 4.2 innings. He struck out four and allowed just one run. Walks plagued him for years… until they didn’t. We all know the story of how he fixed his wildness. It just involved taking a little bit off of each pitch. Instead of throwing 100, maybe he threw 98!…
BTW: I suggest reading that book! Defensive Efficiency Ratio is a statistic used to evaluate team defense by finding out the rate of times batters reach base, on balls put in play. Basically, for every ball hit into the field of play, how likely is the defense to convert that into an out? The formula for Defensive Efficiency Ratio is: 1 – ((H + ROE – HR) / (PA –…
Game 3 of the 1965 World Series at Dodger Stadium. The Dodgers are down 2 games to none to the powerful Twins. Their vaunted 1-2 punch of Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax had lost the first two games by scores of 8-2 and 5-1. Koufax had refused to pitch game one because it fell on Yom Kippur. The flight back to L.A. was tense. Claude Osteen, the Dodgers # 3…
That was a nice sweep of the Cubbies, but you have to consider that they are not a very good team and they are also young and not very sharp in the fundamentals. Still, the Dodgers should have swept them… and they did! In case you haven’t been paying attention, the Dodgers have the following players on the Injured List: Caleb Ferguson – Not progressing as quickly as anticipated on…
Suddenly, the Giants are four games behind the Dodgers, who are tied with the Yankees for the best record in baseball. They both have a .720 winning percentage, but the Dodgers lead all of baseball in runs scored per game with 5.08. To me, that is an amazing statistic in light of the fact that most Dodger players are not hitting. Look at their batting averages. Freddie Freeman is hitting…
In the immortal words of Mr. Cub himself, the great Ernie Banks is known for saying “Let’s play two!” Ernie Banks played for the sheer joy of it! He always had a smile on his face and played the game like a little boy. Ernie Banks has been gone since January of 2015, but you can still feel his presence above and around Wrigley Field… especially during doubleheaders. What the…
The Dodgers have more RH hitters than LH hitters, but it is close – 7 righties to 5 lefties. Of course, the ratio of LH to RH is not nearly as great, so in that respect, the Dodgers are unique. The problem is that at least three of the LH hitters are the same guy… at least right about now (Bellinger, Muncy, and Rios). Those three players are all hitting…
It was said, and I do not remember who exactly said it, that Manny Mota could wake up on a cold December morning, get out of bed, and hit a line drive. He was that kind of hitter. Manuel Rafael Mota Geronimo was born in the Dominican Republic on February 18, 1938. He was the sixth of eight children in a blended family. His mother, Fredesvinda, had four children with…
Last year the Giants won 107 games with a rag-tag bunch of never-were’s, some has-beens, and a few wanna-be’s. Players like Brandon Belt, Buster Posey (now retired), Brandon Crawford, and Evan Longoria (has-beens) all come back to play at a high level. Then, players like Lamont Wade, Jr. Wilmer Flores, Darin Ruf played out of their minds at times. If you went position-by-position, it would have been very difficult to…