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December 30, 2013

More Than One-Third Of World Series Games Spent In Commercials

Doug Kern, ESPNBoston:
After the first two innings of [World Series] Game 1 alternated long and short, Stats & Info set about timing each half-inning, from first pitch to final out. Those times ranged from a five-pitch frame in 1:41 all the way to 24:37.

Overall the Red Sox spent an extra 48 minutes batting (7 hours 21 minutes to the Cardinals' 6:33), mostly because they saw 76 more pitches. Both teams averaged 30 seconds per pitch when rounded.

Those extended commercial breaks between innings accounted for over six hours of the Series' 19:57 total. And that doesn't include the waits during mid-inning pitching changes.
Boston Red Sox batting       7 hours, 21 minutes
St. Louis Cardinals batting  6 hours, 33 minutes
Between Innings Commercials  6 hours, 03 minutes
                            19 hours, 57 minutes
But under this breakdown, as Kern writes, the time of commercial breaks for pitching changes is included in the two teams' batting times.

Jerry Crasnick, ESPN:
Between-innings commercial breaks account for a significant chunk of the longer running times in October. The standard break for an MLB regular-season game is 2 minutes, 5 seconds, and extends to 2:25 for a nationally televised game. During the postseason, the between-innings break increases to 2:55.
Let's assume that, in the World Series, the commercial break for a pitching change is the same as the between-inning commercial break (2:55).

There were 44 pitching changes during the six World Series games, but only 20 of the 44 happened during an inning.
Mid-inning pitching changes while BOS batted: 12 (or 35 minutes, 0 seconds)
Mid-inning pitching changes while STL batted: 8 (or 23 minutes, 20 seconds)
Adding those times to the mid-inning commercial time (and subtracting it from the teams' batting times), we get:
Boston Red Sox batting       6 hours, 46 minutes
St. Louis Cardinals batting  6 hours, 11 minutes
All Commercial Breaks        7 hours, 00 minutes
At least 35.1% of the Fox broadcast was spent showing commercials. This, of course, does not include any short advertisements mentioned by the announcers or any time spent showing the many ads posted throughout Fenway Park and Busch Stadium.

December 29, 2013

Ten Years Ago ...

Ten years ago this week, the Red Sox's proposed mega-trade for Texas Rangers shortstop Alex Rodriguez (then 28 years old) collapsed. The deal would have also brought Magglio Ordonez to Boston while sending Manny Ramirez and Jon Lester to Texas and Nomar Garciaparra to the White Sox. ESPNBoston's Gordon Edes and WEEI's Alex Speier both look back at The Trade That Wasn't.

Edes also picks the Top 5 Red Sox Moments of 2013. ... David Ortiz would like to talk to the Red Sox about a contract for 2015. ... GIFs of the Year! (Chad Qualls, everybody!)

Stuff you probably already know: The Red Sox recently traded relief pitcher Franklin Morales and minor league pitcher Chris Martin to Colorado for infielder Jonathan Herrera. Boston also signed veteran Japanese right-hander Shunsuke Watanabe, 37, to a minor league contract. (Back in November 2004, Ortiz hit a monster dong off Watanbe.)

Shane Victorino had surgery on his right thumb on December 16 and expects to be ready for spring training. ... Kevin Youkilis will play for the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles (Japanese Pacific League) in 2014. ... Ryan Kalish signed a minor-league contract with the Cubs.

Three trophies!

December 24, 2013

Mike Carp World Series Celebration Video

Mike Carp had a camera strapped to his cap when the Red Sox recorded the final out of the 2013 World Series. Here is some of the footage of the locker room celebration and the Rolling Rally.



December 21, 2013

Early Xmas


Joel Sherman, Post:
The Yankees have accomplished the near impossible — they had the oldest player in the majors (Mariano Rivera) and the oldest starter (Andy Pettitte) retire and yet somehow have gotten older this offseason.

Thus, the Yankees saw one of their biggest problems — the decay physically and statistically in older players — and doubled down on it rather than run away. This is what happens when you have a putrid farm system combined with a never-rebuild philosophy combined with hundreds of millions of dollars to spend.

December 18, 2013

Keith At 70


Happy 70th birthday, Keith!





December 17, 2013

Schadenfreude 172 (A Continuing Series)


Rany Jazayerli, Grantland:
After winning their third World Series in a decade, the Red Sox appear well positioned to keep their success going. They're not a particularly old team. ... Boston's farm system is one of the game's best ... The melding of money and talent, the "$100 million player development machine" that former Boston GM Theo Epstein talked about more than a decade ago, continues unabated in New England.

Things in the Bronx are ... not as great. As tempting as it might be to label 2013 a fluke ... the evidence points in a different direction. Last season wasn't a fluke; it was the new normal for the Yankees, and nothing they've done this offseason changes that. If anything, the moves the Yankees have made this offseason seem guaranteed to perpetuate that reality. ...

The Yankees were not a good team in 2013. Their Pythagorean record, an estimate of what their win-loss record should have been based on their runs scored and runs allowed, was 79-83. ...

The Yankees knew they needed to add hitters this winter, and they've done that. The sheer amount of ground their lineup has to make up, however, is staggering. ...

Jeter will return for one more year at shortstop, and aside from turning 40, missing almost all of last season with an ankle injury, and playing poor defense for the last decade, this should go great. ...

This is a lineup in decline, and parts of it weren't that good to begin with. ...

There also isn't enough talent on the way. You'll notice that, in this entire article, I've yet to mention a single prospect or rookie who's ready to step in for the Yankees, giving them upside and youth in a nice, payroll-cleansing package. That's because they don't have any. ... By comparison, the Red Sox's farm system is so deep that, according to Baseball America's Ben Badler, they may have as many as 10 of the top 100 prospects in baseball. ...

The Yankees dug their own hole by making mistakes in drafting and player development. They're even worse off now, however, because the ladders they used to climb out of a similar hole 20 years ago have been removed.

There are again two great teams in the American League East, but they're the Red Sox and the Rays. The Blue Jays and the Orioles ... are better than they used to be. Right now, it doesn't look like this story will have a fairy-tale ending for New York.

The culprit in the Yankees' downfall is mundane, but real: They're simply not talented enough to contend. Talent was something the Yankees could always buy in the past, but no one's selling it anymore. With few ways to acquire that ability, it looks like the Yankees will be living unhappily — if not ever after, then certainly for a lot longer than their front office and fans are prepared to stomach.

December 14, 2013

Book Review: The Kid: The Immortal Life Of Ted Williams, By Ben Bradlee, Jr.

"Ted was an original; not a traditional, modest self-effacing hero
but brash, profane, outspoken, and guileless. Self-taught and 
inquiring ... he was always his own man, never a phony ..."

Ben Bradlee Jr.'s The Kid: The Immortal Life Of Ted Williams is a fascinating, engrossing, and epic examination of the never-dull life of the Red Sox outfielder and self-proclaimed "greatest hitter of all time".

Bradlee spent ten years researching and writing this monumental (nearly 800 pages) biography, interviewing more than 600 people from every corner of Williams's life. Bradlee also had access to Williams's private papers, letters, and journals, and he has presented the most complete picture of Williams to date.

Theodore Samuel Williams was brash, loud, and honest to a fault, though his bravado and bluster was often a screen to hide his raging insecurity. He could be generous with his time and energy, especially with children, yet he neglected his own three kids. He prized loyalty, capable of ending long friendships over real or imagined slights.

Williams's infamous volcanic anger often stemmed from his inability to satisfy the perfectionist ambitions he set for himself. Whenever he failed to meet his own expectations, no matter how innocuous the activity, he could snap. "I didn't feel good because I did something successfully," he once said. "I felt bad if I failed to do something I was expected to do."

During his baseball career, Williams was incredibly sensitive to the way he was portrayed in the press. Bradlee writes: "He was a prickly prima donna whose much-chronicled 'rabbit ears' had an unerring ability to zero in on even a few scattered boos amid all the cheers. ... A voracious consumer of his own press, Ted ignored all the positive coverage and focused only on the negative."

I was struck by the many parallels between the young Williams and the young Babe Ruth. Both were neglected at home, but grew up in environments that enabled them to play baseball nearly year round. Both were bumpkins when they debuted in professional ball, and prone to daffy behaviour. When Williams broke in with the Red Sox in 1939, he would sometimes take a gaggle of kids to the amusement park at Revere Beach, an echo of Ruth inviting scores of orphans out to his rural Massachusetts farm for the day. And as adults, both Babe and Ted would do enormous amounts of charity work, spending untold hours with sick children. (Williams was insistent that his visits to children receive absolutely no publicity, and for the most part, sportswriters complied.)

Williams's mother, May Williams, was famous in San Diego for her work with the Salvation Army, but young Ted was embarrassed by her religious devotion. Indeed, he remained ashamed of his upbringing throughout his life. For years, Williams was terrified that if his mother's ethnic background - she was born in Mexico - became widely known, it would severely damage his chances at playing professional baseball.

His mother's charity did not extent into her own home, however, as she spent little time with her husband and two sons. According to Steve Brown, a friend of Williams late in life, "His mother never showed him love, yet she showed those street urchins love like you wouldn't believe." Sadly, Williams would go on to enact this same dynamic in his own life, ignoring his three children while lavishing attention on hundreds of other youngsters through his work with various charities, including the Jimmy Fund.

The epicenter of Ted's young life was the University Heights playground in San Diego where he first discovered the joy of hitting a baseball. From an early age, he was obsessed with hitting, carrying his bat with him to school every day and sleeping with it at night. He would often stop and practice his swing whenever he passed his reflection in a storefront window. While he was generally too busy playing baseball to follow the major leagues, Ted was captivated by Bill Terry's .401 batting average in 1930. (The young Williams was also intrigued by aviation as a child.)

Ted, as a scrawny 15-year-old, was soon playing against men in their late 20s and 30s. In January 1936, San Diego was awarded a franchise in the Pacific Coast League, and Ted signed with them out of high school, partially to please his mother (the club's owner was a big Salvation Army man). Scouts from the Cardinals, Red Sox, and Yankees were the first to notice Williams; Boston's Eddie Collins had been asking after Williams for awhile, and the Red Sox were given the right of first refusal when San Diego was set to sell Williams's contract. At the time, Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey was fixated on building his team's farm system and had to be convinced to sign Williams.

With the Minneapolis Millers in 1938, Williams was "untamed and crude", prone to "startling displays of immaturity, self-absorption, and lack of concentration". He would swing an imaginary bat while standing around in the outfield (sometimes tucking his glove into his back pocket), or he would be doing jumping jacks, talking with fans, even turning his back on the infield. For Williams, hitting was the essence of the game; as he often remarked, baseball teams didn't pay off on fielding.

The following spring, set to play in Boston, Williams was asked, "You think you'll hit up here?" His reply: "Who's going to stop me?" And, indeed, no one did. Williams finished the year with a .327 average and became the first rookie to lead the American League in RBI, knocking in 145 runs. He finished 4th in the MVP voting.

Williams's exuberance, color, and candor was music to the Boston press's ears, but a fundamental and irrevocable shift in Williams's mood towards the media occurred in his second season (1940). He got off to a slow start and was booed at Fenway Park and when reporters noted that he did not hustle on every play, Williams unveiled his darker side. In late May 1940, sportswriter Harold Kaese ended a column with the cheap shot that Williams had not visited his parents over the previous winter. "This was an unpardonable sin," Bradlee writes, "an unacceptable invasion of his privacy". Kaese's article turned "what had been a simmering feud with sportswriters into a vitriolic campaign that he chose to wage his entire career". Williams referred to the writers as jackals and more formally as the Knights of the Keyboard.

In August of that year, Williams vented to another writer for 20 minutes, listing all the things he couldn't stand about Boston: the fans, the press, the entire city. He said he had asked Yawkey - many times - to be traded. If free agency existed and every team made him the exact same offer, Williams said he would choose the Dodgers. "I know I'd be a hero in Brooklyn," he said. Although Williams finished 1940 with a .344 batting average, the story of his season was his "psychic tailspin, an evolving public meltdown that had played out in, and been shaped by, Boston's newspapers".

Bradlee offers a detailed and fascinating history of the Boston media during this time and says the feud was "a conflict largely manufactured by Williams to fuel his drive to excel". Williams believed he hit better when he was angry, if he felt he had something to prove. Teammate Birdie Tebbets would goad Williams by reading the sports pages out loud to him in the locker room; another player noted that Williams read all of the city's dailies "just to find someone to get mad at".
For the writers, their daily encounters with Williams were a tumultuous mixture of riveting theater, sheer excitement, and resentment at having to absorb a matinee idol's torrent of bile and abuse. But their front-row seat also gave them a fascinating perspective on the development and evolution of Ted's mercurial and fragile persona.
In spring training one year, a reporter thought Williams seemed more approachable. "I'm always nice enough in the spring," Ted explained, "until I read what those shitheads write about me." Williams was always tagged as a selfish player, more concerned with his own stats than the team's performance. The criticism, while mostly false, had some merit. In 1940, when he was moved from hitting behind Jimmy Foxx to batting in front of him, Williams moaned, "there goes my runs-batted-in championship".

In January 1941, Williams registered with his draft board. He was "willing to serve my country if they want me", but added that he would "like to cash in on another season's salary". Although he was sidelined and troubled by a fractured ankle, Williams famously finished the season with a .406 batting average. "I wasn't saying much about it," he said when the year was over, "but I never wanted anything more in my life." Williams also led the AL in runs, walks, home runs, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage. He batted .428 at Fenway, .380 on the road.

When Pearl Harbor was attacked on December 7, 1941, there was no rush to enlist among ballplayers. Williams, as the sole supporter of his mother, had been listed as 3A, but was reclassified after Pearl Harbor. A miffed Williams consulted a lawyer and filed an appeal (a fact that was denied publicly). His deferment was a hot topic in Boston, setting off arguments about self-interest versus the national interest. Yet early fan reaction, even among groups of soldiers, was pro-Ted. Williams eventually agreed to enter the service after the 1942 season, a year in which he won the AL Triple Crown (.356-36-137).

Williams missed three full seasons while fighting in World War II - his age 24-25-26 seasons - three prime years. As Bradlee covers Williams's time in the military, both in World War II and Korea, he also throws cold water on widely-held perceptions regarding his service. Williams was reluctant to serve his country in both cases, and sought any legal means to stay with the Red Sox and continue playing ball. Williams was especially bitter at being recalled for service in Korea, seething at what he perceived as an injustice since he believed "Korea wasn't a declared war" and thus did not qualify as an emergency for which reservists such as himself should be recalled to duty. While he did not voice these resentments publicly, except for a few occasions, he complained to friends for years that his baseball career has been interrupted twice
[I]n time, Williams would come to realize that the positives of being called back - taking his medicine, sacrificing career goals to serve his country, and surviving a spectacular crash landing - outweighed the negatives of time missed, the lost at bats, and the lost chances to set records. Korea was an undeniable plus, as it gave him heroic legitimacy. So gradually, the bitterness evolved into an ambivalence about his military service and finally into a sense of great pride and accomplishment. Fortunately for Williams, his quiet efforts to avoid being recalled and the unappealing bitterness he later expressed publicly would be largely forgotten or ignored.
(Williams noted that after Korea, baseball was never as much fun. For the final eight seasons of his career (1954-61), the Red Sox were no better than mediocre, never finishing higher than third and never fewer than 12 games behind the pennant-winning team.)

When Williams returned to the Red Sox after the war in 1946, his confidence and braggadocio was at an all-time high. He said he was shooting for another .400 season and pronounced himself "the greatest hitter baseball has ever known. Why? Because I have to think that way to ever be the greatest hitter. Suppose I'm wrong? Then what? I'll still hit pretty well and I'll still keep on thinking I'm the best. They can't arrest me for that. If you are aiming at a target, why not pick the top one?"

Williams had yet another spectacular year, winning the MVP and leading the Red Sox to their first pennant since 1918. However, in an exhibition game to stay loose before the World Series, Williams was hit on the right elbow by a pitch. Nursing a painful bone bruise, he batted only .200 (five singles and five walks in 30 plate appearances) against the Cardinals, as Boston lost the series in seven games. It was his only postseason appearance.

The Red Sox lost a one-game playoff to Cleveland for the 1948 American League pennant and lost the 1949 pennant to the Yankees on the final day of the season. Those defeats "crystallized emerging Red Sox lore that would remain fully entrenched until 2004: Boston was a club that for all its talent always found a way to lose in critical situations". The following year, the Globe's Roger Birtwell believed the team was not sufficiently bothered by a losing streak and referred to the players as "baseball's Country Club set". According to Bradlee: "This listless, fat-and-sassy image of the Boston players as pampered and overpaid by [owner Tom] Yawkey would linger and define the team for a generation."

Bradlee offers some background on Jackie Robinson and his 1947 debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers (the Red Sox had the opportunity to sign him about two years earlier). Tom Yawkey was influential in keeping the game segregated during the 1940s. He served on a committee advising Commissioner Happy Chandler on a variety of topics, including "the race question". One report, kept out of the public for decades. noted that allowing black players in the major leagues would drive white fans away, thus diminishing the value of franchises.

Williams was always open to blacks in professional baseball, sending a letter of congratulations to Robinson and making a special effort to befriend Cleveland's Larry Doby, who became the American League's first black player a few months after Robinson took the field with the Dodgers, in July 1947. The Red Sox added a black player to their roster (Pumpsie Green), an astounding twelve years after Robinson's debut. Williams often played toss with Green before games in front of the home dugout. In 1966, Williams used his Hall of Fame induction speech - heard by a then-record crowd of more than 7,000 - as a platform to push for the inclusion of Negro League players in Cooperstown. It was a radical (and completely unexpected) statement from a professional athlete.

Williams was always looking for an edge. For a time, he heated his bats in a big clothes dryer at Fenway, on the theory (conveyed to him in a letter by a 14-year-old boy named David Pressman) that the heat removed all moisture and lessened the bats' weight, and possibly improved performance. The Red Sox went out of their way to placate Williams. They brought in the fences in right field, building the two bullpens that remain there to this day. When Williams complained that the advertisements on the big left field wall were a distraction while hitting, the team removed them. In 1950, at Williams's suggestion, a new policy was instituted, barring the press from the locker room for an hour after games (the time was later shortened to 15 minutes).

While the Boston sportswriters did their part to push Williams's buttons, Ted often created his own trouble with fans at Fenway. During the first game of a May 1950 doubleheader, Williams dropped a fly ball in left field and was booed. On his way back in to the dugout, he gave fans two middle fingers. In the second game, he booted another ball and flipped the bird to all sections of the park. "I didn't mind the errors," he said afterwards, "but those goddamn fans, they can go fuck themselves." There were numerous incidents in which Williams spat towards the fans, who seemed to heckle him simply to get a reaction. In one remarkable instance, a sportswriter sat out in left field and heckled Williams himself. Williams despised the fans' fickle reactions - how they would boo him in one at-bat and then cheer him for a hit in his next time up.

Williams has rightly been lauded for batting .406 in 1941. Yet he believed what he did in 1957, at the age of 38, was a greater achievement. Williams had secretly switched to a slightly lighter bat, which helped him stay back in the box, leading to more line drives to left and left-center. Although Williams had no infield hits at all during the 1957 season, he finished with a .388 average. Five more hits would have pushed him to .400. Williams batted .453 after the All-Star break, but lost the AL MVP to Mickey Mantle because two out-of-town writers listed him 9th and 10th on their ballots.

When Williams retired after the 1961 season, he was 4th all-time in all-time batting average (.344; more accurate research now has him tied for 7th), 3rd in home runs (521), 1st in on-base percentage (.482), and 2nd in slugging (.634).

Unlike most star athletes, Williams's fame grew after his career was over. As one writer put it, Williams "succeeded in bending life to his own prodigious will". He became a spokesman for Sears hunting and fishing equipment, he managed the Washington Senators for three seasons (though seemed to enjoy only the first year), and he helped run a baseball camp on the shores of Loon Pond, in Lakeville, Mass. He also, famously, became an expert fisherman.
What was it about fishing that enthralled Williams? For one thing, it gave him solace and a refuge from the celebrity glare. But it was much more than that. He loved the beauty and authenticity of the outdoor life: "No stuffy characters. No formal dinners. No tight ties around your neck. Just good, clean, fresh air and the gamest opponents in the world," as he put it in 1952. That was a sharp contrast to how he felt about people. Williams liked to call himself "a Will Rogers fisherman: I've never met a fish I didn't like."
Despite his Republican leanings - he publicly supported Richard Nixon and George H.W. Bush - Williams became an ardent, if not militant, conservationist on behalf of Atlantic salmon, speaking out against Danish commercial boats operating off Greenland. Williams believed a healthy supply of salmon was important for the New Brunswick economy, as well as for fisherman such as himself.

A chapter entitled "Transitions" outlines Williams and the various women in his life, including his three wives. Bradlee writes that Williams saw women "primarily as sex objects or glorified domestics". One common Williams wisecrack was: "If you couldn't fuck 'em, they wouldn't be worth anything." He was unenlightened, to say the least. Williams expected women to defer to him, but he hated the surrender of sycophants. Numerous friends believed his poor relationship with his mother fueled a lot of his animosity towards women as an adult. (When one of Williams's female friends dated Boston catcher Sammy White, Ted was aghast: "I don't know what you see in him. He can't hit!")

Later in his life, many of Williams's affairs were controlled by his son, John-Henry. Bradlee's chapter on John-Henry does not contain many kind words about Ted's only son. John-Henry was desperate to prove himself as an individual, to fashion his own life outside of his father's long shadow. Yet he comes across as vindictive, exploitive, wasteful, and entitled. Obsessed with money, he headed numerous memorabilia businesses, cashing in on his father's reputation. As Williams's health began failing, John-Henry cut his father off from just about everyone, taking complete control of his life.

It was John-Henry who first became interested in cryonics, described by Bradlee as "a fringe movement that believes people can be frozen after they die in the hope that advancing science and medical knowledge will one day be able to bring them back to life". Whenever John-Henry would bring up the subject, Ted dismissed it as "a crock of shit". Bradlee notes many times throughout the book that Williams specifically and repeatedly told friends and family that he wished to be cremated. Yet immediately after Williams died on July 5, 2002, his body was sent to the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, in Arizona. Afterwards, John-Henry produced an agreement supposedly signed by Williams, agreeing to the cryonics procedures. It was met with extreme skepticism. Bradlee gives ample space to Claudia Williams, Ted's youngest child (who initially refused to be interviewed for this book), who lays out the case for her father and cryonics over four pages.

Bradlee:
Yet for all his exploits as a ballplayer, one of the most striking things about Ted is how much he excelled at almost anything he undertook in a serious way, like flying, fishing, and photography. His innate talents took him only so far. His drive, determination, curiosity, and passion for learning took him the rest of the way. This notion of being distinctive at anything he undertook resonated with people.
At one point during his retirement, there was talk of making a movie about his life. The project never really got off the ground, but Williams summed up what the essence of the film would have been: "the story of a desperate, dedicated kid who wanted to play baseball more than anything else in his life".

December 6, 2013

Napoli Returns To Sox For Two Years

Rob Bradford and Alex Speier, WEEI:
According to multiple industry sources, the Red Sox have agreed to re-sign first baseman Mike Napoli, bringing the 32-year-old back on a two-year, $32 million deal. It is believed that the Red Sox did not have the best offer to the free agent — the Rangers were thought to have a larger contract on the table — but that the first baseman decided that he wanted wanted to return to the team and city where he thrived in 2013.
In other news, Napoli still has his beard.

December 4, 2013

Tabloid Reaction To Ellsbury's Decision





Mike Lupica, Daily News:
This is what happens when the Red Sox win their third World Series in a decade, against one for the Yankees in that time ... So now the Yankees go out and agree to a deal with Jacoby Ellsbury for the kind of insane longterm contract that got them into the kind of fix they are in in the first place.

They do the only thing they can do: Try to buy their way out of this. If you were running the team, you would do it exactly that way. You have no real assets in the farm system. You have money. So you spend it. ...

No farm system, no choice. You spend money. Maybe they will get around to spending it on pitching eventually.
Bill Madden, Daily News:
How long until the Yankees are regretting giving Jacoby Ellsbury a 7-year contract? ...

[A]s history has proven, contracts of more than six years for players 30 or older have proven time and again to be disasters ...

I'm just not sure what the Yankees are trying to prove here. Now they've agreed with Ellsbury on a $21.8 million per year deal that will almost certainly be another financial disaster three or four years down the road, while giving them another "legs" player in the outfield when what they really needed there was a power bat. ...

Whatever, this reckless, show-their-financial-might signing by the Yankees makes no sense, other than being another example of the Yankees' intention of buying their way out of a situation in which their player development department has been bankrupt for years.

December 3, 2013

Jacoby Ellsbury Joins The Yankees, With 7/153 Deal


According to sources, free agent Jacoby Ellsbury has agreed to a 7/153 contract with the New York Yankees. There is an option for an eighth year (2021) that could bring the total value to $169 million.

I knew 2013 would be Ellsbury's last season in Boston, so his leaving doesn't come as a surprise, but I do wish he'd signed with one of the other 28 teams out there that aren't the Yankees. ... Still, enjoy fourth or fifth place, Jacoby.

Ellsbury was a key member of two World Series champions in Boston, so there won't be any boos from this corner. The contract is a colossal overpay - both in years and dollars - but good for Ellsbury for finding idiots willing to give him everything he wanted. In 2014, the Yankees will pay Ellsbury more than the Red Sox will pay David Ortiz and Dustin Pedroia combined. [Not true; see comments]

In fact, this deal is for more money than the much-maligned 7/142 contract the Red Sox gave to Carl Crawford, then 29, three Decembers ago. While Ellsbury will likely give the Yankees some quality seasons during the length of the contract, he is also a guy with a career 108 OPS+.

Also: There are reports that Jarrod Saltalamacchia has signed a 3/21 contract with the Marlins.


Now Catching For Boston, A.J. Pierzynski

The Red Sox have agreed on a one-year deal with free agent catcher A.J. Pierzynski, who turns 37 at the end of this month. ESPN's Buster Olney reports the deal is for $8.25 million.

Pierzynski caught 111 games with the Rangers last year, hitting .272. His OBP was only .297 and Peter Abraham of the Globe notes that he saw only 3.27 pitches per plate appearance, the lowest in the majors.

The signing is seen as a bridge to catching prospect Christian Vazquez, who hit .289/.376/.395 for Portland and is expected to start 2014 in Pawtucket. Ryan Lavarnway is also in the mix.

Michael Silverman, Herald:
Interestingly, considering the Red Sox' good-guy approach last year, Pierzynski has a reputation for not being well-liked throughout the majors. In a USA Today player poll conducted last year, Pierzynski was overwhelmingly voted the most hated player in the game. He earned 34 percent of the vote, compared to the second-place recipient, Alex Rodriguez, who garnered nine percent.
The Providence Journal quotes Pierzynski's former manager in Chicago, Ozzie Guillen: "If you play against him, you hate him. If you play with him, you hate him a little less."

November 23, 2013

Only 77 Days To "Truck Day"

Some dates in early 2014:
Saturday, February 8 - Truck Day
Saturday, February 15 - Pitchers and Catchers
Thursday, February 27 - Annual doubleheader against Northeastern and Boston College
Monday, March 31 - Opening Day: Red Sox at Orioles
Friday, April 4 - Home Opener: Brewers at Red Sox
The Red Sox traded with Milwaukee for right-handed reliever Burke Badenhop. ... Prospects Garin Cecchini (3B), Bryce Brentz (OF), and Anthony Ranaudo (RHP) were added to the team's 40-man roster.

What was the Most Watchable Game of 2013? Dave Studeman at The Hardball Times says it was the July 30 game between the Rangers and Angels. Studeman ranked every 2013 game "by the total number of swings in Win Probability as well as the average Leverage Index of each play. In non-geek speak, these games featured the biggest swings in leads along with the most intense, close plays." ... Top Red Sox game? June 10 at Tampa Bay.

November 22, 2013

Official WS DVD Out Next Tuesday; Box Set Due December 3


The Official 2013 World Series DVD is scheduled for release on Tuesday, November 26. You can see a short trailer here.

Consumer note: Don't buy anything until the World Series DVD box set comes out the following week, on December 3. There appears to be eight discs - which probably means the six World Series games, a disc of bonus stuff, and the official WS DVD mentioned above. If I'm right, then MLB is hoping to get you to pay twice for the same stuff.

Now, if MLB was smart, they'd include pennant-clinching game against the Tigers instead of doubling up on the official DVD. (That way, many more Red Sox fans would buy both items - and MLB would actually make more money.) But as we all know ...

November 11, 2013

My 2004 Book: "Don't Let Us Win Tonight"

Amazon:
Commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Boston Red Sox' unprecedented championship run in the fall of 2004, this guide takes fans behind the scenes and inside the dugout, bullpen, and clubhouse to reveal to baseball fans how it happened, as it happened. The book highlights how, during a span of just 76 hours, the Red Sox won four do-or-die games against their archrivals, the New York Yankees, to qualify for the World Series and complete the greatest comeback in baseball history. Then the Red Sox steamrolled through the World Series, sweeping the St. Louis Cardinals in four games, capturing their first championship since 1918. Don't Let Us Win Tonight is brimming with revealing quotes from Boston's front office personnel, coaches, medical staff, and players, including Kevin Millar talking about his infectious optimism and the team's pregame ritual of drinking whiskey, Dave Roberts revealing how he prepared to steal the most famous base of his career, and Dr. William Morgan describing the radical surgery he performed on Curt Schilling's right ankle. The ultimate keepsake for any Red Sox fan, this is the 2004 team in their own words.
Don't Let Us Win Tonight is scheduled for release on April 1, 2014.

November 8, 2013

Book Review: Smoky Joe Wood: The Biography Of A Baseball Legend, By Gerald C. Wood

Smoky Joe Wood: The Biography of a Baseball Legend
By Gerald C. Wood
University of Nebraska Press (2013)

It's difficult to imagine anyone writing a more thorough biography of Smoky Joe Wood than what Gerald C. Wood (a possible, though extremely distant, relation) has produced. Despite its many good points, this book is also flawed.

The first 25 pages of the book detail the life of Smoky Joe's father, John F. Wood, a fascinating character in his own right. John F. – both stubborn and eccentric – was a "lawyer and two-time newspaper editor, as well as a politician, gold rusher, chicken farmer, wood- and metal-worker". John F. also worked as a schoolteacher (his wife was a former student) and as a land speculator. Joe always expressed pride in his father, but Gerald Wood concludes that "Joe's defensiveness toward John masked the hurt of a boy orphaned twice by his father's lust for gold".

Howard Ellsworth Wood was born in October 1889, the second of three children, in Kansas City, Missouri. Wood explains how Howard Ellsworth became "Joe". While living in Chicago, the family attended the World's Fair in 1893. The antics of two performing clowns (billed as "Joey and Petey") reminded Joe's parents of their two boys and they began calling them Joe and Pete.

One of this book's strengths is its attention to detail, but Wood often goes overboard, swamping the reader with unnecessary facts. The Woods descended from pioneers in Orange County, New York, so Wood offers a lengthy history of the area. He also includes quite a bit on John F.'s travels near the turn of the century to the state of Washington, Alaska, and British Columbia, searching for gold. (Gerald Wood makes liberal use of letters John F. wrote home, part of the Wood Family Archives to which he had access.)

The book's most serious problem is Wood's insistence on mentioning every game Joe pitched and giving his pitching line and (sometimes) a little play-by-play. This excessive detail bogs down what should be a lively narrative. I found myself skimming these sections – one minor league season run seven dense pages – or simply skipping ahead to where the story picked up again. Also, Wood offers few looks beyond Joe's performances. The reader often has no idea who else on the Red Sox is doing well (or poorly), where the team is in the standings, or what else is going on in the American and National Leagues. Also, Wood puts undue importance on Joe's win-loss record as a measure of his success, and when ERA is mentioned, it is usually only at season's end.

Joe's beginnings in professional baseball are expertly recounted. If Joe felt abandoned by his father, he found a surrogate family on the diamond. Wood writes that Joe "filled the void [left by his father] with baseball. Joe's success on the town team offered acceptance and prestige while his father roamed the Southwest, trying to get rich quick." Baseball was always a refuge for Joe. "I don’t know of anything that I’d rather have done," he told one interviewer. "Baseball is all I ever wanted."

In 1912, the Red Sox moved from the Huntington Avenue Grounds to brand-new Fenway Park – and Joe had the finest season of his career. He led the major leagues with 34 wins and had a 1.91 ERA (2nd best in the AL). Joe also led the league with 10 shutouts, including a 1-0 victory over Walter Johnson in a much-hyped duel in Boston on September 6. In late August, Boston Post writer Paul Shannon first used the “Smoky” nickname that would stay with Joe for the rest of his life. After Joe bested Johnson, other papers picked up the nickname.

Although supremely talented, Joe was often injured. In 1913, he sustained a sprained ankle in spring training and a fractured thumb during the season. Joe pitched with excruciating pain in 1915, likely from a torn rotator cuff. He sat out the 1916 season after being disgusted by a one-third cut in pay and the trading of his friend Tris Speaker to Cleveland.

Unable to pitch and desperate to remain in the game he loved, Joe transitioned into an outfielder after the Red Sox traded him to the Indians. He finished 10th in batting average in 1918 and was among the league leaders in doubles, RBI, and slugging percentage. In addition to playing both left and right field, he also played 19 games at second base.

Over the next two seasons, Joe platooned in the Cleveland outfield with Elmer Smith, with Joe playing against left-handers. In 1920, Cleveland overcame the shock of Ray Chapman's mid-August death to win the pennant and defeat the Brooklyn Dodgers in the World Series.

Wood retired from baseball after the 1922 season to spend time with his wife and four children and also for the security of regular, long-term employment. He accepted a coaching job at Yale University, a position he would hold until 1942.

The book offers details of the gambling and game-fixing scandal that enveloped Joe in 1926. In the spring of that year, Dutch Leonard told AL president Ban Johnson that Joe had conspired with Speaker and Ty Cobb to bet on and fix a Tigers-Indians game late in the 1919 season. Joe admitted placing a bet and collecting his winnings. Although Commissioner Landis declared the accused not guilty of fixing a game, he was completely silent on the betting issue.

The "Legend and Legacy" chapter offers an excellent overview of Joe's career, along with his thoughts on all aspects of the game and its history. This is the type of entertaining recap that was sorely needed in other sections of the book. Gerald Wood also includes a bit of trivia: Joe and Babe Ruth are the only players to have 300 innings pitched one year and 500 at-bats in another. They are also the only two players to start a World Series game as both a pitcher and an outfielder.

This review originally appeared in the November 2013 issue of "The Inside Game", SABR's Deadball Era Committee's newsletter.

November 6, 2013

Pedroia's Thumb Surgery Set For Next Tuesday

Dustin Pedroia will have surgery next Tuesday to repair a torn ulnar collateral ligament in his left thumb.

David Ortiz is on the cover of the latest issue (November 11) of Sports Illustrated with three Boston Police officers. ... Nice SI.com headline: "AL East Hot Stove Preview: Red Sox Threatening To Leave Rivals Behind"

Quintin Berry and Brandon Snyder have both been moved off the 40-man roster and outrighted to Pawtucket. Both players rejected the assignments to AAA, however, and are now free agents.

For Ben Cherington and John Farrell, it's back to work. Farrell: "The game doesn't stop. The baseball calendar doesn't stop just because we played till nearly Halloween. I think we take on this next challenge and look to address it the best we can, and that is, assemble the best team possible, continue to know that we have good young players coming and in time, we're definitely going to be eager to get on the field in Fort Myers again. ... We have to get back to the mindset we took to the field Day 1 with this year and look to build that through the entire season next year."

Ortiz was on the David Letterman Show Monday night. ... Jonny Gomes and a clean-shaven Shane Victorino appeared on Conan O'Brien last night. Other Conan clips here, here, and here.

November 2, 2013

The Parade

UPDATE!:
Pictures from the rally! ... More here. ... And here. ... And here!



It begins at 10 AM. ... Live coverage (or here).
Example
The Red Sox have exercised their $13 million option for Jon Lester for the 2014 season.

And you thought it couldn't get any worse than McCarver?

November 1, 2013

The Alleged "No Championship Clinch At Home" Curse

Joe Posnanski addresses this silliness in a footnote to his column, "Red Sox Redefine What It Means To Be A Dynasty":
* Speaking of curses: A lot of people, it seemed, were trying to make a big deal out of the fact that this year was the first time that the Red Sox had clinched a World Series AT HOME since 1918. Television made it seem like the overriding story of the Series. The "clinch at home" angle seemed to give everyone a chance to trot out all the old curse talk, rehash the Babe Ruth trade, chat up all the old Red Sox fans who have been coming to the park for decades and had never gotten the chance to see a World Series clincher.

Seriously – clinching a World Series at home is a thing now? It's not enough to just win two World Series in the previous eight years, not you have to win it at home for it to really count? I mean, look, it's great that a wonderful town like Boston got to win the World Series in a wonderful park like Fenway. Happy that it worked out that way. It was great to see Red Sox fans get to unleash their happiness.

But I believe, and my Red Sox friends seem agree — not winning a World Series AT HOME is not a thing. It's not a curse. It's not a drought. It's not anything. If you win a World Series you win a World Series, it doesn't matter where. The Chicago White Sox have not clinched a World Series at home since 1906. The Reds did not clinch either of the Big Red Machine World Series at home. Those poor Giants fans have never clinched a World Series in San Francisco. So what? The Red Sox don't have a losing tradition anymore. It's over, you can't just keep bringing it up like it's a storyline. The Red Sox have won three World Series in 10 years. It's time for everyone to just deal with being Boston being Goliath.
Boston has clinched five of their eight World Series titles in front of their home fans (1903, 1912, 1915, 1918, 2013). That's 63%.

Of the Yankees' 27 World Series championships, only nine were clinched in New York (1927, 1938, 1947, 1950, 1951, 1977, 1996, 1999, 2009). That's a paltry 33%.

The Biggest Turnaround In Baseball History

The 2013 Boston Red Sox went worst-to-first in the American League East, going from 69-93 in 2012 - their worst finish in 47 years - to 97-65 this year. But they did far more than that.

The 2013 Red Sox completed the biggest turnaround season in baseball history, because no other World Series champion had a winning percentage the year before as low as Boston's .426.

Alex Speier, WEEI:
You can call it luck, you can call it magic, you can call it a sense of purpose or determination or alchemy or chemistry -- but know that it was something.

Make no mistake -- talent wins. And the Red Sox compiled a roster of players with established track records that represented the sort of skill sets the team believed would contribute to the restoration of some (unknown) degree of success in 2013.

But by their own admission, they didn't expect THIS.
WEEI's Conor Ryan presents the Top 10 Plays of the 2013 World Series.

Jonah Keri (Grantland): Boston Strong (Game 6 and the entire season)

Bill Simmons (Grantland): This Is Our Papi

Two things bugged me about Simmons's article. One, Simmons says he found it "fascinating" that fans at Fenway were expecting a comeback in ALCS Game 2 even before the rally that culminated in Ortiz's grand slam began. Why is that "fascinating"? The team had been coming back in games all season long. Wasn't Simmons paying attention?

Two, Simmons notes that Ortiz was never booed at Fenway during his slumping seasons of 2008-10; rather, he was met with mere "awkward silence". That is a lie. I heard (while watching NESN) plenty of boos myself during several games. (Here is a 2008 article that reports the booing was "pretty loud". Google can help a curious reader find many others.)
Example
Larry Lucchino says the core of the 2013 champions will remain next season.

One player that many observers think will not be in a Boston uniform next spring is center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury.

Jerry Spar, WEEI:
According to a report from Fox Sports' Ken Rosenthal, Red Sox center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury will have an MRI on his left hand after playing through the injury in the postseason.

Ellsbury's hand was discolored and severely swollen up to the forearm, the report indicates, leading to surprise from teammates that he was still playing.
Buster Olney, ESPN:
According to sources: After the 2011 season, for which Ellsbury finished second in the American League MVP race, the Red Sox offered him a deal that fell slightly short of $100 million. The counter-offer from agent Scott Boras, according to sources, was for a deal of about $130 million. The gap in the negotiations was too large to bridge at that time.
OTM picks up the story from there.

October 31, 2013

Your Latest Hard-To-Fathom David Ortiz World Series Factoid

In six World Series games, David Ortiz made five outs.
Game One
1st inning - Safe on E6
2nd inning - Sacrifice Fly F9 (RBI)(robbed of grand slam)
5th inning - Single
7th inning - Home Run (2 RBI)
  
Game Two
2nd inning - Groundout 4-3
4th inning - Walk
6th inning - Home Run (2 RBI)
8th inning - Single
  
Game Three
2nd inning - Groundout 3U
4th inning - Walk
6th inning - Single
8th Inning - Intentional Walk
  
Game Four
2nd inning - Single
5th inning - Double
6th inning - Walk
8th inning - Single
  
Game Five
1st inning - Double (RBI)
4th inning - Single
6th inning - Fly out F8
8th inning - Single
  
Game Six
1st inning - Walk
3rd inning - Intentional Walk
4th inning - Intentional Walk
6th inning - Strikeout
8th inning - Intentional Walk

October 30, 2013

World Series 6: Red Sox 6, Cardinals 1

Cardinals - 000 000 100 - 1  9  1
Red Sox   - 003 300 00x - 6  8  1



2004. 2007. 2013!

Shane Victorino's three-run double in the third inning ignited the Red Sox offense and John Lackey (6.2-9-1-1-5, 105) held the Cardinals at bay as the Red Sox won their third World Series championship in the last ten years.

World Series MVP David Ortiz (.688/.760/1.188) reached base four times - on four walks, three of them intentional - and scored two runs.

Stephen Drew socked a solo home run in the fourth inning. ... Jacoby Ellsbury was on base four times and scored twice. ... Jonny Gomes and Victorino were on base three times each.

After Lackey left the game in the seventh with the bases loaded, Junichi Tazawa retired Allen Craig on a grounder to first. Brandon Workman pitched a perfect eighth and Koji Uehara retired the Cardinals in order in the ninth, striking out Matt Carpenter to end the game - and the 2013 season.

Example
Michael Wacha / John Lackey
Ellsbury, CF
Pedroia, 2B
Ortiz, DH
Napoli, 1B
Gomes, LF
Victorino, RF
Bogaerts, 3B
Drew, SS
Ross, C
The Boston Red Sox have celebrated a World Series championship at Fenway Park twice in their history*:
October 16, 1912
World Series Game 8
Red Sox 3, Giants 2 (10)

September 11, 1918
World Series Game 6
Red Sox 2, Cubs 1
Tonight could be the third time.

(*: In 1916, they clinched in Boston, but played their home World Series games at Braves Field because it had a greater seating capacity.)

The Red Sox have two chances to grab one win and defeat the St. Louis Cardinals in the 2013 World Series. In a season that has been such an amazing turnaround from last year's dismal summer, perhaps it is fitting that John Lackey - who has undergone a remarkable villain-to-hero transformation - gets the ball in what will be a raucous night in Boston. (OTM's Brendan O'Toole writes a bit about Lackey and "redemption" here.)

Shane Victorino is "full go" for Game 6, according to manager John Farrell. Jonny Gomes (left field) and David Ross (catcher) will also be in the starting lineup.

Farrell said that lefty Felix Doubront - who pitched well in Games 3 (25 pitches) and 4 (32 pitches) in St. Louis - will be available out of the bullpen.
Example
Tom Verducci, Sports Illustrated:
It was the middle of spring training, just another day in a month and a half of Groundhog Days, when Boston pitcher Ryan Dempster gave just another absentminded "Hey, how ya doin'?" to teammate Jonny Gomes. What Gomes responded with was anything but ordinary, foreshadowing what the year might hold from a band of rogues and grinders that would come to resemble sloppily hirsute Civil War re-enactors.

Replied Gomes, "One day closer to a parade." Such has been the spirit and will of the 2013 Sox.
A victory in either tonight's game or Thursday's Game 7 will give David Ortiz three World Series rings with the Red Sox. Two Boston players - Harry Hooper and Heinie Wagner - won four championships (1912, 1915, 1916, 1918). Ortiz is the only player from the 2004 team still with the Red Sox.

One more step.
Example

Counting The Hours Until 8 PM

Don't forget to pick up some champagne on the way home!