Tight squeeze in Caribbean Series

The Caribbean Series couldn't get any closer than it was after the first two of its six days.
Each team had a 1-1 record, acquired in a rock-scissors-paper manner. On Wednesday, Mexico defeated the Dominican Republic, which on Thursday beat Venezuela, which on Wednesday had defeated Puerto Rico, which scored its victory Thursday over Mexico.
The Mexico-Dominican Republic game was so close than it went 15 innings to a 4-3 decision. DR then won by a run, 6-5 over Venezuela. In that game, the Dominicans overcame two homers and three RBI by Venezuela's Luis Ramirez. The winners' Kevin Barker, a left-handed batter, also drove in three runs, including a homer against Marlins LHP Renyel Pinto. RHP Julio Manon saved the win by retiring 3B Luis Nunez, who represented the tying run after Jackson Melian had hit a two-out, two-run homer for Venezuela.
In Thursday's other game, host Puerto Rico defeated Mexico 7-3 after scoring five runs in the first inning against Roberto Valdez. For Puerto Rico, Juan Padilla pitched four scoreless innings in relief. Luis Figueroa paced the offense with three hits and two RBI.
One 7-3 victory deserves another, and Mexico turned the tables to get that one this afternoon over Venezuela. Marco Quevedo, who had pitched the Mexican representative into the Caribbean Series, was the winning pitcher with a line of 5 1/3 42202. The Dominican and Puerto Rican teams are meeting tonight.
In another Friday night game, LHP David Welch pitched a no-hitter to lead his hometown Sydney Blue Sox to an 8-0 victory over the Adelaide Bite in the first game of Australian Baseball League Round 2. His line was 90003 10. Welch pitched a seven-inning no-hitter and combined on another no-no while pitching in the Brewers' organization. Welch led the ABL during the regular season with a 1.44 ERA and two complete games.
2B Trent D'Antonio led off and led Sydney's offense with a homer and four RBI. The second game of the best-of-three series will be Saturday at 7:30 p.m. AET, or 2:30 a.m. EST. You might be able to watch the game at australianbaseballleague.com. The winner will meet Perth in next weekend's best-of-three championship round. Sydney took the regular-season championship by half a game over Perth.
With spring training barely a week away, you won't find many top prospects or good sleepers in these winter-league championships. The Dominican Republic has the most players (15) under contract to major league organizations of any of the Caribbean Series teams, but the most advanced is Dodgers RHP Ramon Troncoso. Puerto Rico's nine players in North American organized ball feature Nationals SS Alex Cora and Cubs OF Lou Montanez. Venezuela's players in organized ball include four from the Yankees organization, of whom C Gustavo Molina is the most advanced. Mexico has just four, including Padres SS Everth Cabrera.
Cora is one of a group of recent cut-rate free agents to sign with major league teams. Washington also has signed OF Laynce Nix and RHP Cla Meredith.
The Orioles had been the most active bottom feeder, signing LHPs Mark Hendrickson and Clay Rapada, OF Randy Winn, SS Nick Green and back-from-the-dead RHP Ryan Drese. Now Baltimore reportedly has agreed to terms on a one-year, $8-million deal with DH Vladimir Guerrero, pending a physical exam next week. If he has a season like 2010's, the O's might have been better off signing him for half a year and $4 million.
Other signings: Mark Kotsay, listed at first base, Brewers; 3B Pedro Feliz, Royals; RHP Juan Cruz and 2B Felipe Lopez, Rays; LF Lastings Milledge, White Sox, and LHP Yohan Flande, Braves. You probably haven't heard of Flande unless you live in Reading, Pa. The 25-year-old was 10-8 with a 4.38 ERA last year for the Double-A Reading Phillies, for whom he struck out barely four strikeouts per nine innings.
In a trade, the Yankees obtained OF Justin Maxwell from the Nationals for a Double-A pitcher named Adam Olbrychowski. Maxwell can play center field, and could be a useful extra outfielder with little fantasy value.
Yes, spring training is barely a week away. Florida and Arizona seemed to have missed the brutal winter weather that has struck most of the U.S. during the past week. Even the Rangers players who were scheduled for a caravan appearance in Fort Worth, one of dozens of events that were canceled in North Texas this week, will be looking forward to getting to warm weather.
For me, the worst weather in my six winters in North Texas, meant no wireless or cable for three days. Thus, I missed some blog days. I expect to make those up by making multiple posts some days.

Thoughts on Game 4

Thoughts on Game 4

Here’s the first thought I wrote down during the game: In the early innings, Hunter has been throwing too many pitches.
He didn’t throw too many late in the game because again he was out after four innings.
Neither of the two things happened tonight that I wrote the Rangers had to do to win.
1. Hunter did not make it through six innings.
2. Texas’ batters didn’t work counts so they could manufacture runs instead of swinging for home runs. There apparently weren’t a whole lot of home-run cuts. Maybe by Ian Kinsler with two on when he was the tying run.
The difference there was that Giants batters were able to prolong at-bats by fouling off pitches they couldn’t handle. Credit Madison Bumgarner for much of that. He lasted twice as long as Hunter, but threw just about 25 per cent more pitches.
Texas also gave Bumgarner some easy outs, holding his pitch count down.
The game’s worst play came when Josh Hamilton tried to steal second base with two out and Nelson Cruz at bat in the bottom of the fourth. The Rangers trailed 2-0 with a right-handed batter against the lefty Cruz. Sure, it would have been nice to get one run there to cut the deficit, but that was a case when a home-run swing could have been desirable. Instead, when Buster Posey threw out Hamilton, Bumgarner got an out without having to throw another pitch to Cruz that time around the batting order.
The two double-play balls also gave Bumgarner outs without having to work very hard.
Another big factor in San Francisco’s lineup was something I pointed out before the series began: DEE-fense. If there’s one area where Bruce Bochy has had an advantage over Ron Washington, this is it.
In Game 1, Washington opted for offense over defense by using Vladimir Guerrero in right field and Nelson Cruz in left. The Rangers committed four errors, two by Guerrero. In Game 4, Bochy chose defense over offense by inserting Travis Ishikawa at first base and Nate Schierholtz in right field. The benefit to taking Aubrey Huff off of first base turned out to be more on the offensive side. Unlike Pablo Sandoval, Huff has extensive experience as a DH. That might have helped; he hit a two-run homer that put San Francisco ahead to stay. The defense wasn’t hurt, either.
Already, Bochy had moved Juan Uribe from shortstop to third base and put Edgar Renteria at shortstop to improve the range but more importantly steady the left side of the infield. Renteria’s history of World Series offensive success didn’t hurt any, either.
Darren Oliver must be a good guy. He has always seemed to get a free pass from the media. This season, he has been living off his good start – which was very impressive. The latter part of the season has not been so impressive. He gave up another run in Sunday’s game.
Even though it’s a tough break for Alexi Ogando apparently to be injured, I think it’s totally wrong for the Rangers to be able to replace him for the final games. It’s just too easy to fabricate a pitching injury to help bail out a struggling bullpen. A team shouldn’t need 12 pitchers for a seven-game series with just four starters anyway.
As a side note, I’m already tired of Little Wash. That’s a sight gag that has more than run its course.
This was probably the worst day in the history of Arlington, Texas. The Rangers were only slightly better than the Cowboys. A lot of the blame, home-run swings or not, has to fall on the middle of the lineup and most notably Guerrero (three strikeouts) and Josh Hamilton (2-for-16 for the series). Others aren't doing much better, but those two are supposed to supply power and runs.

Thoughts on Game 1

There were two very obvious warning signs during last night’s game.
1. When the Rangers came to bat in the top of the third leading 2-0, and all three batters hit fly balls for outs without seeing many pitches.
2. When the fifth inning came along and Cliff Lee had thrown about 30 pitches more than Tim Lincecum had.
The first of those sent the message that Rangers batters figured, “With Lee pitching, we have enough runs to win. We don’t have to work to score runs. Let’s just hit the ball as hard as we can.” That’s never a good approach, and even worse on the banks of McCovey Creek.
The second meant that regardless what was going to happen right then, Lee wouldn’t pitch as deep into the game as Lincecum would. It would become a game decided by the bullpens. As it turned out, the pitch count was an indicator of an even worse thing for Texas: The Rangers would lose the game with Lee before the game even got to the relievers.

FYI, this post will be more random thoughts than any coherent, cohesive narrative. I’ll be throwing out the thoughts and in some cases commenting and putting those in perspective.
 The Rangers’ first six lineup positions totaled four hits and five total bases. The 7-8-9 spots contributed seven hits and 10 total bases. That’s not a winning formula, either.
 I have no idea what the over/under was on this game, but if you bet it over, you won easily. In fact, I’m pretty sure you won before both starters were out of the game. I tried to find online a list of the highest-scoring games in World Series history, to no avail. I wouldn’t be surprised if 18 runs ranked among the 20 highest all-time.
 My World Series Preview Email talked about the grossly underrated impact of defense. Ron Washington certainly didn’t read it, or he wouldn’t have gone into a park with a big outfield with starters left to right of Nelson Cruz, Josh Hamilton and Vladimir Guerrero. Cruz is far better in right – where, if he wanders around under a fly ball into the right position he also can throw out a runner if his throw happens to be accurate. Hamilton is at least average, but not ideal in center field, and by far Texas’ best overall defensive outfielder. There was a time, such as when I saw Guerrero in Double-A a couple of decades ago, when he was a wonderment in right field. Now I wonder what he was doing out there.
 I didn’t watch the game on TV because I’m still on my Fox/Lone Star boycott. But I did “see” what was going on through MLB’s Gameday. That was useful for observing pitch counts and pitching patterns, but I have no idea whether some of those Giants doubles might have been outs or possibly singles with competent outfielders tracking them down. But there’s no mistaking that Guerrero wasn’t capable when he committed his two eighth-inning errors.
 There was a time when I might have dreamed about Freddy Sanchez’s hitting four doubles in a World Series game, but it’s pretty clear that would never happen in a Pirates uniform. Still, good for Freddy, an overlooked good player because of where he has played.
 Here’s a pet-peeve observation. The Rangers added Mark Lowe to their World Series roster. Whether he had struck out the side or pitched as badly as he did, I’d still feel the same way. Namely, that he shouldn’t have been allowed to be on a Rangers postseason roster. He was nowhere near the team before the Sept. 1 roster “deadline.” He pitched a few games after he came off the disabled list during the regular season’s last week. I heard that he had been pitching in the Arizona Instructional League after that, though I’m not sure whether that was the case. It used to be that players had to be on the active roster before Sept. 1 to be eligible for the – well, not playoffs, but World Series. Now it seems that the only requirement is to be somewhere on the 40-man roster, and the major league team can pick and choose from about 20 players for the last few postseason roster spots. Why is it that people now complain about having an expanded roster for September but don’t give a crap who plays in the World Series.
When I’m commissioner, the only players eligible for the postseason will be the 25 on the active roster at the end of Aug. 31, plus those few players on the disabled list then who had been active with the major league team when they were hurt.
Oh, a last point. There’s always overreaction after the World Series’ first game. It’s as if the losing team has no chance.
That attitude has some relevance if the home team loses the opener in a matchup that seems pretty even.
That isn’t the case here. The Rangers lost on the road, where they’re “supposed” to lose. If they win tonight, they’ll actually be ahead of the game – tied 1-1 with three games remaining at home, where they’re “supposed” to win.
I do understand that nearly everyone had Texas penciled, if not inked, in to win because Cliff Lee is “unbeatable” in the postseason and the Rangers were “supposed” to win whenever he pitches. However, he didn’t pitch very Cliffly. So it must be devastating that he lost, right?
Well, no, not really. During the regular season, he had a losing record with the Rangers. Sure, he was 7-0 in his career during the postseason, but could any reasonable person expect him NEVER to lose a postseason decision?
A more damaging sign for either team would be if its bullpen doesn’t pitch any better during the remainder of the series. Also, the Rangers can take heart in having some success against both Tim Lincecum and Brian Wilson. Or was that an anomaly?
I lied. I still have one other point to make, and that is about Ian Kinsler’s infuriating nature. Both, or perhaps all three, of the sides to that nature showed up in Game 1.
First, there was the issue of his hitting the first pitch into an inning-ending double play with a run in, the bases loaded and one out in the top of the first. That’s a situation when a batter should be at his most selective, looking for that one pitch that is best for him to hit. Clearly, the best pitch wasn’t the one that Kinsler swung at without seeing any others.
Then in the sixth, he partially redeemed himself by working a walk with a 10-pitch at-bat. Even though the walk came with two out and no one on base, that was a good thing because it drove up Lincecum’a pitch count. It became a better thing when Texas managed to score two runs with two out and drive him from the game.
Finally, Kinsler undid that good on his next plate appearance, when he singled but thought first baseman Aubrey Huff had missed a throw. Ian started toward second base, and Huff tagged him out. That wasn’t an unusual play for Kinsler, a talented player who makes more bone-headed moves than even Nelson Cruz.