baseball-pitching Page 3 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
This Atlanta World Series team signals the end of starting pitching
With Huascar Ynoa on the IL with a shoulder injury and ace Charlie Morton out with a broken leg, the Braves are now looking at two back-to-back bullpen games as their starting pitchers rest up. The pen’s performance closing out for Morton in Game 1 and for Ian Anderson yesterday should give Atlanta ...
You always want a Laz Diaz show in a League Championship Series, amirite?
I’ll put it right here at the top when discussing the Astros 9-2 win in Game 4 over the Red Sox, because I’ve spent the latter half of my life having Red Sox fans yell at me in some sort of fashion anyway. The non-strike call Laz Diaz came up with on Jason Castro from Nathan Eovaldi’s curve in the n...
I’ve had it with relievers
Maybe I’ve rebelled against getting older as long as I can, and I’m coming to accept the hair growing out of my ears combined with the opinions that something in a modern sport isn’t as good as I remember. It’s weird, because I don’t remember having any attachment to relief pitchers of my youth. The...
32 teams need to hear this: There is no pitching formula for the playoffs
Many years ago now, baseball pundits and fans tried to come up with a “secret sauce” for success in the playoffs. It can be pretty infuriating to simply accept that the sport’s biggest prize is handed out at the conclusion of a tournament that is essentially random. There had to be a reason these th...
Robot umpires would destroy the beauty of the catcher position
2022 will be longtime St. Louis Cardinals’ backstop Yadier Molina’s final season. When Yadi finally calls it quits, he will leave an incredible legacy behind — one of defensive prowess, solid offense, and fear being struck into the hearts of baserunners everywhere....
This Juan Soto hot streak is way, way, <i>way</i> better than you realize
Shohei Ohtani is the best player in baseball. Mike Trout is the best pure position player in baseball. Juan Soto is the best hitter in baseball, and as much as I love Mike Trout… he’s not close. Juan Soto is doing something Trout has never done. In Juan Soto’s last 40 games, he has an OPS of 1.253 a...
ESPN’s ‘Cy Young Predictor’ is laughably on the fritz
Predicting who is going to win major awards across the Big 4 American sports is one of the nation’s most popular pastimes. Oftentimes, arguments can be made for several different players. That’s why several years ago, ESPN put out its Cy Young Predictor, an AI system that would take a pitcher’s stat...
Why does one inning make such a difference?
Unless you actually talk to a White Sox fan here in town, things are pretty serene for the Pale Hose. They still have a dominating lead in the AL Central with no one actually trying to catch them, and seem pretty certain to have a date with the Astros come the division series, with every chance of s...
It’s time for baseball to protect pitchers
You don’t want to see the video of A’s pitcher Chris Bassitt getting hit in the head by a 100 mph line drive off the bat of Brian Goodwin on Tuesday night in Chicago. It’s terrifying, and thankfully Bassitt was conscious and aware as he was taken to the hospital. If you really need to see the video,...
Offense is way up since MLB’s ‘sticky stuff’ crackdown
It’s officially been one month since Major League Baseball implemented their guidelines forcing umpires to check starting pitchers for illegal foreign substances. Sure, the All-Star break cost us a few days worth of data points, but in general, we have seen more than enough games, analyzed the spin ...
I for one don’t welcome our crappy new robot umpire masters
Do you remember the part in Iron Man 2 where Tony Stark was in court and the United States government was essentially trying to take the Iron Man technology for themselves and their argument was that other countries were developing the same technology, then Stark hacked the monitors and showed a vid...
How are robo-umps faring in the minor leagues?
The Daytona Tortugas are, in many ways, as average as a minor league team gets....
All this ‘sticky stuff’ talk has gotten out of hand
Tyler Glasnow isn’t wrong that Major League Baseball has done a poor job in executing its crackdown on sticky stuff....
Connecticut high school phenom tosses fourth no-hitter in a row
If you think the no-hitters are getting out of control in Major League Baseball, you ought to check out the high school scene in northern Connecticut. ...
When I'd rather watch 'Schitt's Creek' than ANOTHER no-hitter, you know baseball has a problem
Last night, I was scrolling Twitter as the dulcet tones of Schitt’s Creek provided a backdrop to my evening. In short, I was doing nothing. As the late night baseball game out west between the Seattle Mariners and and the Detroit Tigers wore on, I started seeing familiar tweets in my timeline — we w...
Pitchers are even less afraid these days
We didn’t need Spencer Turnbull’s no-hitter last night to know that pitchers have smothered baseball these days (and that the Mariners have had all their bats replaced with Play-Doh). It’s the fifth no-hitter of the year, and we’re barely a quarter through the season....
We'll never see another Doc Gooden
You know you’re getting old when you remember Doc Gooden’s no-hitter with the Yankees on May 14, 1996. It was now 25 years ago — so long ago that the Mets have gone through multiple waves of promising young pitchers who ultimately disappointed: Pulsipher, Wilson, Isringhausen. Harvey, etc....
Why won’t anyone pitch to Yasmani Grandal?
In 2004, the most feared hitter in baseball was Barry Bonds. This mammoth at the plate hit .362 that season and reached base at an incredible .609 clip. That’s a difference of .247, one of the largest ever recorded. In 2021, Yasmani Grandal is hitting .121 with an on-base percentage of .372 — a .251...
Baseball didn’t anticipate this odd rash of no-hitters, which there are more of than 'count' because 'rules'
John Means pitched this season’s third no-hitter on Wednesday afternoon in Seattle, except it was really the fourth, as Major League Baseball keeps finding out that whatever oddities are available to be achieved, someone eventually will achieve them....
Tony La Russa doesn’t know the rules and there’s no one to save him from himself, either
Is it bad when your manager doesn’t know the rules? If we try to be fair to Tony La Russa, this is the first season this ridiculous extra-innings rule was put in place with the NL not having a DH, and La Russa doesn’t manage an NL club....