Other Baseball

Gotta love Joe Maddon: Tampa Bay Rays manager Joe Maddon, in an effort to change the fortunes of his slumping club, invited Seminole Tribal elder Bobby Henry to Tropicana Field on Monday. “We just turned him loose on the Trop,” Maddon said. Henry, known as The Rainmaker, is a 77-year-old medicine man who has lived in the Tampa area for the last 45 years. “I guess this guy made it rain in Tampa in the mid-80s at some point, so I guess he’s got some supernatural powers,” Maddon said. “If it rains in the Trop I’ll be really impressed. That will be his best moment ever.” http://tbo.com/sports/rays/rays-enlist-help-of-medicine-man-to-shake-funk-20140609/ Maddon would…

http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/johan-santanas-comeback-ends-with-achilles-tear-060614 Too bad because he was fun to watch.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/11021397/jon-singleton-signs-long-term-deal-houston-astros

Per mlbtraderumors, the Indians have already signed Justus Sheffield. They included some tuition money to Vandy in the contract. Does that count towards the pool money or is that just an incentive?

Appel has been just horrible this year (and with Gray and Bryant killing it, Astros blogs are not overly happy about it). In his last start, the 22 year old gave up 10 runs and 10 hits in 1.1 innings against A+ hitters. In 5 starts, his era is over 11.00. And now he has tendinitis in his thumb which, for now, made him miss a start. http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2014/06/05/astros-prospect-mark-appel-dealing-with-tendinitis-in-his-thumb/

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/mlb/news/20140602/justin-morneau-colorado-rockies/?eref=sihp Man I hope he makes the all-star team this year.

Back before the days of the MLB Network, I used to be a big fan of Baseball Tonight on ESPN. It was pretty cool to have a regular, daily show devoted to just baseball, with the day's highlights, some discussion, etc. For old farts like me who grew up without ESPN, much less a show like Baseball Tonight, it was an awesome innovation. But as time went on, I started noticing how poorly they put the show together, how little they actually knew about each game's story line, much less each team's season story line. I eventually moved over to the MLB Network to get my highlights, and baseball news. I liked it much better, perhaps due as much to the near 24-7 availability a…

The actual title of the article is "We've Been Friends Long Enough You'll Understand" by Cee Angi but for me, the heart of what makes Scully great is the idea of letting the "moment breathe" just as you and your friends would do at the game or in a bar. http://www.sbnation.com/longform/2014/6/2/5764256/vin-scully-career-retrospective-dodgers-broadcaster-profile A fascinating and eloquent piece about a fascinating and eloquent man. It's a fairly long read but well worth your time. Some of my favorite nuggets are Red Barber's advice: "It isn't how much, but what you say." and this passage: Ken Korach once asked Scully, "What's broadcasting's essence?" Scully rep…

has allowed four hits in his last four games started. I wonder if that has ever happened before.

Who is playing third for the Rockies today? That's right--Cuddy. Well, that is probably better than putting him in center or second.

I don’t really hear too much brought up about the stellar career Adrian Beltre is amassing. We have always know that he is a stellar defender at 3B, but I wonder if our minds are entrenched in his ho-hum Seattle Mariners years. Although these years with the Mariners were primarily his “prime years”, he has produced 4 consecutive fantastic seasons playing for the Red Sox and Texas Rangers. At this juncture in time, I view Safeco Field oppositely of Coors Field. Safeco is a hitters nightmare, whether that is because of the dimensions of the park, the marine environment, or the bad Juju of ten years of offensive stagnation coming from that ballpark. On this I give Beltre…

He now joins the exclusive club with Jason Tyner, Al Newman, and Tom Kelly. To think he just missed an inside the parker over a 1000 plate appearances ago. And he took just a few more than Alex Cole did before his first, and he ended up jacking four of those for the Twins in '94 with another in '95. Still pretty cool and shocking to see that along the bottom line moments before Beltre and Soria gave us the game.

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/16-facts-about-ben-reveres-home-run/ My favorite was #7, the Phillie Phanatics reaction.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/10989686/kansas-city-royals-pitchers-yordano-ventura-elbow-kyle-zimmer-back-hurt I wanted the Twins to draft Buxton but if we had to choose between Gausman/Appel/Zimmer, I wanted Zimmer. Shows what I know. Gausman is looking solid in AAA but probably ends up a #2 instead of a true ace, Appel has been sent back to EST and Zimmer's got a pretty cloudy future.

Vin Mazzaro has been DFA once again by the Pirates. Would you look to add him as a replacement for Jared Burton?

http://www.twincities.com/sports/ci_25815227/golden-opportunity-metrodome-urinal-troughs-sale

Playing in today's environment, in hitters park in AL - pitching for 15 years. He avgs 210ip a year, 30 starts, 119 ERA+ and 4 WAR per season. His worst fulltime WAR season was still over 2, his best was over 6. 9 of his 15 seasons he was above 4 WAR and he finished top 10 6x. Over 3000 career innings, 200+ wins a few no-hitters but best cy young finish was only 5th.

Jeff Wilson at The Fort Worth Star-Telegram is reporting that the Texas Rangers first baseman is seriously considering a neck surgery that would end his season. Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports adds that Fielder is having more MRIs on Thursday. http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mlb-big-league-stew/report--prince-fielder--seriously-considering--season-ending-neck-surgery-192904258.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter Dave Dombrowski had great timing on this Prince.

Sorry if I mislead you with the thread title, but this post isn't about how I think MLB games need to be sped up. I'm going to be coaching junior high baseball this summer (practice starts today actually) and I've been reading up on strategies to prepare for the season. I came across some reading by coach Bobby Winkles about speeding up the game. He had his players constantly running no matter what they were doing, and this resulted in quicker games. Where I am coaching, junior high games are on a time limit of maybe an hour and a half, so I plan on using the same strategy as Coach Winkles to get more game experience for the players. Since they will be running most of…

This is a bit insane. I always sorta liked Oliva, tough guy, could hit LHP. Morneau tried to run through him once and ended up coughing up blood and missing a few games back in the day. http://www.baseballamerica.com/minors/dodgers-guerrero-has-part-of-ear-bitten-off-by-teammate/

http://deadspin.com/dodgers-backup-catcher-destroys-kid-with-a-dodgeball-1579580181/all

http://www.sporcle.com/games/g/mlbhalloffamers Probably been posted before, not sure. I got 127 my first try. Larkin was my biggest miss.

This is insane - http://m.mlb.com/video/v31940121/cinstl-hamilton-races-home-on-shallow-sac-fly/?player_id=571740 Scores on a sac fly to basically the second baseman. He stole his first base this season off of Molina - with no throw.

In all seriousness, Drew pitched twice in mop-up relief this week for the Dodgers, the first time retiring the side 1-2-3. He did give up a couple runs in his second outing. According to this article, he touched 94 mph on the gun: http://www.latimes.com/sports/dodgers/dodgersnow/la-sp-dn-dodgers-drew-butera-reliever-20140514-story.html With his career .508 OPS, I would think his ceiling as a hitter is back-up catcher. Couldn't he add a couple ticks to his fastball and develop another pitch with a couple of years in the minors and a good pitching coach? It seems to me like he's got a higher ceiling as a pitcher than as a catcher.

http://www.piratesprospects.com/2014/05/vance-worley-back-on-track-as-a-starter-after-working-with-jim-benedict.html Last week, Vance Worley had a successful start for the Indianapolis Indians, the AAA affiliate of the Pittsburgh Pirates. The team had sent him to Extended Spring Training to stretch him out, but also to get his mechanics cleaned up. I don't know that I agree with his comments about not being given a real chance this spring, but it is an interesting article.

I think this is pretty cool..... A filmmaker in Canada found a newsreel (the kind they used to show before silent movies) of the 1919 World Series, which is the infamous Black Sox series. http://www.cbc.ca/asithappens/features/2014/05/05/post-19/ It's more than kind of cool to see the video of enormous crowds watching these games in old stadiums and the players scampering around the bases. But the thing that I wondered was... They show a crown in NYC gathering to "watch" the Chicago-Cincinatti World Series. They're gathered in a park, but they're watching a mechanical device, similar to a scoreboard app on a smartphone. It seemingly tracks runners going around a …

Last year's #1 overall pick has had a tough time adjusting to A ball and a pro pitcher's 5 day schedule. So the Astros sent him back to EST hoping to get him right. http://www.crawfishboxes.com/2014/4/25/5654422/astros-send-top-prospect-appel-to-extended-spring-training The 22 year old was at the Astros high A team (equivalent to the Twins Ft Myers team where the 20 year old Berrios is our best pitching prospect). Astros have had some interesting drafts these last few years, passing on Buxton, Gausman, Zunino, Gray and Bryant (among others) to nab Correa and Appel. Correa is also at A+ and holding his own.

I'm certainly not a frequent poster on TD, but really enjoy the site/commentary/etc. There was a nice article today on ESPN.com that many have likely already seen regarding the incidence of Tommy John surgery this year. I thought it had a nice discussion of factors that come in to play and the current research in the area. There had been some discussion in the forums previously regarding this topic and I thought others may find the article interesting as well. http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/10831700/is-mlb-midst-tommy-john-epidemic

Bummer for Nats fans. http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/10853575/bryce-harper-washington-nationals-torn-thumb-ligament

This came across my desk. Anyone know anything about it? Seems kind of cool....