Giants, Cards: NLCS Game 3.

We’ll have the lineup once it’s posted.

Go Baseball.

[Image by Matt Duffin]

(Source: Al Bello/Getty Images North America)

Raul Ibanez spent the regular season compiling big hits, but he saved his most spectacular heroics for October. Now, he stands among the Yankees’ legion of immortals as one of the most clutch performers in the franchise’s postseason history.

The Yankees have had no shortage of October heroes, but with two mighty blows, Ibanez thrust his name to the top of the list. By homering to tie the game in the ninth and then following up with a walk-off encore in the 12th inning, Ibanez racked up the highest cumulative Win Probability Added (WPA) in the team’s postseason history, surpassing Charlie Keller’s clutch hitting in game four of the 1941 World Series. In addition, Ibanez’ epic performance also cracked the top-five for all of baseball, and made the 40-year old slugger the first player to hit a homerun in both the ninth inning and extra innings of the same postseason game.

Top-10 Postseason WPA, Yankees and MLB

Source: Baseball-reference.com

In addition to rescuing the Yankees from a pivotal game-three defeat, Ibanez also saved Joe Girardi from having to face intense scrutiny for using him as a pinch hitter for Alex Rodriguez. In addition, Arod was able to spend the post game magnanimously applauding his teammate instead of having to answer unfair questions about his perceived inability to produce in the postseason. Of course, the irony is that if there was one man in the clubhouse who knew exactly how Ibanez felt, it was Rodriguez.

Before Ibanez’ game-tying homerun in the ninth inning, the last hitter to erase a postseason deficit in his team’s final turn was, you guessed it, Alex Rodriguez. In 2009, Arod actually accomplished the rare feat on two occasions: the first against Joe Nathan in game two of the ALDS and the second against Brian Fuentes in game two of the ALCS. Only 32 postseason home runs have helped a team tie or take the lead when trailing in the ninth inning or later, and Johnny Bench and Arod are the only players to do it twice.

Yankees’ Top-10 Postseason Hits, by WPA

Source: Baseball-reference.com

It amusing to note that Rodriguez has compiled three of the top-10 WPA ratings in the Yankees long and illustrious postseason history (he also owns the highest WPA in the franchise’s regular season history). Although his struggles in the current ALDS are undeniable, the relentless characterization of Arod as an unclutch performer remains one of the great mysteries of irrational fandom. Fortunately, Joe Girardi isn’t as fickle as far too many Yankee fans. If he was, Raul Ibanez, who batted .057 in 60 plate appearances over a 24-game span at the end of the season, probably wouldn’t even be on the postseason roster. That’s something to think about the next time you feel the urge to overreact to a small sample.

Awesome Playoff Day Open Thread. Today, I’m rooting for the Reds, Nats, Yanks, and A’s.

Let’s Go Base-ball!

[Photo Via: It’s a Long Season]

This afternoon we’ve got two NL games: Cards at Nats and then Giants at Cincy.

Enjoy.

[Photo Credit: Saint Anslem]

Chad Jennings with some Yankee notes. At ESPN/New York, Mark Simon looks at Baltimore’s Miguel Gonzalez.

And over at Deadspin, here’s Tom Scocca on Ichiro’s play at the plate last night.

Tonight gives a pair of Game 3’s: Giants vs. the Reds and later tonight, Tigers vs. the A’s.

Have at it.

Let’s Go Base-ball!

[Photo Via: Omynameistaken]

Over at Grantland, here’s Bryan Curtis on Josh Hamilton:

By now, you and I could recite the outlines of The Story: Hamilton, baseball’s no. 1 overall draft pick in 1999, falls under the sway of crack and cocaine; abandons his wife and daughters; gets clean; gets acquainted with God; and in a semi-damaged, heavily tattooed state, leads Texas to the franchise’s first two World Series appearances.

While Texas fans still love Hamilton’s “story of redemption,” ESPN’s Jean-Jacques Taylor noted the other day, Hamilton “has abused that goodwill.” Not by having a bad season: Hamilton hit 43 homers, just one fewer than Miguel Cabrera, and posted a .930 OPS. No, Hamilton abused it by hitting into a first-pitch double-play ball against the Orioles and looking at just eight pitches in four at-bats and, with a frequency that seemed to accelerate when the Rangers needed it least, behaving like a flake.

Before we dive into how Texas fell out of love with Josh Hamilton, I want to be clear that I’m not making fun of Hamilton’s religion. I’m not questioning the events of The Story. What I’m suggesting is that Hamilton has become a prisoner of it.

…It’s not defending Josh Hamilton to say that he became despised this year for many of the things that, in the confines of a redemption narrative, once made him beloved. The Story swallowed the man. Hamilton seems like a reasonably friendly, occasionally defensive guy who is teetering on the edge of sobriety, who is prone to inconvenient bouts of detachment, and who gets hurt a lot. When he goes to his next team, I hope a new story will start there. But I have a sinking feeling that every time he loses a fly ball, Hamilton will again be a prisoner of redemption, trapped in a tale too flawless for any man.

Here’s an Sunday open thread. Nats, Cards and then A’s, Tigers this afternoon before the Yanks play against the Orioles down in Baltimore this evening. We’ll have a Yankee post up before game time.

Meanwhile, playoffs and football and all that other good shit.

[Photo Credit: mOrtality]

Over at Sports on Earth I recapped last night’s game between the Tigers and A’s. After that, the Reds outlasted the Giants, 5-2.

[Photo Credit:  Damian Strohmeyer, SI]

First up gives the Tigers hosting the A’s then out to San Francisco for the Reds and Giants.

Have at it.

Let’s Go Base-ball.

[Photo Credit: Nina Zivkovic via Je Suis Perdu]

Let Dem Playoffs Begin.

Braves-Cards are the early game. Rangers-O’s are the late one.

We’ll be watching.

Let’s Go Base-ball!

[Photo Credit: TS Flynn via It’s a Long Season]

Thanks to the new dual wild card format, 10 teams have a chance at making it to the World Series. Of course, by late Friday evening, two clubs will already be making plans for next season. In any event, listed below is a breakdown of the playoff history for each team who will be vying for the 2012 MLB championship.

Historical Post Season Records

Source: Baseball-reference.com

From a historical perspective, this postseason resembles a roundup of the usual suspects. Five of the top six franchises in terms of playoff appearances are represented this October, including the Yankees, who will be making their 51st run at a championship. Among teams who entered the season with 20 or more playoff appearances, only the Dodgers and Red Sox failed to join the party. In addition to being long time October combatants, most of these postseason regulars have also been recent participants, with all but the Athletics having made a prior playoff appearance within the last two years.

Grouped together in the middle of the October roll call are the Tigers, Reds, and Orioles, three teams that have had varying degrees of more limited playoff exposure. Although Detroit has only made the postseason in three of the past 25 years, this season marks the first consecutive playoff appearance since 1935, when Charlie Gehringer and Hank Greenberg lead the Tigers to the championship. Cincinnati’s N.L. Central crown marks the franchise’s fourth October appearance since the last days of the Big Red Machine in 1979, but the team can boast two division titles in the last four years. Finally, the Orioles are not only making their first playoff appearance in 15 years, but also coming off their first winning regular season over the same span.

At the bottom of the totem pole is the Nationals, who are making only the second playoff appearance in franchise history and first since the strike shortened 1981 season when the team played in Montreal. What’s more, Washington D.C. will be hosting playoff baseball for the first time since the 1933 World Series.

The Texas Rangers contributed to Washington’s thirst for October baseball when the team played as the Senators from 1961 to 1971. Since its inception, the franchise has now made the playoffs only six times, but this year marks the third consecutive season of October action in Arlington. Of course, after blowing a big division lead, the two-time defending A.L. champs may not feel as is they’ve made the postseason until (and if) they advance to the ALDS against the Yankees.

Longest Championship Droughts, By Team (30 Years or Longer)
 

Source: baseball-reference.com

There are several intriguing World Series match-ups that could result from the field of playoff participants. The Yankees versus Cardinals would feature a showdown between each league’s most successful franchise, while a match-up between the Yankees and Giants would provide a historical nod to the glory days of baseball in New York. If the Nationals and Rangers square off, it would ensure the first championship for one of the franchises. Between them, the two teams currently have 92 fruitless seasons (only three Fall Classics have featured two teams with a longer combined dry spell), so if they meet in the World Series, one of the longest current droughts would come to an end. The Nationals versus Orioles would constitute a very unlikely “Battle of the Beltway”, while the Athletics and Giants would reprise the “BART Series”. However it shakes out, if October turns out to be as exciting as September, baseball fans are in for quite a treat.

[Featured Image: Ed Zurga/Getty Images North America]

Over at Grantland here’s Jonah Keri on why Mike Trout is the AL MVP and not Miguel Cabrera. That said, Bobby Valentine has a better chance of keeping his job than Trout does of winning the MVP.

[Photo Credit: Jeff Gross/Getty Images]

Over at SB Nation’s Longform, here’s Pat Jordan on his days pitching in the minor leagues:

The closest I ever came to pitching a “Big Game” in the minors was in my last minor league season, and it was a “Big Game” only because it was my last game. The year was 1961, and I was pitching for the Palatka in the Class D Florida State League, against the Tampa Tarpons, a farm club for the Cincinnati Reds. I was wild as usual, walking batter after batter, sweating in the merciless August heat, kicking the dirt, cursing myself, my teammates, the umpires, the fans, the opposing batters just standing at the plate, relaxed, grinning even, their bat resting on their shoulder, not even expecting to swing, just waiting out their four balls before they trotted to first base. Their fans cheered my ineptitude at first, but even they got bored with so many walks and runs for their team, the game, for all intents and purposes, already over in the first inning. They began moaning and jeering, pleading with my manager to free everyone from this painful public disgrace, “Take him out, he’s done on both sides.”

The next batter stepped into the batter’s box. I already knew he would be the last batter I would ever face in my aborted career. I glared at him, my final chance to salvage some pride, to go out on my shield on a boat filled with burning straw into that vast sea of an ordinary life that awaited me in Bridgeport, where I expected to work one shit job after another to support my wife and squalling kids; Mason laborer. Soda jerk at a drugstore. Ditch digger on a construction crew. And then, after work, dirty, depressed, and disgusted, I would drink too many beers before I went home to my poor beleaguered wife.

So I decided to plant my fastball in this final batter’s ear; Pete Rose.

Ken was at the game two nights ago. This afternoon, a win gives the A’s the AL West title.

[Photo Credit: Ezra Shaw/Getty Images]

Over at Grantland, check out this great piece on the Red Sox by Charlie Pierce:

The franchise needed a year like this. It needed a year like this not just because it was forced to clear out the lumpy deadwood in the clubhouse, though it certainly needed that. It needed a year like this not just because it was a humbling experience that let the air out of the inflated hubris that had been keeping the franchise’s collective ego aloft since the wonderful autumn of 2004, though the franchise certainly needed one of those, too. The franchise needed a year like this because people like me are getting older and we missed the days when being a Red Sox fan wasn’t so much work. The franchise needed a year like this because we kept telling young folks that it wasn’t always like this, that, in fact, things can be much worse than simply piddling away a playoff spot to the Rays in September, that baseball — Red Sox baseball — can be so thoroughly, unremittingly awful that you can stop worrying every game to death long before it’s time to get back to school.

And, yes, it is sometimes possible that good seats indeed will still be available, phony shutout streak or no.

From a strictly baseball sense, this looks like a middling- to long-range rebuilding process. The manager has to go. The farm system is nearly desiccated, and there isn’t enough talent on the roster to contend anytime soon. Neither Jon Lester nor Clay Buchholz looks remotely like a consistent no. 1 starter anymore. Also, it doesn’t look as though life in the American League East is going to get any easier. (Sooner or later, even the Blue Jays will forget to underachieve.) And I don’t want to hear anything about rebuilding that most noxious of all marketing department curses — “The Brand.” Sooner or later, you realize that no matter how many things you can find to commemorate, The Brand is simply whether you win or not. Stop losing, and your Brand is all bright and shiny again.

So, I rather enjoyed the second half of this Red Sox season. I was reminded of all the afternoons I spent with my grandfather, watching lousy baseball while, bit by bit, he drank and smoked himself into the Beyond. Those were good days, and isn’t that what the baseball people tell us the game is all about? Generations, sitting together, watching players bumble and stumble while the old folks teach the young’uns new and exciting curse words? Let Ken Burns set that to banjo music. I’ll be in the Parakeet Bar, waiting for the show to begin.

[Photo Credit: ]

Head on over to Garden and Gun for Pat Jordan’s latest–this one is on Mike Veeck:

“I know a little bit about anger,” Mike Veeck tells me. “I have a passing acquaintance with anger, too,” I reply. We discuss how anger can be an energy source. Some use it in destructive ways. Beat the wife, the kids, the dog; blow planes out of the sky. Some put it to better use. Throw the money changers out of the temple, demand justice for the weak, write a book, pitch a no-hitter, make people laugh. That last one is Mike Veeck’s cause. He’s demented about making people laugh.

Veeck (as in wreck, as the title of his father’s autobiography puts it) is sixty-one, getting round, with eyes like a ferret, a goatee, and dark hair I know he dyes. He has a limp. Once on the fourteenth fairway, a guy in a golf cart reached for a lighter for his cigar and ran over him. Veeck wrote a column about it for the Lowcountry Sun, a monthly paper distributed around Charleston, South Carolina. He published the guy’s name and phone number so people could berate him for breaking Veeck’s leg. Funny, angry, or both?

We’re sitting under a hot noonday sun in the exposed left-field bleachers of Joseph P. Riley, Jr. Park, home of the minor-league Charleston RiverDogs, the single-A affiliate of the New York Yankees of which Veeck is part-owner and president. A groundskeeper manicures the field below. A few kids are tidying up the stadium for a 5:05 p.m. game against the Delmarva Shorebirds. Veeck and I are catching up. We’ve known each other fifteen years but don’t see each other much. He travels a lot, to conventions and conferences, where he makes people laugh.

[Photo Credit: Sully Sullivan]

Another piece from the Jock archives. Here’s Stan Isaacs on Mike Burke.

“Hey Mike Burke…”

Joe Posnanski talked to Glen Perkins and the closer detailed how he retired the Yankees on Tuesday night:

“What was my first thought?” Perkins asks. “I guess it was that he’s got 40 home runs. … I mean, I knew exactly what the Yankees wanted to do. They’re down two, so they want to hit three solo home runs to win the game. That’s the way their team plays. I figured everyone would come to the plate looking to hit one out.

“With Granderson, he’s hit 40 home runs, and I’d bet that just about all 40 were pulled. So I’m thinking, he’s not going to get a pitch that he can pull. It’s fastballs away. But then, I’m not sure he will go chasing fastballs. So I think maybe I need to get in on him a little bit. Most of all, I want to get two strikes on him and then try to get him to hit a breaking ball the other way … or get it so he swings and misses.”

Perkins’ first pitch, a 95-mph two-seam fastball away, misses. “I know he’s not going to just take the first pitch,” Perkins says. “I can’t just get ahead with a first-pitch fastball. I threw a pretty good pitch, he laid off.”

Granderson then took a slider for a strike, and fouled off a 96-mph fastball for strike two. Perkins had his set-up. “I wanted to throw him a good slider, hopefully get him to chase.”

Perkins threw the slider and Granderson grounded out to shortstop for the first out. But Perkins was not happy with the pitch. “I got a little more of the plate than I liked with it,” he says. “I thought he got good wood on it. The ball sounded good coming off the bat. Maybe when you have 40 home runs, everything sounds loud off the bat. Anyway, Pedro [Florimon, the shortstop] made the play. I wouldn’t say I got lucky; Pedro didn’t have to make a great play. But I think I caught too much of the plate.”

[Photo Credit: East Lake Tumblr]

Head on over to SB Nation and check out the debut of Longform, their site devoted to long form writing.

First up is R. D. Rosen’s story on Al Rosen. Nicely done.

Head on over to Deadspin and check out Alan Siegel’s funny story about Sparky Lyle and the birth of  entrance music for closers:

“The organization probably wasn’t ready for a rock song,” [Marty] Appel said. One of his friends was the son of David Carey, a studio musician who’d toured with Frank Sinatra. Appel described a typical Lyle entrance to the elder Carey and asked for advice. Carey recommended Sir Edgar Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance.”

The graduation march—known to ’80s and ’90s WWF fans as dearly departed “Macho Man” Randy Savage’s theme—was the kind of triumphant accompaniment Appel was looking for. And so, 40 years ago, the era of entrance music began.

When Yankees manager Ralph Houk signaled to the bullpen late in games, Appel would use binoculars to determine who was getting into the Datsun. Then, from the press box, he’d call organist Toby Wright’s direct phone line. If Appel said, “It’s Lyle,” Wright would slowly begin playing “Pomp and Circumstance.”

“As soon as the car pulled through the gate, the place started to get it,” Appel said. “It worked almost from day one.”