Sports Then and Now

It was payday....

What’s in a rivalry? Hatred? Two very good teams in the playoff hunt?

The Philadelphia Phillies are a very good team, worthy of contending year in and year out. They’re also very good at paying attention, you got something going for you Philly. They watched the Yankees buy pennants for years, and decided to follow the pattern. They are number two behind the Yankees with a payroll of just under $173 million. Their average player is paid over $5.7 million. That’s what I call buying wins. Maybe that is why you are one of nine MLB teams in debt.

Now for my favorite part, the Braves payroll comes in at just over $87 million. Now lets do some math, for you Philly fans out there, I will help you out.

Phillies payroll $172,976,381
Braves payroll $87,003,192
Difference- $85,973,189

Read the rest of this entry →

B.J. Upton has yet to live up to being the second pick in the 2002 MLB draft.

Trivia Question- Who was the #2 overall pick by the Tampa Bay Rays in 2002? I was looking at the marvelous draft that was ’02, and was surprised to see it was B.J. Upton who was the pick in the second slot. This was a draft with Cole Hamels, Jon Lester and Zack Greinke.

Upton was a member of the 2001 USA Junior National Team, and in 2002 he won the Baseball America First Team All American. He hit over .600 with 11 home runs in his senior year, and in return for his terrific season he was drafted number #2 overall in the MLB Draft.

Upton has been viewed as a disappointment over the years, Hitting .273/.383/.401, .241/.313/.373 and .237/.322/.424 in his last three seasons. His numbers have declined in every year, and so have his power stats. After a 24 home run season in 2007 he hit only nine and then eleven bombs.

Bossman Junior was viewed as a five tool player when he was drafted. He could run, hit for power and average, field and throw. His problem is not his skill, but it may be his head. Upton has been pulled by his manager, Joe Maddon, several times in his four full years in the majors. Is his attitude holding him back from his full potential?

In 2003, Upton made 56 errors to lead the minor leagues, and a lack of focus has been cited as a possible problem. But his biggest problem actually came in 2008, the Rays AL Championship season. He was benched twice for lack of hustle in that season. He has also been known to admire his home runs, particularly an incident in 2008 that prevented him from reaching second base on a double because he thought it was gone.

Then in 2010, he found himself in the midst of more controversy. He and Evan Longoria got into it in a game vs the Diamondbacks after Upton did not hustle for a ball hit into the outfield. After this, there have been no more incidents with BJ, so it was thought he may have figured it out. However, he is still hitting just .229 with a .310 OBP and .318 wOBA.

I don’t think we will ever see the super star that we all hoped for all those years ago. Maybe he can build an MLB career for himself. But he will never be the five tool player we thought he was.

Should the Baltimore Orioles be shopping Jeremy Guthrie to a contender?

The Baltimore Orioles are in the midst of what looks like another losing season, their 14th straight. Ever since they fell to the Yankees in the playoffs in the late 90’s, they have been hapless. They have developed some nice players in Nick Markakis, Adam Jones and Matt Wieters, but they lack one big thing.

Pitching.

The Orioles thought they were on the cusp of something when Jake Arrieta and Brian Matusz were top prospects. Well, Arrieta has struggled while Matusz has had his own injury woes. Projects like Koji Uehara (in the rotation) and Kevin Millwood were fails. But while there have been struggles, they have found one constant.

Jeremy Guthrie has been a solid pitcher in Baltimore for years. In 2007 and 2008, Guthrie held his ERA in the 3’s and he gave the Orioles some much needed innings in their mess they called pitching. He had an awful 5.03 in 2009, coming off the World Baseball Classic and that may have been the cause of his setback. He rebounded last season for an ERA of 3.83, but a fear is beginning to settle in amongst Baltimore fans.

Are these young players getting too used to the losing atmosphere? Guthrie has an ERA of 4.35, nothing bad but not what he has been in his Orioles past. He certainly has not been as bad as his 4-13 record indicates. Is this a great chance to get a steal for a middle of the rotation starter?

Some teams like the New York Yankees and Detroit Tigers need pitching. Both are in tight division races but lack pitching down the stretch or a usable rotation in a playoff series. Is Guthrie a pitcher they can get cheap? New York kicked the tires with Ubaldo Jimenez, but the price is much too high for an NL West pitcher who’s numbers have gone down dramatically this season.

Guthrie’s numbers are not terrific, but he has been able to hold his own in the very tough American League East. With his numbers down a bit, the Orioles would not be demanding much in return for him. This could be the Yankees chance to get a starter without giving up their prospects.

Guthrie is not going to win a Cy Young award. He is not going to throw many one or two hitters. But he can eat innings and be a very valuable #3 or #4 pitcher in a good rotation. And it is time he exits the losing culture that is the Orioles.

No major leaguer has come close to matching Joe DiMaggio's record hitting streak of 56 straight games.

The Major League Baseball players of today are capable of accomplishing amazing feats, but I am going to go out on a limb and predict that no major leaguer of today will ever hit in 56 consecutive regular season games.

It was 70 years ago today that one of the most amazing individual streaks in sports history ended following an unbelievable two month performance by future Hall of Famer Joe DiMaggio.

After knocking out a hit in every game from May 15th through July 16th, the luck finally ran out for DiMaggio in a game against the Cleveland Indians. As he had done throughout most of the streak, DiMaggio hit the ball hard, but unlike in previous days, there was always someone there to make the play.

His best chance to extend the streak came in his first at bat when DiMaggio laced the ball down the third base line. Unfortunately, third baseman Ken Keltner was playing deep and was able to grab the ball and throw DiMaggio out at first.

After walking in the fourth inning, DiMaggio hit another drive toward third in the seventh inning, but Keltner made another play to throw out the Yankee Clipper.

With the bases loaded and one out in the eighth inning, DiMaggio managed not to hit the ball to Keltner, but instead grounded to shortstop Lou Boudreau who turned it into an inning ending double play.

During the streak, DiMaggio hit .408 with 15 home runs and 55 runs batted in. He had multiple hits 22 times, including four games with four hits. Read the rest of this entry →

Roger Clemens was on trial for lying during a 2008 Congressional hearing.

Given that the “Steroid Era” in baseball has been built on a series of lies, accusations and uncertainties, it seems almost normal for baseball’s darkest era to come to an end with a mistrial in a federal courtroom that accomplished nothing and left as many questions as answers.

Ever since baseballs started flying out of stadiums at uncanny rates beginning in the early 1990s, the game of baseball has been in a civil war between those who believe in preserving the history and sanctity of the sport and those who saw the opportunity for greater success through artificial means.

This battle has left baseball with nearly two decades of inflated statistics and history that no one really knows what to do with.

Baseball purists have always pointed to the purity of statistics as being one of the components that make baseball special. For generations they contended that you could directly compare the statistics of players like Joe DiMaggio, Tris Speaker and Lou Gehrig with Hank Aaron, Willie Mays and Sandy Koufax to legitimately determine the greatest players of all-time.

Now in reality that argument is unsupportable as each era has its own nuances that make it difficult to compare with other generations.

Frank “Home Run” Baker earned his nickname by leading the American League in home runs four consecutive years between 1911 and 1914. During those four seasons, he blasted a combined total of 42 home runs, including 9 to lead the league in 1914. Yes, NINE! He finished his 13-year career with 96 home runs and 103 triples.

Just a few years later, a giant lefthander pitcher named George Herman “Babe” Ruth switched from being one of the American League’s most dominant pitchers to being its greatest slugger. He led the AL with 11 home runs in just 95 games in 1918 and in his first full season playing in the field in 1919 set a new single season record with 29 home runs. He hit 54 home runs in 1920 and 59 the following year and in 1921 became MLB’s career a home run leader, a distinction he would hold until 1974. Read the rest of this entry →

Thanks to the play of their young star Andrew McCutchen, the Pittsburgh Pirates are among the small market teams having surprise success in 2011.

Don’t look now– or perhaps you have looked— at the tables on the Sports page, but 2011 is becoming the year of the small market team. The Brewers have been climbing the standings in the NL Central, the Indians have been in and just barely out of the top of the AL Central, the Pirates have been over .500 more than they’ve been under thus far, and the Nationals (not a small market team but a small market performer) have been bobbing up and down along the .500 line.

And that’s only baseball. Oklahoma City made a run in the NBA. Buffalo had one of the best records in the second half of the last NHL season, taking Philadelphia to seven games in the playoffs. Western New York (Buffalo-Rochester) is currently dominating Women’s Professional Soccer. In men’s soccer, Real Salt Lake has emerged as a power. And of course the mother of all small market towns, Green Bay, won the mother of all American sports championships, the Super Bowl.

So what’s going on?

Perhaps there’s a lesson in what seems to be driving the US Women’s National Team in the World Cup. Despite coming into the tournament as a favorite, the US team hasn’t made the cup finals since its last victory, in 1999, and had to play in this year, after losing four matches leading up to the tournament. If you know enough about sports to be reading this, you know the story. And while the United States is anything but “small market” in almost every respect, we are certainly small market in the soccer world, despite more success in the women’s game. Read the rest of this entry →