John Smoltz brought it up during last night’s game. Something the Rangers saw all summer long. The more you run relievers out, the more you risk them having a bad night. Even with good relievers. It’s just human nature. Nobody is perfect, unless your name is Andrew Miller. The […]
He’d pitched in only four games in his major league career. A total of eleven innings. He was 1-0 with a really nice 1.64 ERA. His first big league game ever came on May 30 against the Rangers in Cleveland, in a game Texas won 9-2. Coming into the game in […]
The average temperature in Chicago in February is twenty-six degrees. Lows, with the wind chill, can regularly be in the negative thirties. It seems the dead of winter has come early to the Chicago Cubs bats. Just six lousy hits in two games, five of them weak singles. No runs in […]
Dear Cleveland: You are welcome. You are welcome that Texas’s pitching tired out Toronto’s offense. Toronto hit so many home runs and scored so many runs in the first round against Texas pitching that they came into the second round of the playoffs too exhausted to continue. Andrew Miller owes […]
Some 241 pitches were thrown in last night’s Game 2 of the National League Championship Series. Only one mattered. Only one out of 241 was anything anyone could do something with. In the top of the second inning, Cubs’ ace Kyle Hendricks, the NL ERA champ, put one lousy pitch […]
The two teams with the longest championship futility in baseball took one step to championship glory yesterday. The Cleveland Indians, fresh off winning the World Series in 1948, took a commanding 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven against Toronto, beating the Blue Jays 2-1. They won Game 2 pretty much the […]
So that’s how you beat the Toronto Blue Jays? With pitching. Who knew? What a novel concept. I hope the powers-that-be for the Texas Rangers were watching last night’s Game 1 of the American League Championship Series. It featured the team that has beaten theirs six consecutive times in the […]
Maybe the tide is turning. Maybe the concept is catching on. Major league baseball managers can be called a lot of things. Innovators is usually not one of them. There’s a book. They stick to it. By the letter. The only way they try something complete new and radically different is […]
Texas’s road to the World Series this year ended up dead ending in Toronto. The pieces were in place for a long run, it’s just the engine broke down before the car even got off the lot. Like buying an American car in the 80s. Now all that’s left to debate is, […]
Dominating pitcher who just struck out his ninth batter with ease. Check. Three-run lead in the top of the ninth. Check. Closer time. Check. By the book managing. Check. Loss. Check. It always amazes me when a manager pulls out his dominating starter in order to give the opposing […]