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Day 26 of 2023 baseball books: Have we Met before? Remind us: Was it all that amazin’?

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“The New York Mets: Celebrating Six Decades
of Amazin’ Baseball”

The editors: Sports Illustrated
The publishing info: Triumph Books, 232 pages, $35, released April 11, 2023
The links: At the publishers website; at Bookshop.org; at Amazon.com; at BarnesAndNoble.com


“The Last Miracle: My 18-Year Journey
with the Amazin’ New York Mets”

The author:
Ed Kranepool
With Gary Kashak

The publishing info:
Triumph Books
256 pages, $30
To be released Aug. 1, 2023

The links:
The publishers website
At Bookshop.org
At BarnesAndNoble.com
At Amazon.com

The reviews in 90 feet or less

We curbed our enthusiasm in hopes of checking out tonight’s opener of the Dodgers-Mets weekend series from Citi Field in New York as baseball comes back from the All-Star break.

It happened shortly after mom called this morning to ask what channel it might be on. The team’s website confused her.

She didn’t see it listed on the Dodgers’ SportsNet L.A. Nor was it on Fox, ESPN, FS1, Channel 9 (a place she still thinks it could be), Channel 13 (a place where sports often land when they have no cable home), Bally Sports West (home of the Angels, for now) or even MLB Network (the place she tried to follow the Dodgers during their contract dispute with Time Warner back in the day).

The answer: None of the above.

It’s on Apple TV+ (cost: $6.99 a month), as she finally figured out after the Dodgers’ website interrupted her search with a popup graphic generated by the MLB’s BetMGM showing her that 8.5 was the over-under for total runs if she wanted to put down a sawbuck.

That also could have been the over-under on her searching for the right channel. It was under. Due to lack of endurance and imagination.

She’d likely find more enjoyment burning an apple pie in the toaster oven than trying to order anything, even Ted Lasso, on Apple TV+ with her non-smart television, let alone her not-so-smart phone. Her Earthlink internet service has also been faulty. So she’s without a Dodgers broadcast now almost a full week, since they took the Sunday off before the All-Star break (who does that?) and now pick things up with a nine-game road trip by alienating whatever fans they have over the age of 70.

And, as they say when they have no answer to the solution, it is what it is.

These Metropolitans of New York start the second half of the season – or, really the last 45 percent of it – fourth in the NL East, a minus-3 in run differential that matches up with their 42-48 record, 18 ½ games behind Atlanta, but certainly not as bad off as the Washington Nationals. So that is what it is.

Except, in New York, it isn’t.

Sham billionaire Steve Cohen, who bought the franchise for $2.4 billion in 2020, spent about a half-billion on free agents last winter to win the off season and also rack up a bill for the most expensive team in the sport’s history — a record $353 million payroll on Opening Day, 2023. That’s almost $100 million more than the runner-up New York Yankees ($277 million), and there’s a distance now between them and the Dodgers ($223 million) and Angels ($212 million), who sit fifth and sixth in the rankings, right after the Padres ($249 million) and Phillies ($243 million).

In the New York Times, right after the Fourth of July, political columnist David Brooks wrote a piece under the headline “Why I Still Love the New York Mets” that included a photo of former pitcher Bartolo Colon following the flight of his one and only home run at age 42 in 2016.

Ah, nostalgia.

Continue reading “Day 26 of 2023 baseball books: Have we Met before? Remind us: Was it all that amazin’?” →

Day 25 of 2023 baseball books: The cautionary tale, and the tail between the legs

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“Bonus Baby: A Long Walk Off The Mound”

The author:
Josh Wilson

The publishing info:
Self published
112 pages, $13.99
Released December 3, 2022

The links:
At Alibris.com
At BarnesAndNoble.com
At Amazon.com

The review in 90 feet or less

Just one more story about draft picks, scouts and players who don’t necessarily pan out.

The 2005 MLB Draft. Second Round. No. 70 overall choice.

The St. Louis Cardinals take Josh Wilson. The right-handed pitcher out of Whitehouse High School in Whitehouse, Texas, just south of Tyler and between Dallas and Shreveport, had this write up on MLB.com:

On the Wikipedia.com post about what happened in that draft, it notes eight of the first 12 picks became MLB All Stars — No. 1 Justin Upton, and including Alex Gordon, Ryan Zimmerman, Ryan Braun, Ricky Romero, Troy Tulowitzki, Andrew McCutchen and Jay Bruce. There’s even two NL MVPs in that list. The first round also included Jacoby Ellsbury, Clay Buchholz and Jed Lowrie.

Among the “other notable players,” there was Tim Lincecum, a 42nd round pick by Cleveland (No. 1,261 overall) and Buster Posey, a 50th round pick by the Angels (No. 1,496 overall). Neither signed, obviously, as they became All-Star teammates with the San Francisco Giants not long after. Those who signed and advanced: Chase Headley, Micah Owings, Brett Gardner, Jeremy Hellickson, Lance Lynn, Will Venable, Peter Bourjos, Matt Joyce, Sergio Romo and Jaime Garcia.

Josh Wilson isn’t mentioned in any more of the “notable players” from that draft.

The majority of Wilson’s career as a pro lasted from 2005 to 2009 in Rookie, high-A or low-A ball, with the Johnson City Cardinals, the Batavia Muckdogs and the Quad Cities Bandits, between the ages of 18 to 22.

He had shoulder issues, maturity issues, and cash-flow issues.

Continue reading “Day 25 of 2023 baseball books: The cautionary tale, and the tail between the legs” →

Day 24 of 2023 baseball books: More scout’s honors, especially those ‘Moneyball’-ed off the payroll

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“Smart, Wrong and Lucky: The Origin Stories
of Baseball’s Unexpected Stars”

The author:
Jonathan Mayo

The publishing info:
Triumph Books
256 pages; $28
Released July 11, 2023

The links:
The publishers website
At Bookshop.org
At Powells.com
At Vromans.com
At TheLastBookStoreLA
At Skylight Books
At BarnesAndNoble.com
At Amazon.com

“Baseball’s Endangered Species:
Inside the Craft of Scouting by Those Who Lived It”

The author:
Lee Lowenfish

The publishing info:
University of Nebraska Press
344 pages; $34.95
Released April 1, 2023

The links:
The publishers website
The authors website
At Bookshop.org
At Powells.com
At Vromans.com
At TheLastBookStoreLA
At Skylight Books
At BarnesAndNoble.com
At Amazon.com

The reviews in 90 feet or less

A headline in the June 21, 2023 edition of the Los Angeles Times: “Scouts sue MLB for age discrimination, claiming the league had a ‘blacklist’“

Heavy sigh. The news shouldn’t have been a surprise at this point in baseball’s wobbly course of history.

More than 17 plaintiffs seek about $100 million. More scouts will likely join this class action suit. Especially those who believe they were wrongfully released from various MLB teams because of their age – not to mention perceived usefulness.

Analytics and technology have been gaining momentum as important amateur player assessment tools. The eyes don’t always have it any more from the physical scouts who do all the legwork, travel, take notes, cross check and then make their case. Budgets are tightened (even if more data shows teams are back to basically printing money) and the size of the draft has also reduced – it used to go as long as teams kept wanting to pick players.

As columnist Jim Alexander of the Southern California News Group recently asked about this situation: So what happens when you give your life to something and then find out it has no more use for you?

Coming from a newspaperman, that carries plenty of weight. And baggage. In a sense, scouts seem to be seen as essential to MLB teams as box scores are to newspapers. They take up too much space. There are other ways to get information. They have a use, but just not here.

The timing of these two books can help us better understand the history scouts have created for a game that seems to be trying to push the pendulum too far the wrong way … to correct an error? Or exacerbate flawed logic?

Continue reading “Day 24 of 2023 baseball books: More scout’s honors, especially those ‘Moneyball’-ed off the payroll” →

Day 23 of 2023 baseball books: Explaining baseball’s evolution with elevated elocution

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“The New Ballgame: The Not-So-Hidden
Forces Shaping Modern Baseball”

The author:
Russell A. Carleton

The publishing info:
Triumph Books
304 pages; $30
Released June 13, 2023

The links:
The publishers website
At Bookshop.org
At Powells.com
At Vromans.com
At TheLastBookStoreLA
At Skylight Books
At Target
At BarnesAndNoble.com
At Amazon.com

The review in 90 feet or less

Quinn Mathews worried a lot of people recently.

Stanford’s senior starting pitcher had been pushing the limits of baseball’s accepted norms — and perhaps some common sense – as his team advanced in the recent College World Series. It all had to do with those who were counting his pitches while his teammates were counting on him to carry them on his back.

During the regular season, the 6-foot-5 lefthander threw at least 100 pitches in 15 of his 16 starts. As the Cardinal faced an elimination game against Texas in the CWS super regional, Mathews was allowed to throw 156 pitches in an 8-3, complete-game victory, which included 16 strikeouts.

That added up him throwing more than 300 pitches during three appearances over a 10-day span.

The social media debate was en fuego: Is this too much for the Mighty Quinn?

“Before people pass judgment, they don’t know what we know,” answered Stanford coach David Esquer. “We took into account that he wasn’t cranking off a majority of sliders and fastballs. He was probably throwing a majority of changeups, and we thought that lowered the stress of the pitch count.”

It led to similar handwringing when Johns Hopkins University fifth-year senior pitcher Gabriel Romano threw 164 pitches during a complete-game win during an NCAA Division III tournament game last month. Author Keith Law was compelled to post this on Twitter, followed by Romano’s response:

An NCAA rule in place today states that if a pitcher goes more than 110 pitches in a game, he can’t return to the mound for three days afterward. The rules were all upheld here.

To complete the story on Mathews: The former Aliso Viejo High standout waited eight days after his regional win over Texas to go up against Tennessee in the College World Series. He lasted just 4 2/3 innings as No. 8 Stanford was eliminated by the Vols on June 19. Matthews threw 89 pitches and held Tennessee scoreless until they batted around on him in the fifth inning.

“Quinn’s bailed us out all year,” said Stanford reliever Drew Dowd of the Pac-12 pitcher of the year.

Mathews, a 2022 19th round draft pick by Tampa Bay before he decided to play one more year at Stanford, was scooped up by St. Louis in the fourth round of this 2023 draft, No. 122 overall.

The Washington Post’s Jesse Dougherty wrote a followup about the “layered debate” caused by pitch counts with college hurlers and it quoted Jimmy Buffi, who the Dodgers hired in 2015 because of his expertise in bio mechanical engineering and effects of arm injuries.

“When you sit behind a computer to write a paper about injury risk, injury risk is your number one priority,” said Buffi, who left the Dodgers in 2019 to start Reboot Motion, a sports science company that consults for teams around Major League Baseball. “But when I joined the Dodgers, it was like, ‘Oh, crap; winning is the number one priority.’ And I think about that often: There’s always a risk-reward trade-off when the ultimate goal is winning.”

Joe Posnanski also wrote last April about pitch counts: “I’ve started to fall in line more with people who think we focus too much on the number of pitches thrown and not enough on the velocity and effort of pitches thrown. You hear old-timers talk about it all the time, but how many times in a game did Tom Seaver or Bert Blyleven or Fergie Jenkins or Jim Palmer or Jack Morris or Steve Carlton or Greg Maddux or dozens of other big-inning pitchers really air it out?* How many times did they throw a baseball absolutely as hard as they could? Ten times a game? Once or twice a game? Never?”

Continue reading “Day 23 of 2023 baseball books: Explaining baseball’s evolution with elevated elocution” →

Day 22 of 2023 baseball books: The Wrighster way and its sense of purpose

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“The Black and White of Baseball:
Overcoming Bias in Baseball and Life”

The author:
George F. Wrighster

The publishing info:
Elite Publications
Gifts of Legacy
105 pages
$15.95
May 11, 2023

The links:
The book’s website
The author’s website
At Amazon.com

The review in 90 feet or less

We happened to be re-reading the other day a synopsis of the 1992 paperback reissue of Robert W. Peterson’s classic, “Only The Ball Was White: A History of Legendary black Players and All-Black Professional Teams” (Oxford University Press, 416 pages).

The blurb read: “When ‘Only the Ball Was White’ was first published in 1970, Satchel Paige had not yet been inducted into the Hall of Fame and there was a general ignorance even among sports enthusiasts of the rich tradition of the Negro Leagues. Few knew that during the 1930s and ’40s outstanding black teams were playing regularly in Yankee Stadium and Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field. And names like Cool Papa Bell, Rube Foster, Judy Johnson, Biz Mackey, and Buck Leonard would bring no flash of smiling recognition to the fan’s face, even though many of these men could easily have played alongside Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Hack Wilson, Lou Gehrig — and shattered their records in the process.

“Many baseball pundits now believe, for example, that had Josh Gibson played in the major leagues, he would have surpassed Babe Ruth’s 714 home runs before Hank Aaron had even hit his first. And the great Dizzy Dean acknowledged that the best pitcher he had ever seen was not Lefty Grove or Carl Hubbell, but rather ‘old Satchel Paige, that big lanky colored boy’.”

Between the time of the Civil War’s ending and the signing of Jackie Robinson by the Dodgers in 1947, there was stops and starts in baseball’s struggle, which mirrored the country’s struggle, in how to level the playing field, discard the Jim Crow blanket of laws stubbornly covering much of the country, acknowledge our imperfections, and be better people.

More than 50 years after that book’s release – which occurred less than 25 years after Robinson’s debut – we are still, in many disturbing and distressing ways, trying to teach those in our community to learn from history rather than repeat it.

In the brief but powerful 11th chapter of George F. Wrighster’s new self-published book — the chapter is titled “Nigga” — he explains what he saw while watching his grandson one game playing shortstop, a runner on the other team pulled up at second base, and “everything went sideways.”

Continue reading “Day 22 of 2023 baseball books: The Wrighster way and its sense of purpose” →