OT: Strange but true feats in MLB in 2012.
It's a slow day at work, slow down on the board, so I figured you guys would appreciate this. ESPN has an article on all of the wildest, weirdest, and wackiest feats of the 2012 regular season. Here are a couple:
• There was a rain delay in a domed stadium (in Milwaukee).
• The Pirates hit back-to-back homers that clanked off the same foul pole.• Todd Frazier lost the grip on his bat in mid-swing and still hit a home run -- even though he wasn't holding the bat in his hands at the moment he hit it.• Michael Morse hit a grand slam, trotted three-quarters of the way around the bases, then reversed himself and circled the bases backward after a video review, returned to home plate, pantomimed his home run swing with an invisible bat and ball, and then rounded the bases again.• In 328 of Dunn's always-entertaining trips to home plate, the ball never got around to leaving the batter's box (222 strikeouts, 105 walks, 1 HBP)!• Adam Dunn hit his 30th homer this year before he hit his 30th single! And kids, all we can say is, don't try that at home.Strangest game of the year :Orioles 9, Red Sox 6, in 17 surreal innings at Fenway, back on May 6.• Your winning pitcher that day: The Orioles' starting DH, Chris Davis. Naturally, he won a game this year before Cliff Lee, Josh Johnson or Ryan Dempster. Your losing pitcher that day: The Red Sox's DH, Darnell McDonald.
December 26th, 2012 at 1:25 PM ^
How did the rain delay in Milwaukee happen? Did the roof not close?
December 26th, 2012 at 4:16 PM ^
December 26th, 2012 at 6:05 PM ^
Not sure if thats's the rule...but I do remember a few years back when the Braves were playing a game and Bobby Cox was ejected when the stadium lights were turned on for the bottom half of an inning. It would appear that if an inning had started with the roof open it needs to stay that way for the remainder of the inning.
December 27th, 2012 at 1:08 PM ^
That seems like a strange rule. Doesn't it only take around 20-30 minutes for a retractable roof to close? That's a lot shorter than an average rain delay.
December 26th, 2012 at 1:27 PM ^
they actually made it seem like it was a rule that he had to redo his swing. Unbelievable how the mlb rule book is written.
December 26th, 2012 at 1:48 PM ^
That Affeldt injury was hilarious. It's a good thing he's not a catcher.
December 26th, 2012 at 1:49 PM ^
"Only one pitcher in the big leagues struck out nine hitters in a row in any game this year. But it wasn't Verlander, Stephen Strasburg or Felix Hernandez. It was (who else?) Aaron Harang, who punched out nine straight Padres on April 13. So how many other times do you think Harang has struck out nine in a game in his last 73 starts? None. Of course!"
The funny thing about this one is that it was also against the then lowly expansion Padres that the MLB record of 10 straight strikeouts was set in 1970. The pitcher who did it was none other than Fresno native Tom Seaver.
December 26th, 2012 at 2:35 PM ^
They show no love for Fister. He also struck out 9 in a row.
December 26th, 2012 at 3:06 PM ^
December 26th, 2012 at 2:06 PM ^
This seems to defy all conventional wisdom as to the biomechanics of hitting a HR:
December 26th, 2012 at 3:27 PM ^
Looks like he was still hanging onto the bat with the left hand; the shock of hitting the ball is what I think made him let go.
December 26th, 2012 at 5:07 PM ^
It is really hard for me to tell, but I see what you're talking about regarding Frazier's left hand. It's awfully close as to whether he was touching the bat when he made contact.
Doing my own Zapruder analysis regarding why the bat came out of Frazier's hands, it seemed it was not so much the shock of hitting the ball as Frazier simply losing his grip. Notorious soft-tosser* Jamie Moyer was the pitcher on that play, so it's a safe bet that ball was not coming in "hot" by MLB standards. Maybe Frazier was trying to extend his swing waiting for the pitch to arrive (but still trying to keep his wrists loose), and simply lost his grip?
(As an aside I was surprised to be unable to find an MLB rule that you had to be touching the bat when you hit the ball. Maybe the rule's buried somewhere in the MLB Rules, but I could not find it giving them a Google once-over. Does anyone have a definitive answer on this?)
*The term "soft-tosser" is a bit amusing, since not too many of us could touch 80 MPH if we tried. But by MLB standards, Moyer was a soft-tosser last year.
December 26th, 2012 at 6:05 PM ^
December 26th, 2012 at 2:23 PM ^
Baseball is a very beautiful yet strange game.
December 26th, 2012 at 2:34 PM ^
Don't forget that Hunter Pence hit the ball three times with only one swing.
December 26th, 2012 at 2:51 PM ^
Speaking of baseball statistical oddities, here's something I've wondered about for a while. Why are perfect games so much more common than they were in the past? See this article (link) for a complete list. 13 of the 23 have happened since 1980, and 6 have happened since 2009. I see a few partial explanations for this phenomenon:
- There are 30 teams now instead of 16, like there were for the first 60-ish years of baseball
- 162 game schedules instead of 154
- Random happenstance: we should actually expect perfect games to fall at irregular (random) intervals sometimes
- Ballparks are smaller than they were for many years, turning fly balls into home runs
Nonetheless, I calculated the likelihood of perfect games appearing at this rate a while back, and it was not only statistically significant, but extremely so. And I'm at a loss for why this is so. Here are a few reasons perfect games and other crazy-improbable events should get less likely as time goes by:
- The differences between the average player, the good player, and the bad player have gotten much much smaller for a variety of reasons. In statistical terms, while the mean batting average has stayed right around .260 for most of baseball history, the standard deviation has shrunk threefold, from about 45 points to 15. Thus, a good pitcher is less dominant relative to the competition now than a pitcher of comparable skill would be 80 years ago
- The steroid era (and yes, people are still juicing, at least to some extent) favors hitters more than it does pitchers (although pitchers still do get some advantage from PEDs)
- Ballparks are smaller than they were for many years, eliminating a lot of cheap texas-league hits, which happen a lot when a pitcher is dominating the competition
- Pitchers aren't expected to go as long as they once were, meaning they fall apart in late innings more easily.
Can anyone shed some light on this topic?
December 26th, 2012 at 6:03 PM ^
December 26th, 2012 at 8:06 PM ^
I think you might have something there. Given that BABIP, like average itself, remains fairly constant over time, today's game is more a "feast or famine" enterprise, which raises the likelihood of a freak occurence.
Of course, there's also a lot lower rate of errors in the modern game, but perhaps the two don't cancel each other out.
December 26th, 2012 at 3:21 PM ^
December 26th, 2012 at 5:20 PM ^
December 26th, 2012 at 6:35 PM ^
December 26th, 2012 at 3:56 PM ^
I was at that Red Sox game against the Orioles and stayed the whole time. Chris Davis could actually be a decent reliever. He hit 92/93 mph on the gun on his fastballs and had a legitimate changeup to strike people out with.
December 26th, 2012 at 4:01 PM ^
A lot of MLB hitters were good pitchers in college and vice versa. For example, Ike Davis was a closer at Arizona State and former Michigan pitcher and current Cub reliever Zach Putnam batted clean-up as a Wolverine.
December 26th, 2012 at 6:48 PM ^