Saturday AL Summary

A quick rundown of games from today’s AL action involving the leading teams.

Tigers 5, White Sox 1 – Detroit closed to within a game of the AL Central-leading White Sox behind Max Scherzer‘s 9 strikeouts and only one walk over eight scoreless innings. It was Scherzer’s 15th win, matching his career high from last season. Since August 15th, Scherzer has four straight starts of 7 innings or more allowing 1 run or less.

Yankees 4, Orioles 3 – New York cooled off the charging Orioles with a 7th inning comeback rally. With a 3-1 lead, two outs and a runner on first, Baltimore starter Wei-Yin Chen walked Jayson Nix and then allowed a run-scoring single by Eduardo Nunez, leading Buck Showalter to bring in Pedro Strop. But, Strop added fuel to the fire with walks to Ichiro and Jeter, before inducing a grounder by Nick Swisher that shortstop J.J. Hardy couldn’t handle, allowing the eventual winning run to score.

Rays 5, Blue Jays 4 – Tampa Bay kept pace with the Yankees by edging Toronto, after losing the first two of a 4-game set. Fernando Rodney reprised the role of fireman with a 5-out save, his first this season longer than an inning. After entering the game with 1 out and the tying and go-ahead runs on the corners, Rodney walked his first batter before escaping the jamb with back-to-back strikeouts. The 9th inning also had its excitement after a lead-off walk to Omar Vizquel, who tried to score the tying run from 2nd on a 2-out Colby Rasmus single but was gunned down at the plate by B.J. Upton to end the game.

Atheletics 7, Red Sox 1 – Oakland crept to within 3 games of the AL West-leading Rangers with their eighth straight win, another thrashing of the sinking Red Sox. The big inning tonight was the third when the A’s pecked away ceaselessly at Felix Doubront with 5 hits, a walk and two stolen bases, good for 4 runs. It might have been more but for Coco Crisp making the first out of the inning by being thrown out at home trying to score from first on a Jonny Gomes double. Rookie A.J. Griffin, returning from the disabled list, retired the first 14 Red Sox en route to the W and a 4-0 record.  Griffin, with totals of 40 strikeouts and only 10 walks in 51.2 innings, is the first Athletics pitcher since at least 1918 to start his career with 8 quality starts in his first 9 appearances. Griffin  joins Brandon Webb, Michael Pineda and Mike Leake with such a debut since 2000, with only Jered Weaver better with 9 QS to start his career. Boston is now 0 for 5 on their West Coast swing, scoring 13 runs and allowing 48. Sox fans can perhaps take some solace from Boston’s 5 game losing streak in April, scoring 17 runs and allowing 46 – they won their next 6 games after that, outscoring the opposition 45-19.

Indians 4, Rangers 3 – Texas, winners of 10 of their last 13, stumbled in Cleveland as the Indians stopped their 6 game slide. Texas starter Scott Feldman failed to retire any of the first 5 batters he faced as the Indians scored all their runs in the first frame. Nonetheless, Feldman lasted 6 innings, only the 7th time in 18 starts this season that he has gone that far. Texas scored their 3 runs on 2 solo HRs and a sac fly. The latter came after David Murphy advanced from first to third on a comebacker to the mound (would have liked to have seen that).  Texas, alone in first everyday since game 4 of the season, have their smallest lead since July 31st and have held a larger lead than they do now on all but three days since April 17th.  On the flip side, Cleveland broke their third losing streak this season of 6 games or longer, all of them since late July. With their win today, the Indians are 6-28 since July 26th, the last time they were above .500.

 

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Phil Gaskill
Phil Gaskill
12 years ago

Sorry, Doug, J. J. Hardy never made a throw at all on that play, let alone a bad one: his error was a muff (or more likely a bad hop, since the ball hit him in the stomach) of the grounder itself. He made three stabs at it after it hit the ground after it bounced off him, finally managed to pick it up, and sensibly held on to it. Shouldn’t make up stuff like that: just say “committed an error” if you’re not sure what happened. . . .

tag
tag
12 years ago
Reply to  Phil Gaskill

Does this signal the end of the Baltimore one-run magic? Is regression to the mean about to kick in? I sure hope so for John’s sake 🙂 I know this was only one game (veeery small sample size obviously) but it was emblematic to me of why all the talk about Baltimore being an exceptional one-run team is, um, highly doubtful. With the game close, they basically imploded, walking batters, committing an error, the usual litany of poor play that afflicts all teams to a greater or lesser extent. Again, I am well aware it was only one game, but… Read more »

Jim Bouldin
12 years ago
Reply to  tag

tag, if you were told that were black and white balls of some unknown proportion in a bag, and you

(1) blindly pulled 17 balls out got 11 black ones, and then
(2) blindly pulled 13 more out, getting all 13 black and then
(3) pulled one last ball out and it was white

how likely would you be to believe that the black:white ratio in the bag was 1:1?

tag
tag
12 years ago
Reply to  Jim Bouldin

Jim, I live in the hometown of Bernoulli and know a little about probability. The point I was making is that all one-run games are not alike, and in a classic, tied-in-the-seventh nail-biter (what most people envision when they think of one-run games) the O’s were like every other team I’ve seen this season (and every other season as well). Baseball just has too many moving parts, in my view, for any team to exhibit a special type of excellence in such contests. Teams have to rely on too many pitchers in their bullpen, too many players on the field… Read more »

Jim Bouldin
12 years ago
Reply to  tag

Tag, it seems to me that everyone’s been pretty clear in the discussions on the topic that you can win a close game in a variety of ways, me included. But as epm said in the other thread, that too can be evaluated to give more insight. But regardless of how they’re doing it–the Orioles over 31 games, or the Yankees (p = .0005) or Royals (p = .00002) over 20 seasons–the statistical evidence is pretty clear that it is not by “chance”. In other words, we may not know how they’re doing it exactly, but we can very confidently… Read more »

tag
tag
12 years ago
Reply to  tag

Jim, Some good research has been done in this one-run area (the system won’t let me include the links; I’ll try to do so in a following post). The “luck hypothesis,” i.e., that good teams generally win more one-run games than bad teams but not nearly at the same rate that they win games with 3+ or 5+ or 10+ run margins (in fact, as winning margins approach a single run “luck” plays more and more of a role in the game’s outcome – so much so that the results of one-run games don’t exhibit much consistency in who wins… Read more »

tag
tag
12 years ago
Reply to  tag

As for Baltimore in particular, I found a rough breakdown of their first 29 one-run games (they are one-and-one in one-run games since then, the loss coming in the game referred to above in which they gave up the lead in the seventh). The wins: 8 times the O’s had a multi-run lead by the middle innings but allowed various numbers of later-inning runs to record the one-run victory. 7 times the O’s had the one-run lead in the top of the 7th or earlier, and held the other team scoreless for 3+ innings. 6 times the O’s won in… Read more »

tag
tag
12 years ago
Reply to  tag

Sorry, some anti-spam thing is not letting me publish the links.

Jim Bouldin
12 years ago

“Boston is now 0 for 5 on their West Coast swing, scoring 13 runs and allowing 48”

I sense that the end is about 30 days away for Valentine’s tenure.

Jason Z
12 years ago
Reply to  Jim Bouldin

If Valentine exits stage left I would be shocked if they
don’t hire Jason Varitek.

I don’t know if he is interested, but I think he would be
an outstanding manager.

He would be the exact opposite of Bobby V.

Maybe Red Sox management should take a page from
George Costanza’s handbook.

Brooklyn Mick
Brooklyn Mick
12 years ago
Reply to  Jason Z

They should can Bobby V now before he runs out of bubble-gum. These last few days he’s becoming more of an embarrassment than he already was…showing up late to the park, making mistakes filling out the lineup card, and then, when asked about breaking baseball etiquette by calling for Saltalamachia to bunt with 2 outs in the 5th inning when the opposing pitcher had a no-hitter going, Valentine’s response was “who cares?” That being said, I don’t think Varitek is the answer. For one thing, he was part of the September 2011 collapse. He hit .077 in September, and as… Read more »

RJ
RJ
12 years ago
Reply to  Jim Bouldin

Update: 0 and 6, 15 runs scored, 54 allowed. An average of a 9 – 2.5 loss every game. Ouch.

Nash Bruce
Nash Bruce
12 years ago
Reply to  RJ

I dunno, isn’t that about the same that run that Boston managed at this time last year? and, Bobby is managing it without all of the big money players to boot….

RJ
RJ
12 years ago
Reply to  Nash Bruce

Right, but being on par with the worst collapse in baseball history is not exactly good.

birtelcom
Editor
12 years ago

Nice work, Doug.

Most Wins in the AL, 2011-2012:
1. Justin Verlander 36 (161 ERA+)
2. Jered Weaver 34 (147 ERA+)
3. CC Sabathia 32 (137 ERA+)
4. Max Scherzer 30 (99 ERA+)
5. Matt Harrison 29 (133 ERA+)

Yippeeyappee
Yippeeyappee
12 years ago

I really have no idea what John Farrell was thinking having 45 year old Omar Vizquel running the bases when he had much faster options on the bench for the potential tying run. Second game in a row in this series that the game ended with the tying run being thrown out at home. On Friday, the Blue Jays won on a Moises Sierra strike to Jeff Mathis. The Jays had never ever won a game before by throwing out the tying run at the plate.

RJ
RJ
12 years ago
Reply to  Yippeeyappee

I really have no idea why Omar Vizquel still gets playing time in the majors, much as I do love the guy.

Voomo Zanzibar
12 years ago
Reply to  RJ

RJ, maybe somebody upstairs likes having an on-field coach. It is a very young team, with no other position players over the age of 31. Omar is technically old enough to be everybody’s father. And, as others have mentioned, there are knuckleheads on the roster, and possibly in charge. And it’s not like he has EVER been able to hit. In 24 seasons Omar has twice achieved an ops+ over 100. 13 seasons of no higher than 78. Sure there’s probably a super-utility guy at AAA who could mash better than: .223 .263 .254 (But maybe not… Small Sample Size… Read more »

RJ
RJ
12 years ago
Reply to  Voomo Zanzibar

Thanks for that analysis Voomo. It is nice to have Omar around, and I love that he clearly loves the game and enjoys playing.

And I take your point about the lack of a suitable replacement in the organisation. I just had a look at Toronto’s AAA roster and saw Brian “2008 Opening Day SS” Bocock lurking there, currently riding a four-year long, 25 AB hitless streak in the majors.

RichW
RichW
12 years ago
Reply to  Yippeeyappee

He might not have had to depend on Vizquel if the “brain dead” duo of Rajai Davis and Colby Rasmus had not run the Jays out of the 5th inning with Encarnacion working over the Rays pitcher. It may have been the dumbest move seen since Lawrie tried to steal home with Bautista at the plate. There is a serious lack of Baseball IQ on this team.

Doug
Doug
12 years ago
Reply to  RichW

I’m with you on the “brain-dead” part for Rasmus trying to turn Davis’s steal of third into a double. But, Davis stealing third alone is okay with me – he’s so good at it, he’d almost have to stumble not to make it. Even if Rasmus had made it to second, it was a bad play as the first baseman comes off the bag and, as you implied, it invites the pitcher to pitch around/walk Encarnacion if he chooses. But, here’s the weird part. This is the scoring line from the play-by-play: C Rasmus caught stealing second, catcher to second,… Read more »

ReliefMan
ReliefMan
12 years ago
Reply to  Doug

It is. Multiple steals only count if everyone is safe.

Voomo Zanzibar
12 years ago

Adrian Beltre in the last 10 games:

20 hits, 14 for extra bases

.500 .524 1.225 1.749

That is 6 games with at least 3 hits… and
4 games with Zero hits !

Voomo Zanzibar
12 years ago
Reply to  Voomo Zanzibar

Well, Beltre just had a game with one hit, as opposed to zero, three, or four.

But it was a homerun.

Voomo Zanzibar
12 years ago

A homer-happy September could get Miguel Cabrera to the (old school) Triple Crown. BA: .336 Milville Meteor .332 Cabrera RBI: 112 J. Holt Hamilton 111 Cabrera HR: 38 Big Donkey 36 Re-Encarnacion 36 Hamilton 34 C. Grand (with a tender hammy) 33 Cabrera ____________ In the NL please-don’t-let-the-PED-guy-win-the-batting-title-race Mccutchen is tied with Melky. And Votto-matic might be back in the race. Supposed to return any day now, with 28 games to play. He’s .004 points behind the pace, and 132 PA short of qualifying. That’s 4.71 PA per game. He won’t get there, but could he hit well enough to… Read more »

Jason Z
12 years ago
Reply to  Voomo Zanzibar

I’m guessing you read the cover story in SI re: M. Trout.

It just made me angry that the Yankees didn’t get him.

I thought I was reading about a young Mickey Mantle.

Voomo Zanzibar
12 years ago
Reply to  Jason Z

Nope, haven’t read SI in about ten years.
I see that the Angels got that draft pick from the Yankees.
What over the hill free agent did NY sign to lose that pick?

Jason Z
12 years ago
Reply to  Voomo Zanzibar

The current number 25.

Brooklyn Mick
Brooklyn Mick
12 years ago
Reply to  Voomo Zanzibar

Don’t know who the Yankees got for the pick, but Trout wasn’t even the first player in the 2009 draft taken by the Angels. It was Randal Grichuk via the (drum roll) Mets.

RJ
RJ
12 years ago
Reply to  Voomo Zanzibar

Buster Posey needs to hit about .420 down the stretch to match Melky. That’s about .020 points BETTER than he’s been since the All-Star break. Come on Joey!

Voomo Zanzibar
12 years ago
Reply to  RJ

Is that assuming full-time AB, or catcher-gets-more-days-off AB?

RJ
RJ
12 years ago
Reply to  Voomo Zanzibar

Assuming catcher-gets-bumped-to-first-instead-of-day-off-in-middle-of potential-pennant-race. I didn’t bother adjusting for off days once I realised it probably wasn’t going to happen.

Brooklyn Mick
Brooklyn Mick
12 years ago
Reply to  Voomo Zanzibar

Posey already has 501 plate appearances, so getting some extra days off would improve his chances. Votto probably won’t come close to the required 502 PA’s, as he’ll need about 5 per game. There were reports that he might return to the lineup today, be he’s not there. If he returns tomorrow, he’ll have 26 games to get 132 PA’s. It could still be done if he hits .400+ down the stretch and gets credited for the required PA’s with the requisite number of AB’s. In other words, if he finishes at .360 but only has 490 PA’s, MLB will… Read more »

Larry
Larry
12 years ago

With Roger Clemens prowling around looking for all the world like he is going to pull a publicity stunt start in September for the Astros at age 50, there was at least a theoretical possibility of Clemens facing Vizquel. Would a combined 95 years have been the record for a pitcher/batter matchup?

Jim Bouldin
12 years ago
Reply to  Larry

If that guy runs the bases on fire the same night that Clemens pitches, I’ll be scouring StubHub for a Skeeters ticket.