Being a Fighters fan means having 500 instant friends the minute you sit down in the Fighters' outfield cheering section wearing a Nippon Ham jersey.
Being a Fighters fan means that to you, the 19-year-old phenom pitcher of the year was Yu Darvish.
Being a Fighters fan means you can identify the flag of Panama, and you know that "Panama" is really the Spanish word for "country where powerful switch-hitters come from".
Being a Fighters fan means knowing that "Macias" and "Seguignol" both really have four syllables.
Being a Fighters fan means knowing when "Ogasawara" has five syllables and when it has three.
Being a Fighters fan means getting a huge grin on your face when the oendan leaders unfurl the "Ogasawara" banner, because it means that 1) the most fun hitter to watch in the world is at bat, and 2) it's time to sing the Ogasawara song!
Being a Fighters fan means singing "Oi, oi, Hokkaido" and high-fiving everyone within reach when a run is scored.
Being a Fighters fan means having more than one nutty outfielder who wears funny costumes before and after games.
Being a Fighters fan means you should go eat at Yakiniku Erika, which is a 5-minute walk from Nippori station.
Being a Fighters fan means knowing the last two lines were referring to Hichori Morimoto.
Being a Fighters fan means seeing the kanji "稀哲" and reading it "Hichori". (A strange unique name for a strange unique boy.)
Being a Fighters fan means sitting on a subway next to a complete stranger wearing an Ogasawara jersey and chatting about baseball as if you've been life-long friends.
Being a Fighters fan means you have to put up with Shinjo's crazy-ass stunts.
Being a Fighters fan means you actually ENJOY putting up with Shinjo's crazy-ass stunts.
Being a Fighters fan means you know the Seguignol wave and the Yukio Tanaka jump.
Being a Fighters fan means that you don't care how many years Yukio is past his prime, damnit, he's Yukio Freaking Tanaka and you'll cheer your head off for him.
Being a Fighters fan means that you've watched Kensuke Tanaka go from being "the other" Tanaka to being "the other" half of an awesome middle infield with Makoto Kaneko.
Being a Fighters fan means pretending Kazunari Sanematsu never existed.
Being a Fighters fan means that Tomoya Yagi was the 2006 PL Rookie of the Year, no matter what the judges decide.
Being a Fighters fan means that NO, the Texas Rangers (or anyone else) can't have Trey Hillman.
Being a Fighters fan means knowing that even though the new mascot BB the Bear is pretty dorky, he's nowhere near as bad as Fighty the... flamingo? pterodactyl? big ugly pink bird? was.
Being a Fighters fan means wearing fuzzy bear ears and waving an inflatable blue dolphin and being surrounded by hundreds of other crazy people doing the same thing.
Being a Fighters fan means having a deep spiritual connection with the island of Hokkaido even though you've never been there.
Being a Fighters fan means, most of all, that WE ARE NUMBER ONE!
Second Stage. Darvish. Sugiuchi. Wednesday at 6pm (2am PDT).
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Monday, October 09, 2006
The Truth About Ichiro
You may be wondering why I called this entry "The Truth About Ichiro". No, I haven't suddenly discovered that he's actually an alien from the planet Krypton or anything, don't worry.
True/False: Every game Ichiro started in his last year in Japan, he played right field and batted cleanup.
(For the answer, read on.)
You see, there's this myth going around that Ichiro played centerfield for a large proportion of his time in Japan, which is almost always propogated by people writing articles about Ichiro's move to CF this year on the Mariners. And quite frankly, that myth is wrong. I've always thought that Ichiro was primarily a rightfielder, but I never had data to back it up. Well, now I do.
A few weeks/months ago, I found this amazing page of every starting lineup in Japan from 1981 onward. While it's true that the starting orders don't necessarily indicate how many innings a player played at each position, it does indicate where they batted in the order, and generally what position they were playing, doesn't it? (I'm sure there's a databank somewhere that DOES have the exact innings that he played at each position, but I haven't found it, so this is what I do have. I don't think there's a Japanese version of Retrosheet, unfortunately.)
I wote a Perl script to parse out the starting lineup information for both Ichiro and Johjima. You can view the long outputs with breakdowns per year here:
Ichiro starting lineup spots, 1994-2000
Johjima starting lineup spots, 1995-2005
Ichiro, a summary, in 857 starts:
So, before people go off saying that Ichiro spent his entire career in Japan as a leadoff-batting centerfielder, maybe they should look at the data.
As for Johjima, in 1072 starts:
It's funny looking at who he batted behind in more recent years, too. The 2005 3-4-5 was usually Batista-Matsunaka-Johjima, and in 2003 and 2004 it was often Iguchi-Matsunaka-Johjima (yes, THAT Iguchi). Before that, Hiroki Kokubo batted 5th in front of him.
So, yeah. I hope this dispels some myths, though I fully expect to keep seeing articles where people insist Ichiro played centerfield for most of his time in Japan anyway.
(It's funny, though, because when I asked a friend in Japan whether he knew where I could get more concrete data on this, he laughed, like "I could have told them that without having to open up a stat book. Hell, I was the reverse: I didn't even know he'd ever played CF. He was always in right. At Orix he'd drop runners on the way to third like sacks of meat with sniper fire from deep right. He'd do that Superman shit catching hard liners out there. He owned right field.")
Speaking of which, congratulations to the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks for beating the Seibu Lions in today's playoff game and advancing to Second Stage! Hayato Terahara held together amazingly well, and it did come down to the bullpens in the eighth inning, with Hoshino walking Nakazawa and Matsunaka before Yamagishi came in and gave up a three-run homer to Julio Zuleta. Matoba doubled in another run and Matsunaka doubled another in the 9th. The final score was 6-1 Hawks. Now, onward to Wednesday, wherein I start cheering for the right team again. GO FIGHTERS! Yu Darvish was announced as the Fighters' starter for the first game. No idea who'll be up for Softbank; I'm guessing Saitoh, but who knows.
True/False: Every game Ichiro started in his last year in Japan, he played right field and batted cleanup.
(For the answer, read on.)
You see, there's this myth going around that Ichiro played centerfield for a large proportion of his time in Japan, which is almost always propogated by people writing articles about Ichiro's move to CF this year on the Mariners. And quite frankly, that myth is wrong. I've always thought that Ichiro was primarily a rightfielder, but I never had data to back it up. Well, now I do.
A few weeks/months ago, I found this amazing page of every starting lineup in Japan from 1981 onward. While it's true that the starting orders don't necessarily indicate how many innings a player played at each position, it does indicate where they batted in the order, and generally what position they were playing, doesn't it? (I'm sure there's a databank somewhere that DOES have the exact innings that he played at each position, but I haven't found it, so this is what I do have. I don't think there's a Japanese version of Retrosheet, unfortunately.)
I wote a Perl script to parse out the starting lineup information for both Ichiro and Johjima. You can view the long outputs with breakdowns per year here:
Ichiro starting lineup spots, 1994-2000
Johjima starting lineup spots, 1995-2005
Ichiro, a summary, in 857 starts:
Lineup spot:That is to say, he started about 70% of his games in right field. If you look at the text file with the extended breakdowns, you'll see that the last time he started over half his games in centerfield was 1995. The last time he started more than 10 games in centerfield was 1997. In 2000, his last year in Japan, EVERY game he started, he was batting cleanup and playing right field. He batted leadoff primarily for the 1994-1996 seasons, and batted third for almost all of 1997-1999.
1st : 311
2nd : 40
3rd : 399
4th : 107
Position starts:
LF : 24
CF : 225
RF : 608
So, before people go off saying that Ichiro spent his entire career in Japan as a leadoff-batting centerfielder, maybe they should look at the data.
As for Johjima, in 1072 starts:
Overall:Johjima's an interesting case. He started out batting 7th/8th a lot, then worked his way up to 6th, and then spent most of his last few years batting in the 5-spot. So when I originally said that I thought he'd never batted higher than 5th, I was wrong, but when I said he spent most of his career batting 5th or 6th, I was right. Either way, starting a bazillion games per season is nothing new to him, but batting third is not actually where he was accustomed to hitting, and he never batted 2nd, either.
--------
Lineup spot:
3rd : 38
4th : 35
5th : 443
6th : 360
7th : 105
8th : 88
9th : 3
Position starts:
C : 1039
1B : 11
DH : 22
It's funny looking at who he batted behind in more recent years, too. The 2005 3-4-5 was usually Batista-Matsunaka-Johjima, and in 2003 and 2004 it was often Iguchi-Matsunaka-Johjima (yes, THAT Iguchi). Before that, Hiroki Kokubo batted 5th in front of him.
So, yeah. I hope this dispels some myths, though I fully expect to keep seeing articles where people insist Ichiro played centerfield for most of his time in Japan anyway.
(It's funny, though, because when I asked a friend in Japan whether he knew where I could get more concrete data on this, he laughed, like "I could have told them that without having to open up a stat book. Hell, I was the reverse: I didn't even know he'd ever played CF. He was always in right. At Orix he'd drop runners on the way to third like sacks of meat with sniper fire from deep right. He'd do that Superman shit catching hard liners out there. He owned right field.")
Speaking of which, congratulations to the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks for beating the Seibu Lions in today's playoff game and advancing to Second Stage! Hayato Terahara held together amazingly well, and it did come down to the bullpens in the eighth inning, with Hoshino walking Nakazawa and Matsunaka before Yamagishi came in and gave up a three-run homer to Julio Zuleta. Matoba doubled in another run and Matsunaka doubled another in the 9th. The final score was 6-1 Hawks. Now, onward to Wednesday, wherein I start cheering for the right team again. GO FIGHTERS! Yu Darvish was announced as the Fighters' starter for the first game. No idea who'll be up for Softbank; I'm guessing Saitoh, but who knows.
Sunday, October 08, 2006
Short, Sweet, Sad, and Softbank
If you haven't already heard, Buck O'Neil died Friday night. From all accounts, he lived a long, happy, and fulfilling life, even including things like playing in a minor-league all-star game earlier this year, at the age of 94. The staggering amount of baseball history he was witness to is pretty amazing. You can read some of his history here or here.
That said, today the Yankees got knocked out of the ALDS by Jeremy Bonderman and the Tigers. I was helping some friends out with stuff, and we checked on the game, saw Posada was at-bat with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, and I said, "Oh look! It's the Yankees last and best chance, Jorge Posada!" and boom, he hit a two-run homer. I shut up, and the game ended shortly thereafter.
On the other hand, the postseason schedules will continue to be eastcoasteriffic as the Mets swept the Dodgers out of the NLDS.
The Padres did NOT get themselves swept out of the NLDS, beating the Cardinals 3-1. You have to wonder what sort of crazy day it is when the only hits the Cards manage are 2 each by Little Davey Eckstein and Ickle Ronnie Belliard, and So Taguchi is the only man on either side to hit a home run, but hey, whatever. Chris Young gets major Marinerd points for being ninety feet tall and graduating from Princeton. Anyway, the only division game on tomorrow will be the Cards-Padres, Woody Williams vs. Chris Carpenter. Not looking encouraging for the Pads, but who knows?
As I mentioned, the Seibu Lions and Softbank Hawks are playing the first stage of the Pacific League playoffs in Japan this weekend. I listened to last night's game and tonight's over internet radio, and OH MY GOD WHAT A PITCHING DUEL IT WAS YESTERDAY. Talk about the game of the year. They had the best pitcher in Japan, Kazumi Saitoh, going against the other best pitcher in Japan, Daisuke Matsuzaka, and it was, as promised, an astounding duel.
Both Saitoh and Matsuzaka went the complete game, Saitoh throwing 115 pitches in 8 innings, Matsuzaka 137 in 9. Matsuzaka didn't walk anyone, but he did HIT four batters, which was odd for him as he hit three batters ALL YEAR. Saitoh was magnificent, allowing only three baserunners in the first six innings and striking out 7 in that time. The Lions turned double plays in the first and fourth innings, and I was joking that the Hawks hadn't turned any because you can't get double plays when your pitcher doesn't let anyone get on base! Of course, then he walked Alex Cabrera, who was immediately erased when Kazuhiro Wada hit into a double play.
The 7th inning was where all the action was in the game. Matsuzaka struck out Shibahara and Tanoue to start off the top half of the inning, but Yuuichi Honda singled after that, and miracle of miracles, so did Naoki Matoba. Munenori Kawasaki was hit by a pitch to load the bases, and then Naoyuki Ohmura, who is usually good with RISP, grounded out to first, ending the inning. Doh. The Lions' heart of the order strung together three hits in the bottom of the 7th -- Hiroyuki Nakajima and Alex Cabrera singled, and then Kazuhiro Wada, undoubtedly annoyed at his earlier GIDP, hit a line drive to left field for a double, scoring Nakajima, and despite Saitoh retiring the next three batters, two on strikeouts for a total of 9 on the evening, the Hawks couldn't score anything off Matsuzaka in the 8th or 9th -- heck, he got STRONGER as the night went on, as he struck out 5 of 6 batters faced in those last two innings, for a total of 13 strikeouts for the evening. Even weirder, 9 of those strikeouts were in the last 4 innings, and the other 4 were in the first 5. Either way, it was pretty likely that whichever side could manage to scrape one run together would win, and it happened to be that the Lions won 1-0.
I'm rooting for the Hawks to win this weekend, but that's mostly because I think the Fighters will have a way easier time against them than they would the Lions. (This is based purely on the fact that the Fighters were 7-13 against the Lions this year but 12-8 against the Hawks.) Fortunately, they indulged me tonight by beating the Lions 11-3. I thought the radio announcer was literally going to explode when he was calling Nobuhiko Matsunaka and Julio Zuleta's back-to-back home runs in the 9th inning. Matsunaka had a fine game, going 3-for-5 and knocking in 5 runs. Let's hope he can get it out of his system this weekend :)
Tomorrow, Fumiya Nishiguchi, whose name cracks me up, takes the mound for Seibu. He's been good this year, but not as mind-bogglingly good as people thought he was last year. He's also been iffy against the Hawks. Fortunately for him, the Hawks have Hayato Terahara on the mound, who's got great raw talent, but is still figuring out how to be a pitcher. He's been iffy against the Lions this year, but then again, he's been iffy against everyone, and you never know if he's going to go out there and get lit up, or if he's going to go strike out 10 in 6 innings. So, it should be an interesting game if nothing else.
Something that is way freaking cool is that the Yokohama Bay Stars actually list their players' at-bat music. So I can indeed confirm all the songs I thought I heard were infact the songs I thought I heard.
And absolutely completely randomly, Bobby Valentine mentions the latest addition to the menu of the fast-food chain Lotteria -- the Bobby Burger. Oh my. It has pineapples on it.
That said, today the Yankees got knocked out of the ALDS by Jeremy Bonderman and the Tigers. I was helping some friends out with stuff, and we checked on the game, saw Posada was at-bat with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, and I said, "Oh look! It's the Yankees last and best chance, Jorge Posada!" and boom, he hit a two-run homer. I shut up, and the game ended shortly thereafter.
On the other hand, the postseason schedules will continue to be eastcoasteriffic as the Mets swept the Dodgers out of the NLDS.
The Padres did NOT get themselves swept out of the NLDS, beating the Cardinals 3-1. You have to wonder what sort of crazy day it is when the only hits the Cards manage are 2 each by Little Davey Eckstein and Ickle Ronnie Belliard, and So Taguchi is the only man on either side to hit a home run, but hey, whatever. Chris Young gets major Marinerd points for being ninety feet tall and graduating from Princeton. Anyway, the only division game on tomorrow will be the Cards-Padres, Woody Williams vs. Chris Carpenter. Not looking encouraging for the Pads, but who knows?
As I mentioned, the Seibu Lions and Softbank Hawks are playing the first stage of the Pacific League playoffs in Japan this weekend. I listened to last night's game and tonight's over internet radio, and OH MY GOD WHAT A PITCHING DUEL IT WAS YESTERDAY. Talk about the game of the year. They had the best pitcher in Japan, Kazumi Saitoh, going against the other best pitcher in Japan, Daisuke Matsuzaka, and it was, as promised, an astounding duel.
Both Saitoh and Matsuzaka went the complete game, Saitoh throwing 115 pitches in 8 innings, Matsuzaka 137 in 9. Matsuzaka didn't walk anyone, but he did HIT four batters, which was odd for him as he hit three batters ALL YEAR. Saitoh was magnificent, allowing only three baserunners in the first six innings and striking out 7 in that time. The Lions turned double plays in the first and fourth innings, and I was joking that the Hawks hadn't turned any because you can't get double plays when your pitcher doesn't let anyone get on base! Of course, then he walked Alex Cabrera, who was immediately erased when Kazuhiro Wada hit into a double play.
The 7th inning was where all the action was in the game. Matsuzaka struck out Shibahara and Tanoue to start off the top half of the inning, but Yuuichi Honda singled after that, and miracle of miracles, so did Naoki Matoba. Munenori Kawasaki was hit by a pitch to load the bases, and then Naoyuki Ohmura, who is usually good with RISP, grounded out to first, ending the inning. Doh. The Lions' heart of the order strung together three hits in the bottom of the 7th -- Hiroyuki Nakajima and Alex Cabrera singled, and then Kazuhiro Wada, undoubtedly annoyed at his earlier GIDP, hit a line drive to left field for a double, scoring Nakajima, and despite Saitoh retiring the next three batters, two on strikeouts for a total of 9 on the evening, the Hawks couldn't score anything off Matsuzaka in the 8th or 9th -- heck, he got STRONGER as the night went on, as he struck out 5 of 6 batters faced in those last two innings, for a total of 13 strikeouts for the evening. Even weirder, 9 of those strikeouts were in the last 4 innings, and the other 4 were in the first 5. Either way, it was pretty likely that whichever side could manage to scrape one run together would win, and it happened to be that the Lions won 1-0.
I'm rooting for the Hawks to win this weekend, but that's mostly because I think the Fighters will have a way easier time against them than they would the Lions. (This is based purely on the fact that the Fighters were 7-13 against the Lions this year but 12-8 against the Hawks.) Fortunately, they indulged me tonight by beating the Lions 11-3. I thought the radio announcer was literally going to explode when he was calling Nobuhiko Matsunaka and Julio Zuleta's back-to-back home runs in the 9th inning. Matsunaka had a fine game, going 3-for-5 and knocking in 5 runs. Let's hope he can get it out of his system this weekend :)
Tomorrow, Fumiya Nishiguchi, whose name cracks me up, takes the mound for Seibu. He's been good this year, but not as mind-bogglingly good as people thought he was last year. He's also been iffy against the Hawks. Fortunately for him, the Hawks have Hayato Terahara on the mound, who's got great raw talent, but is still figuring out how to be a pitcher. He's been iffy against the Lions this year, but then again, he's been iffy against everyone, and you never know if he's going to go out there and get lit up, or if he's going to go strike out 10 in 6 innings. So, it should be an interesting game if nothing else.
Something that is way freaking cool is that the Yokohama Bay Stars actually list their players' at-bat music. So I can indeed confirm all the songs I thought I heard were infact the songs I thought I heard.
And absolutely completely randomly, Bobby Valentine mentions the latest addition to the menu of the fast-food chain Lotteria -- the Bobby Burger. Oh my. It has pineapples on it.
Friday, October 06, 2006
Friday Foto: A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Innings
Just a few quick things first:
Next Friday there'll be some sort of USSM get-together at somewhere in Capitol Hill. Man, I should totally deck myself out in Nippon Ham Fighters gear and scare everyone.
Conor typed in his interview with Doug Fister! Yay!
The Pacific League Playoffs start at 1pm Saturday Japan Time, which is 9pm Friday Seattle Time. Wayne Graczyk explains the format of the series. Probable starters: the best pitcher in Japan (Kazumi Saitoh), and the other best pitcher in Japan (Matsuzaka). God, I wish I could watch this game. If anyone finds an internet broadcast of it, let me know. (EDIT: I am listening to a Japanese radio broadcast of it over the internet from here -- click on one of the baseballs. Still, I want to SEE it. Dammit!)
Anyway, it's been a long 2006 season...
"How I Spent My Summer Vacation"
Yeah, that's what my summer's worth of baseball tickets looks like.
56 games featuring 41 teams in 16 different stadiums in 9 different metropolitan areas in 2 countries.
33 games at Safeco Field, in which the Mariners went 20-13 (.607)
5 NL games, 5 minor league games, 11 NPB games, 31 AL games, 4 interleague games.
Average ticket price: $22.83
8 Mondays, 9 Tuesdays, 5 Wednesdays, 4 Thursdays, 10 Fridays, 12 Saturdays, 7 Sundays. And at that, only 3 Wednesdays and one Thursday were at Safeco, which means that I might be a poster child for "$10 Mondays and $11 Tuesdays".
I only went to 8 of the games on my 16-game plan. I should probably pick my season ticket plan differently next year.
I got 11 ticket signatures this year: Manny Sanguillen, Cole Hamels, Jeremy Affeldt, Jason Schmidt, Kirk Saarloos, Nick Swisher, Barry Zito, Tim Corcoran, Rich Harden, Joe Blanton, and Francisco Cruceta. (There's various other signed stuff in that pile. I think my autograph total for the year is around 30.)
I kept score at 54 out of 56 games. The only ones I skipped were August 6th and the Fighters game on September 9th.
Hello, my name is Deanna and I have a slight baseball addiction...
Next Friday there'll be some sort of USSM get-together at somewhere in Capitol Hill. Man, I should totally deck myself out in Nippon Ham Fighters gear and scare everyone.
Conor typed in his interview with Doug Fister! Yay!
The Pacific League Playoffs start at 1pm Saturday Japan Time, which is 9pm Friday Seattle Time. Wayne Graczyk explains the format of the series. Probable starters: the best pitcher in Japan (Kazumi Saitoh), and the other best pitcher in Japan (Matsuzaka). God, I wish I could watch this game. If anyone finds an internet broadcast of it, let me know. (EDIT: I am listening to a Japanese radio broadcast of it over the internet from here -- click on one of the baseballs. Still, I want to SEE it. Dammit!)
Anyway, it's been a long 2006 season...
"How I Spent My Summer Vacation"
Yeah, that's what my summer's worth of baseball tickets looks like.
56 games featuring 41 teams in 16 different stadiums in 9 different metropolitan areas in 2 countries.
33 games at Safeco Field, in which the Mariners went 20-13 (.607)
5 NL games, 5 minor league games, 11 NPB games, 31 AL games, 4 interleague games.
Average ticket price: $22.83
8 Mondays, 9 Tuesdays, 5 Wednesdays, 4 Thursdays, 10 Fridays, 12 Saturdays, 7 Sundays. And at that, only 3 Wednesdays and one Thursday were at Safeco, which means that I might be a poster child for "$10 Mondays and $11 Tuesdays".
I only went to 8 of the games on my 16-game plan. I should probably pick my season ticket plan differently next year.
I got 11 ticket signatures this year: Manny Sanguillen, Cole Hamels, Jeremy Affeldt, Jason Schmidt, Kirk Saarloos, Nick Swisher, Barry Zito, Tim Corcoran, Rich Harden, Joe Blanton, and Francisco Cruceta. (There's various other signed stuff in that pile. I think my autograph total for the year is around 30.)
I kept score at 54 out of 56 games. The only ones I skipped were August 6th and the Fighters game on September 9th.
Hello, my name is Deanna and I have a slight baseball addiction...
Thursday, October 05, 2006
And Now, A Word From Our Bonser
Not really, mind you. I'm just pretending to be clever.
The Marke Lowe Elbowe Lowe-Downe
So we all know that Mariners reliever Mark Lowe had surgery recently, and the M's make it sound like everything's all happy-fun, but Jeff Sullivan points out that this may be more serious than we think.
Summing The Summer
The Mariners mlb.com site offers a review of the season, which saves me the trouble of writing one. Aside from the fact that they seem to think our 30-year-old catcher is part of the "youth movement", most of what they have to say isn't unreasonable. It's true that when playing the AL West, we sucked enough ass to start a donkey farm, and it's encouraging that they call Snelling a keeper.
On the other hand, it's funny that Jon Huber ninja'ed Mark Lowe's reliever ERA title. Also, they left out strikeouts in the leader columns. It's obvious Felix leads the team with 176 -- heck, he was tied with Danny Haren for 6th in the AL -- but the funny story here is that Putz pushed himself up to 104 strikeouts when he closed out Saturday's game, putting him one ahead of Jarrod Washburn's 103. Apparently that made J-Rod the Washburninator bitter.
Guys Dig Chicks Who Know the Infield Fly Rule
Or so says David Wright.
Man, I bet he'd be even more impressed if he knew that at softball this year, I was playing second base, a pop fly was hit towards me, the infield fly rule was called, and I dropped the ball by accident anyway.
The Plot Thickens
A's 5, Twins 2
So my computer at work died this morning.
Good: I didn't have to do work for an hour or two.
Bad: I didn't have the A's-Twins Gameday ticker available.
Good: There's a TV in the lobby of my office building that was showing ESPN.
Bad: My boss caught me watching TV (but I explained to him that I was waiting to get my computer back from the IT guys).
Good: I saw Neshek pitching and Little Nicky Punto the Boy Superhero making an awesome catch in the stands.
Bad: I missed Kotsay's freaking inside-the-park home run. (I did get to see it later in the day on Sportscenter, though. I love how his jersey came completely untucked.)
Weird: The A's are heading home, and they're up 2-0 on the Twins. NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition. I sense a new nickname for Esteban Loaiza...
Mets 6, Dodgers 5
This one was probably a lot closer than anyone really wanted to admit.
But rather than an inside-the-park home run by one centerfielder against another, it featured two guys being thrown out at home plate on the same play, as both J.D. Drew and Jeff Kent reached home at the same time on a Russell Martin single, and Paul Lo Duca did what any catcher in his situation would do -- he tagged out everyone in sight.
In the grand tradition of the Dodgers -- you know, three men on third base and all -- this seems perfectly appropriate to me.
Eric Byrnes cracks me up
Unfortunately, I have no pictures or links for this one yet, but due to the Yankees game raining out, there wasn't much baseball to watch on TV by the time I got home at 7pm. On the other hand, I got to see the tail end of SportsCenter, which featured Eric Byrnes and Vernon Wells as commentators. Wells actually comes off as pretty conservative and intelligent from what I saw.
But Byrnes, man, he's just still so funny, and I swear he doesn't have nearly enough blood in his caffeine system. You can tell he's not really trying to be cool or announcer-like, he's just being candid and babbling about his ex-teammates on the A's, about the way different guys pitch, all the while talking about ninety miles a minute. Sometimes I think Byrnes would be a lot of fun to sit and watch a game with, although that might be because I also talk at a higher baud rate than most normal people.
Apparently he even said something about having "man-love for Derek Jeter" before I got home, but sadly, I missed it. Yeah, I know, the amount of man-love that ESPN has in general for Derek Jeter is somewhat apalling, but I love that Byrnes used a word like "man-love".
The Player's Blog-roll
I updated my earlier post to include all the ones I know of now that are actually blogging the postseason (Haren doesn't seem to be updating, so he's off the roll). These are actually pretty awesome to read:
Derek Lowe: "Tomorrow, we’ve got Hong-Chih Kuo going, and I know he’s a rookie and he’s only got one win -- and they’ve got Tom Glavine going and he’s got about a million wins -- but I like our chances."
Cliff Floyd: "[Mike] Cameron’s my boy. When he was here, with the Mets, we were like Frick and Frack. I was Frack."
Barry Zito: "This place is crazy, man. For whatever reason, they put a white roof on it. I guess nobody told them baseballs are white or something. We need to bring back those orange glow-in-the-dark balls we used to have growing up for games here."
Michael Cuddyer: "I've never been such a Royals fan in my life except for yesterday. It was a really cool situation."
While it's not a funny quote, I thought it was interesting that David Wright mentioned that his family couldn't come up for the weekday games, due to his brothers being in college and both of his parents working. That's both really cool and really sad -- I mean, it's not like he doesn't make plenty of money, but they're reputedly pretty down-to-earth and not going to do the whole quit-our-jobs-and-live-off-our-famous-son thing. On the other hand, I know that if *I* had a close relative playing in the MLB postseason, there's no way in hell I wouldn't be there to see it in person.
Stay Tuned
Upcoming posts from me will include my thoughts on the Hawaiian Winter Baseball league and which teams/players to keep an eye on, the 2006 roster of the All-Cute Team, and some funny statistics about my own baseball season, the oddest of which might be that in 56 baseball games attended this summer, I literally went to exactly one major-league game on a Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays...
The Marke Lowe Elbowe Lowe-Downe
So we all know that Mariners reliever Mark Lowe had surgery recently, and the M's make it sound like everything's all happy-fun, but Jeff Sullivan points out that this may be more serious than we think.
Summing The Summer
The Mariners mlb.com site offers a review of the season, which saves me the trouble of writing one. Aside from the fact that they seem to think our 30-year-old catcher is part of the "youth movement", most of what they have to say isn't unreasonable. It's true that when playing the AL West, we sucked enough ass to start a donkey farm, and it's encouraging that they call Snelling a keeper.
On the other hand, it's funny that Jon Huber ninja'ed Mark Lowe's reliever ERA title. Also, they left out strikeouts in the leader columns. It's obvious Felix leads the team with 176 -- heck, he was tied with Danny Haren for 6th in the AL -- but the funny story here is that Putz pushed himself up to 104 strikeouts when he closed out Saturday's game, putting him one ahead of Jarrod Washburn's 103. Apparently that made J-Rod the Washburninator bitter.
Guys Dig Chicks Who Know the Infield Fly Rule
Or so says David Wright.
Man, I bet he'd be even more impressed if he knew that at softball this year, I was playing second base, a pop fly was hit towards me, the infield fly rule was called, and I dropped the ball by accident anyway.
The Plot Thickens
A's 5, Twins 2
So my computer at work died this morning.
Good: I didn't have to do work for an hour or two.
Bad: I didn't have the A's-Twins Gameday ticker available.
Good: There's a TV in the lobby of my office building that was showing ESPN.
Bad: My boss caught me watching TV (but I explained to him that I was waiting to get my computer back from the IT guys).
Good: I saw Neshek pitching and Little Nicky Punto the Boy Superhero making an awesome catch in the stands.
Bad: I missed Kotsay's freaking inside-the-park home run. (I did get to see it later in the day on Sportscenter, though. I love how his jersey came completely untucked.)
Weird: The A's are heading home, and they're up 2-0 on the Twins. NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition. I sense a new nickname for Esteban Loaiza...
Mets 6, Dodgers 5
This one was probably a lot closer than anyone really wanted to admit.
But rather than an inside-the-park home run by one centerfielder against another, it featured two guys being thrown out at home plate on the same play, as both J.D. Drew and Jeff Kent reached home at the same time on a Russell Martin single, and Paul Lo Duca did what any catcher in his situation would do -- he tagged out everyone in sight.
In the grand tradition of the Dodgers -- you know, three men on third base and all -- this seems perfectly appropriate to me.
Eric Byrnes cracks me up
Unfortunately, I have no pictures or links for this one yet, but due to the Yankees game raining out, there wasn't much baseball to watch on TV by the time I got home at 7pm. On the other hand, I got to see the tail end of SportsCenter, which featured Eric Byrnes and Vernon Wells as commentators. Wells actually comes off as pretty conservative and intelligent from what I saw.
But Byrnes, man, he's just still so funny, and I swear he doesn't have nearly enough blood in his caffeine system. You can tell he's not really trying to be cool or announcer-like, he's just being candid and babbling about his ex-teammates on the A's, about the way different guys pitch, all the while talking about ninety miles a minute. Sometimes I think Byrnes would be a lot of fun to sit and watch a game with, although that might be because I also talk at a higher baud rate than most normal people.
Apparently he even said something about having "man-love for Derek Jeter" before I got home, but sadly, I missed it. Yeah, I know, the amount of man-love that ESPN has in general for Derek Jeter is somewhat apalling, but I love that Byrnes used a word like "man-love".
The Player's Blog-roll
I updated my earlier post to include all the ones I know of now that are actually blogging the postseason (Haren doesn't seem to be updating, so he's off the roll). These are actually pretty awesome to read:
Derek Lowe: "Tomorrow, we’ve got Hong-Chih Kuo going, and I know he’s a rookie and he’s only got one win -- and they’ve got Tom Glavine going and he’s got about a million wins -- but I like our chances."
Cliff Floyd: "[Mike] Cameron’s my boy. When he was here, with the Mets, we were like Frick and Frack. I was Frack."
Barry Zito: "This place is crazy, man. For whatever reason, they put a white roof on it. I guess nobody told them baseballs are white or something. We need to bring back those orange glow-in-the-dark balls we used to have growing up for games here."
Michael Cuddyer: "I've never been such a Royals fan in my life except for yesterday. It was a really cool situation."
While it's not a funny quote, I thought it was interesting that David Wright mentioned that his family couldn't come up for the weekday games, due to his brothers being in college and both of his parents working. That's both really cool and really sad -- I mean, it's not like he doesn't make plenty of money, but they're reputedly pretty down-to-earth and not going to do the whole quit-our-jobs-and-live-off-our-famous-son thing. On the other hand, I know that if *I* had a close relative playing in the MLB postseason, there's no way in hell I wouldn't be there to see it in person.
Stay Tuned
Upcoming posts from me will include my thoughts on the Hawaiian Winter Baseball league and which teams/players to keep an eye on, the 2006 roster of the All-Cute Team, and some funny statistics about my own baseball season, the oddest of which might be that in 56 baseball games attended this summer, I literally went to exactly one major-league game on a Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays...
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
If It Hadn't Been For Park Chan Ho, It'd Been Over Long Time Ago
Where did he come from, where did he go?
Here we go for more Postseason Hoedown. Or is that Hostseason Poe-down? Hmm.
Book Club
I can't make it to book club this Saturday at all. I am under the vague impression that it could go on without me, from what a few people have told me. Am I correct? I'm thinking that maybe it should go into a hiatus until DMZ's book comes out in February, although I may feel differently in a month or two when I start catching up on my stack of unread baseball books and want to force everyone else to read some of them too.
Most Evaluable Player
If you're a geek who thinks Win Probability is cool, the amazing and inimitable Jeff Sullivan over at Lookout Landing has been doing witty WinExp% charts for the Mariners all year, and the results are in -- JJ Putz was the WPA MVP of the team this year. Discussion ensues about where the faults in the method arise, as well, but I think we can all agree that Putz was a sensational closer. KENtastic also posted the Win Shares for the team, if you're more into the classic Bill James school of thinking. It puts Raul Ibanez at the top, and as he was the top hitter per WPA as well, this makes sense. Ibanez played in more games than Putz, of course, and he had one heck of a season (.289/.353/.516, 33 HR, 123 RBI), better than just about anybody anticipated.
A Long Long Time Ago, in a Galaxy Far, Far Away
...the Atlanta Braves didn't win a division title.
So Far, So Good, So What?
Zito 3, Santana 2.
Carpenter 5, Peavy 1.
Wang 8, Robertson 4.
I'm not allowed to make postseason predictions this year. I'm fine with pretty much anyone winning except the Yankees. If you stuck a gun to my head and asked me who I was rooting for, I'd probably say the A's, but if someone else stuck a gun to my head, I'd probably say the Twins, and then if someone else stuck a gun to my head, I'd be wondering where you all got these guns, and then suggest that it'd be delightful if Mike Cameron and Brian Giles both went yard off Jeff "Jered's Older Brother" Weaver tomorrow.
Even Kokoyakyu's a Rerun Tonight
Waseda vs. Komadai. Saito Yuki vs. Tanaka Masahiro, yet again, this time for the finals of the Hyogo Kokutai sports festival. Waseda won 1-0, with Saito pitching a shutout and driving in the only run of the game. I can't imagine this is going to make the insane Japanese media any less insane about him.
There's a Hiroshima Carp pitcher named Saito Yuki as well, who's only a year older than the high school star. One main difference is that he's left-handed. The other main difference is that he's apparently got a wicked sense of humor, and when he won his debut game the other day, he took out a red handkerchief to wipe his forehead during his post-game hero interview to poke fun of his name, playing off the blue handkerchief that started the Waseda star's "handkerchief prince" legacy. I heartily approve. (Thanks to Gary for the original pointer, of course)
Of course, if you look at their names it's obvious -- 斉藤祐樹 is Saito Yuki the 18-year-old Waseda pitcher, 齊藤悠葵 is Saito Yuki the 19-year-old Carp pitcher. Duh!
In a funny twist of fate, the Carp's Saito's victory debut game also featured my other favorite NPB name double, journeyman Kimura Takuya, currently on the Giants. It would be folly to confuse his name (木村拓也) with that of another Kimura Takuya (木村拓哉), the lead singer of the mega-popular J-Pop band SMAP, even though they too are only half a year apart in age.
(As a note, I know I've recently switched back and forth between lastname-first, firstname-first in describing Japanese players, but today I did lastname-first because of the kanji names. Also, I'm still damn inclined to spell it "Saitoh Yuuki", but I dunno, usually I've seen Japanese people romanize it "Saito Yuki", like on this book, so I'm going with that. For the record, I try to spell Japanese names the way the player does -- hence "Johjima" last winter when people were writing "Jojima", and hence "Saitoh" for Kazumi Saitoh, because HE spells it that way, it says "K. Saitoh" on his uniform, etc. And I'm pretty sure the guy on the Carp has "Saitoh" on his uniform as well.)
Here we go for more Postseason Hoedown. Or is that Hostseason Poe-down? Hmm.
Book Club
I can't make it to book club this Saturday at all. I am under the vague impression that it could go on without me, from what a few people have told me. Am I correct? I'm thinking that maybe it should go into a hiatus until DMZ's book comes out in February, although I may feel differently in a month or two when I start catching up on my stack of unread baseball books and want to force everyone else to read some of them too.
Most Evaluable Player
If you're a geek who thinks Win Probability is cool, the amazing and inimitable Jeff Sullivan over at Lookout Landing has been doing witty WinExp% charts for the Mariners all year, and the results are in -- JJ Putz was the WPA MVP of the team this year. Discussion ensues about where the faults in the method arise, as well, but I think we can all agree that Putz was a sensational closer. KENtastic also posted the Win Shares for the team, if you're more into the classic Bill James school of thinking. It puts Raul Ibanez at the top, and as he was the top hitter per WPA as well, this makes sense. Ibanez played in more games than Putz, of course, and he had one heck of a season (.289/.353/.516, 33 HR, 123 RBI), better than just about anybody anticipated.
A Long Long Time Ago, in a Galaxy Far, Far Away
...the Atlanta Braves didn't win a division title.
So Far, So Good, So What?
Zito 3, Santana 2.
Carpenter 5, Peavy 1.
Wang 8, Robertson 4.
I'm not allowed to make postseason predictions this year. I'm fine with pretty much anyone winning except the Yankees. If you stuck a gun to my head and asked me who I was rooting for, I'd probably say the A's, but if someone else stuck a gun to my head, I'd probably say the Twins, and then if someone else stuck a gun to my head, I'd be wondering where you all got these guns, and then suggest that it'd be delightful if Mike Cameron and Brian Giles both went yard off Jeff "Jered's Older Brother" Weaver tomorrow.
Even Kokoyakyu's a Rerun Tonight
Waseda vs. Komadai. Saito Yuki vs. Tanaka Masahiro, yet again, this time for the finals of the Hyogo Kokutai sports festival. Waseda won 1-0, with Saito pitching a shutout and driving in the only run of the game. I can't imagine this is going to make the insane Japanese media any less insane about him.
There's a Hiroshima Carp pitcher named Saito Yuki as well, who's only a year older than the high school star. One main difference is that he's left-handed. The other main difference is that he's apparently got a wicked sense of humor, and when he won his debut game the other day, he took out a red handkerchief to wipe his forehead during his post-game hero interview to poke fun of his name, playing off the blue handkerchief that started the Waseda star's "handkerchief prince" legacy. I heartily approve. (Thanks to Gary for the original pointer, of course)
Of course, if you look at their names it's obvious -- 斉藤祐樹 is Saito Yuki the 18-year-old Waseda pitcher, 齊藤悠葵 is Saito Yuki the 19-year-old Carp pitcher. Duh!
In a funny twist of fate, the Carp's Saito's victory debut game also featured my other favorite NPB name double, journeyman Kimura Takuya, currently on the Giants. It would be folly to confuse his name (木村拓也) with that of another Kimura Takuya (木村拓哉), the lead singer of the mega-popular J-Pop band SMAP, even though they too are only half a year apart in age.
(As a note, I know I've recently switched back and forth between lastname-first, firstname-first in describing Japanese players, but today I did lastname-first because of the kanji names. Also, I'm still damn inclined to spell it "Saitoh Yuuki", but I dunno, usually I've seen Japanese people romanize it "Saito Yuki", like on this book, so I'm going with that. For the record, I try to spell Japanese names the way the player does -- hence "Johjima" last winter when people were writing "Jojima", and hence "Saitoh" for Kazumi Saitoh, because HE spells it that way, it says "K. Saitoh" on his uniform, etc. And I'm pretty sure the guy on the Carp has "Saitoh" on his uniform as well.)
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
Postseason, heroes, and blogs, oh my!
Stupid Scheduling, or The Oakland A's Will Be At Work Earlier Than I Am During The ALDS
The first and foremost piece of business tonight is that the postseason schedules are up, and they're ridiculous. All of the 8pm Eastern games involve the Yankees or Mets. There are no games starting later than 5pm Pacific.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but... six out of the eight teams in the postseason aren't even on the east coast. Three of the eight (Dodgers, Padres, and A's) are even on the west coast. You can argue that the Twins and A's are small-market teams, but what kind of idiots wouldn't want to watch Barry Zito vs. Johan Santana at a time of the day better suited to pizza and beer rather than eggs and coffee? Oh, right, the sort of people who heard that Joe Mauer beat Derek Jeter for the batting title and said, "Joe Who?"
Over at Athletics Nation, the lovely and talented BaseballGirl went off and actually called the MLB commissioner's office, and found email addresses and phone numbers where one can vent their frustration at the situation. My housemate offered to Tivo some of the games for me, but I mean, a 10am game makes it highly unlikely I won't know the outcome and details of the game by the time I'd get home from work, which takes a lot of the fun out of watching it. If they seriously don't think anyone's going to watch the A's-Twins games, why not just have them start at a normal time for our small-market coast?
Players Blog It Too, or Wright Now Is Gum Time
In other postseasoniness, Michael Cuddyer and Barry Zito have joined the mlblogs.com family to theoretically blog the postseason. Oddly, the three mlblogs.com player blogs I've been reading for a while are also of players in the postseason -- Nate Robertson, David Wright, and Dan Haren, who really needs to update his. But none of these even remotely compare with Pat Neshek's blog, which he's been writing and maintaining on his own for the whole season, even before he made the majors. I've said it before, but if you don't read Neshek's blog, you're really missing out.
(morning edit: MetsGrrl informs us that Cliff Floyd also has a postseason blog. Neat.)
(evening edit: Derek Lowe joins the madness!)
Hometown Who-roes?
I was going to talk about the Hometown Heroes thing last week, since I thought it was really cool that Mike Schmidt was named Phillies Hero on his birthday -- but wanted to wait until all of the selections had been announced. Thing is, I still can't find a comprehensive page listing all 30. The first 20 are listed in this article, but that's it. Other choices not on that page:
Mariners, Ken Griffey Jr
Twins - Kirby Puckett
Red Sox - Ted Williams
Angels - Rod Carew
Astros - Nolan Ryan
Diamondbacks - Randy Johnson
Giants - Willie Mays
Padres - Tony Gwynn
Dodgers - Jackie Robinson
I can't seem to find one for the Rockies. Also, I think it's funny that Nolan Ryan is the hero for two teams and that Rod Carew is the ANGELS' Hero, since I always associate him with the Twins.
(EDIT: Yay! Tokyo Sam finds me the entire list here.)
Kazumi Saitoh, or I'm Sorry Being The Best Wasn't Good Enough
Alright, so the Pacific League season is over in Japan, and let me ask you all a question: What Japanese pitcher in the Pacific League do YOU think led the league in wins, strikeouts, innings pitched, ERA, and just about every other category under the sun?
No, no, not Daisuke Matsuzaka. He didn't win any of those categories. Good as he is -- and I'm not going to say he wasn't -- the best pitcher in the Pacific League this year was easily the Softbank Hawks' Kazumi Saitoh. My friends thought I was crazy when I said I basically took a train 200 miles north to Sendai for an afternoon just to see him pitch, but no, it was worth it. Saitoh's amazing. His fastball registers in the low 90's and he supposedly throws one of the best forkballs in Japan. Also, he's like 6'4" or so; I have one picture I took of him up in Sendai where he's at the plate with an umpire, a coach, and catcher Matoba, and towers over them all. He also seems like an interesting and intelligent guy, from everything I know of him.
Anyway, his line for the season looks something like this (with Matsuzaka for comparison, though nobody else really comes close to these two):
But it gets even more insane. I've been reading Saitoh's blog on his official website for most of the season, and the latest entry nearly made me cry. It's basically an apology to the Hawks fans for the team not being first place in the Pacific League, and saying that he feels like it's all his fault for letting them down and not winning that last game against the Fighters. But he says there's still a chance in the postseason, and it'll be tough, but he will do his best and so will the team and they'll be fighting all the way to win. (as an aside, though -- it's going to be a tough fight, with the Lions having home-field advantage in all games, and especially with Nagisa Arakaki sick with appendicitis.)
Seriously, this is a guy who should be a shoe-in for the Sawamura award, who even has a pretty good case for being league MVP, and he's apologizing for going out there and pitching 6 innings, giving up 3 runs, walking none, and striking out 10 guys.
You know, the only way I could possibly love him more, I think, is if he pitched for the Fighters :)
The first and foremost piece of business tonight is that the postseason schedules are up, and they're ridiculous. All of the 8pm Eastern games involve the Yankees or Mets. There are no games starting later than 5pm Pacific.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but... six out of the eight teams in the postseason aren't even on the east coast. Three of the eight (Dodgers, Padres, and A's) are even on the west coast. You can argue that the Twins and A's are small-market teams, but what kind of idiots wouldn't want to watch Barry Zito vs. Johan Santana at a time of the day better suited to pizza and beer rather than eggs and coffee? Oh, right, the sort of people who heard that Joe Mauer beat Derek Jeter for the batting title and said, "Joe Who?"
Over at Athletics Nation, the lovely and talented BaseballGirl went off and actually called the MLB commissioner's office, and found email addresses and phone numbers where one can vent their frustration at the situation. My housemate offered to Tivo some of the games for me, but I mean, a 10am game makes it highly unlikely I won't know the outcome and details of the game by the time I'd get home from work, which takes a lot of the fun out of watching it. If they seriously don't think anyone's going to watch the A's-Twins games, why not just have them start at a normal time for our small-market coast?
Players Blog It Too, or Wright Now Is Gum Time
In other postseasoniness, Michael Cuddyer and Barry Zito have joined the mlblogs.com family to theoretically blog the postseason. Oddly, the three mlblogs.com player blogs I've been reading for a while are also of players in the postseason -- Nate Robertson, David Wright, and Dan Haren, who really needs to update his. But none of these even remotely compare with Pat Neshek's blog, which he's been writing and maintaining on his own for the whole season, even before he made the majors. I've said it before, but if you don't read Neshek's blog, you're really missing out.
(morning edit: MetsGrrl informs us that Cliff Floyd also has a postseason blog. Neat.)
(evening edit: Derek Lowe joins the madness!)
Hometown Who-roes?
I was going to talk about the Hometown Heroes thing last week, since I thought it was really cool that Mike Schmidt was named Phillies Hero on his birthday -- but wanted to wait until all of the selections had been announced. Thing is, I still can't find a comprehensive page listing all 30. The first 20 are listed in this article, but that's it. Other choices not on that page:
Mariners, Ken Griffey Jr
Twins - Kirby Puckett
Red Sox - Ted Williams
Angels - Rod Carew
Astros - Nolan Ryan
Diamondbacks - Randy Johnson
Giants - Willie Mays
Padres - Tony Gwynn
Dodgers - Jackie Robinson
I can't seem to find one for the Rockies. Also, I think it's funny that Nolan Ryan is the hero for two teams and that Rod Carew is the ANGELS' Hero, since I always associate him with the Twins.
(EDIT: Yay! Tokyo Sam finds me the entire list here.)
Kazumi Saitoh, or I'm Sorry Being The Best Wasn't Good Enough
Alright, so the Pacific League season is over in Japan, and let me ask you all a question: What Japanese pitcher in the Pacific League do YOU think led the league in wins, strikeouts, innings pitched, ERA, and just about every other category under the sun?
No, no, not Daisuke Matsuzaka. He didn't win any of those categories. Good as he is -- and I'm not going to say he wasn't -- the best pitcher in the Pacific League this year was easily the Softbank Hawks' Kazumi Saitoh. My friends thought I was crazy when I said I basically took a train 200 miles north to Sendai for an afternoon just to see him pitch, but no, it was worth it. Saitoh's amazing. His fastball registers in the low 90's and he supposedly throws one of the best forkballs in Japan. Also, he's like 6'4" or so; I have one picture I took of him up in Sendai where he's at the plate with an umpire, a coach, and catcher Matoba, and towers over them all. He also seems like an interesting and intelligent guy, from everything I know of him.
Anyway, his line for the season looks something like this (with Matsuzaka for comparison, though nobody else really comes close to these two):
IP H ER HR BB K W L ERA WHIPInsane.
Saitoh 201 147 39 10 46 205 18 5 1.75 0.94
Matsuzaka 186.1 138 44 13 34 200 17 5 2.13 0.92
But it gets even more insane. I've been reading Saitoh's blog on his official website for most of the season, and the latest entry nearly made me cry. It's basically an apology to the Hawks fans for the team not being first place in the Pacific League, and saying that he feels like it's all his fault for letting them down and not winning that last game against the Fighters. But he says there's still a chance in the postseason, and it'll be tough, but he will do his best and so will the team and they'll be fighting all the way to win. (as an aside, though -- it's going to be a tough fight, with the Lions having home-field advantage in all games, and especially with Nagisa Arakaki sick with appendicitis.)
Seriously, this is a guy who should be a shoe-in for the Sawamura award, who even has a pretty good case for being league MVP, and he's apologizing for going out there and pitching 6 innings, giving up 3 runs, walking none, and striking out 10 guys.
You know, the only way I could possibly love him more, I think, is if he pitched for the Fighters :)
Monday, October 02, 2006
Game Report: Mariners vs. Rangers - Who Wants To Be A Millwood Heir?
I could write a game report from Saturday's game, but I spent most of it taking pictures, so I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. Click on any to see the full photo set (and I've got more I could add, but I want to see what these look like on another monitor before recalibrating). Page 6 is the incident where the umpires actually changed the ruling on Ian Kinsler being safe at first in the 8th inning.
To be honest, it was a downright crappy day. I overslept and ended up driving down; then the route I usually take was unavailable due to construction up around Western and Denny. I got out of the car at the lot at about 12:25pm, and notice that it's cold, windy, possibly dripping a tiny bit of rain, and they're CLOSING THE STADIUM ROOF. So not only did I miss batting practice, but it was a grey cloudy day which already meant awful lighting, and then the roof closing was only going to frustrate me more.
However, I'd bought a ticket for 10 rows behind the Rangers dugout, figuring I might as well get a great seat to my last game of the year, plus the whole Kevin Millwood thing.
So I took a whole lot of pictures. Some of them actually came out well, though I took a bazillion of Michael Young and Mark Teixeira that didn't come out at all. I took an inordinate number of Felix, and of Millwood, but many didn't come out that well just due to the lighting. I took a lot of Ichiro and Kinsler just due to their high socks. And sadly, even at close range, getting a good shot of post-homerun high-fives is really sort of a pain. It's one of the things I'd like to work on next year -- maybe I'll even bother getting a faster lens. We'll see. That 18-200 VR is looking juicier and juicier every day.
The thing is, when you take 600 pictures, you're bound to get at least a few good ones. I'd say that about half the ones I put in this photoset almost evoke "good enough for Yahoo Sports" and the other half evoke "Ha, that's pretty funny". Maybe I'll reduce/reorder the set sometime later. I dunno.
Either way, this is most likely my final baseball photo set for the year except for my Japan pictures, which I was figuring on releasing during the offseason, maybe as a Friday Foto series, maybe something else. I do have a LOT of Friday Foto fodder this year, it seems, if people want me to do that again this year.
What can I say about the game? The Mariners won it 3-1. Millwood was lovely to watch, but Felix was even better. Beltre's home runs were fantastic. Seeing the umpires reverse the call on Kinsler was pretty bizarre. Seeing JJ Putz pitch a nice 9th was good. My only real complaint about the game was that it was too damn short, seriously -- if I'm going to bother buying a Box seat, I want to enjoy my view for more than just two hours, y'know?
It was really weird leaving the stadium after the game, too, realizing that I wouldn't be back there until April, except maybe for Fan Fest. Very sad.
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To be honest, it was a downright crappy day. I overslept and ended up driving down; then the route I usually take was unavailable due to construction up around Western and Denny. I got out of the car at the lot at about 12:25pm, and notice that it's cold, windy, possibly dripping a tiny bit of rain, and they're CLOSING THE STADIUM ROOF. So not only did I miss batting practice, but it was a grey cloudy day which already meant awful lighting, and then the roof closing was only going to frustrate me more.
However, I'd bought a ticket for 10 rows behind the Rangers dugout, figuring I might as well get a great seat to my last game of the year, plus the whole Kevin Millwood thing.
So I took a whole lot of pictures. Some of them actually came out well, though I took a bazillion of Michael Young and Mark Teixeira that didn't come out at all. I took an inordinate number of Felix, and of Millwood, but many didn't come out that well just due to the lighting. I took a lot of Ichiro and Kinsler just due to their high socks. And sadly, even at close range, getting a good shot of post-homerun high-fives is really sort of a pain. It's one of the things I'd like to work on next year -- maybe I'll even bother getting a faster lens. We'll see. That 18-200 VR is looking juicier and juicier every day.
The thing is, when you take 600 pictures, you're bound to get at least a few good ones. I'd say that about half the ones I put in this photoset almost evoke "good enough for Yahoo Sports" and the other half evoke "Ha, that's pretty funny". Maybe I'll reduce/reorder the set sometime later. I dunno.
Either way, this is most likely my final baseball photo set for the year except for my Japan pictures, which I was figuring on releasing during the offseason, maybe as a Friday Foto series, maybe something else. I do have a LOT of Friday Foto fodder this year, it seems, if people want me to do that again this year.
What can I say about the game? The Mariners won it 3-1. Millwood was lovely to watch, but Felix was even better. Beltre's home runs were fantastic. Seeing the umpires reverse the call on Kinsler was pretty bizarre. Seeing JJ Putz pitch a nice 9th was good. My only real complaint about the game was that it was too damn short, seriously -- if I'm going to bother buying a Box seat, I want to enjoy my view for more than just two hours, y'know?
It was really weird leaving the stadium after the game, too, realizing that I wouldn't be back there until April, except maybe for Fan Fest. Very sad.
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