|
June 19, 2013
THT Essentials:
Rich Barbieri
John Barten Kyle Boddy Brian Borawski James Gentile Matt Hunter Frank Jackson Chris Jaffe Brad Johnson Jason Linden Dan Lependorf Bruce Markusen Jeff Moore Greg Simons Scott Spratt Dave Studeman Shane Tourtellotte Steve Treder And here's the full roster. Now available THT's latest e-book Most Recent Comments
And That Happened (3)
30th anniversary: Bob Welch does it all (1) And That Happened (2) 30th anniversary: Keith Hernandez for Rick Ownbey and Neil Allen (4) Four teams, 38 innings, one historic day (9)   
Or you can search by:
 All content on this site (including text, graphs, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
Wednesday, May 09, 2012A job with your name on itThe Houston Astros and old buddy Mike Fast are looking for a summer intern for their Decision Sciences group. They're particularly interested in candidates with good database and front-end skills. If that sounds up your alley, here's the link. And That HappenedRangers 10, Orioles 3: Josh Hamilton: four bombs, eight RBI and 18 total bases on a 5 for 5 night. Every time he does something awesome this year I imagine him muttering something about how dumb it was for Jon Daniels not to talk about a contract extension before the season began. Yankees 5, Rays 3: Two homers for Raul Ibanez. Which most nights would get him kudos, but we have used up our kudo supply on Josh Hamilton. In other news, remember those Kudos chocolate covered granola bars? When my brother was in the navy and his ship was sent to the Persian Gulf in late 1990, the Mars Corporation sent an utter ass-load of those Kudos bars to them. They had them all the time every day and they got sick to death of them. Summer 1991 they were back in Norfolk and they had a dependants' cruise, allowing the families onboard. I went with my parents. They still had tons and tons of Kudos bars, and the sailors were begging everyone to take handfuls of them with us so they could clear out the stock. Rumor was that they'd get better candy bars once those where gone. I have no idea why I just told you all of this. Cardinals 6, Diamondbacks 1: A big night for multi-homer games. Carlos Beltran had two and drove in six runs. Like I said, we're out of kudos. Would you care for a Skor? Or a Whatchamacallit? God, I love Whatchamacallits. Jake Westbrook pitched seven shutout innings. He gets some Necco Wafers. Sorry, I know that sucks, but we're running out of candy. Athletics 7, Blue Jays 3: Earlier in the day yesterday I was on a radio show in Toledo that covers the Tigers and we talked about how hilarious it would be if Brandon Inge was a big hero this weekend when the A's play the Tigers. Well, he's warming up: walkoff grand slam. He's had two straight 4-RBI games. Pirates 5, Nationals 4: Rod Barajas hit a walkoff two-run homer. Henry Rodriguez was fugly in the ninth: a walk, two wild pitches and then that tater. The fact that the Nats signed Mike Gonzalez yesterday is no accident. Braves 3, Cubs 1: Hey, on the bright side, the Cubs actually gave Ryan Dempster one run of support. Which is a ton for him. I think they're gonna see if they can trust him with that and if things go well they may score two runs for him sometime in the near future. No need to go crazy or anything. Braves are tied for first, by the way. And while I watched this whole game, I didn't focus too hard on the second half because I was busy riffing on Chip Caray on Twitter. I gotta start watching the opponents' broadcasters so I'm not so distracted with fun pursuits like that. Mets 7, Phillies 4: Philly jumps out to a 4-0 lead but Joe Blanton didn't have nearly the mojo last night that he had in his last start. The first four guys in the Mets lineup went 8 for 17 with 5 RBI. Astros 3, Marlins 2: Houston ends Miami's seven-game winning streak. All-Star infielder Omar Infante had two errors on one play in the sixth allowing two Houston runs to score. White Sox 5, Indians 3: Alex Rios tripled home the go-ahead run off Chris Perez in the 10th and scored himself on a subsequent fielder's choice. Rios has beaten up on Perez quite a bit in recent years. Twins 5, Angels 0: Scott Diamond had seven shutout innings. The Twins had 12 hits and walked four times. Royals 6, Red Sox 4: Billy Butler with a big three run homer in the eighth. The AP game story, at least as it was written as of 11:15 PM last night, referred to Butler as the Royals' "portly designated hitter." Which is pretty hilarious and I'll be sad if they scrubbed it out by this morning. Brewers 8, Reds 3: Aramis Ramirez his a bases loaded triple and Ryan Braun had three hits and scored twice. Giants 2, Dodgers 1: Ryan Vogelsong outuels Clayton Kershaw. Brett Pill's third inning two-run bomb was all that was needed. Tigers 6, Mariners 4: Kevin Millwood has to be about done, right? (5 IP, 8 H, 5 ER, 5 BB, 3K). The pen was shaky again, as Jose Valverde walked the bases loaded in the ninth, but this time the Tigers shook loose. Padres 3, Rockies 1: Comeback story Jeff Suppan wins again. Will Venable doubled and tripled. The Rockies have lost five straight. Last week’s recordIt happened last week. On May 2, the Braves came back from a 6-0 deficit to defeat the Phillies and Roy Halladay. Then, after an intervening 4-2 loss, they came back from 5-0 down to beat the Rockies on May 4 and from 6-0 down to win on May 5. That’s three big comebacks in four days. And it was the fastest such set of comebacks in baseball history. Using the Retrosheet game log database, I found 1,799 games where the winning team came back from 5-0 or worse. (Note that I am not looking at all leads here—only leads where the ultimately winning team has not yet scored.) A total of 137 teams performed this feat three times or more in a season. Six teams did it five times in one season, the most recent being the 1987 Cincinnati Reds. I then looked to see how quickly these teams got three such wins. Until last week, the record was held by the 1949 Boston Braves, who came from 6-0 down to beat the Brooklyn Dodgers on 5/28, from 5-0 down to beat the Phillies on 5/31 and from 5-0 down to beat Pittsburgh on 6/1. That’s three big comebacks in five days. Also notable are the 1997 Anaheim Angels, who came back from 5-0 down three times in six days: 5/12 (White Sox), 5/14 (Orioles) and 5/17 (Brewers). And honorable mention goes to the Pittsburgh Pirates, who came back to win both ends of a doubleheader after trailing 5-0 in the first game and 7-0 in the nightcap against the Philadelphia Athletics. I think records are set in baseball every week. You just have to know where to look. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||