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March 06, 2012

Don Mincher career highlights

The other day, the baseball world lost another one of its veterans, as Don Mincher passed away at age 73. The first baseman enjoyed a 13-year career mainly with the Twins, but he also played with the Angels, Pilots, Rangers and A’s, and he played with both Senators squads—he was on the clubs that moved out of Washington to both Minnesota and Texas.

After his playing days, he became general manager of the Huntsville (Ala.) Stars, the Double-A affiliate of first the A's, then (and now) the Milwaukee Brewers. And he served as president of the Southern League from 2000 to last October..

When a player dies, it’s time to look back on his life and career. Others can do a better job looking at the man himself. Below are his career highlights. These include his personal highest and lowest moments, the greatest and most important games he participated in, and some of the oddities he was personally on hand for. Also, because he was a Pilot, we’ll also include one or two of the better Mincher-related anecdotes from Jim Bouton’s book, Ball Four.

Here they are, in order and divided by team he played for:

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Posted by: Chris Jaffe

October 31, 2011

Postseason predictions wrap-up

Twenty Hardball Times staffers made their predictions of how the 2011 postseason would play itself out. Some proved prescient, a few less so. Let's take a look at the rankings to see whose guesses came closest to, and shortest of, perfection.

Scoring was based on a 5-3-1 system similar to regular-season awards: If someone picked a Division Series correctly, that person received one point, choosing an LCS winner garnered three points, while being a fortune teller and predicting the World Series winner earned five points. (Nobody got those five points.)

Here are everyone's picks and the results, ranked by total points.
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Posted by: Greg Simons

October 18, 2011

LCS prediction results

With the World Series competitors set—and good luck to the Rangers and Cardinals—it's time to review how the Hardball Times' staff did in the League Championship Series and compare their picks to those of our readers' contest entries.

The champion picker among our readers—and the winner of a copy of The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2012—is Eugene Douglas. He eliminated any need for a World Series-winner tiebreaker by being the only entrant to have a team actually in the World Series.

Eugene tied for the lead going into the League Championship Series by picking three Division Series winners—Detroit, Texas and Milwaukee. (Note Detroit: He's a Yankees fan.) So the Rangers won it for him, which is only proper because he works as a software programmer in Washington, D.C., where the Rangers once played....

The Annual, currently in production, will be available later this fall. We'll be sure to let you know on this site exactly when you can order yours.

There were a couple of mistakes in our previous article about Hardball Times staff picks, with "Prescient" Ben Pritchett already given credit for his pick of the Tigers winning the LDS, which put him in a three-way tie at that time. Additionally, Mat Kovach had correctly chosen the Cardinals over Philly, so he vaulted into a tie with Ben and Greg Simons with three LDS picked accurately.

In the LCS round, only Ben, Greg and Sam Hendrickson chose one of the World Series entrants correctly; Ben and Sam picked Texas, while Greg selected St. Louis.

Using a 1-3-5 scoring system, right now, Ben and Greg are tied with six points each. The only THT staffer who has a shot at getting another pick right is Sam, who chose Texas to win the Fall Classic. Check back after the World Series for the full results rundown.
Posted by: THT Staff

October 17, 2011

Offensive surge gives Cardinals NL pennant

The St. Louis Cardinals are in the World Series for the third time in eight years after an offensive explosion propelled the Redbirds to a six-game series win over heated rival Milwaukee. St. Louis scored 43 runs over the six games, including a dozen in a 12-6 win on Sunday night.

The Cardinals offense improved its overall numbers from the regular season and currently top the eight postseason teams in batting average and are second in on-base percentage and slugging.

	             AB	        Slash Line	 HR	XBH
Cards Reg. Season   5532      .273/.321/.425	162	502
Cards Postseason     386      .288/.345/.448	 10	 39

Rafael Furcal's solo home run in Game Six gave the veteran shortstop nine home runs since the start of the regular season, and six of those have come against Milwaukee. But the real story in the playoffs for Tony La Russa's squad is the emergence of David Freese as a frightening presence in the lineup.

Freese hit a home run every 36.3 plate appearances in the regular season, and that number is down to 10.75 in the playoffs. He's averaging an extra-base hit every 4.77 plate appearances, about once per game, down from once every 13.44 regular season PA. The staggering numbers do not stop there:

	                 PA	  Slash Line	 HR	XBH
Freese Reg. Season	363	.297/.350/.441	 10	 27
Freese Postseason	 43	.425/.465/.850	  4	  9

Freese probably would not be able to duplicate those numbers on his favorite game console, and his surge of offensive proficiency and prowess is a major reason why the Cardinals are the NL's surprise World Series entrant.
Posted by: Shlomo Sprung

October 11, 2011

LCS thoughts & theories 10/11

Bullpen battle taken by Texas

After Texas starter Derek Holland was pulled with two outs in the third inning of Monday's ALCS game two, Rangers manager Ron Washington had to put his bullpen into action way earlier than he ever would have anticipated. Then the game went into extra innings, and the Rangers relief corps remained nearly perfect.

Texas' bullpen threw 8.1 scoreless innings, and they were rewarded by Nelson Cruz's 11th-inning grand slam that gave the Rangers a 7-3 win over Detroit and a 2-0 series lead going back to the Motor City. The Tigers' bullpen was perfect before Ryan Perry imploded in the 11th, but the battle of the bullpens has been a huge reason why Texas has taken the first two games at home in Arlington.

 
	         IP	Record   ERA	WHIP	 K/9	   
Texas Bullpen	12.2	  2-0   0.00	0.65	11.8	   
Detroit Bullpen	 8.0	  0-1   4.50	1.00	 4.5	 

With the next games shifting over to Comerica Park, the Rangers relievers have a lot to live up to if they want to remain as close to flawless as possible. For the Tigers, the margin of error is close to none, which was proven with one swing of the bat Monday night.

Brewers starters unstable sans Gallardo

Milwaukee survived the NLDS against Arizona by winning all three of its home games, but the Cardinals offense has proven not as kind to the Brewers at Miller Park as the Diamondback hitters were.

Shaun Marcum allowed five runs in four innings in the Brewers' 12-3 loss to St. Louis in Game Two of the NLCS and continued the trend of Milwaukee starters not named Yovani Gallardo stumbling and faltering in the postseason. Zack Greinke struggled in the team's Game One win, and Randy Wolf was abysmal in the Division Series in Phoenix. Let's see how extreme the splits are between Gallardo and the rest of the Brewers rotation.

	                 IP	Record   ERA	WHIP	 K/9	   
Yovani Gallardo	        14.0	  1-0   1.29	0.92	9.00	   
MIL SP w/o Gallardo	18.2	  1-2   9.53	2.07	7.54	 

Gallardo can only pitch two more games in this League Championship Series, so Ron Roenicke will need at least one of his other starters to perform up to team standards and fulfill this team's rightfully lofty expectations.
Posted by: Shlomo Sprung


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