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Dr. D gets more tired of analyzing losses than you do of reading about them. But, you wanna know what happened. Apparently 30% of you want to know what happened without watching the Mariners.
Some spot starter out of the A's bullpen -- who knows what his name was -- threw the ball almost precisely the way James Shields throws it on his best day. The scrub had a tremendous power slider/cutter that broke 2" gloveside and whistled in at 84-89 MPH. That's the center clump on Brooks' movement chart. What a cutter! And he commanded it in the zone. Say whaaaaaa? He threw it 33 times.
And he had a 92 fastball. Command of it.
His 3rd pitch (!) was a quality changeup with the magic -8 MPH and more sink than usual. Command of it.
His 4th pitch (!!) was a tantalizing 77 MPH change-curve. Command of it. Threw his #4, least frequent, pitch more than 10% of the time. That is James Shields' weaponry, right on the button. It sounds like we're making excuses, we know, we know. But it's like the NBA: some guy who averages 11 points a game lights you up for 29 on a given night, you're going to lose. Or it's like Mike Montgomery: after he threw his second shutout, the Padres' fans weren't thinking Montgomery threw well. They were just thinking, "Why do the Padres stay out all night drinking."
But, if you want to grouse, go ahead with my blessing. Most the afternoon, the M's needed only 1 run to tie it, and you should score 1 run on Bob Gibson his ownself. Also, the A's have a terrible bullpen. So it's not like Shields Junior beat the 1974 Dodgers here. He woulda, but he didn't.
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Dr. Kelly's back, giving us our chemistry Ph.D to go with our MD, our Dr of Law and the guy who plays a doctor on your monitor. Glad to see you Dr. K. And thanks for cursing us today. This was supposed to be a freebie.
All y'all, there is a button that says ACTIVE THREADS. It's right above the carousel of articles. It takes you to the old sidebar that gave you a Recent Comments Menu. It's a better one, though. That was more information than should be jammed into a fraction of a sidebar. Now, one click and you can peruse the convo's with shoulders relaxed and eyes unsquinted.
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Don't feel like digging up anything info-taining about the M's. This is the anti-Warm Fuzzies post. So here is an interesting Hey Bill:
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Hey, Bill, I listen to sports radio sometimes and I hear former general managers (GMs) say a lot of things about teams' needs and trade options that sound sensible. Then I look them up and at least one of those people made a really dreadful trade when he was a GM, and as far as I can tell, did nothing else of note. I think about some current GMs and I think some of their decisions are pretty awful, and even thought so at the time they were announced, and yet I'm almost certain that if I heard them talk about baseball they'd sound knowledgeable and sensible to me. I am absolutely certain that they know more and better about what they are doing than I know about what they are doing. I'm not sure what my question is here, but I think it's this: Can you explain the apparent discrepancy?
Asked by: flyingfish
Answered: 6/29/2015
The past is a great deal more clear than the future. Looking at the future, Joey Butler may be Cecil Fielder, or he may be Mitch Meluskey or Gary Gray; we don't really know. When you combine a package of unknowns, sometimes you can miscalculate by an inconceivable margin. As the GM of the Vancouver Polar Bears, for example, I might conclude a) that Vancouver has a chance to win in 2000, b) that Rick Ankiel is the pitcher who can get us over the top, and c) that Vladimir Guerrero, playing for us in A ball, will never hit in the majors because he swings at everything. I trade Guerrero for Ankiel to bring Vancouver the pennant in 2000. All of that may be entirely reasonable based on the information that is available to me at the time, but then Vancouver goes into a slump the moment the trade is announced and finishes 25 games out, Ankiel loses all command of home plate and Vladimir turns out to be than one player in a thousand who doesn't need any strike zone, and I look like an idjit for making the trade. --
LINK TO BILL JAMES ONLINE.....
Dr. Detecto honestly doesn't know what more Jack Zduriencik could do this year, but he does know that Zduriencik's past 1,000 games GM'ed and his average return is 74 wins per season. Pretty well established that he don't have Pat Gillick's touch for a brushstroke. He holds other guys accountable, right?
Sigh,
jemanji
