All-Star Game LiveBlog
Dave · July 13, 2010 at 1:29 pm · Filed Under Mariners
For those of you interested in such things, I’ll be liveblogging the all-star game for FanGraphs from my perch here in Anaheim. I’ll start at 4 pm pacific time, and you can come hang out and watch the game with me here.
Decent game, but the singer who sang the National Anthem butchered it. Why do pop singer’s think it’s cool to sing 48 notes where there is only one called for. She flat out ruined it.
That’s what hundreds or thousands of dollars in vocal lessons over the course of your lifetime will do to your ego.
You’ll start thinking 48 notes is the bare minimum that you’re gonna showcase when the song calls for three.
I never spent that much, but have similar music training…and can tell you on a stack of Bibles that if you run among those types, you’ll find a thousand someones who think they’re the “Charlie Parker of vocalists”- and once they have the stage, try to prove it.
The end result: chop-house butchery when you were aiming for Michelangelo-like sculpture.
I don’t know how many caught it, but during the All-Start game Elise at KJR had Steve Kelly on, and he was so stupid that I wanted to drive and punch him in the nose.
He argued against trading Jeff Clement and Brandon Morrow. He basically spent an entire hour defending the way Bill Bavasi looks at teams, and continued to argue, in a very strange manner, that we should trade Ichiro. His logic was this:
1) We are paying Ichiro $18M a year, and he probably brings in that much, if not more, in revenue on his own (between the merchandising and the Japanese TV deal).
2) Because this money is made back, we should spend more on someone else.
3) Since we don’t spend that money, we don’t need him, and therefore we should trade him.
He also went on to say that even though he gets 200+ hits a year, we don’t win with him.
According to him, therefore, Jamie Moyer is the most valuable player in baseball, because teams around him have done very well.
Elise didn’t bother to mention that the team around him has been terrible. She actually said that Ichiro should change his batting style and hit for more power.
So, in conclusion, Steve Kelley is an idiot, and If you see him, tell him I said that. Give the Geoff Baker nonsense, with this, I’m in support of firing the baseball writers, more than the manager and GM.
Oh, I did want to mention something about the All-Star game… If the Yankees make it back to the World Series, Joe Girardi will have to realize that them not having home field advantage is because he left a giant tub of buttered popcorn out there to run the bases, with everyone on the bench, and everyone in the stadium, and almost everyone in the state where the game was being played, being faster than his base runner.
And a Boston Red Sox player, no less.
I love it.
Speaking of stupid commentary….
Every ASG McCarver says (at least) one thing that makes me want to throw something through my TV set, and then throw my TV out the window. This year’s gem:
As Adam Wainwright takes the mound, the Fox graphics department puts up a chart showing the home/road split for his Win-Loss record:
home: 9-0
road: 4-5
McCarver immediately chimes in that there’s “an easy explanation” for that disparity. And what would that be? The mound is different in every road stadium, but it’s always the same at home. Then he expresses amazement that more pitchers don’t show a similar extreme home-road split for this reason.
Think about this for a second. Pitchers should record more losses on the road than at home, and the primary reason is the mound.
Ok, Tim, allow me to step into your bizarro McCarverWorld for a second. If the mound is so important, and most pitchers don’t show much of a home / road split, shouldn’t the logical conclusion be that there isn’t much difference in mounds from stadium to stadium? Or maybe that the mound just isn’t as important as you think it is?
Of course, out here in the real world where we actually think about what we’re saying, we recognize how meaningless pitching Wins and Losses are and how stupid it is to assign a team stat like that to a particular pitcher, so we wouldn’t even be talking about it in the first place.
Anyway, earlier Joe Buck was talking about them eating hot dogs. But frankly (ha!) I don’t want to know what is going into McCarver’s mouth, because it clearly has other uses, seeing as he’s talking out of his ass.
Well, congrats to the NL for finally getting around to winning another freaking All-Star Game after like a zillion years or so!
Now, let’s see how the Yanks handle not having “home field advantage” in the World Series for a change…LOL! 🙂
Great post, BTW, Joser. Who knows what really runs through the windmills of Tim’s, ah, “mind”?!
I will not listen to any Tim McCarver broadcast. If it’s a game that I wanna watch, and I can’t get it on the radio, I will just mute it.
The same things applies to JC Pearson for Fox’s NFL coverage, though he is gone now. Especially considering that Fox considered him their lowest tiered guy, so if he was calling the game, you knew that no one gave at the network level gave a damned about that game, and so it was going to be a crappy broadcast.
This was my favorite game thread in a long time.
Wait, what? I must have missed that story…
Got another one for you. McCarver talking about David Price and Ubaldo Jimenez: They both throw 100 but Ubaldo throws a heavy 100mph ball while Price throws a soft 100mph.
Uh, what?!?!
Holy crap, he patted her on the thigh probably saying sorry after he went after a ball in the stands. Stop trying to make something out of nothing.
Exactly!
He tapped the girl on the leg and asked if she was alright … after scraping his glove against her face in pursuit of a foul ball.
I saw someone (a teacher I believe he said) post a statement the next day that he would have been fired for such an “offense.” Bull Shit on the State of WA educational system – alert!
Ditto to Mid80’s righty post above.
Man, what happened to this site?
There isn’t a player in baseball that gives straight answers. IF they did almost every answer to a journalist would be “That’s a stupid question, were you even watching the game?”
How often does he get thrown out at third? Hit baserunning remains good.
His WAR is already 3.0, and it’s mid-July.
And apparently that diving backwards catch into the wall in Spring Training must have been done by Willie Bloomquist or Raul Ibanez.
I think the only thing that Ichiro can’t do is make some Seattle fans happy.
Divish reports Ackley (and Paredes and Vavaro) has been promoted to Tacoma.
Ackley getting “pushed” … Good news. Time to take the family truckster to T-Town.
Paredes and Varvaro: Are they 40-man roster space eaters that need evaluation at the higher level before a decision can be made on them, or are they actually guys that may be able to help in the Mariners bullpen? Strike that … anybody could probably help in the Mariners bullpen.
Neither Paredes or Varvaro have overall “eye popping” numbers throughout their career or even in AA this season, but Varvaro does have 46K’s in 34 innings this year … which is really good!
Carson, Jay: What say you?
September cups-o’-coffee, perhaps?
Well, I guess he thinks because Jimenez is pitching his home games at altitude, he has to throw that “hard” 100-mph fastball whereas Price can get away with throwing the “soft” one…
(/rolleyes)
Gotta love McCarver’s “logic”…sigh.
i don’t know if I’m going to have time for a whole post of it, at least not immediately, but the short is that Varvaro has made appreciable strides in his command this season but it may not be enough just yet and Paredes, when healthy, is pretty awesome but also has some command problems.
Thanks Jay – you da’ man!
Sounds like there are legitimate reasons for both relievers being promoted and that more development work is necessary. Also creates room on the AA roster for the prospects picked up from the Rangers in the Cliff Lee trade last week.
The other end of the “spectrum” for reduced playing/pitching time – sounds like it is going to occur in Tacoma (Hannahan, Woodward, any number of current relievers)?
The Tacoma bullpen for a while has been patched together with a random assortment of quad-A relievers, so I don’t see that as being problematic.
henryv, well said.
And
I’m not sure about “fans”, but there are a few bashers who just seem to hang around for that purpose.
I just watched the first part of the ASG, but the highlights for me were Ichiro’s great catch of Pujol’s line drive sure extra baser, and Cliff Lee striking Pujols out. You know you are good when you can get one of the best hitters in the game like that.
By the way, the reaction of the Anaheim fans was pretty funny. There was really a lot of booing of Yankees and Red Sox players/coaches.
The highlights for me were probably:
1) Ichiro’s catch
2) Braun’s catch
3) Lee’s strikeout of Pujols
4) McCann’s game-winning double
5) Scott Rolen’s hustle ahead of McCann’s double — which was pretty darn good yet for a guy who’s 35
& 6) Valverde’s striking out the side in the top of the ninth
Re the fans’ reaction…he may be Red “Sock” these days, but I was a bit surprised to hear Adrian Beltre get booed like that in SoCal — especially when the Anaheim crowd seemed relatively polite toward the current Dodger guys when they were announced.