I Bet You Won't Finish Your Popcorn

This first weekend in May 2015 wields a double edged sword. The weekend that essentially started on Thursday could be either sports fan nirvana or the final debacle for a degenerate gambler.

The yearly talent crapshoot known as the NFL draft kicked off the weekend on Thursday. Teams have probed, poked and tested about 2,000 of the young men they see as the top college talent. All that evaluation is done in the hope they will find the next Peyton Manning and not the next Ryan Leaf. After a season that offered as much if not more coverage given to off the field issues than to the play on the field, the word “character” became the hacky sack of every broadcast.  I guess watching Jameis Winston throw the football makes everyone forget about the other stuff.  For every Tyrann Mathieu there are 5 Justin Blackmon’s it seems. Only time will tell if all the character questions had merit, though I will be surprised if more than 3 of the top picks in this draft play out their rookie contract.  The most popular bets available on the draft define insanity; you can bet on where any player will be drafted, who the first running back drafted is and which conference will have the most players drafted. I will bet that any players unfortunate enough to be drafted by those whoopee cushions known as the Redskins and Browns will come to camp stocked up on Prozac to cope with the insanity.

Saturday presents us with the most exciting two minutes in sports followed later by the richest fight in boxing history. The Kentucky Derby is the only “pre-game” that rivals the Super Bowl. At least with the Derby there are other races to watch instead of seventeen human interest stories about a player’s gardener’s dog’s barber. Well, all the pre derby stuff is worth watching just for the big crazy hats isn't it? The races yes, for the hats no, no it’s not.  It was unfortunate that California Chrome missed the Triple Crown last year since it was a neat story of a great little horse, though it only furthered the notion there will never be another Secretariat.  My pick, Carpe Diem, didn’t carpe enough, which is why I don’t bet on horse racing unless I happen to be at the track in Saratoga Springs. I hit the trifecta the last time I went though it sure wasn't enough to retire to St. Thomas.

I hope the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight lives up to the hype after waiting so long for it to happen. Apparently it is already the richest fight in boxing history and at $ 90.00 for pay-per-view in standard def I think I’ll stick with plain old Netflix.  I went to a pay-per-view event for Tyson- Spinks (I didn't buy the tickets) and that was over before I finished my popcorn.  I hope anyone that made the investment on this fight gets to finish theirs. These guys are both long in the tooth for boxers though I expect the fight to go the distance. I don’t see either being able to knock the other out, unless it’s happens to be of the Hollywood double knockout variety.

Behind these big three, the NBA and NHL playoffs are in full swing and into the second round. I’m going on a short limb and wagering these early rounds will have more drama than the finals in either league.  We can’t forget baseball still has over 135 games to go before their playoffs begin. That season seems so long because of the number of games, though time wise it’s really only longer than the NFL.  If you’re a fan of any or all of the sports action this weekend I wish you luck in having the time to finish your popcorn. For all you gamblers out there I hope you managed to hang on to enough gas money to get to you to work Monday. If not, I hope you have a good pair of shoes and a friendly looking thumb or maybe even some leftover popcorn.

Throwback Pitcher

     

     I rarely will sit and watch baseball on the tube anymore, though I have been to a few D-Backs games at “whatever the hell they call it now” Field in Phoenix. It really is much more enjoyable in the stands than on TV because you realize there is more going on than what the camera can show you at any given moment. My baseball on TV watching is pretty much confined to catching some of the World Series. There are two memorable examples for me of catching just the World Series at seasons end; now I have a third. The first was when our local Diamondbacks beat the Yankees on a bloop single in game 7 back in 2001; it was great to finally have a championship for an Arizona team. The other was an even bigger deal for this New England mutt. I could have sworn there was something in my eye watching the Red Sox finish a sweep of the Cardinals back in 2004; I couldn't help wishing some of the die-hard Red Sox fans I knew could have been there to witness what I did that night. Many of them have passed on, including my dad, so the end of the game was thoroughly surreal and bit overwhelming. Now if the Cubs could just get there and do the same, it would probably stop global warming.

     Along comes this past Wednesday night, and I managed to catch the last few innings of Game 7 of the World Series, which was the first bit of baseball I watched all season. I’d had kind of half an ear tuned to the series, so I knew the teams were taking turns kicking the crap out of each other.

     I was surprised to see a one run game in the 6^th inning, so I decided what the heck watch the last few innings and see which team self-destructs.  What I saw was a pitching display that will be written about for years to come, especially with the current way pitchers are handled.  As I watched I was amazed at how he gave those guys nothing to hit, and could still turn it loose when he needed. The network flashed a graphic across the screen showing what the Giants Madison Baumgardner was doing hadn't been done in over a 100 years; a few weeks ago I wrote a piece about something similar :

http://theholeinthepaper.blogspot.com/2014/09/where-are-all-guys-with-rubber-arms.html

   

     Being a failed Little League pitcher myself, that lead the league my last year in plunking kids in the head, I am prone to admire a pitcher that has command of a game the way Baumgardner did the other night.  Being witness to a demonstration like that for a part time baseball fan was definitely a happy accident.  My hope is some real baseball fans got to partake as well. 

Where Are All the Guys with Rubber Arms?

Yesterday while watching the most over produced show on TV, AKA Sportscenter,I saw the Phillies had 4 pitchers combine to throw a no-hitter.  A no-hitter isn’t a common occurrence, even more uncommon is a collection of pitchers pulling one off. Usually when a guy has a no hitter going he keeps throwing until he either finishes it off or self-destructs. There was mention of the starter reaching 108 in his pitch count so they had to pull him, though I think issuing walks to everyone but the hot dog vendor was an additional concern. The mention of the pitch count got me to thinking and though I don’t follow baseball much and haven’t for a good while, when I hear talk about pitchers the subject of pitch count always seems to worm its way in to the conversation. My question is, if so many pitchers now playing in the majors are closely monitored for pitch count why are so many blowing their arms out in a relatively short period of time?  I look at talented guys like Kerry Wood, Brandon Webb, and Mark Pryor and wonder how come these guys burned so bright and then got hurt and faded away?  With all the science involved in pitching anymore why hasn’t it improved pitchers ability to keep their arm intact and pitch at a high level for a long time? So, okay that’s three questions, math challenged at the moment I guess.  With daily occurrences like the quick hook in yesterday’s no hitter it is no wonder the complete game has almost disappeared from the stats book. Last season two pitchers tied for the most with 4. Four. Only twice in the last 15 years has the major league leader hit double digits in complete games, James Shields in 2011 and Randy Johnson in 1999.  It has almost become a self-fulfilling prophecy for arm trouble by focusing so much on preventing it happening. The complete game has slowly been disappearing from the game over the last several decades and though it is not a great measurement of a pitcher’s ability, it makes the obsession with pitch count all the more baffling.

As these questions were bouncing around the playground that is my mind I decided to do some investigating on when complete games for pitchers started to became a disappearing statistic.  The numbers have dwindled year after year since the early 80’s, with last pitcher to hit twenty in 1986  being Fernando Valenzuela and 15 has only been reached 4 times since then. Pulling up the list of the all-time leaders I noticed it is top heavy with players from the pre-World War I era. There are only 2 pitchers, Robin Roberts and Gaylord Perry that pitched after 1965 in the top 50. The leader is Cy Young, the guy the award is named for, with 749, the current active leader, CC Sabathia, at his current seasonal average would have to pitch 283 more seasons to catch Cy. I’m going out on a limb and guessing Cy's record is pretty safe.  Granted the game was different in those days, though it still doesn’t explain how 100 years ago a pitcher could start 35-40 games a year and complete 80-90% of them and keep doing it year after year. They sure didn’t have all the off season workouts, strength training and other performance sciences developed that we see now. How did those guys manage to have such seemingly tireless arms? Did they pitch drunk everyday so they never felt their arm get tired? I have no idea, do you? I sure didn’t expect to be writing about baseball today. I guess it’s just another of those questions I started with and fell through the hole in the paper.

 

 

Stats mentioned found here: http://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/CG_career.shtml