Binoculars, Charlie Manuel, Mick Billmeyer, Philadelphia Phillies, Shane Victorino, Sign stealing

Accusations Against Phillies Nothing New

Posted on by Jason Turbow

Even as the Phillies were denying efforts to steal signs against the Colorado Rockies on Monday, people started to dig back a bit to look at their history with the subject.

They didn’t have to dig far.

Just last October, rumors of Philadelphia’s extra-curricular sign stealing swirled during the World Series, when, during Game 4 of the World Series, Yankees catcher Jorge Posada visited pitcher CC Sabathia six times in the first inning, then eight more times in the fifth. This didn’t do much to improve the quality of the product for those watching at home, but it might have been enough to thwart would-be sign thieves.

During the game, Posada also went into dexterous sign gymnastics with nobody on base, throwing down complex sequences normally utilized to stymie a runner on second.

Those rumors hit a head when Dodgers coach Larry Bowa went on ESPN950 radio in Philadelphia, and said this:

There’s rumors going around that when you play the Phillies, there’s a camera somewhere or bullpen people are giving signs, and catchers are constantly changing signs. That’s the rumor. Now is it [proved]? No. I’ve had three people come up to me, ‘Watch center field, they’ve got a camera. Some guys stand up by the fence and if their arms are up it’s a breaking ball.’ I didn’t see it, but other teams swear by it.

So I’m sure the Yankees personnel said, ‘Heads up, these guys like to give signs from second, they’ve got people in center field. So they were constantly changing signs. Posada was paranoid about it. CC was paranoid about it so they kept going out. They might have changed signs four times on one hitter. That’s the reason he went out. It wasn’t to say to him, ‘Settle down.’ It was, ‘Go to this sign.’

Bowa, a Philadelphia icon for his years with the team during his playing days, had no direct inside knowledge of the system (that he admitted to, anyway), but his speculation was enough to send Shane Victorino into a tizzy.

“I guess he knows something that I don’t know about, obviously,” Victorino said shortly after Bowa’s comments aired. “We play between the lines, and that’s what it’s about. For Bowa to come out and say something like that, if he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, if he doesn’t have cold, hard facts, he shouldn’t say something like that. It’s just not something that should be said. For you to pop off like that, I’m not happy.”

Victorino, of course, has been fingered as complicit in the most recent allegations against his team, largely because he was seen on the dugout telephone in conjunction with Mick Billmeyer’s spyglass proclivities from the Philadelphia bullpen.

Last October, Victorino backed up his statement by pointing to the fact that Philadelphia lost the first two of the first three Series games, saying, “Obviously if we’re stealing signs we would be doing better than what we’re doing right now.”

Well, okay. Except that sign stealing doesn’t guarantee victory, especially against a team as good as the Yankees; it merely massages the odds. One of the most notorious sign-stealing-from-beyond-the-outfield-wall teams of the 1960s was the Chicago Cubs—and look where it got them.

Another statement that didn’t hold much water came yesterday, when Phillies manager Charlie Manuel opted to go on the offensive and accuse the Mets of vague improprieties.

“Somebody maybe ought to check the Mets if they did that,” he told the New York Daily News, possibly in retaliation for the Mets leveling similar accusations against the Phillies in 2007. “Their (—-ing) home record is out of this world (14-8), and they’re losing on the road (4-8). Sometimes that’s a good indicator of getting signs and (crap). I’m not accusing them, but you look at that and—damn. We’re about the same home and road. I’m just saying their record is much better at home and they hit better.”

It’s nice that the Phillies are equally dominant at home (10-6) and on the road (10-7), but it must be pointed out that the recent controversy came on the road. It takes a special kind of chutzpah to pull that off, no matter what the Phillies’ actual intentions might have been.

Between Colorado, last year’s World Series and the 2007 Mets, it might be time for the Phillies to give it a rest.

You know, just in case they’re doing anything improper.

– Jason

5
Ken Griffey Jr., Omerta Code

Griffey Junior Naps (or Not); the Real Story is, Why Do We Know About it?

Posted on by Jason Turbow

Much has been made during the last few days of a nap that Ken Griffey Jr. may or may not have taken in the clubhouse during the eighth inning of a recent game. If it happened as alleged by a source to the Tacoma News Tribune, it kept Griffey from being available to his team as a pinch-hitter.

Griffey and Mariners manager Don Wakamatsu deny that was the case, although Griffey has yet to unequivocally shoot down questions about whether he might have been sleeping in the clubhouse at any other point during the game.

Clearly, this is not the way he wanted what are likely his last months as a professional ballplayer to play out.

The prevailing unwritten rule in this case can be summed up by a sign, some version of which has shown up in big-league clubhouses for decades:

What you see here, what you do here, what you say here, let it stay here.

It’s a code of omerta, a concept popularized by the Italian mafia to highlight the tradition of silence when it comes to conversation with outsiders. Ballplayers are expected to honor that silence when it concerns things that happen behind clubhouse doors.

Which is why it’s so shocking that “two younger players” filled News Tribune writer Larry LaRue in on Junior’s sleeping habits. The reaction of the rest of the team is no different than that of the Yankees after Jim Bouton came out with his groundbreaking Ball Four account of their daily activities while they were still active players.

Wrote Mickey Mantle in All My Octobers: “If the players resented the press for digging into our private lives, how were we supposed to feel when a teammate did it?”

Unless a teammate didn’t do it.

There are grumblings that it wasn’t “two younger players” at all, but somebody in the front office who spread the rumor, in a deliberately mis-attributed fashion.

The motivation would be clear: at age 40, Junior is hitting .200 for the M’s, with only two extra-base hits—both doubles—in 80 at-bats on the season. The same story that broke the news of his napping habits suggested that he was days away from losing his position as the team’s left-handed DH, if not his roster spot entirely.

The trouble is, the guy is so iconic in Seattle that the prospect of negative fan reaction should the team cut him can’t be easy to stomach for General Manager Jack Zduriencik.

This isn’t to suggest that it was Zduriencik who got into LaRue’s ear, or a member of his staff, or anyone other than the young players as claimed—only that a little PR hit like this for Junior, with no lasting repercussions to his reputation, might grease the skids just a touch, and make an eventual parting a skosh more painless for the guys doing the cutting.

This, of course, is sheer speculation, and completely unfounded. ESPN’s Tim Kurkjian reported that the responsible players were admonished during a team meeting “for taking it outside of the clubhouse.” (Ironically, somebody had to tell Kurkjian about the goings-on of the clubhouse meeting for that news to break.)

That the front-office rumor is even able to exist, however, speaks to the insidiousness that can permeate a ballclub when confidences are compromised.

No matter which way it happened, one thing is certain. “People talk far too much,” said Dusty Baker, speaking in general terms about clubhouse leaks, although he could well have been talking specifically about this situation. “There’s always a leak, there’s always a Judas. Always. Judas is more alive now than ever.”

– Jason

1
Binoculars, Mick Billmeyer, Philadelphia Phillies, Sign tipping

Break Out the Binocs—There’s Thieving to be Done

Posted on by Jason Turbow

The thing about the overwhelming majority of unwritten rules is their nebulous nature—the gray area in which acceptable behavior becomes entangled with less palatable fare, essentially creating a murky stew in which bad blood can reasonably fester on both sides.

Today’s news is much more clear-cut. Tracy Ringolsby reports for Fox Sports that the Philadelphia Phillies have been warned by Major League Baseball about their alleged tendency to steal signs from other clubs.

But wait a minute—this blog has consistently touted the propriety of sign stealing, with the caveat that once caught, the activity is halted. So why the big deal?

The Phillies, if one believes the rumors, were using binoculars to aid their cause. According to the unwritten rules, this is never okay. (It’s also prohibited by the written rules, which is why the league stepped in.)

The specific accusation points at bullpen coach Mick Billmeyer, alleging that he trained his lenses on Rockies catcher Miguel Olivo; Phillies center fielder Shane Victorino was subsequently seen on the bullpen phone, ostensibly receiving stolen signs to relay to the Phillies hitters.

Ringolsby reported that the New York Mets might have made a similar accusation after the Phillies battered Johan Santana for 10 runs in 3.2 innings on May 2.

The league called the evidence “inconclusive,” but has warned the Phillies and alerted the umpiring crew to pay close attention to the situation.

Billmeyer seems a perfect choice to run such a scheme. He knows catchers and their signs, having worked as Philadelphia’s minor league catching coordinator from 2000-03, and as the major league catching instructor from 2004-08.

Philadelphia’s excuse: Billmeyer wasn’t looking at Olivo, but at his own catcher, Carlos Ruiz. The only problem with that reasoning is that the Phillies were up to bat when the situation was brought to light on the game telecast, and Ruiz was in the dugout.

Assuming that the allegations are correct—that Billmeyer was picking off signals and relaying them via telephone to the Philadelphia dugout—how difficult would it be to then get word to the hitter?

Not very.

In the 1960s, New York Yankee Bob Turley would whistle from the bench when the upcoming pitch was different from the one that preceded it. (Had the previous pitch been a fastball, for example, Turley would whistle if the next pitch was to be a curve.)

Tigers manager Del Baker signaled Hank Greenberg with a system of “all right”s and “come on”s. (“All right, Hank, you can do it” indicated that a fastball was on the way, whereas “Come on, Hank” meant curve.)

The possibilities are limitless.

Similarly, it’s hardly the first time that a team has used foreign assistance to peek in on the opposition. In the late 1950s, the Milwaukee Braves stationed pitchers Joey Jay and Bob Buhl in the Wrigley Field bleachers, shirts off and dressed like fans. They’d train binoculars on the catcher, and signal the pitch with a rolled-up program.

In the 1970s, Cubs manager Herman Franks once stationed himself inside the WGN television truck outside the ballpark, using their feed to relay signals to coach Harry Lowrey via the dugout phone. (The experiment lasted all of one game, after Franks’ instructions interfered with the WGN producer’s instructions for his crew, and vice versa, serving mostly to screw everybody up. It was, after all, the Cubs.)

During the 1976 World Series, three scouts for the Yankees were spotted in the ABC-TV booth, huddled around a television and talking into walkie-talkies. Although no formal charges were filed, they were quickly removed from the premises.

If the Phillies are to accede to any piece of the Code now, it’s clear which part they should heed: They’ve been caught, and it’s time to stop.

Update: Watch the video as part of an MLB Network panel discussion here.

Update II: The accusations against Philadelphia were nothing new.

– Jason

6
Boston Red Sox, C.C. Sabathia, Derek Jeter, Josh Beckett, New York Yankees, Retaliation, Robinson Cano

Beckett Takes Aim at N.Y.; When Does Intent Matter?

Posted on by Jason Turbow

The primary issue for major league hitters who have been hit by a pitch is determining intent. It’s not uncommon for pitchers who work inside to accidentally “let one slip”—as they like to say in their own defense—and inadvertently drill the batter.

It’s a risk that comes with the job description.

The trick is figuring out when this is not the case, and when hitting a guy was exactly what the pitcher had in mind.

Hitters have all sorts of methods for this, from gauging arm angle (“When guys are throwing regular pitches, they throw toward the center of the plate,” said Oscar Gamble, “but when they’re throwing at you, their arm comes straight toward you”) to identifying how they track their target before they release the pitch (“He stares right at you,” said Randy Knorr, “and looks where he’s going to throw it”).

“Sure, you can tell,” said Andy Van Slyke. “Body language will tell you, more than anything else. . . . Sometimes (the situation) merits your being drilled, sometimes it doesn’t. You’re talking about arbitrary things in people’s minds. In one person’s mind it’s deserved, and in the other guy’s mind it’s not.”

Which is why understanding the game situation is so important. If there are two outs and nobody on base, and one of the pitcher’s teammates has recently been drilled, chances are good that he meant it.

All of which helps make Josh Beckett’s outing against the Yankees last week so confusing.

In the sixth inning of Friday’s game, Beckett—who had utterly dominated New York early, striking out five of the first six hitters he faced—came unraveled. After Alex Rodriguez’s leadoff double, Beckett drilled Robinson Cano in the knee so hard that “it hurt the witnesses in the press box,” according to ESPN’s Wallace Matthews.

It went downhill from there.

A wild pitch advanced the runners and frustrated Beckett. Two walks (one intentional, the other of which drove in a run) and a single over the course of the next three hitters extended New York’s lead to 5-1.

Beckett was so off—and so dangerous—that he crossed up his own catcher, Jason Varitek, with a 92 mph cutter, hitting him in the left forearm and knocking him out of the game.

The bases were loaded for Derek Jeter and there was still only one out.

In the big picture, the Red Sox are having the type of season for which they were known before they recently starting winning championships, disappointing in virtually every facet. Beckett has served as the poster boy for this failure, sporting a 6.31 ERA coming into Friday’s game (having given up eight earned runs in three innings two games earlier), while winning only one of his six starts.

If he wasn’t a bundle of frustration by the time he faced Jeter, he should have been.

All of which led to the questions of motivation when he buried his first pitch into Jeter’s shoulder blade.

A pitcher wouldn’t intentionally hit a guy with the bases loaded, would he?

Maybe. Don Drysdale did. In 1962, he drilled St. Louis outfielder Curt Flood—who was six-for-his-last-12 against the pitcher—with three runners on board. Drysdale had already allowed four runs to that point in the game, and felt he had more to gain from the message pitch than he lost with the additional run.

It’s not often that the media spends a weekend guessing the intent behind a pitch that drives in a run by hitting a guy, but this is precisely what happened—especially in light of the fact that Beckett also pitched dangerously inside to Francisco Cervelli (two batters before Jeter) and Mark Teixeira (two batters after Jeter), both with the bases loaded.

(“He just went haywire,” reported the Hartford Courant. Wrote the New York Post, “It sure looked like Beckett was hitting Yankees on purpose.”)

For some pitchers, a lost cause can spur emotions. By the time Teixeira stepped to the plate, the Yankees had scored four runs in the frame and led 7-1; Beckett had retired just one of the eight hitters he’d faced.

He was done no matter what happened.

After he hit Jeter, speculation raged, and although the Yankees—C.C. Sabathia and Rodriguez notably among them—gathered on the top step to berate Beckett at top volume, they said all the right things after the game.

Joe Girardi: “He just seemed to lose command.”

Phil Hughes, who started the game for New York: “The purpose was going inside, I assume, and sometimes it gets away from you.”

Jeter: “No one hits anyone with the bases loaded.”

They said this, of course, because savvy big leaguers hardly want to incite the opposition—or the commissioner—should retribution of their own be forthcoming. Hughes went so far as to allege that “there was nothing that called for retaliation tonight.”

But when umpiring crew chief Tim McClelland asserted that Saturday’s game would commence without warnings, that was all Sabathia—that day’s starter—needed.

It’s not like it was difficult to spot in advance. “If and when Dustin Pedroia or Kevin Youkilis gets drilled by CC Sabathia this afternoon, they’ll have Josh Beckett to thank,” wrote John Tomase in the Boston Herald’s game preview.

It was, in fact, Pedroia who got it, in the second inning, with two out and nobody on. By that point, it didn’t matter what Beckett had intended; the damage had been done and a response was necessary. The retaliation was a departure from the Joe Torre era in New York, when such events came with resounding infrequency.

“It’s not even the point whether it was intentional or not,” Nick Swisher told the New York Daily News. “The point is that we’ve got each other’s backs, and we’re going to let you know about it.”

“It means a lot to the guys in here,” added an anonymous Yankee.

After the game, Sabathia took the standard tack of calling the pitch a fastball “that got away,” ending his portion of the festivities.

It should end it for the Red Sox, as well. We’ll know for sure when the teams meet again on Monday.

– Jason

1
Dallas Braden, Don't Bunt to Break Up a No-Hitter, Evan Longoria

Braden’s Perfecto Threatened By Bunt Attempt; Reaction Minimal

Posted on by Jason Turbow

On Sunday, Dallas Braden proved that he’s equal opportunity when it comes to the unwritten rules.

Two weeks ago, he caught considerable heat (much of it from New Yorkers) when he called out Alex Rodriguez for running across the mound during a game in Oakland. Yesterday, another potential violation against him reared its head when Tampa Bay’s Evan Longoria tried to wile his way aboard with a drag bunt in the fifth inning. The ball rolled foul, but had Longoria reached, he would have been the first—and, ultimately, only—baserunner Braden allowed on the day, a perfect game spoiled.

This piece of the Code is similar to the one prohibiting all forms of aggressive baserunning (including stolen bases and tagging up on fly balls)—it’s valid only in the later innings of blowout games.

In Longoria’s case, he was on the cusp of both, in seriously gray area. Paying attention to a no-hitter isn’t even a consideration through four innings; starting in the fifth, the feat takes on increasing importance with each frame.

Similarly, the four runs by which the A’s led at the time of the bunt attempt can hardly be considered insurmountable, although Braden’s superlative dominance must be considered when gauging the stoutness of their lead.

To help figure this out, let’s look at some examples.

On one hand: Ben Zobrist broke up Jarrod Washburn’s no-hit attempt in 2006 with a sixth-inning bunt—a tactic that, since it came relatively early in a two-run game, bothered neither Washburn nor his manager, Mike Hargrove.

“If it was the eighth or ninth, maybe that would have rubbed me the wrong way,” Washburn told the Tacoma News Tribune. “But bunting is just part of the game, and he was just trying to make something happen.”

On the other hand: Anaheim rookie Devon White tried to break up Danny Jackson’s 1986 no-hit attempt with a bunt single in the eighth inning. The fact that it was a 2-0 game hardly mattered to Jackson. The bunt went foul, and Jackson threw his next pitch chin-high, forcing White into a back-pedaling stumble.

“The first hit of a no-hitter is not a bunt,” said Jackson in the Orange County Register. “I don’t know how long he’s been around, but he’s got to go down.”

The most famous instance of this maneuver, of course, was Ben Davis’s bunt to break up Curt Schilling’s perfect game in 2001. In that case, Davis had several strikes against him:

  • He was the Padres’ backup catcher.
  • Bunting was not part of his repertoire.
  • He did it in the eighth inning.
  • He laid down a perfectly atrocious, but very lucky, bunt.
  • He did it against an iconic and outspoken pitcher, Curt Schilling; a knowledgeable and outspoken manager, Bob Brenly; and an Arizona team that would go on to with the World Series.

None of it mattered, of course. It was a 2-0 game, and Davis brought the tying run to the plate for the first time since the Diamondbacks scored their second run. As much as the members of Arizona’s clubhouse wanted to rip into Davis for his audacity, the defense for his action was unimpeachable.

Even Brenly, Davis’ most outspoken critic, eventually came around and admitted that much of his bluster was merely a message to Schilling that his manager had his back.

For Longoria, the case for bunting was clear.

“He had everybody off-balance,” he told the Tampa Tribune. “I figured I’d try to take the opportunity there, maybe it stays fair and we get a runner on. At that point, you’re really not thinking about the guy’s perfect game or no-hitter, you’re just trying to get back into the game. It was a manageable game. Get somebody on and try and score.”

“If you want to prohibit it, just play your third baseman in,” added Rays manager Joe Maddon. “Both sides have the ability to do whatever they want. I believe if you’re trying to beat the other team and that’s your best way to do it then you do it.”

Ultimately, of course, the only opinion that matters here is that of the guy at the business end of the potential violation. So what did Braden think?

No big deal, he told XM Radio after the game, echoing every sentiment above about close scores meriting all sorts of efforts on behalf of the offense.

Give him this much: the guy knows his Code book.

– Jason

4
The Baseball Codes

Happy Mother’s Day

Posted on by Jason Turbow

In honor of the mothers in my life, I offer a brief selection of day-appropriate quotes:

  • “Your book was quite good. When are you going to get a job?”—My mom, Ellen
  • “You sounded great on the radio, honey. Why don’t you go work for EPSN?”—My mother-in-law, Simma
  • “Hey, Mr. Famous Author, your kid has a diaper that needs changing.”—My wife, Laura

To the three of them, and mothers everywhere, I hope your days are as grand as Hallmark suggests they should be. Happy Mother’s Day to one and all.

– Jason

2
This Week in the Unwritten Rules

This Week in the Unwritten Rules

Posted on by Jason Turbow

May 3
Pirates starter Zach Duke failed to respond when Dodgers reliever Ramon Ortiz threw two pitches at Andrew McCutchen—one at his head. Realizing the potential for disaster, he immediately owned up to his oversight, in a most public manner.

May 4
An additional wrinkle for the Zach Duke situation concerned whether he should have been instructed by manager John Russell to carry out the deed.

May 4
I wrote a piece for Yahoo Sports, detailing 10 of the lesser-known unwritten rules.

May 5
Milton Bradley quit on his teammates, leaving the ballpark after being pulled from a game—while the game was still going on. There are few more effective means of losing clubhouse support.

May 6
Dallas Braden weighed in on the Alex Rodriguez mound-crossing affair once again, this time on video.

May 6
ESPN’s Jerry Crasnick talked to three prominent pitchers about how they’d respond should various unwritten rules be broken on their watch.

May 6
Anaheim’s Howie Kendrick bunted in the game-winning run in the 12th inning against Cleveland. Not every member of the Indians appreciated it.

May 7
Washington’s Scott Olsen had a no-hitter through seven innings against Atlanta. Then the Braves requested that the grounds crew tamp down the mound. Did it distract him? Two batters later, he gave up a hit.

May 7
Morgan Ensberg discusses a novel way to relay pitch selection from second base, and it has nothing to do with stealing signs from the catcher.

– Jason

4
Aaron Harang, Greg Maddux, Morgan Ensberg, Sign stealing

A New Angle on Sign Stealing

Posted on by Jason Turbow

Morgan Ensberg was a big-leaguer for eight seasons, an All-Star in 2005. Now retired, he wants to join the media.

The first step in this endeavor is a blog, Morgan Ensberg’s Baseball IQ, on which he posts articles and interacts with fans. Yesterday, he wrote about the same Jerry Crasnick article I referenced for this site (in which Crasnick interviewed three prominent pitchers about the unwritten rules)—only Ensberg approached it from the standpoint of a hitter.

One thing he said—not in the article, but in response to a reader comment—caught my attention: “Stealing signs from second is mostly done out of the pitcher’s glove . . . not the catcher’s signs.”

This blew me away. In more than 200 interviews with big leaguers and ex-big leaguers as research for The Baseball Codes, not one of them mentioned this facet of sign stealing.

I quickly got Ensberg on the phone to discuss this most specialized of skills. Here’s what he said:

You’re leading off at second base; estimate you’re probably around 30 feet from the pitcher. If the pitcher hasn’t been taught to protect it, you can see everything that’s in his glove. You can see his hands, you can see his fingers, you can see the ball, you can see the seams.

Generally, pitchers will hold ball in same spot in the glove. On certain pitches you can see some red from the seam, but on other pitches you don’t see the seam. You might see something in the way he holds his glove. All this is just patterns. I’ve been at second base 100,000 times in my life, and learned to pick up patterns in the way a pitcher grips a baseball.

Greg Maddux gripped the majority of his pitches out of the same ball placement within the glove. He’d put the ball in the same spot, the seams in the same spot within his glove. He was able to develop what looked like a changeup grip 100 percent of the time, but as he started to pitch, he adjusted his grip and we wouldn’t be able to see what was being thrown.

Clearly he was aware that baserunners were trying to look into the glove, so he developed a thing where every single grip would start out as a changeup grip, and then he’d adjust it once he started his motion, and we’d lose it.

Pitchers can prevent this simply by angling their hands; instead of the knuckles of their glove hand facing the plate, they can turn them toward either first or third base to shield them from the runner at second.

Ensberg also addressed the notion that not every hitter wants to know what’s coming. Like, say, Ensberg himself. He described an instance of a pitcher’s tell that he once picked up from the plate.

Aaron Harang with the Reds used to have his glove straight up on a fastball and sideways on off-speed out of the windup, 100 percent of the time. You don’t get opportunities like this, ever. It was the most blatant example I’ve ever seen. I see his glove go fastball, first pitch, and he came in at 92, a four-seamer at chest height. I came out of my shoes, swinging and missing.

I thought, what are you doing? That ball’s up under my chin. I step back in. He goes into his windup and he does it again—fastball again, chest high. I come out of my shoes again, swinging and missing. Now I’m 0-2.

Third time, here it comes, same height, same everything. Three fastballs chest high, three swings, three misses. Go sit down. I’m walking back thinking, that’s embarrassing. You know the thing’s coming, you have zero discipline, you got too pumped up—you deserved that. It’s complete self-hate.

Great stuff from a guy who lived it.

– Jason

5
Atlanta Braves, Bobby Cox, No-Hitter Etiquette, Scott Olson, Washington Nationals

Olson’s Near-No-Hitter Invaded by Marauding Mound Tampers

Posted on by Jason Turbow

Most baseball fans are aware the rule mandating that players avoid discussion of a no-hitter being thrown by a teammate.

Few, however, realize the depth of superstition in this arena. Guys in the dugout maintain whatever routine they’re in, as changing a pattern could constitute a jinx.

Bobby Cox

In the middle of Sandy Koufax’s no-hitter in 1963, for example, Dodgers rookie Dick Calmus jumped off the bench to applaud; coach Leo Durocher told him to sit down and zip it.

Bob Brenly found himself tapping the knob of Matt Kata’s bat during the middle innings of Randy Johnson’s perfect game in 2004, then couldn’t stop himself, despite the increasing pain, into the late innings. “I did not move off of that bat rack,” he said. “I knocked on that bat on every pitch. My knuckles were raw by the end of the game, but I just felt that you can’t change anything.”

During Nolan Ryan’s seventh no-hitter, umpire Tim Tschida spent the early innings bypassing Rangers catcher Mike Stanley when it came to getting new baseballs to the mound, opting instead to throw them himself. In the ninth inning, however, Tschida let Stanley do the work. When he handed a baseball to the catcher, however, Stanley, handed it right back, refusing to tackle that kind of responsibility.

None of this even considers the concepts of warming up a reliever or making a defensive substitution, things that can conceivably project anti-karma in exactly the same way.

All of which is a lead-in to yesterday’s near-no hitter from Washington’s Scott Olsen, which he carried into the eighth inning against the Braves.

It’s fairly expected for the opposition to try to get inside a pitcher’s head in any way possible. During a no-hitter, this means making him aware that he’s headed toward potential immortality—a fact they hope will spook him. This type of bench jockeying is hardly unusual.

Ex-Cardinals pitcher Joe Magrane, for example, had a habit of yelling things like, “Hey, let’s break up his no-hitter,” loud enough to reach the mound. (At least one of his teammates, Rex Hudler, didn’t appreciate it. “He didn’t have to go up there and face the guy,” said Hudler. “There were times when I’d tell him to shut up. Don’t let your mouth write checks my body can’t cash.”)

As prevalent as the strategy is, does it work? “No,” said Mets manager Jerry Manuel. “Heck no. You’d think it would, but it doesn’t.”

The Braves, however, took things a step further against Olsen, requesting in the bottom of the seventh inning that the National Park grounds crew tamp down the mound. Talk about changing things.

Two batters and eight pitches into the top of the eighth, Olsen gave up a hit. Two batters after that, he was out of the game.

(It must also be noted that prior to that inning, Washington manager Jim Riggleman did some changing of his own, sliding Adam Kennedy from second base to first to replace the ham-handed Adam Dunn, and inserted Alberto Gonzalez at second.)

Perhaps an unusual divot had formed that presented some sort of danger to Braves pitcher Tim Hudson, which required some mound maintenance. That would provide sufficient explanation.

The question for baseball fans is, when was the last time you actually saw something like that happen during the course of a game? In the vast majority of cases, the answer would be, never.

Braves manager Bobby Cox is a master strategist, and in the last season of a long and wildly successful tenure. Might he do something like this to avoid the additional pressure that being no-hit might contribute to an already struggling team?

Just maybe.

– Jason

2
Bunt appropriately, Cheating, Chris Perez, Cleveland Indians, Howie Kendrick, Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Torii Hunter

Kendrick Bunts, Cleveland Complains, Angels Win

Posted on by Jason Turbow

Last week, Anaheim’s Howie Kendrick stirred up some emotions with a two-out, ninth inning bunt that scored Torii Hunter from third base with the game’s winning run.

It came on the first pitch thrown by Indians reliever Chris Perez, who after the game was vocal in his displeasure.

“It was a bad baseball play that happened to work out,” he told MLB.com. “I don’t want to say it was bush league, but you never see that. Ninety-nine percent of hitters in that situation would rather win the game with a hit, not a bunt. It was a stupid play that just happened to work.”

Au contraire, Mr. Perez—it was a smart play that happened to work.

Let’s examine some corollaries between Kendrick’s bunt and another famous bunt that caught some heat: Ben Davis’ bunt that broke up Curt Schilling’s perfect game in 2001.

  • Speed was not remotely part of Davis’ game. “For a backup catcher (like Davis) who had never bunted for a base hit before in his life to do it, I thought that was unnecessary to begin with, and disrespectful, to top it off,” said then-Diamondbacks manager Bob Brenly.
  • Kendrick, while not necessarily a burner, is known to steal a base should the situation present itself. Bunting for hits is within his accepted repertoire.

Verdict: Kendrick

  • Davis got lucky with a bad bunt that landed in a good place. “He bunted as bad a ball as you can bunt, to the most perfect spot in the infield to bunt it. . . .” said Schilling. “I never said it was a horses–t play. I thought it was a horses–t bunt.”
  • Kendrick’s effort was a thing of beauty, placed in an ideal spot on the right side of the diamond. The Indians had no chance.

Verdict: Kendrick

  • Davis’ bunt spoiled a significant personal achievement.
  • For Kendrick, there was nothing on the line save for the most important thing on any baseball diamond: a victory.

Verdict: Kendrick

Ultimately—and no matter how you feel about either incident—both Davis and Kendrick must be exonerated for the simple fact that their at-bats mattered.

Davis came to the plate in a 2-0 game; as a baserunner, he brought the tying run to the plate for the first time since Arizona scored its second run. Kendrick’s case was even more stark: he literally won the game with his effort.

And make no mistake, Chris Perez—that was an effort. Sure, it was brains over brawn, but it also took cunning and execution.

Had it been an 8-0 type blowout, Perez would have a legitimate complaint. As it is, if there’s any certainty to be had here, it’s that Perez wouldn’t have said a thing had one of his teammates won the game in exactly the same fashion.

* * *

Earlier in the inning, Hunter exposed another rule: If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying. His was perhaps the lowest-grade cheating in the unwritten rulebook, along the lines of an outfielder popping up, glove raised, acting like he caught a ball that he clearly knows he trapped.

In Hunter’s case, he hit a ball into the right-field corner, where Shin-Soo Choo gathered it and threw it to second in time to catch the sliding Hunter. Hunter knew he was out. From his vantage point, even Choo probably knew that he got his man.

Second-base umpire Paul Schrieber, however, called Hunter safe, and he eventually scored the winning run.

When asked after the game whether or not he should have been called out, Hunter rolled his eyes and said, “I’m not going to answer that. He said I was safe, so I was safe.”

He did precisely what he should have done. In big league baseball, that falls within the definition of honesty.

– Jason

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