Tag: baseball

No-Hitter Etiquette, Rich Harden, Ron Washington

No-Hitter in Hand, Harden Pulled

Posted on by Jason Turbow

Removing pitchers in the middle of no-hitters is getting to be downright commonplace these days.

Eight days after Twins manager Ron Gardenhire raised eyebrows for removing pitcher Kevin Slowey after 106 pitches over seven no-hit innings, Rangers manager Ron Washington did something similar with Rich Harden yesterday.

In Slowey’s case, he had recently been shelved due to elbow soreness, and his long-term effectiveness was more important to his manager than a longshot chance at finishing a no-hitter with an elevated pitch count.

Harden did Slowey one better, throwing his gem in his first start off the disabled list. A seventh-inning walk to Michael Cuddyer raised his pitch count to 111, with Jim Thome at the plate and the tying run on deck. It was all Washington needed to see.

Harden had no chance of throwing 150 pitches on the day—which is what it would have taken to complete the game at the pace he had set—and already possessed a storied injury history.

As pointed out in the Wall Street Journal, oddities about the moment were plentiful.

•  Slowey was watching the action from the Minnesota bench.
•  The plate umpire was Jim Joyce, himself at the center of a no-hitter controversy earlier this year when he incorrectly ruled that what would have been the final hitter of Armando Galarraga’s would-be perfect game reached base safely.
•  New Rangers owner Nolan Ryan—he of seven (full) no-hitters—was watching the game from the front row.

There may be no more prominent opponent of strict pitch counts than Ryan. Ron Washington is acutely aware of this. That he made the move anyway speaks to his conviction about the subject.

“He threw 111 pitches,” Ryan said of Harden in an MLB.com report. “He kept his stuff the whole time, but Ron didn’t have a choice but to take him out. You have to protect the player and do what’s best for the team. Ron did the right thing and Rich knew it.”

The no-hitter was broken up in the ninth, when Joe Mauer singled against close Neftali Feliz. If Harden needed a shoulder to cry on, Kevin Slowey was just down the hall.

– Jason

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Don't Help an Opponent, Francisco Cervelli, Vince Coleman, Willie McGee

Stop! In the Name of Glove

Posted on by Jason Turbow

There was a bit of hubbub in New York last week when Francisco Cervelli, normally a catcher for the Yankees, showed up at third base.

The clamor had less to do with Cervelli’s ability to make plays than the tools he used to make them. Midway through the game, TV cameras homed in on his Wilson model glove, smartly embroidered with the words “Wright No. 5.”

There is a Wright who wears No. 5 and plays third base in New York with a Wilson glove, but his home games aren’t at Yankee Stadium. It’s David Wright, the longtime third baseman for the Mets.

What, asked reporters later, was Cervelli doing with that glove?

“We have the same [glove] company,” Cervelli said in an MLB.com report. “That’s what they sent me, so I’ve got to use it. That’s my glove. I don’t know, maybe later when I’ve got more years in the big leagues, they’ll put my name on it. I don’t really care.”

It’s a far cry from Vince Coleman, whose actual glove was once used by an opponent. It was 1991, and Giants outfielder Willie McGee had his equipment stolen from the visitors’ locker room at Shea Stadium, so he turned to ex-teammate Coleman for backup. Using one of Coleman’s gloves, he recorded three putouts on the day.

(McGee was significantly happier with the result than were Coleman’s teammates on the Mets, who later fined him $10 per catch in kangaroo court.)

Cervelli’s tale also ended up in the Mets clubhouse, albeit a more circuitous route. Although he’s only played three innings at third base so far this season, he regularly takes ground balls there before games. When he left his glove on the turf when the Yankees plaed at Citi Field earlier this year, clubbies mistakenly returned it to Wright’s locker.

“He got confused and said, ‘I’m so sorry,’ ” said Cervelli. “I want him to sign my glove when the season’s done. I’m going to send it to him.”

– Jason

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Brett Gardner, Jeremy Bonderman, Retaliation

Living it Up in New York

Posted on by Jason Turbow

Sometimes the umpires know when to let ’em play.

Detroit starter Jeremy Bonderman drilled New York’s Brett Gardner with his first pitch of Wednesday night’s game, clear retaliation for Gardner’s takeout slide that injured Carlos Guillen on Monday. (Watch it here.)

(“If anyone over there thought it was a clean slide, we had a different opinion on that,” said Johnny Damon afterward, putting to rest any doubt about Bonderman’s intentions. That the response came two days later might be explained by the diagnosis that came down in the interim, confirming that what had been thought to be merely a ding was a deep bone bruise that would need weeks to heal.)

An immediate warning was issued by umpire Eric Cooper, in an effort to keep things from spiraling out of control.

Except that Miguel Cabrera then had to go and hit a pair of homers, possibly inspiring Yankees reliever Chad Gaudin to hit him in the ribs with a 91 mph fastball.

There was, apparently, sufficient doubt behind the intent for Gaudin to be allowed to stay in the game. (Tigers manager Jim Leyland disagreed, getting tossed after arguing for the merits of warning enforcement. “They’re going to the playoffs—we’re not going anywhere,” he said to Cooper, in comments picked up on the Fox Sports Detroit telecast and reported in the Detroit Free Press. Somebody is going to get hurt.”)

It evened out somewhat, when Detroit’s Enrique Gonzalez put a pitch behind Derek Jeter‘s back, and ran inside to both Robinson Cano and Mark Teixeira (each of whom hit first-inning homers).

After Cooper declined to identify Gaudin’s pitch as having intent, it would have been difficult for him to implicate Gonzalez on similar charges. There was also the fact that by drilling Cabrera, Gaudin had reignited a controversy that by all rights should have died. The Tigers were entitled to a response, and Cooper gave it to them.

* * *

One of the most entertaining pieces of any tit-for-tat beanball war is the creativity involved in blanket denials that come sweeping in from both sides. (Ozzie Guillen might be the only big league manager to steadfastly refuse to play the game—”Maybe people don’t believe that, but every time I get something done, I let you guys know who did it,” Guillen said about the concept of retaliation in the Chicago Sun-Times. ”And I got a lot of money paid to Major League Baseball because I say, ‘Yes, I did it’ “—although his admissions end up being far more amusing than anything he could fabricate.)

Yankees manager Joe Girardi did his part in the Bronx, insisting that Gaudin’s drilling of Cabrera made little strategic sense, eventually leading as it did to Girardi burning both David Robertson and Mariano Rivera in a game that New York would win, 9-5.

The players involved similarly chimed in:

  • “I don’t know. I don’t care,” said Cabrera in an MLB.com report, in response to a question about whether he felt he had been hit on purpose.
  • “I don’t know if it was [intentional] or not. That’s not for me to judge. It doesn’t really matter,” said Gardner about the pitch that hit him.
  • “I think guys can tell when you’re doing it on purpose. I didn’t,” said Gaudin, in denial. “This is baseball. It happens.”
  • “Next question,” said Bonderman, declining to discuss his pitch to Gardner. Of course, Bonderman was been suspended to start the season after drilling Minnesota’s Delmon Young at the end of last year.

Admission of intent, of course, is tantamount to signing your own suspension notice, so denials are status quo.

Although he was short with his answer, Bonderman opted for the most noble solution to the problem. While the public would enjoy a full dissertation on his actual motivation, the consequences for frankness in this situation won’t allow it. (Just ask Ozzie Guillen.) So rather than lying about the pitch in question getting away, Bonderman simply refused to discuss it.

Which is just fine by us.

– Jason

2
Bobby Thomson, Sign stealing

Stolen Signs and the Shot Heard ‘Round the World

Posted on by Jason Turbow

Bobby Thomson, who passed away yesterday, held an unusual place in baseball. Not a Hall of Famer, not even a superstar, he was nonetheless legendary, with his Shot Heard ’Round the World augmenting a long and successful career, during which he resided at the heart of the Giants’ batting order for his five best seasons.

Thomson will be forever linked to Ralph Branca, the Dodgers pitcher who served up the homer that’s kept them both famous. It was, and will always be, among the greatest moments in baseball history.

It’s also unique, in that its intrigue has grown over recent years, a half-century after it happened, as new information came out about the Giants’ proclivity for stealing signs that season, and questions arose about whether Thomson might have been signaled in advance of Branca’s fateful pitch.

None of it can detract from the gravity of the moment, or serve to deny Thomson his rightful place among baseball’s legends. Still, it’s a tale of Code-based intrigue, and brings new wrinkles to an otherwise well-worn story.

The original draft of The Baseball Codes offered a lengthier examination than was ultimately published. Today seems to be a good time to offer it up here.

Without question, the most infamous sign-relay system in baseball history—which inspired countless newspaper accounts and its own book-length examination—was the one used by the New York Giants at the Polo Grounds in 1951. That was the year of baseball’s greatest home run, Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard ’Round the World,” which capped the Giants’ return from a huge August deficit to beat the Brooklyn Dodgers in a three-game playoff and earned them a trip to the World Series.

The Giants’ system had been kept largely secret for a half-century, but was uncovered in 2001 by the Wall Street Journal’s Joshua Prager, who later wrote a book on the subject, “The Echoing Green.” Prager found that after a particularly rough stretch in mid-July 1951, New York manager Leo Durocher implemented a system with which the Giants expertly stole their opponents’ signs for the final 10 weeks of the season. During this stretch, New York went 40-14, after a solid if unspectacular 56-44 mark from April through July.

The Giants’ home ballpark, the Polo Grounds, offered the perfect setup for such a scheme, as the windows of the center-field clubhouse faced the field, giving a spotter a perfect sightline to the plate. It wasn’t exactly revolutionary to steal signs from that clubhouse—Bill Veeck alleged that as far back as John McGraw the team had someone looking through binoculars from that same vantage point, who would either raise or lower a shutter to signal the pitch.

The positioning was so favorable that even visiting teams used the setup to their advantage. Gene Mauch recalled that as a little-used infielder with the Cubs in 1948, he’d sit with a pair of binoculars in the Polo Grounds visitors’ clubhouse (located alongside the home locker room, it also had windows overlooking the field) and pick up the Giants’ signs. Mauch’s signal to Chicago’s hitters was a large can of peach nectar that he’d move back and forth across the sill—to the left for a curveball, to the right for a fastball and in the middle for a changeup. Because it was the Cubs, however, the signals were usually of little assistance. “I remember one game when Walker Cooper was catching and Dave Koslo was pitching (for the Giants) that I called every pitch,” he said in the Los Angeles Times. “I think we got three hits and one run.”

Mauch wasn’t the only Cub that season who knew his way around a spyglass. There was also Hank Schenz, who split duties with Mauch both at second base and behind the team’s binoculars. When Schenz, a journeyman, joined the Giants three seasons later, he appeared to be a good fit for the system that Durocher was about to install.

It was an electric signal that ran from the Polo Grounds’ clubhouse to the home bullpen. With it, someone sitting near the Giants’ locker-room window could press a button, which buzzed a bullpen phone. The system was simple and effective—no matter how hard anyone looked for an illicit signal coming from behind the center-field window, they wouldn’t see a thing. One buzz for fastball, twice for off-speed was the code.

Schenz was on the New York roster for the final two months of the season, during which he never came to the plate—possibly because he spent so many innings watching games from behind the clubhouse window. He was one of the first to man the buzzer, but much like his play on the field, his desire outstripped his talent, and he experienced occasional difficulties in properly decoding the opposition’s signals. The binoculars were soon passed to Herman Franks, a young coach whose days as a catcher had ended two seasons earlier (and who would go on to a long and storied career in sign thievery from the coaching ranks).

When the buzzer sounded, a bullpen member signaled the hitter, often with an indicator so subtle that it would go unnoticed by the opposition. Bullpen catcher Sal Yvars, for example, was said to occasionally tip fastballs simply by not moving at all. For something off-speed, he’d do something clearly visible from the plate, like stretch or toss a ball into the air.

(There is some debate about this. The Polo Grounds bullpens were 454 and 447 feet from home plate, making it questionable as to whether someone would be able to see a stretch or tossed baseball well enough to interpret it—to say nothing of the fact that, because of its notoriously bad drainage—the park’s site was actually shown to be lower than the adjacent Harlem River in an 1870’s map of the area—there was a significant dropoff to the outfield. The grade was so extreme that the managers in the dugouts could only see their outfielders from the waist up, which makes it even less likely that Yvars, at 5-foot-10, was easily visible from home plate. What’s beyond question is that the system—whatever it was—worked well.)

Durocher’s buzzer was of little use at first, as shortly after it was installed the Giants went on a 17-game road trip, during which time they dropped from eight games behind Brooklyn to 12 1/2 games back. New York was struggling as the Dodgers surged. “The Giants,” proclaimed Brooklyn manager Charlie Dressen, “is dead.”

The team returned to the Polo Grounds on Aug. 11, and a loss to open the homestand dropped them 13 ½ games back. This was the Giants’ first extended stretch with buzzer under hand, however—21 out of 24 games at home—and they subsequently took off, winning three straight from Philadelphia, then three more from the Dodgers. Three straight over Philly on the road. Two victories over Cincinnati, one from St. Louis and a four-game sweep of the Cubs gave New York 16 straight wins and brought the club to within five of the Dodgers.

The Giants never would have caught Brooklyn had they not won 14 of their final 18 road games in addition to their home success, but, as evidenced by Gene Mauch’s can of peach nectar with the Cubs, it’s clear that teams don’t need to be playing at home to steal signs from outside the field of play.

The Giants eventually tied the Dodgers atop the standings, and the season culminated in a three-game playoff. After splitting the first two, the Dodgers took a 4-1 lead into the ninth inning of game 3, setting up Thomson’s heroic home run to clinch the pennant. While since admitting to the sign-stealing scheme, however, the slugger has long denied—if sometimes half-heartedly—that he was tipped off to the pitch he hit out.

Branca was told about the Giants’ system in 1954, three years after Thomson’s homer, but never commented on it—even when a bylined article by Jimmie Piersall, then with the Washington Senators, in the May 1962 issue of Baseball Monthly, suggested that the hitter knew what was coming. (“Thomson says it never happened,” wrote Piersall, “but I’ll bet he could get an argument out of Ralph Branca, who threw the pitch.”)

It wasn’t until Prager reported on the entire affair that Branca broke his silence.

“When I heard those rumors and innuendoes, I made a decision not to speak about it,” Branca said in the Wall Street Journal. “I didn’t want to look like I was crying over spilled milk. Bobby and I are really, really good friends. He still hit the pitch.”

The baseball world is a bit poorer today.

– Jason

1
Kevin Slowey, No-Hitter Etiquette, Ron Gardenhire

Pulling Slowey Nothing to Get Worked Up Over

Posted on by Jason Turbow

It was a big deal Sunday, in a novelty kind of way, when Ron Gardenhire pulled Kevin Slowey from his start, despite the fact that his pitcher had not given up a hit to the A’s.

By almost all counts, it was the correct thing to do. It was Slowey’s first start since being skipped in the rotation due to elbow soreness, and he was on a short leash from the outset. He had thrown 106 pitches when he was pulled.

Some decry the concept of pitch counts in the modern game, but Slowey’s removal was not without precedent.

In 1997, Pittsburgh’s Francisco Cordova was lifted after 121 pitches and nine innings of no-hit ball against the Astros; reliever Ricardo Rincon worked one hitless frame and the Pirates won it in the 10th.

In the first combined no-hitter in National League history, Atlanta’s Kent Mercker was pulled after six innings in a 1991 game. It was just his second start of the year, after 44 relief appearances, most of which lasted just a single inning and none of which stretched beyond two. (Mark Wohlers and Alejandro Pena combined to shut down the Padres over the final three frames.)

Pitchers have been pulled from no-hitters because it’s early in the season (Anaheim’s Mark Langston was allowed only seven innings and 98 pitches against the Mariners in his first start of the 1991 campaign, which was reasonable after he got in only 16 innings of spring training work due to a lockout) and late (A’s pitcher Vida Blue threw five frames of no-hit ball against the Angels on the final day of the 1975 season before being removed to stay fresh for the playoffs.)

Then there was San Diego’s Clay Kirby, who was pulled from his 1970 no-hitter by manager Preston Gomez for a pinch hitter, because the Padres were losing and needed an offensive boost.

Gardenhire is in good company. If anyone still doubts his strategy, the bottom line is this: Slowey is still healthy enough to give it another go in his next start, and that counts more than anything.

– Jason

– Jason

3
Alex Avila, Armando Galarraga, Brendan Ryan, Chris Carpenter, Gerald Laird, Teammate Relations

Dugout Dispute Dogs Detroit

Posted on by Jason Turbow

When Chris Carpenter upbraided St. Louis shortstop Brendan Ryan in the Cardinals dugout last week, not quite out of view of TV cameras, many people wrote it off as a notoriously hot-headed pitcher overreacting to a situation that was hardly dramatic. (Ryan was late to the field for the bottom of the first inning because he had been hitting in the cage as the first three batters in the Cardinals lineup made quick outs. He then compounded matters by grabbing the wrong glove and having to wait for the correct one to be delivered. Watch it here.)

Carpenter is in clear possession of a sharp-edged personality, so it was easy to pile on. When Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga did something remarkably similar yesterday, however, it became clear that this type of behavior is not necessarily reserved for the people from whom we most expect it.

After all, in watching his perfect game spoiled by a blown call, Galarraga showed more class and restraint than could reasonably be expected. So to see him flustered—completely undone over what was apparently some confusion with his catcher over pitch selection—served to illustrate what kind of line even the most collected pitchers walk under trying circumstances.

In Galarraga’s case, he had words near the bench with catcher Alex Avila at the end of the second inning of Detroit’s game against the White Sox, entering the dugout pointing and yelling. The Tigers’ other catcher, veteran Gerald Laird, stepped in to defend his would-be protégé, and tempers quickly escalated. (Watch it here.)

At least Carpenter made an effort to carry on his conversation away from prying eyes (although he ultimately didn’t make it far enough into the dugout tunnel to succeed). Galarraga’s dispute was totally undisguised.

Avila, Galarraga and Laird all described it afterward as just a few heated moments, but only Laird cut to the crux of the matter when identifying what exactly prompted him to intercede in a fight that wasn’t initially his.

“For [Galarraga] to come in and try to embarrass him in front of his teammates like that, I just didn’t think that was the right time to do it,” he told MLB.com.

In that regard, Laird is spot on. Players have angry words with teammates all the time—behind closed clubhouse doors. Opening it up for public scrutiny goes directly against the Code, which has an entire section devoted to protecting secrets of the trade.

In another odd twist, Fox Sports Detroit, which was televising the game in Michigan, opted not to air footage of the fight, nor did broadcasters Mario Impemba and Rod Allen ever mention it.

One unwritten rule of the media involves editing essential pieces out of a story at risk of credibility. By failing to reference the day’s key storyline, FSD appears to care more about appeasing the home team than informing fans.

FSD executive producer John Tuohey took responsibility, reported the Detroit News, saying that had the fight occurred during game action, rather than between innings during a commercial break, it would have made the air.

It’s a weak argument. Comcast SportsNet Chicago aired the entire affair, and it didn’t seem a bit out of place. People understand that things happen while other things are on the air. That’s what replays are for.

The Tigers won the game, so at least something went right for them.

– Jason

0
Francisco Rodriguez, Protect Teammates

Mets Players Compelled to Back K-Rod, Even as they Shake Their Heads in Disgust

Posted on by Jason Turbow

By now, we all know what happened with Francisco Rodriguez—the fight with his father-in-law in the Mets’ family lounge at Citi Field; how he pummeled a much older man; his arrest and arraignment.

How does the Code play into it? Rodriguez is a member of the New York Mets, and his teammates are expected to stand up for him. Even if they can’t tolerate the guy, or what he did.

Carlos Beltran is a prime example. Talking to ESPN New York, he detailed this exact dilemma in clear terms:

It’s disappointing, man. You don’t want to see no one go through that. But it is what it is. Now he has to deal with that situation. Us, as players, as teammates, even though we don’t agree with what he did, we have to support him. He’s part of the ballclub. He’s going to come here and do his thing.

“You always protect your teammate, from management or the front office, even if they are wrong,” Jose Rijo told me a few years back. “They are your teammates, and you hate to see anything happen to them. Your teammate is like your girlfriend—once you get to know them, you love them no matter what.”

A more appropriate metaphor is teammates as brothers. Clubhouse fights are hardly uncommon, but the quickest way to get over them and build instant cohesion is for somebody wearing a different uniform to step in with an opinion on the matter.

Former Indians third baseman Al Rosen, a Jew, told a story about some vicious insults hurled his way from the dugout of the Chicago White Sox in the 1950s.

“Today they don’t allow bench jockeying, but in those days it was prevalent,” he said. “There was a lot of brutal stuff that went on. They tried to get to a player, and obviously a racial or religious epithet will do it. I went into the dugout at Comisky Park one time looking for the guy who had been on me for games and games. I looked right down the bench and said, ‘The son of a bitch who’s been saying that come on out.’ Nobody would.

“Saul Rogovin, who was Jewish and pitched for them, knew who it was, and he told me later on, ‘Al, I wanted to tell you who it was, but I was a teammate of his.’ He was put in that spot, and he couldn’t get out of it.”

As reported by Buster Olney, Francisco Rodriguez has far too big a contract to serve as reasonable trade bait for pretty much anybody (if his option kicks in, the Mets will be paying him $17.5 million by 2012), meaning he’ll likely be in New York for the long run.

If they haven’t already, his teammates should begin preparing their “no comments” right now.

– Jason

0
Brandon Phillips, Don't Call out Opponents in the Press, Fights, Johnny Cueto

A Dark Day for Baseball Etiquette in Cincinnati, Pretty Much All Around

Posted on by Jason Turbow

This is what can happen when a player utters even a syllable too many about his opponent. (Though to be fair to the Cardinals, “little bitches” is a full four syllables.)

A day after forgetting to use his inside-the-clubhouse voice when discussing feelings about the St. Louis ballclub with the press—which included referring to them by the above epithet—Cincinnati’s Brandon Phillips stepped to the plate yesterday as the Reds’s first hitter of the game.

Upon entering the batter’s box, he tapped his bat on the shin guards of Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina and plate ump Mark Wegner as a means of greeting.

There’s nothing wrong with this. It’s standard practice for Phillips, meant as nothing but a friendly hello.

At least until he encountered a short-fused catcher who clearly prefers that his team be referred to in terms more genteel than “little bitches.”

“Why are you touching me?” he asked Phillips, as reported in the Cincinnati Enquirer. “You are not my friend, so don’t touch me.”

Phillips had thrown down the gauntlet with his comments, and Molina was only too happy to pick it up. Both teams flooded the field, and the scrum quickly turned into a baseball rarity—a fight in which actual blows were thrown. Managers Dusty Baker and Tony La Russa were ejected. (Watch it here.)

The appropriate response to Phillips and Molina: Grow up a little.

The unwritten rules mandate on-field retaliation only for on-field breaches of etiquette, and nothing more. Phillips ran his mouth, and the Cardinals responded in the best way possible, holding him to a combined 1-for-10 over the ensuing two games, while winning both to move into a tie with Cincinnati in the NL Central.

Molina should have let his comments go, and concentrated on the game, not a silly schoolyard spat. (He did use the confrontation as a bit of personal motivation, hitting a second-inning homer off Johnny Cueto.)

Now, what had been an unendorsed bit of foolishness from a single player has turned into genuine bad blood. It certainly helps make things interesting as the teams battle for the division lead, but these matchups are loaded with motivation based on baseball alone. Watching players act like testosterone-fueled kids does nothing for the purity of a good stretch drive.

* * *

During the course of the festivities, Baker and La Russa got into it, bringing quickly to mind the fact that they haven’t had the smoothest relationship over the years.

When Baker was with the Cubs in 2005, La Russa went public about concerns over Kerry Wood’s inside pitches, which was followed by Cards pitcher Dan Haren hitting his counterpart on the Cubs, Matt Clement.

Baker took it as an attempt at “selling wolf tickets,” or overtly trying to intimidate his team, saying in the Chicago Tribune that “no one intimidates me but my dad and Bob Gibson—and this bully I had in elementary school. But I grew bigger than him, and he stopped bullying me.”

The two eventually met and settled things, but it didn’t take long for their history to bubble to the surface yesterday.

* * *

Another unwritten rule was broken in the middle of the crowd of players, when Cueto, backed up against the backstop by a pile of humanity, opted to kick his way free.

There are rules to any fight; in the Code-driven world of professional baseball, this is especially true. It’s why Izzy Alcantara has gained such notoriety, and why Chan Ho Park’s attempted drop kick of Tim Belcher in 1999 continues to be replayed.

Square up and hit a guy, if you must, but the unwritten rules stipulate that kicking a player as means of attack is less than manly; something even for little bitches, if you will.

Cueto’s spikes landed, apparently repeatedly, on the face of St. Louis catcher Jason LaRue, who suffered a concussion and bruised ribs, and has been ruled out of playing today—and possibly much longer.

“He could have done some real damage (on LaRue),” said Chris Carpenter in the Cincinnati Enquirer. “He got him in the side of his eye, he got him in his nose, he got him in his face. Totally unprofessional. Unbelievable. I’ve never seen anything like that. He got kicked square in the side of the face with spikes. C’mon, give me a break.”

Cueto was on the mound for the Reds yesterday, but batted first with two runners on, and later during a 2-2 game. Neither situation was appropriate for retaliation.

The teams meet again in early September. This time, on-field payback—should that be the route the Cardinals choose to take, and with La Russa at the helm, it’s a good bet—will be entirely appropriate.

Buckle in.

Update (Aug. 12): Cuteo has been suspended for seven games—effectively, two starts—for his part in the brawl. If he knows what’s good for him, he’ll appeal in an effort to delay his punishment until just before the Reds visit St. Louis on Sept. 3.

– Jason

13
Brandon Phillips, Don't Call out Opponents in the Press

Phillips: Cardinals are ‘Little Bitches’; Cardinals: 7-3 Victory

Posted on by Jason Turbow

If Brandon Phillips’ isn’t Jonathan Sanchez’s newest favorite person, he should be.

Sanchez, the Giants’ No. 4 starter, let his mouth run loose on Sunday, when he guaranteed that his team would sweep its upcoming three-game series against San Diego and win the National League West.

Confidence is great, but braggadocio is rarely appreciated by one’s opponent. But just as pundits were beginning to dig into the concept of how to let sleeping dogs lie, Phillips laid down a distraction of such gravity that Sanchez may as well have forgotten how to speak English, for all the attention he’s getting.

Turns out that Phillips doesn’t like the Cardinals. Like, even a little. Despite missing a recent game after fouling a ball off his leg, he was geared up for Cincinnati’s showdown with its NL Central rivals.

His full quote, as reported by Hal McCoy of the Dayton Daily News:

“I’d play against these guys with one leg. We have to beat these guys. I hate the Cardinals. All they do is bitch and moan about everything, all of them, they’re little bitches, all of ’em.

“I really hate the Cardinals. Compared to the Cardinals, I love the Chicago Cubs. Let me make this clear: I hate the Cardinals.”

  • Fact: Phillips is a fun-loving guy.
  • Fact: Phillips is a bit of a loose cannon.
  • Probable fact: Phillips was merely joking around, and said what he did facetiously, in a light-hearted moment.
  • Indisputable fact: None of that matters.

Earlier this season, Phillips claimed he meant no disrespect to the Washington Nationals when he beat his chest after scoring a run. It made no difference; he still got drilled in response.

Similar retaliation for Phillips’ recent statement is unlikely—his on-field act in Washington was met with an on-field response; this is a different matter entirely. Still, that hardly means the incident is over.

When David Cone publicly called out Dodgers pitcher Jay Howell in the 1988 NLCS, the Dodgers responded with a wave of bench jockeying so vicious that a rattled Cone lasted just two innings into his Game 2 start. (The story is outlined here, within the context of Carlos Zambrano’s calling out A’s pitcher Jerry Blevins earlier this season.)

Yesterday, the Cardinals let their pitching do their talking, as Phillips went 0-for-5 and struck out to end a 7-3 St. Louis victory that cut Cincinnati’s lead in the division to a single game.

Tony La Russa also got involved. Just as Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda amplified Cone’s quote to motivate his team in 1988, La Russa did his part to give Phillips’ statement some legs.

“We win the right way and we lose the right way,” he told reporters. “We’ve received a lot of compliments over the years that when we lose we tip our caps and when we win we keep our mouths shut. That’s my comment.”

Given a moment to think it over, however—in the post-game shower, no less—La Russa flagged down reporters and added this:

“I don’t think that will go over well in his own clubhouse. Phillips is ripping his teammates — Scott Rolen, Miguel Cairo, Russ Springer, Jim Edmonds—all the ex-Cardinals over there. He isn’t talking about this year. He is talking about the way we’ve always played and those guys are old Cardinals. Tell him he’s ripping his own teammates because they are all old Cardinals.”

If that’s the case, he’s doubly ripping the former Reds—Ryan Franklin, Jason LaRue, Kyle Lohse, Felipe Lopez, Aaron Miles and Dennys Reyes—in the St. Louis dugout.

The most vocal any Cardinals player got in response was to point to Phillips’ performance on the day, and reiterate that the game is played on the field, not in the media.

“I didn’t know we had bad blood,” Skip Schumaker said in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “They can talk. And we’ll leave our comments to ourselves.”

It’s reminiscent of a similar dispute in 1972, when Angels pitcher Clyde Wright decided to talk about defending AL Cy Young and MVP winner Vida Blue, immediately after besting him in a 3-1 victory.

“Why should I be up for him?” Wright is quoted as saying in Ron Bergman’s book, Mustache Gang. “He’s just another pitcher now. I’m 8-3 and he’s 1-4. I can get up for the A’s, but not for Vida Blue. He doesn’t look as aggressive as before. You can see it in his eyes. He ran out to the mound, sure, but we all do that now.”

Blue’s response came eight days later, when he gave up a single run over nine innings to top Wright and the Angels. It was only then that he offered an opinion about what Wright had said.

“I don’t think Clyde Wright looked as aggressive as before,” Blue said after the game. “He ran out to the mound, but we all do that now. I can get up for the Angels, but not for Clyde Wright. What’s he now—8-4? I’m 2-4, but I’d say this even if I were 24-4.”

The Cardinals hardly needed motivation from Brandon Phillips to win the NL Central; how they perform down the stretch will be independent of anything he did or could say. (The same holds true for the Padres, in regard to Jonathan Sanchez.)

If they do pull it out, however, one sentiment pertaining to his statement will be irrefutably true: It didn’t hurt anybody but Cincinnati.

Update (Aug. 10): Talking about it today, Phillips didn’t back down, essentially saying that he said his piece, and now he just wants to win.

Reds manager Dusty Baker in McCoy’s column in the Dayton Daily News:  “You prefer that they don’t say that, but everybody refers to the freedom of speech and then you say things and get in trouble for it. I talked to him about it and it just puts a little more pressure on him to play better personally.”

– Jason

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Gary Varsho, Joe Kerrigan, John Russell, Know the Pipeline

Kerrigan Out in Pittsburgh; Did he Know Too Much?

Posted on by Jason Turbow
Joe Kerrigan

That the Pirates fired two coaches yesterday is hardly shocking. They’re the Pirates; these things happen.

At first, it was thought to be a step toward the eventual ouster of manager John Russell. Then it came out that Russell was behind the dismissals . . . as were baseball’s unwritten rules.

Russell refused to discuss his motivation for sacking pitching coach Joe Kerrigan and bench coach Gary Varsho, beyond platitudes that there were “some issues that I felt we needed to change,” and that he “lost two friends.”

A motivating factor could easily have been Kerrigan’s on-field performance—hope for Pirates pitchers was never high, and they’ve still managed to underperform—but there appears to be more to the story.

The firings, reported the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, were a matter of loyalty—or lack thereof: “Several players and others inside the team described scenes on recent road trips to Texas, Oakland and St. Louis where Kerrigan and Varsho either were openly critical of Russell or having mini-meetings with some coaches or players away from Russell.”

It’s not like this is new territory for Kerrigan. Baseball’s Code warns that there’s a mole on nearly every team, someone who carries sensitive information to the front-office and, as an occasionally unintended consequence, poisons clubhouse relationships.

According to multiple sources, Kerrigan is such a coach. In Joe Torre‘s book “The Yankee Years,” writer Tom Verducci identified issues within the New York clubhouse during Kerrigan’s tenure as bullpen coach:

(Torre) knew Kerrigan was connected to the front office by way of (GM Brian) Cashman, and word reached Torre that Kerrigan was having private conversations with Cashman about the team and Torre. One staff member even said Cashman had telephoned Kerrigan during a game.

Also in the book was the assertion that Kerrigan had “confrontations with players in just about every stop of his baseball life, including Philadelphia, Boston and the Yankees.”

Hall of Fame baseball writer Tracy Ringolsby wrote that Kerrigan was “a clubhouse mole when he was on the coaching staff in Montreal, Boston and Baltimore.” It’s possibly what led to his rise to the Red Sox managerial office after Jimy Williams was fired in mid-2001.

And this, from InsidePittsburghSports.com: “One veteran front-office executive said this of Kerrigan upon his hiring by the Pirates, ‘John Russell better have his head on a swivel because he has a manager killer on his staff now. Joe Kerrigan might be the biggest backstabber in baseball.’ ”

Kerrigan brings an intense devotion to film study and numbers-crunching to his coaching, traits that can be appealing to a general manager looking to balance out a staff heavy in more traditional baseball men. Even more enticing, perhaps, is the opportunity to have a reliable ear to the ground.

At some point, however, the question shifts to the cost one is willing to pay for information gained. Among other things, it helped lead to Torre’s departure from the Yankees.

Pirates GM Neil Neal Huntington backed Russell’s decision, clearly too late to salvage any hope of respectability for the Pirates and their young nucleus this season.

In this case, however, the focus is on next year. The quickest path to a clean slate is to wipe clean the messiest smudges.

– Jason

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