MLB notes: Sox pitchers fanning the flames
SportsMLBBoston Red Sox
By Michael Silverman | michael.silverman@bostonherald.com | Boston Herald
PUBLISHED: April 14, 2013 at 12:00 a.m. | UPDATED: November 17, 2018 at 12:00 a.m.
The Red Sox got through their first nine games with an above-.500 record, which coming off last year's sorrowful season counts for a great deal.
One key to their success has been their starting pitching, and one stat in particular stood out as an early key indicator: strikeouts.
Entering the weekend, the Red Sox led the majors in strikeouts per nine innings, at 10.37. Their 58-strikeout total was second in the majors, tops in the league. Their 2.50 ERA also was tops in the league but no doubt the whiff rate, the ability to freeze or fool batters, has been central to their success.
Ryan Dempster's 15 strikeouts after his first two starts were tops, followed by Jon Lester (13) and Clay Buchholz (12).
"I think it's a reflection of the type of stuff we have," manager John Farrell said. "I will say Ryan Dempster's strikeout totals are a little more than expected. We were kind of joking about it today, maybe we trade off three strikeouts for another inning or two of work in that role, but he's there to get outs and by virtue of the strikeout, we can't argue about that. But I think overall it's a matter of the talent our pitching staff has, and the swing-and-miss ability, and the overall talent they have."
Red Sox pitchers have been taught to pitch to contact, which means not to nibble and try to catch corners all constantly, but trust their command and their pitches' movement. Weak contact is optimal; the batter not being able to put the barrel on the bat. Otherwise, strikeouts will do just as well, even though they require more pitches than the one needed to get a contact out. Pitch efficiency always comes into play, and so far the Red Sox starters have not excelled at going deep into games. They are tallying their strikeouts while they're in there, but those starts are not lasting as long as they should and probably will.
For somebody like Dempster, the choice between pitching to contact and pitching for the strikeout is a fine line.
Said Farrell: "He's going to use the stuff that he has. It's not like he's going to come up with an above average sinker to get a higher rate of ground balls. He's going to pitch with a four-seamer, he's going to pitch with a split and his slider. So we don't want him to try to reinvent himself for the sake of an additional inning. We do know that when we get through the month of April and he has four or five starts under his belt, that pitch count limit will climb to give him the opportunity to get deeper in games."
An African-American void
Just 7.7 percent of Opening Day rosters were comprised of African-American players, another reminder of how much work lies ahead if the sport is going to regain its appeal to African-American athletes.
Commissioner Bud Selig is going to establish a diversity task force aimed at rectifying the concerning trend. Baseball has had its RBI program — Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities — in place for several years, but it has not yielded results.
Four teams had no African-American players on their opening roster, while the Yankees and Phillies accounted for 17 percent of African-American players.
Farrell offered this take on the issue: "I think the African-American athlete has migrated toward basketball and football a little bit more readily. Whether it's the efforts with the RBI program that's now got six, seven years in existence to address that, to attract more African-Americans to the game of baseball, I think those are all great measures being taken. But when you look at maybe the land or the acres needed for fields in the inner city, and that real estate, prime real estate that they won't devote to the (baseball) field — that may be an uneducated response on my part, but I don't know why we're not attracting as many African-Americans as we should so I'm looking forward to the results of that as well because there are far too many very good athletes that could be playing this game."
Scully on top of his game
San Diego batter Carlos Quentin's hot-headed charge of Dodgers pitcher Zack Greinke Thursday sparked one of the biggest baseball brawls of the last couple of years. The Dodgers were particularly incensed, considering that Greinke broke his left collarbone, and outfielder Matt Kemp was as hot as anyone on the team. Televised replays showed Josh Beckett spending a lot of time trying to insert himself between the angry Kemp and the ongoing scrum. If you haven't seen and heard the Dodgers' telecast of the fight, you owe it to yourself to seek it out — if only to get an understanding of how polished and professionally Vin Scully handled the tumult. Never raising his voice and speaking as if he were describing two people walking up to each other on the street, Scully simply observed and described. Lipreading revealed a common word coming out of Kemp's mouth. Scully described what Kemp was saying with: "That is fertilizer."
On another recent broadcast, the 85-year-old Scully followed a Dodgers promotion that required him to mention Twitter and hashtags with the following moment of candor: "Can I ask you an honest question between you and me — what in the world is a hashtag? There are so many things in this world I don't understand it would fill the Library of Congress."
He also mentioned that he had been watching TV when an ad for a new Dog TV channel appeared, touting its ability "to comfort pets when the owner is not at home."
Said Scully: "How do you sell a sponsor to a pet? 'Dog TV' — now does that mean cats can't watch?"
Big coverup for Uehara
On TV, Red Sox reliever Koji Uehara's glove looks enormous. Up close, not so much. It is maybe a little larger than average, but Uehara has a good reason for wearing a glove so big.
"It's because I try to hide my tendencies," said Uehara, who throws a split-fingered fastball.
Because the grip on that pitch requires putting fingers on either side of the ball, Uehara wants an extra big pocket so the hitter cannot pick up what grip he is applying.
Uehara said the glove is made by Nike and is not a special order, but it is available off the shelf in Japan. . . .
Yankees closer Mariano Rivera is retiring in his unique, classy style. In each city on this swansong season, he is trying to meet with behind-the-scenes people in each town.
In Cleveland last week, Rivera asked, according to the Associated Press, "Where's the drummer?" in a meet-and-greet session.
John Adams raised his drum sticks and said "Right here," and Rivera told him, " 'Hey, you the man. Being loyal, being there, day in and day out, I really respect that. Thank you."
Rivera met with 25 Indians employees for half an hour before a Yankees-Indians game.
Taking measure of Mick
Wednesday marks the 60th anniversary of Mickey Mantle's famous Griffith Stadium home run, a mammoth clout, maybe even the longest of all time. We just don't know for sure. Modern data such as velocity off the bat, trajectory, vertical launch angle were not around to help provide a precise answer for how far it went but the ball entered baseball folklore regardless. A good deal of the hit's appeal is that its distance was estimated by a Yankees public relations staffer at 565 feet. Even though the Yankees employee used his feet to pace off the distance, the phrase "tape measure" home run was born with the Mantle clout.
Home run aficionados have long puzzled over the truth. Doubters of the 565-feet claim, no doubt Red Sox fans, estimated the ball could have gone no more than 510 feet. Fistfights have broken out over lesser disputes and nobody will ever know the truth on Mantle's home run for sure, but it's a good time to celebrate the scientifically minded baseball fan, in this case Alan Nathan, a professor of physics at the University of Illinois, who a couple of years ago published a paper on the home run.
Based on eyewitness accounts — the ball glanced off a beer sign in left-center, bounced off the roof of a house before rolling to a stop — Nathan was able to come to a more precise estimate. In his research, Nathan found the "principal new piece of information used in the analysis is that the ball was retrieved behind the row houses facing 5th Street. For the ball to get to the backyard of those houses, it had to travel far enough to at least hit the roof, which allows a precise determination of a minimum distance that the ball would have traveled unimpeded. As it happens, that minimum distance is very close to the distance one would expect for a ball hit optimally. Thus, a physically plausible scenario has been found for the trajectory that is consistent with all the available information and the laws of physics. The minimum distance is found to be 538 feet."
So, until somebody comes up with something different, 538 feet is the answer to how far Mantle's home run went. Try to remember that on Wednesday when you get asked.
Fenway open-door policy
The Red Sox will hold an Open House on Wednesday, allowing fans to stroll through Fenway Park at their own pace, get an autograph from a former player or coach and visit a few "forbidden" areas such as the clubhouses, the dugouts, batting cages and the bullpen. Fans may also walk along the warning track. Last year, the event was quite popular and there were big back-ups near the home dugout and Green Monster scoreboard. The event runs from 9 to 5. Concessions will be sold — at discount prices, the club said. . . .
The 2012 Pawtucket Red Sox, winners of the Governor's Cup (International League champs), received their rings during a pregame ceremony on Opening Night at McCoy Stadium Thursday.
That date also happened to coincide with the major league debut of Alex Wilson, who got called up to the bullpen last week. Wilson could not make the ceremony, but he got his ring early.
"I went down there to pick up my truck and snagged it before anybody else got theirs," he said.
Wilson's wife and parents were in town this weekend to share in Wilson's once-in-a-lifetime event. "They're here through (today)," he said, "so they're going to catch a few more games — hopefully, I'll get in there another time or two and make this trip worth it for them." . . .
The Red Sox will be in Philadelphia on May 29, the date the Phillies chose to honor 12-year-old Bailey O'Neill, who, in a bullying incident, died a couple of months after being punched by a fellow student. O'Neill was a big Phillies and Flyers fan who suffered seizures a few weeks after the January incident, went into a medically induced coma and was taken off life support and died on March 3.
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