Sports Memorabilia at Hollywood Collectibles

I consider myself a late but thoughtful giver of gifts. Rarely do I give a gift on the date for which it's intended, but more often than not, that's because I'm waiting to be struck with a perfect idea. I like a gift that's received with enthusiasm and genuine marvel, so while I may not be very prompt, I prefer to think that in the end it's usually worth the wait.

I'd like to think that Lee Pelekoudas is in the same boat. I'd like to think that, like me, Lee's an excellent gift-giver who simply requires a little bit of extra patience. But so far, at least as far as Washburn's concerned, Lee's only demonstrated the second part. There has been no gift. There was a rumor of a gift, but no gift-giving came to fruition, and while I'm trying to give him time, I'm ever so slowly losing my wits. Come on, Lee. This is easy. Give us the gift of no Washburn. Because the longer you wait, the more you look like that dick who forgot his friend's birthday. And that guy sucks.

Biggest Contribution: Jeremy Reed, +15.1%
Biggest Suckfest: Jose Lopez, -16.3%
Most Important AB: Reed single, +11.7%
Most Important Pitch: Span triple, -17.7%
Total Contribution by Pitcher(s): -23.8%
Total Contribution by Lineup: -26.2%
Total Contribution by Opposition: 0.0%
(What is this chart?)

• It's funny - we all complain about how hanging on to Washburn a little longer only gives him time to regress, thereby lowering his market value, but let's be honest, the only team whose opinion of Washburn changes by the start is us, and we already have him. There's not another organization in baseball - at least, not a competitive one - who's going to look at Washburn's 3.44 ERA since May 25th and think "hey this guy's really good." Everybody knows exactly what Jarrod Washburn would bring them as a starter, and nothing he does short of getting hurt or adding 10mph to his fastball is going to change the way he's perceived. So don't worry about the regression. If some team out there really wants Jarrod Washburn, they'll go ahead and try to get him, even if his run prevention returns to normal. For better or worse, front offices just aren't as easily duped as we've been conditioned to believe they are. 


• Hard to believe Adrian Beltre came about six inches away from giving the Mariners a seventh-inning lead. Unfortunately Denard Span appears to be one hell of a defensive outfielder. Given that Beltre has the seventh-lowest BABIP - LD% in baseball, Red might want to consider staying inside for a while, just to be safe. It's a jungle out there.


• Denard Span, everybody. The 20th overall pick in 2002 came into the year looking like a complete and utter bust, having failed to hit anywhere north of high-A, but all he's done since the start of the season is hit .328 between AAA and the Majors with a good eye, a lot of speed, and a shit-ton of groundballs. On top of that, if this series is any indication, he also seems to play outstanding defense. Out of nowhere, a prospect in danger of being written off for good has turned himself into a major building block for the organization. That's always a lot of fun to see, even if one of the side effects is watching Beltre get robbed. Now if only this sort of thing would happen with Jeremy Reed.


• Jarrod Washburn's BIP profile: 3 grounders, 6 fly balls, 7 liners, 2 pop-ups, 2 bunts (excluded). That's a 44% line drive rate for those of you without a calculator. A 44% line drive rate against a lineup including Nick Punto, Mike Redmond, Carlos Gomez, Adam Everett, and someone named Randy Ruiz. Oh, he also only threw 60 strikes on 102 pitches. Welcome to bad. RRS may not be much better whenever he gets his chance to stick, but at least he'll be cheaper and far more attractive in a sexual way.


• You may not have noticed but Bryan LaHair isn't very good.


• It took me a little while to figure out why a 2-2/1 BB day so redeemed Jeremy Reed in my eyes, but I think I figured it out. Last night his OPS stood at .695. Now it stands at .714. It's that "7" that, psychologically, seems to make all the difference. I know it's stupid and I know .699 basically means the same thing as .700, but for some reason, my brain seems to thing the second one is quite a bit more appealing. .272/.318/.377? Fourth outfielder. .280/.330/.384? Now we're talking. I won't defend it, but I will explain it. What's that? These chicken tacos are only 99 cents? I'll take ten!


• Jared Wells (the guy we got back in the Cha Baek trade that oh my god fuck you Carlos Silva) made his Mariner debut today and whiffed two over a pair of scoreless innings. Not a bad first game for a pitcher that kind of sucks. He's not particularly interesting, but since he's up for a few days, I might as well spend a few words talking about him. He's a righty that comes over-the-top with a straight fastball between 90-94, a slider between 78-83 with a lot of movement, and a changeup that serves no purpose other than to nominally diversify his arsenal. As is the case with seemingly every disappointment ever considered at any point to have a bit of promise, the problem with Wells isn't so much stuff as location. He has enough stuff to retire Major League hitters, but he doesn't throw enough strikes to give himself a chance. Oh, he also doesn't generate many groundballs. It'd be one thing if Wells were still 23 or 24, but he turns 27 in October, and he's not making progress. Barring some miracle, be prepared to forget this name.

US Cellular Field saw a rarity, or at least what feels like a rarity, Wednesday night, a pitcher's duel. The Sox pitching as a whole has struggled since the beginning of July. In fact, only once since July 1st have they held an opponent to one run or less. John Danks and the bullpen made it twice, and did it in half the time of last nights marathon affair.

Danks needed to give the bullpen a break after they went 10 innings yesterday, and he was up to the task from the very first inning. He needed just 8 pitches to get three consecutive groundouts to Juan Uribe in the first, and cruised through the early innings thanks to an excellent changeup. His change was so good Wednesday that he ditched his breaking ball altogether, going exclusively with fastball, cutter, change. (Watching CSN's SportsNight as I'm writing this. Toby said Danks' curve was crap in the bullpen, so he didn't call one all game.)

Justin Verlander had an answer for Danks most of the night, at one point retiring 12 White Sox batters in a row, but the Sox got to him on the bookends. In the first, Jim Thome tagged a 3-run shot to left-center for his 6th career HR off Verlander. Carlos Quentin did a great job making sure Thome got to the plate with men on base; first getting the Sox first hit of the night on a 0-2 pitch, then breaking up what looked to be a sure double play with a hard slide at second base. Were it not for the slide, Jermaine Dye would have been out at first easily. In the 8th, as Verlander reached well into the triple digits, Dye redeemed himself by inciting a 2-out rally with a double down the right field line. Verlander intentionally walked Thome, for obvious reasons, to get to Paul Konerko, who had to earn his way on with a 7-pitch walk to chase Verlander at 130 pitches.

Alexei Ramirez capped the sox 2-out rally to provide the much-needed insurance runs with a single off Verlander's replacement, Aquilino Lopez, before getting caught in a rundown between first and second. All of the Sox runs came with 2-outs, so it really was a rare night at USCF. Ramirez' hit was huge because of the obvious--there is a world of difference between a single or a walk bringing the tying run to the plate versus a 3 (singles or walks)-- and the Tigers had the heart of the order due up in the 9th.

I thought Joey Cora pulled Danks at least one batter too soon--I would have liked to seen him work into the 8th to really give the pen the night off--but his last pitch was a truly terrible pitch. With Magglio Ordonez in scoring position, Danks seemed to be working Gary Sheffield over when Toby Hall called for a high--out of the zone high--fastball. Danks grooved one down the middle, thigh high, and he was lucky Sheffield only stroked it for a double. In hindsight, it might have been an inspired pull by Cora, but it felt a little quick to me.

Meta

In the interest of keeping the front page a little cleaner, I'm going to implement a new way to deal with the overflow gamethreads. We'll still use them, but as soon as the recap goes up, assuming there is a recap, I'll demote the overflow threads from the front page. (So Stop re-promoting them, Wiz.) The site looked a little ridiculous yesterday with 5 threads taking up prime content real estate. They'll still be fully accessible, but they won't be as visible once the recap goes up.

From now on, once the recap goes up the old gamethreads will be available in two places, one on the right sidebar and one on the left. On the right, there is box below the FanShots listing the last three gamethreads. On the left, there is the link cleverly titled "Game Threads" in the Sections box that will take you to a page that has nothing but the latest gamethreads. Hopefully, the cleaner front page will prompt more posting from Colin and Shaftr, wink, wink.

It's been less than a year, but by my count, there are twenty guys on the 40-man roster who weren't with the organization since Neal Huntington and Frank Coonelly took over.

Here they are:

Jimmy Barthmaier
Denny Bautista
T.J. Beam
Jason Davis
Phil Dumatrait
Craig Hansen
Jeff Karstens
Ross Ohlendorf
Marino Salas
Ty Taubenheim
Tyler Yates
Raul Chavez
Chris Gomez
Andy LaRoche
Doug Mientkiewicz
Luis Rivas
Jason Michaels
Brandon Moss

Here are the players who have held over:

Ronald Belisario
Sean Burnett
Matt Capps
Dave Davidson
Zach Duke
Tom Gorzelanny
John Grabow
Yoslan Herrera
Paul Maholm
Romulo Sanchez
Ian Snell
John Van Benschoten
Ryan Doumit
Ronny Paulino
Jose Bautista
Brian Bixler
Adam LaRoche
Freddy Sanchez
Jack Wilson
Nate McLouth
Nyjer Morgan
Steve Pearce

I don't have some grand point here; I mostly just want to make a record of the 40-man roster right now to look back at in a year to see whether this amount of player movement continues.

I think it will. There is still a huge number of players on both lists who are basically useless--Belisario, Davis, Taubenheim, Van Benschoten, Herrera, Rivas, Morgan, and probably Davidson, Paulino, Bixler and Burnett as well. My guess is that Huntington will be very active this offseason in finding replacements for many of these players, both in signing players to minor-league deals and acquiring cheap free agents. For example, the Pirates pursued Chad Durbin last offseason but didn't sign him, and now he's posting a 1.77 ERA for the Phillies. The Pirates tried a similar signing with Byung-Hyun Kim that didn't work, but I still bet they're more aggressive with the Durbins of the world in the coming offseason.

Also, the Bucs may trade more veterans, such as Grabow and Wilson, in the offseason, and these trades may be similar to the Nady-Marte deal--they'll look for upside, but they'll also look for quantity, because this season has shown that the Pirates lack depth in a big way. So in a Wilson deal, they might target a young shortstop and a couple more pitchers who are nearly ready. (This is all speculation, by the way.)

The result of all this could is that by this time next year, or even by April, the 40-man roster could be very, very different from the way it looked when Dave Littlefield was fired, with as few as a dozen players remaining.

The Detroit Tigers needed a great start from Justin Verlander tonight.  Maybe that was more than they had any right to expect, given the lost cause that this season has now become.

But when it fell to the staff ace to stanch the bleeding, to put a stop to this demoralizing losing streak, what does Verlander do?  He tees up a three-run homer to Jim Thome in the first inning.  Not what the Tigers needed.

That's really not a fair assessment of Verlander's overall effort tonight, however.  Even though a lights-out pitching effort would've been great, the Tigers needed him to just hang in there and keep their damn relievers off the field.  Verlander tired out at the end, and two more runs were charged to him when Aquilino Lopez couldn't get an out.  (Stop pretending to act surprised.)  But he toughed out almost eight innings, giving his team what it needed.  And for that kind of effort - even if it wasn't a winning one - he probably deserves a salute. 

Yes, that's what it's come to.  Applause just for playing.  Get your complimentary pat on the back on your way out.

Save a different kind of salute for the lineup, which only managed five hits tonight.

Roll Call

I think a subdued GameThread was to be expected after last night, and the feeling of resignation that loss created.  I don't know how many actually watched every pitch tonight, but it's like they say - misery loves company.

Welcome to the BYB support group.  Say hi to MackAveKurt, HavocRox, MSU4LIF, spotstarters, ThaWalrus9, wepri31, explosivo2k2, ViolaHalo, Boney, pfuhrmeister, densogirl, dettigionswings'stons, rock n rye, Juskimo, Rogo, bradm, and ahtrap.

And we're back to the wretched, intolerable Mets games of yestermonth. Sloppy defense, anemic offense, practically nothing to get excited about. The pitching wasn't terrible. Pedro Martinez got off to a rough start but mostly settled down and managed to pitch into the seventh inning. Only a David Wright error allowed the Padres' third run to score, and an Eddie "Rusty" Kunz homerun allowed -- his first since 2005 when he was playing with Oregon State -- put the game woefully out of reach at 4-2.

The Mets' hitters are back in that mode of, uhh, that thing where you don't do a lot of run-scoring. They made another mediocre starter look like the second coming of Steve Nebraska and fell back to three games behind the Phillies. There's still hope: three games is far from insurmountable, they've got plenty of games left against the Phillies and Marlins, blah blah blah. Seriously, who can stand this anymore? They'll suck me back in with an 8-2 win on Thursday, and then back in the crapper with a 3-1 loss on Friday. Eff this ess.

Big winners: David Wright, +20.5% WPA, Dan Murphy, +17.2% WPA
Big losers: Carlos Beltran, -27.3% WPA, Carlos Delgado, -21.8% WPA
Teh aw3s0mest play: Murphy RBI single, +10.4% WPA
Teh sux0rest play: Giles single/Wright error, -18.9% WPA
Total pitcher WPA: -6.3%
Total batter WPA: -43.7%

Game Thread Roll Call

Nice job by Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright; his effort in the game thread embiggens us all.

Probably getting to be about the late innings now, eh? This should be fascinating...

Or, Jo-El blew it and we're down by six. Either way.

The rally thread.

8-4 w/ Pineiro beating Lowe?  Whouda thunk it?

Picking up where we left off from last night's overflow:

I'm out of ways to describe how terrible the A's offense is. Let me sum up: The A's received a hit from Crosby, Gonzalez, and Thomas today, and received three walks. That's the offense they put up to support their brand-new pitcher on the mound, who certainly deserved better than he got tonight.
 
With the exception of the first inning, where he let a two-out rally and a bomb leave him down 3-0, Gio settled in nicely and pitched a gem the rest of the way, pitching into the seventh, and looking good doing it. Unfortunately, thanks to the lack of A's hitters, Casilla, not Ziegler, replaced him, so the one batter he left on base eventually scored, taking him from a 3 run outing to 4. His line finished 6+ IP, 4 H, 4 ER, 2BB, 4K. I thought he pitched better than the numbers indicated, and he may have earned a win for a different team in baseball tonight.
 
Unfortunately, he made his major league debut for the 2008 Oakland A's, and their offense is painful. I'm surprised that pitchers just don't burst into tears having to take the mound for this team. After all, what is the point of pitching well? What is the difference between losing 5-1 and losing 2-1? How much pressure do you want to put on a young pitcher when he knows he can't give up more than a run or he will lose?
 
Despite doing their best to be no-hit tonight, the A's offense finally got on the board in the sixth with their first hit of the game, a solo homerun by Bobby Crosby. In the very next inning, they loaded the bases with no one out (in horrifying shades of last night), and failed to score. Yet again. You would think that even by accident that the A's could have scored in a least one of those situations. But when you score only 17 runs on your nine game losing streak, there isn't a lot of room for lucky and good things to happy to your team.
 
I'm tired of this. I would have rather lost the game tonight 10-9 than have to sit through inning after inning of scoreless baseball. I'm over pitching duels. I want some offense!
 
Duchscherer takes the mound tomorrow, trying to avoid an A's 10 game losing streak, while the rest of us do our best to cheer for maybe the three players left that we want to actually keep in our offense. And fun fact of the day, if you need more: Cust has now struck out 53 times in his last 101 ABs.
 
Same game, same time tomorrow. Hopefully a different outcome.