Baseball Virgin

[Threeteas]

He got the nickname Yogi from a friend who saw him as a Hindu mystic. THe cartoon character was named after him, and he didn't particularly like it.

He's from an area in St. Louis known as "The Hill". It used to be called "(somewhat derogatory term for Italians) Hill" but I guess we can't do that anymore. At any rate, the best food in STL is on The Hill. Go there around Labor Day (or is it Memorial Day?) and watch the bicycle race!

We've just had a bicycle event here in the Fremont area of Seattle, where an alternative lifestyle is de rigour, hence the participants being naked, or naked and painted. If you value your dignity, do not buy a second hand bike from Fremont!

Is that true, the cartoon was named after him? Fantastic.
I guess Boo Boo played for the Mariners then?

 

[tessler]

So, you guys wanna hear my Whitey Herzog story?

YES!

 

[PAGoldsby]

Philbert's tired old Whitey Herzog story...

Whitey was the manager for the Kansas City Royals from '75-'79, then he went to the Cards. He kept his house in KC, though, and mostly one of his daughters lived there. It was not too far from the hardware store where I worked when I was in high school, so if he was in town, he'd often come into the store to get stuff to work on the house.

One Saturday, I was helping another customer with some plumbing fittings or something, and Whitey came in with another guy. The man I was helping kept looking at Whitey as if he sort of recognized him. Finally I told him, "Yeah, that's Whitey Herzog. He's got a house down the road a bit." Well, the man just didn't believe me, nor did he believe the 2-3 other folks in the store who said it was Whitey. So I told the man to just ask the guy if he was Whitey.

Whitey's got what he needs, he pays at the register, exchanges pleasantries with a couple of folks, and heads to the door. My customer strikes. "Excuse me, you look familiar."

"Yeah. I look just like Whitey Herzog, don't I?" and left.

To this day I'm not convinced the customer was sure one way or the other.

 

[535IS]

Nice.

The batter stands in an area marked by chalk - the batter's box. This particular batter has what is known as a "backward stance," with his leading foot closer to the plate than the trailing foot. Nobody bats like this.

You do if you want to hit to the opposite field.

The guy in the drawing is batting 'left handed'. If he were on the other side of the plate, he would be batting 'right handed'. This is the same 'handedness' as in golf, where the more 'powerful' hand is the one pushing the swing while the other hand basically supplies balance and control. [This is more noticeable in golf where entirely different clubs are used, depending on your swing. Baseball bats are all cylindrical, so they can be used either way. A few batters can hit well from either side and they are known as 'switch hitters'.]

A batter hits best when the bat is straight out from his body, which is perpendicular to his foot stance. So you can see that, by shifting the stance, it shifts the place where he prefers to hit the ball. If the bat is angled toward right field, the hit ball will probably go toward right field. The tricky part comes from the bat's cylindrical shape. If the ball is hit off the top of the bat, it goes into the air and slightly slower (pure physics at work here) and if it is hit off the bottom, it goes into the ground, also slower. With a level swing (we usually try), a squarely hit ball should go straight off the face of the bat with the highest speed.

That said, most left handers have a tendency to hit toward first base and right field while right handers have the opposite tendency. However, if you stand 'backward' like this, it shifts the range in which you hit the ball to the opposite field. If the fielders aren't paying attention to your stance, they will not be as prepared for your hit because they will be out of place to catch it.

A simple example is a right handed batter with a runner on first base. The first baseman will be at the base to be ready for the pitcher to try to catch the runner off base and 'throw him out' (throw to the first baseman before the runner gets back, in which case he will be tagged 'out'). The second baseman usually shifts toward second base for a right-handed batter, leaving a large gap between him and first base. If the batter can hit a ground ball opposite his usual direction, there's no one there to catch it and he and the runner will both advance safely.

Have you considered printing all of our posts off and using them as a note set for handy reference at the game?

 

[Threeteas]

Have you considered printing all of our posts off and using them as a note set for handy reference at the game?

I was working on memorising them.

Looking at the Mariners there seems to be a guy called Ichiro that's not bad and a bit of a local hero. Haven't looked at the Detroit "Tigers" (see I have been studying) yet, to see what they are like, but a passing conversation indicated they have some top class players that just aren't performing of late.

Also, I see it's a coaches' job/role to run on the field at some point to shout at a referee with very close faces and much arm waving. Then there's the seventh innings stretch, like a Mexican Wave but with more creeking and cracking noises.

 

[PAGoldsby]

Backward stance ...

To hit opposite field, I line up in a normal closed stance. I will step into the plate in the swing, though. Standing in a backward stance means you have to rotate your head more than 90 degrees to see the ball. There are very few hitters who can pull this off. I think Pete Rose used to do it on occasion. In general though, it's a really difficult stance to deal with. It's much easier to bat (and harder to defend) to square up, then rotate from the shoulders, through the hips and move the leading foot into the plate with the swing. The backward stance also puts left-handed batters at an awkward disadvantage to hit and run.

Don't even get me started on the clowns who hold their bat upright over their heads. I see more and more batters with this stance. They all seem to be batting about .215 or so.

 

[Threeteas]

They all seem to be batting about .215 or so.

Now to the nitty gritty. I saw this sort of statistic referred to but have no idea as to what .215 of what, it is referring to.

What are the numbers to look for?

 

[PAGoldsby]

Now to the nitty gritty. I saw this sort of statistic referred to but have no idea as to what .215 of what, it is referring to.

What are the numbers to look for?

That's the batter's batting average, or ratio of hits to at-bats (plate appearances), in thousandths. If a batter gets a hit every trip to the plate, he's said to be "batting a thousand" since the decimal form would be 1.000, or a thousand thousandths. A .215 hitter gets a base hit about 1 in 5 trips to the plate. Easy, right?

Wrong.

Not every plate appearance counts as an at-bat. If the player is walked, or hit by a pitch, the plate appearance does not count as an at-bat. Also, if he is out by a sacrifice fly or a fielder's choice, it doesn't count as an at-bat. There are a couple of other, more esoteric, exclusions to the at-bat rules.

A season batting average of .300 is very good, .275 is about average, .250 or below is pretty sucky. .215 is kind of a magic number in baseball, known as the Mendoza line, after Minnie Mendoza. He raised mediocrity as a batter to a new low. (How's that for a Yogi Berra-ism?)

 

[Threeteas]

And do pitchers work on the same basis, so a 0.5 would mean they...no hang on while I think about this.

The pitcher could throw a maximum of 5 balls at a batsman, two no balls and three balls...okay so far?

So, with a 0.1 wouldn't that mean the pitcher was getting a batsman out once every 50 pitches, so a .5 would be every 25.

Now I'm guessing it's not that simple is it?

 

[PAGoldsby]

The pitcher's main statistic is ERA - Earned Run Average. The ERA is 9 * (# of earned runs / innings pitched). The statistic is designed to approximate the number of runs a pitcher is likely to give up in a complete game. If a pitcher gives up 3 runs in 6 innings, his ERA is 9*(3/6) = 4.50. Pitchers rarely pitch all 9 innings (a complete game). You'll see innings pitched as 6.2, for example. What that really means is 6 2/3 of an inning, or 6 full innings plus two outs in the 7th.

For relievers (pitchers who come in in the 5th - 8th inning, usually) ERA is not a really accurate rendering of effectiveness. For closers (pitchers who come in in the 8th or 9th inning, usually), it is more helpful, although their ERAs are as likely to be artificially high as artificially low. If a closer is pitching 1/3 or 2/3 of an inning for most of a season, he could have a very low ERA, since he's just there to get a couple of outs. It just takes one earned run in 1/3 of an inning to screw up the works, though. Pitch a third of an inning and give up a run, and your ERA is 27!

What counts as an "earned run" has its own set of somewhat confusing rules, too.

Another important pitching statistic is number of strikeouts, denoted by a "K" when keeping score. It's a season and career cumulative number, like the total number of hits or home runs for a batter.

I'm sure by now you're certain that we're making all this up!

 

[BeemerMike]

Now I'm guessing it's not that simple is it?

Yes, you're guessing, and no, it's not that simple. The pitcher gets a "batting average" based on what the batters he pitches to do (hit, out, walk, etc.), and not on each pitch. Calculated the same way as for the batter.

And a pitcher can throw far more than 5 pitches at a single batter. First, the maximum "count" is 3 "balls" and 2 "strikes" before the next pitch either walks or strikes out the batter or the batter hits the ball, for a total of 6 pitches . . . but "foul balls" (balls hit by the batter but not into "fair territory") do not count as strikes after the second strike. There have been some epic battles between a pitcher and a batter, where the batter "fouls off" pitch after pitch after pitch.

 

[PAGoldsby]

I've seen MLB pitchers throw as many as 15 pitches to a single batter. If the batter can successfully keep chipping fouls out of the pitches, he can really frustrate and wear out a pitcher. Most pitchers will come out of the game around 100 pitches. They'll come out a lot sooner if they're giving up hits and runs, or stay in if they're pitching really well.

A "no-hitter" is just that - no batter got a hit against the pitcher, but he may have walked one or more. Rare.

A "perfect game" is when the pitcher retires 27 consecutive batters - no walks. Very rare.

I don't think there has ever been a pitcher to strike out 27 consecutive batters in a game. Randy Johnson struck out 12 or 13 a couple of years ago in the last perfect game I can recall.

 

[tessler]

A "no-hitter" is just that - no batter got a hit against the pitcher, but he may have walked one or more. Rare.

A "perfect game" is when the pitcher retires 27 consecutive batters - no walks. Very rare.

Johnson's PG was the most recent, but Cy Young had the distinction of throwing the first one in the American League (in the modern era), up at Boston.

\Just look at that box score. A thing of beauty.

 

[Threeteas]

Now it is starting to sound like jibberish. The pitcher is measured on a batting average (although he doesn't need to bat), where in 9 innings, although not 9 and certainly not 9 if the home team are winning after the away team has batted in the 9th's opener and not exceeded the home teams score of the 8th, and can sometimes be 27 although if it's good it's more likely to be 9x a number between 1 and 27 divided by another number of not greater than 9 and probably not a whole number if someone is out in the 7th, unless by the 7th the pitcher has been replaced by someone with an artificially high, or low, number. And this all depends not on the 5 pitches, but any number of pitches dependent upon what the batter does, which can vary from a base run, two bases run, a home run, a walk, a punty thing or anything else, at which point the coach runs on, spits tabacco and swears and gesticulates. We all stand up and scratch at the start of the seventh and whatever number that permutates to is given as an average to the pitcher.

Seems simple enough now. Why didn'y you just say so to start with?
So how many goals or trys equal a round?

 

[PAGoldsby]

You forgot about the baby oil, but you've pretty much got it.

 

[BeemerMike]

Oh, and one more thing . . . although there may be a clock in the outfield scoreboard, there is no clock in baseball.

 

[Threeteas]

Oh, and one more thing . . . although there may be a clock in the outfield scoreboard, there is no clock in baseball.

Well thank the lords of baseball rules for that, otherwise they'd have set a maximum time for a pitcher to throw and you lot would have had between bases speeds added to the interminable stats sheets too. Go on, tell me they have speed guns that do just that!

 

[tessler]

Oh, and one more thing . . . although there may be a clock in the outfield scoreboard, there is no clock in baseball.

And there's certainly "no crying in baseball" either!

Ok, guys, this has been an awesome thread, but I'm heading up to the mountains for the Fourth ÔÇö well out of cell/internet range ÔÇö and won't be back till next week.

Lamble, enjoy that game on Saturday. We expect nothing less than a full "ride report" and a play-by-play account of every inning (including culinary adventures in the stadium). Photographs, a plus!

Happy 4th to you and your's everybody!

 

[Threeteas]

If I catch the ball, can I keep it?

Are they all worth $500,000 or only the "special" ones?

Tessler, I'll do my best, but you may end up with a poor photocopy of the Seattle Times' sports page.

Enjoy the 4th.

 

[nytrashman]

sorry to say it but you still are not going to get to see a real baseball game, as real baseball is played in the bronx in oct.