Lincoln Mitchell

Blog

This page contains links to recent blogs by Lincoln Mitchell

Tagged with: All Star Game

The Next Baseball Commissioner's Biggest Challenges →

The more difficult issues facing the new commissioner will be to ensure that baseball continues to generate the profits it has produced in recent years in an environment where the process of turning content into revenue is changing and becoming more difficult. Rising attendance throughout most of the Selig years has been a source of revenue for MLB and the teams themselves. That is unlikely to change in the near future, but the other major sources of revenue, notably cable television contracts are different.

Comment

Time for Tedious All Star Game Debates Again →

At best these debates are fun, challenging and seemingly important. Hall of Fame and Award related discussions feel important because they have direct bearing on how the game and its history are remembered. One of the annual baseball debates that meets none of these criteria surrounds the All Star Game. These debates begin around this time of year and usually take the form of whether some genuinely underrated very good player, a famous and clearly great player having an off-year or a not well known player having a good first half should start the All Star Game, or make the team. This year Josh Donaldson, Derek Jeter and Seth Smith are good examples of each category.

Comment

Eliminating Collisions at the Plate Will Be Good for Baseball →

Removing the collision at home plate, takes a tactic away from base runners with the intention of making the game safer, but it does not change the overall dynamic or balance of the game. In this respect, these rule changes are different than the changes over the decades that have been implemented to keep batters safer from pitched balls. The required use of batting helmets, increased use of body armor and system of quicker warnings for pitchers who rely throw brushback pitches, has created an advantage for hitters that did not exist 60 years ago. Regardless of whether or not one supports throwing inside, it is hard to deny that for many years it was a legitimate part of the game, and of the game's strategy.

Comment

Wha Timmy's Future Could Hold →

This is why, with only a few months to go before he becomes a free agent, Lincecum and the Giants are facing some very tough decisions. It is likely that both the Giants and their one-time superstar pitcher would like to see Lincecum have a strong second half and then sign a big, multi-year contract. However, it is not likely that things will go that smoothly. If Lincecum continues to struggle while showing occasional signs of brilliance, the Giants may offer a contract in the three-years, $20-million range, but not much more than that. Lincecum may get lucky and find another team willing to take a chance on him, but if not he might stay with the Giants because he has always played there, or he might leave because he feels insulted at not receiving a better offer. Either way, the likelihood is that if he continues to struggle through the end of this season, Lincecum's days as a dominant starter will be behind him.

Comment

Is It Time to Get Rid of the All-Star Game? →

These changes also have not addressed the major problem facing the All-Star Game-that it is a relic from another era and no longer meets the needs of fans or players. In an era of interleague play and widespread access to televised baseball in one form or another, the logic underlying an All-Star Game is not evident. Fans wishing to see how a great American League pitcher like Justin Verlander or Mariano Rivera fares against a National League star like Bryce Harper or Buster Posey no longer have to wait until the All-Star Game and hope for that matchup. Since the advent of interleague play, hose matchups may occur during the regular season when the Yankees play the Giants or the Tigers play the Nationals. The fans may have to wait a year or two for a specific matchup, but the regular season now has a great deal of interleague play.

Comment

Don Larsen, Manny Mota and the 1962 Giants

Fifty years after that tough defeat, and more importantly two years after finally getting their World Series victory, Giants fans can look at that 1962 team more charitably. They can recognize the impressive talent and interesting baseball stories that were brought together on that team. It is still possible, but not likely, that that great World Series will be commemorated by a 50th anniversary rematch. Even if this does not occur, it is worth taking a few minutes this October to remember this extraordinary team that came up just a foot or so short of a championship.

Comment

Melky Cabrera and Baseball's New Steroid Problem

Melky Cabrera’s suspension for the use of testosterone is a blow to the pennant hopes of the San Francisco Giants as Cabrera was having a great year and had been a key ingredient to the Giants being in first place at the time of the suspension. The impact of this event, however, goes far beyond one team. Cabrera’s steroid use demonstrates that while steroid abuse is probably not as rampant at it was 10-15 years ago, the steroid era is not as firmly in the past as many in baseball would like to believe.

Comment

Maybe Melky is Actually a Good Ballplayer

Cabrera’s career, to be sure has been an odd one. Before 2010, he had established himself as a useful, if not quite good, outfielder: a valuable fourth outfielder on a good team or a passable starter on a bad team. In 2010, however, he was terrible, hitting .255/.317/.354 for the Braves. The Kansas City Royals took a chance on Cabrera; and the outfielder had a career year in 2012, hitting .309/.335/.470, numbers he is on track to easily exceed this year.

Comment

Hunter, Blue and Holtzman

On the surface, these three could not have been more different. Blue was an African American from Louisiana, Hunter a country boy from North Carolina, and Holtzman was from St. Louis and retired with more wins than any other Jewish pitcher in baseball history. It has been more than 25 years since any of these pitchers has thrown a pitch in the big leagues and their respective places in baseball history are now secure. Hunter became a Hall of Famer and a beloved figure in North Carolina before passing away in 1999 at the far too young age of 53. Holtzman’s name occasionally crops up in connection with his longtime friend and teammate Reggie Jackson and was briefly a manager in the Israeli baseball league, but is generally remembered as a solid and dependable pitcher, but not much more than that. Vida Blue is remembered as the guy who had all the talent in the world, but could never entirely get it together.

Comment

The Unusual Career of Bobby Abreu

Abreu is the kind of player who will be easily forgotten by most fans. His post-season footprint was not large for a player in the wild card era who amassed well over 9,000 regular season plate appearances. He underperformed in black ink and awards voting; and had a personality that rarely drew a great deal of attention. However, he was also a player with both an unusual skill set and career path who managed to put up numbers that would not look out of place in Cooperstown.

Comment

Can the Yankees Develop Starting Pitching

The Yankees inability to develop highly touted pitching prospects into quality major league starters is an organizational problem that probably involves scouts, minor league managers and coaches, big league managers and coaches and front office management. Solving this problem will not be easy and probably cannot be done simply by bringing in one pitching guru like the San Francisco Giants’ Dick Tidrow.

Comment

On the Passing of Gary Carter

Last week when Gary Carter, the Hall of Fame catcher and catalyst of probably the most famous rally in baseball history, died at only 57 years old, the baseball world mourned the passing of a great and beloved ballplayer. I found myself more saddened than I might have expected by his death. This is partially due to the arc of Carter’s career and life dovetailing so well with my life as a baseball fan. Carter was one of the few, maybe only, Hall of Fame players whose first baseball card came out the year I started collecting. His best years, from the late 1970s to the mid 1980s corresponded with my most youthful and intense period of being a baseball fan. He was not a fully formed star like Johnny Bench or Reggie Jackson when I first became aware of baseball, but he began his career at a time when my infatuation with baseball could still be described as childlike wonder.

Comment

Remembering the Unappreciated Reggie Jackson

When looking back on Jackson’s career many words come to mind, but underrated is not one of them. However, at least with regards to awards voting, Jackson, through a combination of being unappreciated and unlucky, may not have received his due. Jackson finished in the top ten in MVP voting six times, while only winning the award once in 1973. In 1973, when he won the MVP, Jackson played in 151 games hitting .293/.383/.531 for a league leading OPS+ of 162, stealing 22 bases while only being caught eight times for a team that easily won its division. He also played a decent right field and led his leagues in homeruns (32) and RBIs (117). It was a great year for a great player which was properly recognized by the BBWAA. It was not, however, his best year.

Comment

Clemens, Johnson, Maddux and Martinez in Historical Perspective

When Philadelphia Phillies manager Charlie Manuel sent Chad Durbin to the mound to start the bottom of the fifth inning of game six of the 2009 World Series, replacing future Hall of Famer Pedro Martinez, it was the end of a baseball era. Martinez’s last game in the big leagues had not gone well as the New York Yankees, led by Hideki Matsui, rocked him for four runs in four innings. Martinez was the last of a quartet of pitching superstars also including Randy Johnson, Roger Clemens and Greg Maddux, who, at a time when offensive production was higher than ever, dominated the game as no other group of pitching peers ever have.

Comment

Why Stephen Strasburg Should Be on the All Star Team

Stephen Strasburg may go on to become a great pitcher who appears in many All-Star Games, but he could also get hurt next month, or have a career that ends up somewhere in between. He will only be, however, a rookie phenom once.Many baseball fans would enjoy seeing this 21 year old compete against the game’s best; and the All Star game would certainly benefit from that storyline, but unfortunately the league missed this opportunity in the name of some principle that is prima facie laughable.

Comment

The All Star Series

The steady increase in the size of the All Star Game rosters will continue this year as there will now be 34 players on each team. With 34 players, it is likely that each team will have 13 pitchers. At first glance this seems not just absurd, but likely to make the All Star Game resemble a real baseball game even less than it usually does. Similarly, it seems like the steady increase in the number of players cheapens the game a little bit as it will be easier for players to earn a spot on the roster.

Comment

The All Star Game is Fun, but it Isn't Baseball

The problem with the All Star Game is not that it is meaningless, it is that it isn’t baseball. More accurately the All Star Game is not a baseball game. The All Star Game is a fun mid-season break. The Future’s Game, fan fests and the like can be great events. Even home run derbies have some value as pure spectacle, but the game itself isn’t really a baseball game.

Comment