Lincoln Mitchell

Blog

This page contains links to recent blogs by Lincoln Mitchell

Posted in: Baseball

What is Really Baseball's Best Rivalry

That rivalry may not be between the Red Sox and Yankees, but between two teams that are gearing up for another division race in the NL West, and who are also playing each other this weekend, the Giants and the Dodgers. Both the Yankee-Red Sox and the Dodger-Giant rivalries have had moments of intense competition, memorable games and pennant races, and genuine rancor between the two teams. However, the degree of competition and balance between the two rivals has been consistently stronger between the two NL rivals.

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Bill James Gets it Wrong on Penn State

James’ transition from iconoclastic and groundbreaking baseball analyst to whatever he is now has not been smooth. The set of skills he had that made him so good in that role and so influential to so many people have not served James as well now that the movement he has started has now become part of the mainstream of baseball analysis. Questioning everything, and not believing any conventional wisdom was a great way to reinvent statistical understanding of baseball 30 years ago, but that approach has failed James badly now.

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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.

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Baseball's Best Boring Team

Describing a team as boring is subjective, but it is clear that at the halfway point in the season, the Yankees, despite their very good record, have not generated any buzz in New York. Last year fans watched Derek Jeter reach 3,000 hits and saw Mariano Rivera become the all time saves leader. This year they have seen Jeter pass Paul Waner on the hit list while Rafael Soriano has taken over as a good closer, but one about whom few Yankee fans care deeply. It is hard to think of any Yankee games which are even close to as memorable as Santana’s no-hitter, any one of several starts by Dickey, or even some of the early season Yankee-Red Sox games of recent years.

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The New Context for Offense-The Case of Brandon Belt

San Francisco Giant first baseman Brandon Belt has been the subject of some controversy as many Giants fans feel he has not been given a fair chance over the last season and a half while others believe he has been a disappointment. Belt, who began the 2011 season as the Giants’ top hitting prospect, spent most of 2011 moving back and forth from first base to the outfield, the starting lineup to the bench, and the big leagues and AAA. This year, Belt spent the first month or two of the season being moved in and out of the lineup before settling, at least for now, into the starting first baseman’s role

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Roger Clemens Acquittal Still Resolves Nothing

Roger Clemens’ acquittal on perjury charges may be a triumph of justice as the government case against him was weak. For this baseball fans should be relieved, as few fans, even those who never liked Roger Clemens, would have liked to have seen the baseball legend doing time based on a flimsy government case against him. However, Clemens’ acquittal speaks to the problems that baseball still faces in its efforts to put the steroid era in the past, because it does nothing to change the realities that Clemens took steroids and MLB did not seem to care.

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The Autumn of Alfonso Soriano

Soriano is winding down a career that will feel much more impressive in retrospect than it did at the time. Soriano was never quite the superstar some thought he would become because his game had too many holes and too many things at which he was not quite good enough, but when the incongruity between his tools and appearance on one hand, and his numbers and skills on the other, fade into the past, he will be more likely to be remembered as the very good player he has been.

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The Late Pedro Borbon and the Reds Closer by Committee

During the years he pitched for the Reds, Borbon was part of one of modern baseball’s longest and most successful experiments with the closer by committee approach to bullpen management. Sparky Anderson, who managed the Reds during those years, demonstrated that closer by committee never works, except of course when it does. In each of the seven years during which Borbon was a major part of the Red bullpen, the Reds had at least three players who finished at least ten games. In five of those years they had four players finish at least ten games. In 1973, they also had two players with more than ten saves and nobody with more than 14. Two years later they had a similar situation, but their save leader had 22. This was during a period when good firemen, as they were known then, regularly saved 30 or more games.

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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.

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The Yankees, Innovation and Derek Jeter

Jeter’s talent, ability to stay healthy and unique place in modern Yankee history have all contributed to his record of most games at shortstop for any one team, and the third most at any position for any team, but the Yankee management also should get some credit, not for giving in to the pressure from fans and media to keep playing Jeter at shortstop, but for recognizing that this may have been the best way to use this exceptional player, despite his shortcomings

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The Yankees Neglected Bench

The Yankees inability to find a backup catcher or utility infielder who can contribute with the bat while fielding decently is baffling because by not finding these kinds of players, who are often available and always inexpensive, the Yankees risk seeing a team with a payroll in excess of $200 million fail to make the playoffs because they were unable to solve problems that would have cost, at most, a few million dollars in salary. Given the age of a number of key players, notably Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez, the Yankees have additional reason to need a strong bench, and should have known this before the season started.

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Umpires in the Broadcast Booth

Baseball fans today have more ways than ever to follow, discuss and analyze the game we love so much. New mediums such as podcasts, websites and online databases did not exist a generation ago. More games are televised, and are more broadly accessible than ever before; and it is easier to watch highlights or review game video than it was even a few years ago. Nonetheless, some of the oldest media still are very powerful and beloved, particularly among older fans. I still find myself reading the game stories and the box scores in my local paper every morning, even though I have often seen most of them the previous night. Similarly, I still enjoy listening to ballgames on the radio, albeit frequently through MLB’s iPad app.While the technology has changed, in other ways the experience of listening to game on the radio, or listening to the audio of a televised ballgame has not changed much. There is still one or two professional broadcasters joined by one or two former ballplayers. The quality of the broadcasts vary quite a bit from team to team, but the basic feel is the same as it was 30-40 years ago. Occasionally a team, or network, will change this format by bringing a former manager, rather than former player into the broadcast booth. This brings a slightly different perspective.

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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.

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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.

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How Johnny Damon Might Make it Into the Hall of Fame

If Damon gets his 3,000th hit, his candidacy for the Hall of Fame will have to be revisited and taken seriously. There are currently 28 players with 3,000 hits. All of them are in the Hall of Fame except for Pete Rose who has lost his eligibility, Derek Jeter and Craig Biggio who have not yet appeared on a Hall of Fame ballot, but are very strong candidates, and Rafael Palmeiro who is stuck in steroid purgatory.

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Ozzie Guillen and Free Speech in Baseball

The controversy over Ozzie Guillen’s statements regarding Fidel Castro occur at a fascinating intersection of money, politics and baseball, resulting in a media tempest and a five days suspension for Guillen. There are two reasons why Guillen’s comments in praise of Castro might have gotten him in trouble. The first reason would be that his political views angered the Marlins ownership. The second reason could be that Guillen’s, at best, poorly phrased, admiration for Castro, risked alienating the Marlins from Miami’s sizable Cuban-American population, many of whom are baseball fans.

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Raising-and Keeping-Cain

On Monday fans of the San Francisco Giants received the best piece of news since their team won the World Series in 2010. Matt Cain, one of the team’s, and the game’s, best pitchers, opted to sign a five year $112 million extension with the Giants, rather than test the free agent market after this season. Cain, who will be 28 in October has pitched over 1300 innings, with an ERA+ of 125 since his big league career began in 2005. In the 2010 post-season, he helped lead the Giants to their World Series title, pitching 21.1 innings without giving up an earned run. Cain is also a workhorse who has pitched more than 200 innings in each of the last five seasons.

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The Most Recent and Saddest Chapter for Joba

Injuries, even avoidable ones, happen, so it is not entirely fair to blame the Yankees for that. It is, however, an unfortunate side effect of the silly “Joba Rules” that between injuries, Chamberlain only managed to have a partial career. Only briefly in 2007-9 was he allowed to simply be a pitcher. His time as a starter was limited to less than one full season because the Yankees were so worried about injury. The Yankees treatment of Chamberlain was baffling, and was baffling at the time as well. The team acted as if they had never seen a pitching prospect so had no idea how to use him. Now, sadly for the Yankees, but even more sadly for Chamberlain, they don’t have to worry anymore.

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Pettitte's Return

The news that Andy Pettitte was coming out of retirement to try to pitch one more year for the Yankees initially sounded like another annoying Steinbrenner trick. It also was a reminder of the last years of Roger Clemens’ career when the question of whether or not he was going to stay retired and return to pitching was a constant during spring training and sometimes the early part of the season. Pettitte’s status as an all-time Yankee great who remains beloved by most Yankee fans also made the decision by the team’s management easier, but even for Yankee fans the news was surprising and a bit strange.

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Great Yankee Second Basemen-Where Does Cano Rank

Cano’s place among Yankee second baseman is framed by the same question the Yankees will have to ask after 2013: whether or not Cano will, by that time, be in the decline phase of his career. If Cano can hit the way he did in 2009-2011 between 2012-2015, he will, assuming he stays with the Yankees, have a strong claim on being the greatest Yankee second baseman ever, with more games at the position than any other Yankee and offensive numbers comparable to Lazzeri and Gordon. There is, of course, no guarantee that Cano can achieve this. If he begins his decline after 2013 or 2014, he will probably be remembered as only the third greatest Yankee at his position; and the Yankees will find themselves with a contract that will be very tough to move.

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