Month: June 2010

Today, I’m pleased to present a guest post from Joe Guzzardi, who recently attended a reunion for the 1960 World Champion Pittsburgh Pirates and had a chance to talk to former Bucs ace Vern Law.

_________________

On June 19, I was one of the 38,000 at PNC Park for Saturday night’s game that honored the 1960 Pittsburgh Pirate World Series champions. The veterans inspired the struggling 2010 Buccos who broke their 12-game losing streak by beating the Cleveland Indians 6-4.

Vern Law threw out the first pitch. And Law was the best choice for the honor. Law, even though he was hurt, started three of the seven World Series games and won two. Down the home stretch during that magical season, Law was the Pirates’ stopper and won the Cy Young Award for his valiant efforts. (Until 1967, baseball issued only one Cy Young Award that represented the best pitcher in both the American and National leagues.)

Although Law will always treasure his contributions to the 1960 team as his greatest baseball achievement, another of his individual pitching feats will never be matched.

On July 19, 1955 Law pitched an 18-inning gem against the Milwaukee Braves in front of 10,000 Forbes Field fans.

Surrounded by what would become the nucleus of the 1960 champs including MVP Dick Groat and rookie Roberto Clemente, Law held the Braves to one earned run while striking out twelve and walking only two during the equivalent of two full 9-inning contests.

Among the fearsome Braves batters were Hall of Famers Hank Aaron (at second base) and Eddie Matthews. The Braves line up was so strong that Joe Adcock batted seventh behind future Pirate manager Chuck Tanner who was then a rookie right fielder.

Yet, pitching on only two days rest, Law dominated the powerful Braves and held the big guns of Aaron, Matthews and Adcock to a mere three hits in 21 at bats.
Law’s heroic effort kept him on the mound for 4:44. But he did not pick up the win. Bob Friend, another Bucco stalwart, got the credit despite hurling a shaky 19th inning in the Pirates 4-3 victory.

I asked Law about his masterpiece.

As Law recalled, he had been named an emergency starter that evening for Joe Gibbon who had come up sick.

After 9 innings, Pirate manager Fred Haney asked Law how he felt. Then after the 12th inning, Haney indicated that he was going to pull Law.

But Law, who was still feeling fine, convinced Haney to leave him in.

By the end of the 15th inning, Haney was determined to give Law the hook. But Law was still able to hold his ground. Said Law to Haney: “Skip, after pitching this long, let me win or lose this darn thing!”

Looking back, Law sensed that Haney felt sorry for him. “Are you sure you’re all right?” Haney asked. When Law confirmed that he was, Haney said: “Okay, go get ‘em.”

After the 18th inning, Law had exhausted his powers of persuasion. Although he tried to talk Haney into one more inning, the Bucco manager told him: “That’s it, your done. Go take a shower.”

Although Law had great confidence in Friend, who relieved him in the top of the 19th, he said that in the 1950s and 1960s “no pitcher wants to leave a game. All of us back then wanted to finish what we started.”

To Law’s dismay, Friend immediately gave up a run on two hits and a walk. But the Pirates rallied for two runs in the bottom of the 19th to salt away the win.

Said Law: “I was grateful we came back. It would have been devastating to lose a game like that.”

Law’s amazing marathon July 19 has an interesting footnote. Four days later, Law started against the Chicago Cubs. This time he pitched another complete game that went ten innings. Law dominated the Cub, giving up only four hits while striking out eight and walking none in the Corsairs 3-2 victory.

Law’s pitching line for two starts against the Braves and Cubs: 28 IP, 13 H, 3 ER, 2 BB and 20 SOs!

Since Law’s phenomenal outing fifty-five years ago, no pitcher has gone as long. And in this era of the pitch count that normally limits starters to 100 tosses, no pitcher ever will.

_________________

Joe Guzzardi is a writer and member of the Society for American Baseball Research. Email him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com.

A couple weeks ago, I received an email from a representative of a publishing company, Sourcebooks. The rep said New York Times bestselling author Len Berman has a new book due out this fall, The 25 Greatest Baseball Players of All Time. The rep wrote:

I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on his list, which include Alex Rodriguez (preposterous if you ask me) and excludes names like Rod Carew, Cal Ripken Jr., Ken Griffey Jr. and several other 90’s players that have proven themselves above and beyond many that made the list.

I welcome story ideas, and I’ll write about interesting topics that relate to this site. Berman’s book met those criteria, so I encouraged the rep to send me a copy. He obliged and also included Berman’s bestseller, The Greatest Moments in Sports, which I’ll review in the next few weeks, once I read it.

I finished Berman’s newer book yesterday, and it wasn’t bad. It’s meant for children, similar to many baseball books I had growing up. The book didn’t tell me much I didn’t already know, but it offers good information for children learning the history of the game. The 25 players are mostly fine ambassadors to baseball, offering kids a slice of America’s pastime at its best. In alphabetical order, Berman’s top 25 players are:

• Hank Aaron
• Johnny Bench
• Ty Cobb
• Joe DiMaggio
• Bob Feller
• Jimmie Foxx
• Lou Gehrig
• Bob Gibson
• Josh Gibson
• Rogers Hornsby
• Walter Johnson
• Mickey Mantle
• Christy Matthewson
• Willie Mays
• Stan Musial
• Frank Robinson
• Jackie Robinson
• Alex Rodriguez
• Pete Rose
• Babe Ruth
• Mike Schmidt
• Warren Spahn
• Honus Wagner
• Ted Williams
• Cy Young

(As I’ll make clear before the end of this post, my top 25 differ somewhat.)

Berman, an eight-time Emmy Award-winning sportscaster, determined picks with a Blue Ribbon Panel consisting of Ralph Branca, Frank Deford, Steve Fortunato, Roland Hemond, Jeffrey Lyons, Chris Russo, and Bernie Williams. The panel members apparently voted subjectively on who they considered worthy, with the 25 highest vote recipients making the book. Given how much baseball changes every generation, the panel’s unscientific look might have been the fairest selection method. Still, a quantifiable ranking system may have helped, too.

I have recently begun to pay more attention to one of the latest crazes in the baseball research community, a metric called Wins Above Replacement (WAR.) This rates the number of extra wins a player theoretically provides over an average replacement, incorporating both offense and defense and suggesting a player’s overall worth. Using TheBaseballGauge.com, I found the 25 best players for career WAR. They are as follows, with players who didn’t make Berman’s list in boldface:

1. Babe Ruth
2. Ty Cobb
3. Walter Johnson
4. Honus Wagner
5. Cy Young
6. Barry Bonds
7. Willie Mays
8. Tris Speaker
9. Stan Musial
10. Ted Williams
11. Hank Aaron
12. Eddie Collins
13. Mickey Mantle
14. Roger Clemens
15. Rogers Hornsby
16. Christy Matthewson
17. Grover Cleveland Alexander
18. Lou Gehrig
19. Rickey Henderson
20. Mel Ott
21. Frank Robinson
22. Nap Lajoie
23. Joe Morgan
24. Greg Maddux
25. Tim Keefe
    

WAR isn’t perfect, and in general, stats often don’t tell the whole story. No metric could fully measure the contributions to baseball of Jackie Robinson, who has an eternal spot in my top 25. Still, looking at WAR and other formulas popular within the Society for American Baseball Research can double-check for worthy old-timers like Speaker and Collins.

Berman notes in his postscript, “Who knows? Maybe this book will turn into a ‘doubleheader.'” That route offers plenty of material. I could list 50 great players who didn’t make the cut including Carew, Ripken and Griffey. I don’t know if they make my top 25, and I think if Rodriguez is on Berman’s list, Bonds should be there as well (personally, I don’t feel like honoring either man or Clemens.)

Here’s my top 25:

1. Babe Ruth
2. Willie Mays
3. Ted Williams
4. Ty Cobb
5. Walter Johnson
6. Hank Aaron
7. Satchel Paige
8. Lou Gehrig
9. Cy Young
10. Honus Wagner
11. Jackie Robinson
12. Stan Musial
13. Christy Matthewson
14. Tris Speaker
15. Rogers Hornsby
16. Eddie Collins
17. Pete Rose
18. Rickey Henderson
19. Josh Gibson
20. Joe DiMaggio
21. Greg Maddux
22. Roberto Clemente
23. Mickey Mantle
24. Sandy Koufax
25. Joe Jackson

I encourage anyone who’s interested to post their top 25 in comment form here.

I periodically review baseball books. For a compilation of my reviews, go here.

What he did: I’ve written a couple of times recently about Case, an outfielder for the Washington Senators and Cleveland Indians from 1937-1947 who shot 8 mm color footage of his career. I didn’t know of Case before first hearing from his son George Case III, but his stolen bases totals impressed me.

In an era before speedsters like Maury Wills, Lou Brock and Rickey Henderson helped revolutionize base stealing, Case averaged over 40 stolen bases in six seasons of leading the American League. Imagine what Case could have done in an era where stealing was encouraged and coached for.

Era he might have thrived in: The 1980s, playing for the St. Louis Cardinals.

Why: Perhaps no team stole as well as the 1985 Cardinals, who swiped 314 bases and had five men with more than 30 steals. Case stole a career-high 61 bases for the Senators in 1943; the stat converter on Baseball-Reference says Case would have 70 steals on the ’85 Cardinals, second-most on the team behind rookie Vince Coleman who had 110.

Maybe there are certain intangibles a machine can’t compute. I ran track all four years of high school, and I remember that as our team attracted more good runners, I got better. I think a lot of things in life are like that. People thrive on competition. We learn from others who best us, receiving encouragement from their feats that the seemingly impossible can be done.

Case didn’t have many peers to draw from. Wally Moses finished just behind him in 1943 with 56 steals, though no other American League player had 30. In fact, Case fell just shy of stealing at least 10 percent of the bases in his league that year. Looking over Baseball-Reference, I found seven men in the modern era who have done this:

• Luis Aparicio in 1959 and 1964
• Lou Brock in 1966
• Bill Bruton in 1954
• Willie Mays in 1956
• Jackie Robinson in 1949
• Snuffy Stirnweiss in 1944
• Maury Wills in 1962 and 1965

For reference, Ty Cobb didn’t steal 10 percent of the bases in his league when he swiped 96 bags in 1915, Brock fell short of the 10 percent mark when he had 118 in 1974, and Henderson’s record-setting 130 steals in 1982 accounted for 9.33% of the 1,394 stolen bases in the American League that year.

With the glut of expansion and nearly twice as many teams now playing in each league than they did in Case’s era, stealing 10 percent of the bases in one’s circuit has become almost impossible. Consider that Jose Reyes’ 78 steals in 2007 were less than 5 percent of the 1,564 steals in the National League that year. Still, I think Case’s totals for his era are impressive.

Curious, I emailed Case III. He wrote back, “My father often said, that if he had played in another era, he probably could have stolen at least 100 bases in a season.  My dad never ran when the team was behind by more than three runs and never tried to steal third with two outs – it just wasn’t done when my dad played.”

There’s one more thing worth mentioning. Case died in 1989 at 73 from emphysema. When I interviewed Case III by phone two weeks ago, I asked if his dad had smoked during his career. Case III told me his dad started smoking when he was 10. If he’d come of age in an era where this was frowned upon, who knows what his stolen base totals could have been.

Any player/Any era is a Thursday feature here that looks at how a player might have done in an era besides his own.

This week’s guest post from Joe Guzzardi, a regular Wednesday contributor here, looks at the practice in recent years of limiting pitch counts.

___________________

When Nolan Ryan took over as the Texas Rangers’ president, one of the first things he did was announce that throughout the organization he would banish the use of the pitch count to determine how long a pitcher stays in the game. Ryan wants his pitchers to go deep instead of being pulled when they reach an arbitrary number like 100.

At the start of the season, Ryan summed his philosophy up to the Dallas Morning News about what he expects to from starters: “The dedication and work ethic that it takes to pitch an entire season…as a starting pitcher and the discipline to continue to maintain his routine all year. And he wants the ball every fifth day, and he’s going to go out there with the intent of pitching late into games and not complaining.”

Speaking from his own experience, Ryan added that he “had to develop stamina because my intent was to pitch a lot of innings.” That message is being sent loud and clear to the Texas starters.

The pitch count debate has picked up over the last couple of years. And not a moment too soon, if you ask me. When you’re brought up as a baseball fan in the era of pitchers like Warren Spahn, Bob Friend and Robin Roberts who finished what they started, it’s hard to listen to a barrage of pitch count statistics from the broadcast booth.

During last night’s game in Arlington between the Rangers and the Pittsburgh Pirates, two divergent pitching philosophies went head-to-head with Ryan emerging as the clear winner—and not just on the scoreboard where Texas won 6-3.

At the center of it all is yesterday’s Pirate starter Ross Ohlendorf.

In August 2009, the Pirates manager John Russell (a former major league catcher) and pitching coach Joe Kerrigan (once a major league pitcher) decided to “shut down” Ohlendorf, their best starter, who had an 11-10 record in 176 innings. The premise was that the Pirates wanted to save Ohlendorf’s arm for the next season.

In an interview with Pirate announcer and former pitching great Steve Blass, Kerrigan justified his move by claiming that it’s a proven that once young pitchers go over a certain number of innings, their likelihood of injury increases dramatically.

But Ohlendorf isn’t young; he’s 27. And, at 6’5” and 245, he’s not a frail rookie. Like Ryan, he’s a Texas-born cattle rancher. And, finally, Olendorf wasn’t about to exert himself during the off-season. He’d committed to an internship at the Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C. where he’d be in a coat and tie working in a cubicle all winter.

Things haven’t worked out as Russell and Kerrigan planned. Ohlendorf hasn’t won a game since he was yanked from the rotation. Last night, the Rangers shelled him in the fifth. Another Pirate announcer and one-time starting pitcher Bob Walk said that after four innings, Ohlendorf had “nothing.” Ohlendorf’s 2010 line: 0-6; 5.43 ERA

By the way, Blass, Walk and all-time relief great Kent Tekulve who does the Pirates post-game analysis are all pitch count skeptics.

Bob Feller, Tim McCarver and other pitchers and catchers with impeccable credentials are among the multitudes who agree with Ryan, Blass, Walk and Tekulve: let pitchers pitch.

By the way, during the 1946 season when Feller was Ohlendorf’s exact age of 27, he pitched 372 innings and won 26 games with a 2.18 ERA.

Then there’s Ryan’s case.

In his 26 year career, Ryan averaged 262 innings per year. In 19 of those years, Ryan exceeded Ohlendorf’s 170-180 inning “shut down” total. When he was 44, Ryan pitched 173 innings (and compiled a 12-6, 2.61 ERA season).

All of baseball is watching the Rangers. Baltimore Orioles’ president Lee MacPhail thinks it will take years to know if Ryan’s experiment works. Said MacPhail: “We need to see if the pitchers under the Texas system remain durable and how many more innings they pitch over an extended time. That’s how we will gauge the results.”

In the meantime, Ryan and MacPhail can point to Ohlendorf as Exhibit 1 of pitch count folly.

___________________

Joe Guzzardi is a writer and member of the Society for American Baseball Research. Email him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com.