Talkin' Baseball

      Merry Christmas readers! I hope you all have a nice holiday, and not really as a gift, but mostly because I want to, I will list all 78 MLB players who were born today (Negro Leaguers included). Enyel De Los Santos Alex Jackson| Zach Jackson  Nabil Crismatt Tanner Rainey Garret Cooper  Waldis Joaquin Ruben Gotay Willy Taveras Hideki Okajima Tarrik Brock Eric Hiljus Steve Montgomery Scott Bullett Marty Pevey Bruce Walton Rick Renteria Ty Gainey Tom O'Malley Gerry Davis Wallace Johnson Charlie Lea Jeff Little Rick Anderson Julio Gonzalez Luis Quintana Manny Trillo Gene Lamont Dennis Musgraves Chris Krug Jack Hamilton Charlie Beamon Frank Baldwin Mike Blyzka Dick Manville Ned Garver Neal Watlington Bruce Wright Willie Bunn Griff Lomax Charles George Quincy Trouppe Bill Harris Alta Cohen Ben Chapman Jo-Jo Moore James Buford Lloyd Brown Bill Akers Red Barnes Buster Chatham Gene Robertson Tom Gulley Earl Kunz Allen Elliot Frank Ellerbe Herb Hunter Walter Holke K...

A long time ago the San Francisco Giants contemplated moving the team to St. Petersburg, Florida. However, they decided against it, and the team has been happy for a while. However, now I wonder if they should move to Florida. Buster Posey, catcher for the Giants from 2009-2021, joined the ownership group of the team and said that a potential factor for the team not getting Shohei Ohtani, even though they offered him practically the same deal, was the drug and crime problems that occur in San Francisco.  'Something I think is noteworthy, something that unfortunately keeps popping up from players and even the players’ wives, is there’s a bit of an uneasiness with the city itself, as far as the state of the city, with crime, with drugs' (Buster Posey) I'm not necessarily sure this is the case because Los Angeles has some of the same problems and Shohei went there. I do agree that the city is rather unappealing because it is filthy and there is a ton of crime. I do feel that w...

  A very interesting part of baseball is the good ol' mound charge. This can occur for a variety of reasons, but most commonly happens when a batter is hit by a pitch and thinks it intentional. Then he comes running like a bull at the pitcher, and occasionally fists will fly, a hit will be landed, and there are often ejections. But seeing as how mound charging is almost always bad for everybody involved, why does it happen as often as it does?   I remember in 2017 Giants pitcher Hunter Strickland plunked Bryce Harper with a fastball. Harper, with the nasty temper that he has, threw his helmet at Strickland and rushed him. The benches cleared, like they always do, and both players were suspended. The Nationals' best player and the Giants solid reliever were out for three and six games respectively.   But why? Why did Hunter Strickland hit Bryce Harper, and why did Harper charge?   Well, I can tell you both of those things. Bryce Harper had a history of hitting bombs o...

 Thank you readers, for yesterday I got 70 views (the highest per one day in the blog's lifetime). I am now up to 511 pageviews for the blog, and 177 this month (also a record). I appreciate that people deem this blog palatable enough to read it.   Thanks for the achievement, and Merry Christmas.

     I know this isn't a baseball card blog, but I did come across something interesting with one of my cards today.       I was looking at one of my many Cal Ripken Jr. cards, and I noticed something peculiar. In 1992, Ripken played in all 162 games (kind of his calling card) and hit below par, batting .251 with 14 homers and 72 RBIs. I have to say, it wasn't very impressive considering he just came off of an amazing and MVP winning 1991 season in which he batted more than 70 points higher and hit more than double the home runs.     Back to my card. Here's a photo of it. Can you tell what's wrong?        In case you can't tell (or the image doesn't load), the card says that Ripken hit only 4 home runs in 1992.      If that were the case, it would bring his meager .366 slugging percentage go down to a pathetic .319, making his OPS for that season only .642. He would also have at least 10 less RBI, so it woul...

  We all know who this guy is (if I can get the images to work). I wrote a post on him about a week ago (The Best Name Ever), an am re-writing to tell you that Bubbles is a distant relative of rock singer George Thorogood. If you want to know why, you have to check the very bottom of the page.     They both said b-b-b-b-b-b-bad.     Remember, Bubbles was nicknamed so because he stuttered his 'b' sound. See:

            When looking at active pitchers, especially starters, you'd find that Chris Sale and Jacob deGrom are among the best. Chris Sale has the best ever K/9 rate and deGrom is only 0.1 strikeout away from that mark. deGrom has the best ever K/BB ratio, at 5.38 (Sale is not too far away in this category at 5.26). So both of these guys are elite players, who seemed to be steamrolling into the Hall of Fame as of 2019. However, injuries have been thrashing both of these players' careers.     Since the shortened 2020 season, Jacob deGrom has made only 32 starts. In that time, as usual, he has been great (14-6, 2.03), but he is 35 and recovering from his second Tommy John surgery, which doesn't usually go well for a pitcher's statistics. He currently sits with an 84-57 record (.596) and a stunning 2.53 ERA. However, I know I wouldn't vote for a starter who won less than 100 career wins, and he's still 16 away from that mark. And at 35, you h...

  Hi all. I know this is a baseball blog, but I prefer writing about baseball history and such in the offseason. If y'all would like to know what is going on in the baseball world today, check out the blog that I just created for that purpose. Note that I will not write about every transaction made, but only the big or semi-big ones.  Here is the link to the baseball news blog Bryce Harper and the Army of Mercker Robots bryceharperandthearmyofmerckerrobots.blogspot.com And if you are interested in my current project, which is making the two greatest teams of all time and making them slug it out, check out ultimateworldseries.blogspot.com Thank you and Merry Christmas.

      This man, who played a 12-year career spanning from 1913-1930 had the greatest name ever, better than Ducky Medwick or Goose Goslin. His name was Bubbles Hargrave and he was the brother of fellow catcher Pinky Hargrave.  Bubbles was nicknamed such because he stuttered his 'B' sounds.     Eugene Franklin, or Bubbles Hargrave started his career in 1913 and hit 1/3 with the Cubs. The catcher played three seasons with the Cubs, in which he only had 58 at-bats and hit .207. He then moved to the Reds six years later, where he played 8 years, and hit .314 in 2367 at-bats, and even won a batting title, hitting .353 in 1926 and finishing sixth in MVP voting. He also led the league in hit by pitch in 1923 with 12. And after a solid 1928 (with only190 at-bats), he called it quits.     However, in 1930, at the age of 37, Bubble Buddy came back for a last hurrah to play for the Yankees. You know, he was teammates with Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Tony Lazzeri,...

  Sorry for the break readers. I have no good excuses except that I didn't want to write about this. To be honest, I'm not sure if any of you care anyway. But I will write it for you since I promised. Please comment to show that you care.     Anyway, the five closers I was narrowed down to almost three months ago were Kenley Jansen, Jhoan Duran, Jordan Romano, Emmanuel Clase, and Felix Bautista. Let's get down to business.          5: Kenley Jansen Kenley Jansen has had a pretty good career so far. He has compiled a total 420 saves (7th all time) and a 2.52 ERA to go along with the number. He also has a career 12.8 K/9 rate to combat his 2.7 BB/9. Jansen has a career .182 BAA and a home run rate .5% lower than the league average. However, Jansen has been on a bit of a decline lately, pitching to a 3.19 ERA over the last five seasons. Don't get me wrong, this is still a good number, but nothing compared to his 2.20 ERA through his first nine season...

 The 2024 Hall of Fame ballot came out not long ago, and I would love to tell you who I would vote for. I will start with the new faces in class and then go on to the grizzled vets. Jose Bautista Adrian Beltre Bartolo Colon Adrian Gonzalez Matt Holliday Victor Martinez Joe Mauer Brandon Phillips Jose Reyes James Shields Chase Utley David Wright And now for the grizzled vets, those poor unfortunate souls who couldn't make the Hall their first time around: Todd Helton Billy Wagner Andruw Jones Gary Sheffield Carlos Beltran Alex Rodriguez Manny Ramirez Omar Vizquel Andy Pettitte Bobby Abreu Jimmy Rollins Mark Buehrle Francisco Rodriguez Torii Hunter     So, you can vote for 10 players (assuming you're a sportswriter). I would personally vote for the following:     1: Todd Helton In his 17 year career, Helton has collected 2519 hits, 592 doubles, 369 homers, 1335 walks (compared to 1175 strikeouts), 1401 runs, and 1406 RBIs. He did get a boost at Coor's field, hitti...