I'd recommend a Kevlar vest.

Paxton - "Pitching around" (intentionally walking) a star batter is half of the main reasons for intentionally walking. Probably more often teams will intentionally walk a batter when there are runners on 1st and 3rd. This is because if the ball is grounded to a shortstop, he has to make a choice. If he throws to 1st, the runner at 3rd can make the choice to run home. If he holds the ball, the bases are loaded anyway. If he decides to throw to 1st, he still has to deal with the runner running at him.

The same goes for if a batter gets a lead-off double. Since there's already a guy in scoring position on 2nd, and if there's a ground-out, if they throw it to first that runner can move to third and score on a sacrifice fly (you can run as soon as the ball is caught, not before.)

So they'll walk the next batter to have runners on 2nd and 1st, which gives more opportunities to the defense for forceouts and double-plays.

Thus, they do it to take "bad" decisions away from the shortstop/2nd baseman, and give more "good" decisions by putting more runners on and forcing the offense. While this will (a) give the offense more opportunities to score, the flip side is just as true as it (b) gives the defense more opportunities for double-plays and easy tag-outs and no decision-making...as this is the one sport where second-guessing when a split-second guess is needed can lose a World Series.

(I tried to find a video of Chuck Knoblauch's "fake throw" for the Minnesota Twins in the Game 7 of the immortal 1991 World Series against Atlanta's Lonnie Smith.

Lonnie was on a "hit and run" from 1st base - when a player starts running before the ball is hit. The ball was hit, and he had such a head of steam that he would've scored the go-ahead run in the 7th inning of a 0-0 game. However, Chuck Knoblauch "pretended" to get a cut-off throw (when the 2nd baseman/shortstop gets a throw from the outfield and throws it to wherever the runner is.) This froze Lonnie Smith in his boots, just long enough for him to realize that he was had and steal a vital 2 or 3 seconds from his run. He ended up at 3rd base, and failed to score.

As the Twins got the only run in the 10th, this was the fake that won it for the Twins, and the decision that cost the World Series for the Braves.)

Poor Ken Griffey, Jr.

This was one of the rare playoffs where all of the potential World Series or LCS were intriguing.

Tampa Bay vs LA or Philly is intriguing, Boston vs Philly would be really intriguing, and Boston vs LA would be really, really intriguing.

Looks like this one is going back to Anaheim.

Or not.

Cross post from the current cricket thread for the North Americans.

Baseball Harder than it Looks.

It's a pub-table conversation brought to life. An animated hypothetical. Would Trescothick's hand-eye co-ordination make him a natural slugger? Could Giles' ability to spin a cricket ball translate into a mean curve? Might Jones make a sharp shortstop? And would the superior athleticism and ball skills of the professionals outweigh the knowledge and understanding of the amateurs?

The answer was an emphatic 'no'. This became sharply apparent when Giles took to the mound in the third inning and gave up 10 runs in 13 at-bats, a hammering easily equivalent to a bowler going for 36 in a single over. He was even on the receiving end of a grand-slam, Ian Young smashing a homer into the Old Pavilion with the bases loaded. It earned him some merciless ribbing from Jonny Gould, the Channel Five sports factotum doing sterling work on the tannoy.

Thanks JV. I confess I had to read your post about 4 times before I fully understood it all. Not a comment on how you explained it just the 'language' of baseball I guess.

Interesting the cricket v baseball comparison. The speed and movement of a baseball to be hit by a relatively narrow, rounded bat seems like mission impossible to me. The speed and accuracy of fielding and throwing in baseball always impresses me.

I once had a go at hitting a few baseballs fired at me by a machine. Most I missed, most of those I hit were 'fouls' and any I did hit were ground balls. I recall one went in the air but not with any force. I was told that the machine speed was set on slow.

Even for those of us who grew up playing the game, a trip to the "batting cage" can be a very humbling experience.

I think I like this guy.

Two comments:

QUOTE:
The only thing that strikes me as a bit amiss is that the nurdler, the guy who can get on base but can't hit it out of the park - sort of Graham Thorpe maybe - seems to have died out a bit, in an age when big beefed up guys just want to smack the crap out of it, so something might be lost.

Nurdler? I'm not sure baseball has an equivalent word for that.

QUOTE:
Watching the Brewers in the play-offs, I also couldn't help admire the way baseball allows blokes with enormous fat guts to compete at the very top. I like that in a sport.

Exhibit A: Prince Fielder

And Mr Fielder claims to be a vegetarian.. I have my doubts.

I think that the closest that baseball has to "nurdler" is "banjo hitter", but it isn't remotely as good (and "singles hitter" is much too positive).

Dynamo Kev wrote:

QUOTE:
And Mr Fielder claims to be a vegetarian.. I have my doubts.

While I'm not of Fielderian proportions, when I was vegetarian I was proof that not all vegetarians are beanpoles withering away.

QUOTE:
Even for those of us who grew up playing the game, a trip to the "batting cage" can be a very humbling experience.

I did better than I thought I would the last time I went, but I can't hit anything over 60mph.

QUOTE:
The speed and accuracy of fielding and throwing in baseball always impresses me

As someone who played baseball in the UK for a few years - for the Croydon Bluejays back in the 80's (we had 4 Great Britain players on our squad them - I was a back-up infielder), throwing the baseball from the outfield is one of the hardest things to do correctly, IF you played cricket all your life. The throwing action is VERY different from cricket, the ball travels flat and fast and is the result of having your arm come from a different angle than you would throw a cricket ball and your shoulder is also in a different position. It's hard to explain without imagery, but if you watch a baseball outfielder with a good arm throw a ball to home plate on a dime - it's jaw dropping. I used to watch Dwight Evans of the Red Sox throw runner after runner out at home plate. The velocity of his arm was amazing and would leave any cricketer I have ever seen wondering why his arm was so wimpy. I never could could throw a baseball from center field to home plate without it hitting the ground, unless it sailed high in the air and dropped down.

And Jon Lester is ACE.

Video of Ichiro's throws from Japan. The one at 1.25 made my jaw drop.

Here is is famous throw to third base to get Terrence Long out, from his 8th game in America.

QUOTE:
Terrence Long, the speedy center fielder of the A's, reached first on a single up the middle, and then with one out, pinch-hitter Ramon Hernandez came up and spanked another single to right.

Long looked at Ichiro charging the ball in right but thought to himself, "With my speed, it is going to have to be a perfect throw to get me," so he gambled . . . and that was a big mistake.

Bob Finnigan of the Seattle Times describes the next moments.

"Think of the best throw you've ever seen and forget it. This had to be as good if not better, a 200-foot lightning bolt that was never more than a few feet off the ground as it cut down Long."

John Hickey of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer went a step further.

"Ichiro came up with a throw from right field that needs to be framed and hung on the wall at the Louvre next to the Mona Lisa. It was that much a thing of beauty."

And the accolades went on and on. After the game, people seemed to forget about pitcher Aaron Sele, who had pitched eight shutout innings in the 3-0 victory. All the players could talk about was Ichiro and The Throw -- and they are still talking about it. Probably always will.

Manager Lou Piniella said, "I've seen some pretty good arms: Dave Parker, Ellis Valentine, Jay (Buhner), but boy, that ball had some hop on it."

Said an ailing Buhner, sitting on the bench because of injury: "If I've seen a better throw it hasn't been for a long time. You just don't see a guy throw like that all the way in the air, when it's cold as hell, when he's been sitting there for seven innings."

Third baseman David Bell was on the receiving end of the perfect peg and had these observations: "I knew he had a great arm, but I was surprised. Rarely do you see a throw start that low and carry that far. I was looking to take it on the hop and it never hopped. It had some serious carry."

Ichiro just game into the game in the 8th inning and still did that.

QUOTE:
I think that the closest that baseball has to "nurdler" is "banjo hitter", but it isn't remotely as good (and "singles hitter" is much too positive).

I was going to suggest the aforementioned Ichiro as a great example of that.


Why is throwing a cricket ball different than a baseball (I mean by fielders, not bowling vs. pitching)? Aren't they about the same size and weight?