• Gee, I thought this would have been bigger news. It's not every day -- or for that matter every decade -- that a batter is intentionally walked with the bases loaded. By my count, it's now happened five
times: Nap Lajoie in 1901, Mel Ott in 1929, Bill "Swish" Nicholson in 1944, Barry
Bonds in 1998, and now Josh
Hamilton in 2008. Seems like sort of a big deal to me.
•
This item about
Mariano
Rivera's wild pitch in
Friday night's loss reminds me of a
certain blogger's
certain book of last spring. As such, the item comes with my highest recommendation.
• The headline of
Stephen King's latest for Entertainment Weekly: "How TV Ruined Baseball." In the style of headlines everywhere, though, this one overstates King's case. If he thought baseball were ruined, he wouldn't pay attention any longer, but I'm almost certain he's still one of the world's bigger Red Sox fans. Rather, King is merely complaining that Major League Baseball has been hyper-commercialized, and he's right. You might argue that there's no use complaining, but I think you'd be wrong. If nobody complained, things would be even worse.
• You might recall that
Brian
Bannister, after his first three starts this season, was 3-0 with a 0.86 ERA. Right around that time, Joe Posnanski started writing his Banny Logs and I poked fun at Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA for their/its preseason projection for Bannister: 6-8, 5.19 ERA. Well, now it's four months later and -- including
yesterday's gem -- Bannister's 7-12 with a 5.96 ERA.
And it occurs to me that PECOTA might have been a lot smarter than NEYER.
• It's worth remembering, in the midst of
Albert
Pujols' MVP-caliber season, that back in March a lot of people thought he might need Tommy John surgery and thus
miss the season. I certainly wasn't immune, and dropped Pujols a few slots in my next-five-years rankings. I'm just glad I didn't drop him more than I did.
• In the end, only three of the first-round draft picks didn't sign before the midnight Friday deadline: Yankee pick Gerrit Cole, Seattle's Josh
Fields, and Washington's Aaron Crow. It's always easy to beat up on teams that don't sign their draft picks, but Nationals GM Jim Bowden does make a
pretty good case for himself. Of course, I'm sure Crow's "advisors," Randy and Alan Hendricks, could make a pretty good case, too.
(H/T:
Ballbug)
• Congratulations to
Travis
Ishikawa for hitting his first homer
yesterday. If you saw "T. Ishikawa" in the box score, you might think (as I did), "Ah, the Giants must have signed a Japanese player and I missed it." Don't worry; you didn't miss anything.
The name "Travis" is sort of a giveaway. This Ishikawa was born in Seattle, and the Giants drafted him in the 21st round in 2002. Until this year, Ishikawa never hit much above Class A, and before this season he wasn't listed among the Giants' top 30 prospects. But this year he hit reasonably well -- .291/.382/.462 -- in Double-A, and then absolutely crushed Triple-A pitchers in 48 games, with 38 extra-base hits in 48 games. Ishikawa's complete history doesn't suggest that he has a solid chance of sticking in the majors for long, but there's a pretty clear choice between giving Ishikawa a shot or seeing more of
Rich Aurilia.
Rob Neyer
