Ain't That a Shame

According to the Associated Press, baseball attendance is down 1.4 percent from this time last year, a season that saw attendance dip to under a 30,000-a-game average for the first time since 2003.  Dare I say the chickens are coming home to roost?  Take a look at ticket prices to see what I mean.

 

The story notes that nineteen of thirty teams have recorded a drop while four teams, the White Sox included, have had “large rises”; in the case of the Sox, that’s a bump of 2,311 fans per game.  It might be more if not for the $5 popcorn, $8 lemonade and Dylan Cease pitching in the minors.

Commissioner Rob Manfred says there’s cause for optimism given cable ratings and figures for MLB.TV streaming, but that’s all in the eyes of the beholder.  Fans watching on multiple platforms are fans not buying popcorn and lemonade or $10.25 beer at the park.  How long until cable and streaming costs go through the roof to make up for “lost” concession revenue?   

 

 

 

And They All Fall Down

If I were to say that Cubs’ third baseman Kris Bryant and right fielder Jayson Heyward collided, you’d likely either scratch your head in confusion or ask if it happened on the base paths.  No, it happened when not one but two players found themselves in unaccustomed positions.

 

During the sixth inning of Sunday’s game against the Reds, Bryant was in right field, with Heyward moved over to play center; that’s two players out of normal position. Cincinnati’s Eduardo Suarez hit a fly ball that Heyward might have caught, had he not collided into Bryant.  Bryant was helped off the field and missed the next two games in Houston.

 

After the game, Heyward said he called for the ball, which would mean Bryant didn’t hear him.  Or it could mean Bryant doesn’t hear as well as Albert Almora or Kyle Schwarber, the two outfielders Heyward would be most accustomed to playing alongside.  Or it could mean calling for a ball in center is different than calling for a ball in right, Heyward’s normal position.

 

Or it could mean that, when you have thirteen pitchers on your roster, stuff like this will happen unless you never, ever rest your starters.  Ah, baseball for the analytically driven.  You have to love it, or not.

Swing, Batter

Launch angle, my pinkie.  After the White Sox struck out 16 times in Minnesota Sunday, I was almost too mad for words.  Thank God for the Cubs.  A day later, they struck out 17 times against Astros’ pitching.  Javy Baez struck out five times, for the second time in his career.

 

After the game, Cubs’ manager Joe Maddon told the Tribune (which actually sends a reporter to follow the team on the road), “One beautiful thing about Javy is I don’t think he’s going to lose any sleep over that.  He’s going to conduct himself in the same manner as if he got five hits.”  This is gibber elevated to a new level.  If I were Maddon, I wouldn’t want Baez going sleepless in Houston, but I would want him to learn from his mistakes.  And looking at the career of a former Cub would be a great way to start.

 

In a kind of coincidence that indicates the presence of a supreme being (and one fond of irony), the Cubs were flailing away in Texas on the same day Bill Buckner died.  Forget the fielding gaffe in the 1986 World Series, Buckner is a player worth studying.  I’d go so far as to say his 22-year career points back to the future of baseball, or should.

 

Yes, the 2715 hits are an impressive total, but so are the strikeouts, all 453 of them from 1969-1990; in comparison, Baez already has struck out 610 times in five-plus years.  Buckner never struck out more than 40 times in a season.  In 1982, he hit .306 with fifteen homeruns and 105 RBIs and just 26 strikeouts.  In other words, in 709 plate appearances that season, Buckner struck out 3.7 percent of the time.  Baez has twice struck out five (worry-free) times in a game.  Buckner never struck out three times in any of the 2517 games he played.

The analytics crowd probably wouldn’t like his career .321 OBP, reflecting the low number of walks, 450.  Tell you what.  The MLB draft is next week, with the White Sox picking third.  If I could take Bill Buckner II, I would.  And, just for fun, I’d watch to see where Javy Baez’s career is ten years from now.        

 

 

Climb Every Mountain

Climbers just love Mt. Everest, but Mt. Everest isn’t replying in kind.  At least ten climbers have died so far this season trying to reach the summit of the world’s tallest mountain.  Really, they need to take a hint.  I did.

 

The summer between college and law school, I drove to Colorado—by myself, no less—and spent time in Rocky Mountain National Park.  One day, I decided to go on a hike—by myself, of course—and see what life was like above the tree line.

 

Hiking up to 14,000 feet, give or take a few, I didn’t need oxygen, just the desire to put one foot after another, hour after hour, over the course of thirty miles, fifteen up and fifteen down.  There was an undeniable beauty to it—mountain lakes, the wind giving voice to pine trees, the play of light and shadow across the floor of a distant valley.  Sometimes, I could see the jet passing overhead, other times I could only hear it.  Either way, I’m pretty sure pilot and passengers didn’t see the speck of a young man making his way up the mountain trail.

 

I got above tree line, which I think is about 12,000 feet, by early afternoon and kept going until there was no place higher to go; then I rested.  Starting back down, I thought it would be fun to slide down the snow pack in front of me, and it was, until I realized my body would keep going once the snow gave way to rock.  I did a full Fred Flintstone to come to a stop right at the edge of the snow.

 

The snow slide was not my only dumb decision.  In addition, I failed to tell anyone where I was going, and I failed to realize how long it would take to complete a thirty-mile hike.  Let’s just say hiking down a mountain in darkness isn’t nearly as much fun as it sounds, and, if it doesn’t sound like fun in the first place, well, you’re right; all I had to do was trip over a root or a boulder and it was bye-bye Doug.  But God looked down and took mercy on a fool.

 

After that experience, I’ve pretty much been a contented flatlander ever since.  Who knows, you might bump into me on the stairway to heaven someday, but never, ever, on a climb to the top of the world.   

The Sport of Kings

Horseracing is the sport of kings, and I am the walrus.  No, horseracing is a sport whose time may have come and gone.

 

On Saturday, a horse died running at Santa Anita, for the third equine fatality in nine days, and the 26^th since December 26^th.  They die racing or practicing.  Either way, stepping onto that track risks an animal’s very existence.

 

NBC is set to broadcast the Breeders’ Cup in November.  That’ll give plenty of time for Lester Holt to do an exposé on conditions at Santa Anita and horse racing in general, but I won’t hold my breath.  What I will do is protest any attempt by the racing industry to get help from Springfield to prop up Illinois race tracks.  Sorry, guys.  If people prefer slots to ponies, you’re time is up.  But look at the bright side.

 

You literally get to ride off into the sunset.

More Old School

I hate soft toss, always have.  It took Clare a while to adjust to it because she was a pure fastball hitter.  But once she did, my daughter would put on a show during high school and college BP.  But to what end?  In a game, nobody threw from twenty feet behind a screen, and I think it just depressed some of Clare’s teammates that they couldn’t hit with her kind of power.

 

I feel the same about the MLB equivalent.  The “pitcher” stands a little further back throwing the same kind of slop that goes into the stands.  Again, to what end?  No major league pitcher throws like that, and nothing of importance gets addressed.  If anything, BP “slop” encourages a hitch that will cause outs come game time.  You’d think the slumps that come with winning the homerun derby at the All-Star Game would get people to change their minds.         

 

Well, maybe it has.  I read in the NYT Friday that some teams are rethinking their approach to BP.  Out with the slop, in with the hard stuff.  The story says slop-BP has been around since before the Flood, but I disagree.  If memory serves, Ferguson Jenkins of the Cubs threw BP between starts, and I’m betting a lot of other pitchers did, too, before the advent of free agency.

The days of Jenkins bearing down on the likes of Ron Santo and Billy Williams aren’t coming back, but a pitching machine set to high would do the trick.  Let’s see how long until either Chicago team changes how it handles BP.    

 

 

Consistency

What did Ralph Waldo Emerson write?  Oh, yeah, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”  On that basis, White Sox general manager Rick Hahn must be blessed with one big mind, because he sure is inconsistent.

 

One day after Lucas Giolito’s gem in Houston, Reynaldo Lopez laid an egg against the Twins.  Lopez gave up eight earned runs in 3.2 innings on eight hits (only three of them homeruns) and two walks.  Where Giolito threw 107 pitches over nine innings Lopez threw 82 before being lifted in the fourth.  Giolito threw 77 percent of his pitches for strikes, Lopez 61 percent.  Figures don’t lie.

 

So, tell me this—if Dylan Cease is better off learning whatever it is he’s learning in the minors, why not Lopez, too?  After Friday’s outing, he has a 3-5 record with a 6.03 ERA.  Either he’s not listening to Don Cooper, or our pitching coach has gone mute.  Oh, and Lopez comes with a personal catcher.  That would be Welington Castillo with his .176 BA.  That’s a real daily double.  Throw in Yonder Alonso at .177, and we’re talking serious trifecta.

 

Daniel Palka gets sent down because he wasn’t producing, fine.  Now explain why Castillo and Alonso are different.  Palka with his 27 homers as a rookie generated what I would call minimal goodwill with the front office commitment.  Contrast that to Castillo, who served an 80-game PEDs suspension, and Alonso, who’s in his first—dare I say only?—season on the South Side.  To my small mind, this is arbitrary decision-making

 

Early on, rebuilds feature retreads—think Castillo and Alonso—to hold down spots while a team amasses enough young talent to compete.  At some point, a rebuild is supposed to involve prospects performing at the major league level, only the White Sox refuse to bring up Cease or his battery mate, Zach Collins.  No, we’re going to pull off a rebuild by sticking with the old guys.

 

Then again, what do I know?  I try to be consistent in thought and action.