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Post by qwik3457bb on Oct 14, 2024 17:58:26 GMT -5
Repertoire: It’s hard to say exactly what Cobb’s repertoire is right now. He’s always relied on a top-notch splitter, and although he used 5 pitches in 2022 and 2023, he’s yet to use his 4-seamer and slider this season. As of now, he’s a 3-pitch pitcher. In both his 3 regular season starts and the ALDS start, he’s used just the sinker, the curve and the splitter. The movement and run value numbers for Cobb’s pitches are questionable because of small sample sizes, but I’ll give them anyway. His splitter gets above-average drop and below-average tail away from lefties. His curve gets above average drop and below average break away from righties. The sinker gets above-average drop and slightly above-average tail into righties. The splitter is still far and away his best pitch, which is why the fingernail and blister issues matter so much to Cobb. The splitter has a very high plus value per pitch, in just 3 starts, it’s plus 3 runs. But the sinker and curve both have significant minus value per pitch. His FB velocity is below average, and the FB spin is bottom 10%, a good thing because his FB is a sinker, not a 4-seamer. His curve spin has historically been above average, but this season he hasn’t thrown enough of them to be in the charts. His extension has always been among the worst in baseball, bottom 7-13% every year since Statcast started measuring that characteristic in 2016. Again, this is a very limited sample size, but in his 3 regular season starts, Cobb’s average exit velo was very high, nearly 92 mph (and it was 91.7 in the start in the Division Series, too. The barrel rate was below average, but the hard-hit rate was above average. His line drive rate was low, the ground ball rate was extremely high, the flyball rate was very low, and he didn’t get even one popup in his 3 regular season starts. The swinging strike rate is very low to this point, would be the lowest in MLB if he were qualified. The called strikeout rate is very good, and the CSW is well below average. In the Division Series start, he had just one swing and miss in 41 pitches. Luck factors and ERA estimators are very unreliable, nearly random, in just 3 starts but here they are anyway: the BABIP was a bit low, .271, the strand rate was very low, 61% and the HR/FB rate was also very low, 7.7%. The ERA estimators think his ERA for the 3 starts should be 4.08 rater than 3.87.
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Post by qwik3457bb on Oct 14, 2024 18:03:44 GMT -5
Playing the Name Game: The Yanks have Alex Verdugo, and the Astros have Alex Bregman, and there are a number of other good hitters named Alex, including Gordon and Johnson, but clearly the best hitter named Alex in MLB history is Alex Rodriguez. Is there any reason to go over his career? Is there anyone who doesn’t know both his achievements and his disasters? Is there anyone who doesn’t know his dating history? Is there anyone who doesn’t know he’ll have to wait for a long time for Hall of Fame selection, if it ever happens? I doubt it. Moving on…I’d rather talk briefly about Alex Fernandez who, unless I’ve missed something, is the best MLB pitcher named Alex. Fernandez struggled with his command in his first couple of seasons, but started to get it “under control” in his 3rd year with the White Sox, cutting his walk rate nearly in half. He went 57-34 over the next 4 seasons with a 3.52 ERA, winning 18 games in 1993 and getting a down-ballot MVP vote and 16 more in 1996, getting some Cy Young support. I can’t remember seeing another pitcher who got votes for both awards without ever making an All-Star team. After the 1996 season, he left the Sox via free agency and signed with the Marlins…just in time to help them win the title in 1997. He was 17-12 with a 3.59 ERA, but he hurt his shoulder in the NLCS, and was left off the World Series roster. The shoulder shortened his career. He missed all of 1998, came back and had a decent comeback in 1999, going 7-8 with a 3.38 ERA in 24 starts. In 2000, his career came to an end in May with the aggravation of the shoulder problems he suffered in 1997. Unless I missed somebody, Cobb is the 2nd best pitching Alex in MLB history.
He's also the best pitching Cobb in MLB history; there are two others, but both pitched just one season in the majors. Very few Cobbs overall, just 6 or 7. As for hitting Cobbs, there was Tiger Joe Cobb, who played just 1 game for them alongside that other Tiger guy named Cobb. And that’s it.
Oh, except for this guy: Tyrus Raymond Cobb, considered the greatest player in MLB history for the first 30 years or so of the 20th century, until Babe Ruth surpassed him in the eyes of fans and sportswriters. Cobb still hold so many records, highest career BAVG (.366) most seasons batting over .300, 23, most batting average titles won, 12, most consecutive batting titles won, he’s tied for the most .400 seasons at 3, most five-hit games (14), most steals of home (54), most stolen base tours of 2nd, 3rd and home in the same inning (4), and the record for the unofficial stat known as runs produced, which is runs plus RBI minus home runs hit. He also holds the record for most games played in the outfield.
Cobb is 6th all time in batting bWAR, 11th in OBA, 86th in slugging despite his low total of home runs (just 117), and 30th in OPS. He’s 2nd in career runs scored and hits, 4th in doubles, 2nd in triples, 6th in total bases, 9th in RBI, 57th in walks, and 4th in stolen bases. Cobb lead the AL in all four quadruple slash categories in 4 seasons: 1909, 1910, 1914 and 1917, and even won the Triple Crown in 1909 as well.
Cobb’s personality traits were famous. He was combative. Very combative. Extremely combative. Borderline crazy. He fought with everyone: opponents, umpires, teammates, especially early in his career, who hazed him like crazy to try to get him to quit. He was even accused of being part of the general game-fixing that was going on in MLB throughout the period before the White Sox scandal, but that was never proven and he denied it. As a man born in Georgia in the 1880s, there is little doubt that Cobb was racist, as was most everyone in that time and most places. There are a number of stories that he assaulted black people, but those seem to have been exaggerated, at least from what I read in Wikipedia. In his biography written in the last year of Cobb’s life, Al Stumpf, his biographer played his racism down, but later on, Stump wrote in books about his “real record” in which he insisted that Cobb’s racism was excessive. Later historians accused Stumpf of creating forgeries of documents and diaries and after that, it was revealed that Stumpf stole some items belonging to Cobb. Exactly how racist Cobb was can never be pinned down exactly, but the same Wikipedia article mentions a few items in this area. He said nothing publicly about Jackie Robinson breaking the color line until 1952 but when he finally did, he said “Certainly it is okay for them to play. I see no reason in the world why we shouldn't compete with colored athletes as long as they conduct themselves with politeness and gentility. Let me say also that no white man has the right to be less of a gentleman than a colored man; in my book that goes not only for baseball but in all walks of life.” In 1953, he praised Brooklyn Dodger’s catcher Roy Campanella as “among the best all-time catchers”, and praised the Dodgers for holding a tribute game for Campanella after he was paralyzed in a car accident. He once famously said that Willie Mays was the only player he’d pay money to see. After his death in 1961, the Los Angeles Sentinel, one of the oldest African-American newspapers in the country, praised Cobb for speaking out in favor of “racial freedom in baseball”.
After he retired, he became very wealthy, he was one of the original big investors in Coca-Cola when it went public, he was also heavily invested in General Motors, which would’ve been a gold mine throughout his life. He divorced his first wife after 39 years of marriage and five children in 1947. In 1949, at the age of 62, he remarried, but had no further children. He became generous in his old age, founding the Cobb Memorial Hospital and the Cobb Scholarship Fund for needy Georgia students heading to college. He suffered from diabetes in his final years. In June 1961, Cobb fell into a diabetic coma and died about a month later.
Bill James talked Cobb’s personality in the Bill James Historical Abstract. In showing a picture of Cobb and Christy Mathewson taken in the Giants’ dugout at the 1911 World Series (Cobb was good friend with both Mathewson and Walter Johnson, surprisingly enough), Mathewson looks confident in his uniform, staring off into the horizon. Cobb is dressed in a coat that looks like it was made for a circus elephant and has an overcoat over his arms almost completely covering his hands; he’s looking to Mathewson with a half-crazy look in his eyes. James says this about Cobb in the picture:
“He (Cobb) had no weapons, at the moment, to defend himself against his inadequacies – no spikes, no bat, no gloves. He was so crude and unpolished that he must have felt that whenever they took those things away from him, he became nothing; and his shortcomings glowed like a hot piece of iron in the dark. And whenever he saw them glowing, he got angry. You can see it in his face. I think that if he could just put on a uniform and go out on the field it would be such a relief to him, out where manners and taste and style were all defined by bases gains and bases lost. And everyone else, for a change, would have to apologize to him.”
That’s about as good a description of what Cobb was probably like as I’ve ever read.
What is his baseball legacy? In the first vote for the Hall of Fame, five all-time greats were selected for the first class: Ruth, Johnson, Honus Wagner, and Mathewson went in with Cobb, but Cobb got the most votes, 222 out of 226 ballots cast. So, in that very real sense, Ty Cobb was the first Hall of Famer. That, as much as the fiery behavior, is Cobb’s legacy.
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Post by qwik3457bb on Oct 14, 2024 18:04:23 GMT -5
Carlos Rodon starts the first game for the Yanks, and I went over his season and his postseason record (which got worse) in some detail before his start in the ALCS. In that game he came out like a house on fire, striking out the side in the 1st on 10 pitches and pitching another strong inning, before weakening in the 3rd and collapsing in the 4th. He gave up all 4 runs in 3 2/3 innings in the Yanks' only loss off the series, 4-2 in game 2.
Against the Guardians, Rodon has a very good record. He’s 8-5 with a 2.81 ERA in 21 games and 19 starts. In 125 innings, he’s allowed just 96 hits, 42 runs, 39 earned, 10 HR and 41 BB, with 124 K’s. His WHIP against Cleveland is an excellent 1.096, and their quadruple slash line against him is .214/.291/.330/.621. He hasn’t started against them since 2022. He pitched a great game in Cleveland in his 2nd start that season for the Giants, going 7 innings, giving up just 2 hits , 2 BB and 1 run, striking out 9, getting the win in a 4-1 Guardians loss. He's never faced them in the postseason.
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Post by qwik3457bb on Oct 14, 2024 18:05:36 GMT -5
Yankees' lineup vs. Cobb: The Yanks get Anthony Rizzo back; I hope he’s able to hit reasonably well. They also activated Marcus Stroman as a long reliever, and benched Ellis and Rice
1. Torres (2B) is 3-9 with 1 double, 2 solo HR, 2 BB and 2 K
2. Soto (RF) is 7-11 with 1 double, 2 HR, 4 RBI, 1 BB, 2 K and 1 GIDP
3. Judge (CF) is 3-12 with a solo HR and 5 K
4. Wells (C) has never faced Cobb
5. Stanton (DH) is 2-14 with 1 solo HR, 3 BB and 4 K
6. Chisholm (3B) is 1-3 with 2 K
7. Volpe (SS) is 0-1
8. Rizzo (1B) is 1-4 with 1 BB and 1 K
9. Verdugo (LF) is 3-7 with 2 doubles, 1 RBI and 1 BB
On the bench: Grisham is 0-8 with 1 BB, 5 K and 1 HBP; Cabrera is 1-2; Trevino is 0-2; Berti is 0-4 with 1 BB and 2 K.
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Guardians lineup vs. Rodon: Just 5 players on the team have faced him, four are in the lineup:
1. Kwan (LF) is 0-2 with 1 K and 1 HBP
2. Fry (DH) has never faced Rodon
3. Ramirez (3B) is 10-43 with 4 doubles, 1 triple, 5 RBI, 7 BB (1 IBB), 4 K, 1 HBP and 1 GIDP
4. Thomas (CF) is 1-5 with 1 double and 2 K
5. J. Naylor (1B) is 2-10 with 2 K
6. Noel (RF) has never faced Rodon
7. B. Naylor (C) hasn’t either.
8. Gimenez (2B) hasn’t as well
9. Rocchio (SS) hasn’t, too.
On the Bench: Hedges is 0-2 with 1 K.
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Post by qwik3457bb on Oct 14, 2024 18:06:55 GMT -5
In other playoff action yesterday:
The Mets took a beating in the opener of the NLCS. The Dodgers jumped on starter Kodai Senga early as he walked 4 batters in the first two innings, giving up 3 runs on 2 hits. The Dodgers added 3 more off of starter-turned-reliever David Peterson in the middle innings, and 3 more of mop-up man Jose Bhutto in the 8th. In all, the Mets pitchers gave up 9 hits and 7 walks, and the Dodgers rode seven shutout innings from Jack “medical issues” Flaherty to a 9-0 rout. Flaherty gave up just 2 hits and 2 BB, striking out 6. Shohei Ohtani and Enrique Hernandez had two runs and two hits each; Mookie Betts knocked in three on a bases loaded double, and Max Muncy had what turned out to be the big hit, the single with two outs and bases loaded in the first that got LA the early lead. Most ominous for the Mets: the Dodgers got nine runs without hitting a HR, and they led the NL in home runs.
But those omens might be being dispersed: The Mets struck early in the 2nd game this afternoon. Lindor hit another big HR, a solo shot in the first off of opener Ryan Brasier, and Vientos followed a Taylor RBI-double with a grand slam of follower Landon Knack to give the Mets an early 6-0 lead in the 2nd. The Dodgers have rallied some and with their lineup, you can’t count them out. Muncy hit a solo HR in the 5th to make it 6-1, and Tommy Edman singled in two in the 6th to cut it to 6-3. The game is still 6-3, now bottom 8 in LA, and Stanek gave up a hit and a walk with two, and closer Edwin Diaz is in the game, trying to hold the 3-run lead with Kike Hernandez due up.
And, at 7:38 pm at the Stadium, it’s Cobb vs. Rodon. See you then.
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Post by bumper on Oct 14, 2024 18:33:29 GMT -5
Break out the long sleeve turtle neck sweatshirts! I'm just pulling out my warm Yankee gear... sweatshirt,hat,socks,jacket, and fleece blanket! Heading to stadium in about an hour!!! I'm hoping the crowd is loud and... we score early and often! LETS GO YANKEES!!! LETS GO YANKEES!!! LETS GO YANKEES!! lola stay warm. i know you're gonna bring home a win. enjoy!! |
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Post by bumper on Oct 14, 2024 18:34:37 GMT -5
freeman strikes out to end it. diaz also k'ed betts and freeman in the 9th. mets win 7-3. tie up the series at 1-1. they come to citifield. go mets.
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Post by qwik3457bb on Oct 14, 2024 18:37:39 GMT -5
Mets won 7-3, tying the NLCS at a game apiece. After letting the first two get on in the 9th, Diaz struck out the side to close it out.
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Post by qwik3457bb on Oct 14, 2024 18:38:43 GMT -5
Yanks take the field. Rodon on the mound throwing his final warmups.
Kwan about to step in to the box.
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Post by qwik3457bb on Oct 14, 2024 18:40:16 GMT -5
Rodon is finished with his warmups. Kwan steps up to the plate.
Game underway...
FB well outside, ball 1.
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Post by qwik3457bb on Oct 14, 2024 18:43:13 GMT -5
Kwan...
FB above middle, fouled off, 1-1
FB above the waist, outer 3rd, fouled off again, 1-2
Slider just outside at the knees, spoiled.
Slider bounced outside, 2-2
FB inside middle, fouled again
FB just below the last one, fouled off yet again.
Cutter misses up and away, 3-2
FB above and inside middle, late and under, Kwan pops to Verdugo in short left, Verdugo gets a bit of a late break, but has plenty of time, catches, 1 down.
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Post by qwik3457bb on Oct 14, 2024 18:44:10 GMT -5
Fry takes a FB just high, near middle, 1-0
Takes a FB inside, waist high, 2-0
FB below and outside middle, Fry pulls it to 56 hole, beats Volpe's dive to his right for a 1 out single.
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Post by qwik3457bb on Oct 14, 2024 18:45:42 GMT -5
The dangerous Ramirez...
FB outside at the knees, 1-0
FB high above middle at 96.6, 2-0.
Drops a change thigh high, outside corner, swung on and missed, 2-1
FB in the zone just above middle, popped to shortish right center, Soto comes in and left, catches, 2 down.
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Post by qwik3457bb on Oct 14, 2024 18:48:17 GMT -5
Thomas takes a curve that misses the back door, 1-0
Takes a slider waist high, just outside, but called a strike, Rodon got a break, that was a ball, missed by 2 inches on Gameday, 1-1
Swings under a FB up and in near the corner at 96, 1-2
FB 4-5 inches outside at the top, Thomas doesn't chase, 1-2
Slider hangs up and away, taken, Wells tries to frame it, it goes off his mitt for a passed ball, Fry to 2nd with two down, 3-2 on Thomas.
FB up and in, but in the zone, at 97, swung under for the K, inning over.
Bottom 1, 0-0 Yanks.
Rodon had to work, but kept them off the board. 22 pitches in the 1st.
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Post by qwik3457bb on Oct 14, 2024 18:49:25 GMT -5
Just one called strike in the 1st for Rodon, but 3 swings and misses, including two by Thomas.
Torres steps in to lead off for the Yanks...
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