Mack's Apple's - 10-13-17 - Giving The Finger, Indians, Bullpens, Amending Replay, Tom Seaver

Good morning.

Giving The Finger on baseball cards –

Some fans don’t approve of the NFL players kneeling down during the National Anthem in protest, so what would they make of one of baseball’s greatest pitchers who flipped the bird on not one, but two baseball cards in successive years? Why, the scoundrel corrupted America’s youth.

A top sports auction house, Robert Edward Auctions (REA), is selling a relatively rare 1887 Old Judge tobacco card featuring “Old Hoss” Charlie Radbourn giving his fans the finger. An astonishing 22 bids have driven the "Obscene Gesture” card up to $2,000, with 17 days still left.

Indians feel the pain -

Josh Tomlin’s eyes welled with tears as he searched for words to explain what had happened. None ever came.

October, the month when championships are seized or squandered, was callous to Cleveland once more.

“I’m not really sure how you get over something like this,” Tomlin said after the Indians were ousted from the postseason with a 5-2 loss to the New York Yankees on Wednesday night in Game 5 of the AL Division Series. “I’m not really sure I’m over last year, either. The only way to get over something like this is to go out there and win, and that’s not what happened.”

Worse than this is a loss in one of those one game playoff series. Play an entire season and have it all taken away in one game. Thank God the Mets never had this happen to… oh… wait.

Bullpens -

The most striking trend of the 2017 Major League Baseball postseason was established minutes into the very first game. With three runs in and only one out recorded in the first inning of the American League Wild Card game, the Yankees manager Joe Girardi pulled ace starting pitcher Luis Severino from the mound, commencing a parade of relief pitchers. In the bottom of the third inning, the Twins manager Paul Molitor followed suit, lifting his best starter, Ervin Santana, in favor of a cadre of bullpen arms.

New York wound up prevailing 8-4, largely because its relievers combined for 8 2/3 innings, 13 strikeouts, and only one run allowed, while their Twins counterparts ceded four runs on six hits. The game, like many that have followed this month, was won by the team with the superior bullpen.

How many times have I write about to those great St. Louis bullpens that would just punch out one 95+ MPH specialist after another? How many?

Amending replay -

The spirit of replay review wasn’t about microscopic technicalities, it was about getting certain calls right: home run/not a home run, fair/foul, safe/out (in other areas, obviously, given this argument). Major League Baseball should greatly consider amending the rules to make it so that a player simply returning to the bag is grounds to be called safe, ending the pedantry of these types of reviews. Semi-related: a switch from above-ground bases to flat bases would be a welcome change as well.

Matthew Pouliot made a great point on Twitter. What we’re asking of with players, expecting them to stay on the bag at all times while sliding back, is not realistic. Pouliot adds that an unintended consequence of these types of reviews is seeing more players sliding head-first into bases and, as such, suffering more hand injuries. Even if the “spirit of the rule” argument doesn’t jibe, the player health angle should.

Look, I’m old school and I’d rather go with the human factor here. Take away the whole replay thing and train better umpires (younger ones with better eyesight would help).

If you stay with replay, you have to live with the purity of it. If a runner comes off the bag, and is tagged by a player with a ball in their glove, he’s out. Period.

tom seaver got his arse out of California just in time –

Mets legend Tom Seaver escaped a really tight spot – amid the California wildfires.  “Tom Terrific” and his wife, Nancy, fled from their Napa Valley home as flames bore down on their wine country property, The Mercury News reported. The couple fled from Calistoga at 4 a.m. Wednesday and reunited with relatives in South Lake Tahoe later in the day, along with their six cats, five dogs and a parrot, his daughter Anne Seaver said.

I never thought of Seaver as an ‘escape artist’. Starters usually hang in there under fire. This real fire was obviously much more serious than any he was facing on the pitching mound. God to see him and his family are safe and sound.