Neil Walker Handles Hometown Pressures

Neil Walker. Born and raised in the ‘Burg.

The Pittsburgh Pirates‘ 2004 first-round draft pick must feel great to be playing his baseball before for his hometown, especially at the professional level. To be paid to do something you love, and in front of thousands of people who love you, well, it just wouldn’t seem to get much better than that for a “job”.

Still, I can’t help but wonder if the home-grown product of Pine-Richland HS in Gibsonia, PA, just 16 miles north of “dawntawn” Pittsburgh doesn’t secretly enjoy a good road trip now and then. There has to be a lot of “interactions” with friends and family that a player from out of town doesn’t necessarily get exposed to in the same way Walker does on a daily basis.

“Neil, you’re Cousin Ginny called and wants to know if you can get her those same seats for the game?… No?!…Well why not?!”

“Neil, you’re parents called and can’t make the game tonight. You’re mom’s not feeling up to it. Can you stop there before the game?”

“Neil, you’re Uncle Joe says you’re pulling off the ball too much, keep that front shoulder in there!”

Mind you, the stats don’t necessarily bear it. Walker’s career .272 batting average on the road is almost identical to his .278 home BA, and his home run and RBI production on the road (25/117) vs. his home numbers (19/127) pretty much match each other.

Still, maybe he’d be hitting .300 at home and knocking the ball out of the ballpark more often if he wasn’t born on the banks of the Monongahela? (I know your son wasn’t really born on the banks of the Monongahela River, Mrs. Walker, but I’m just trying to be creative. Hopefully you’ll forgive the poetic license.)

I guess there's no way to know for certain the effects of being a “local guy done good”. Real good.

In any case, the guy certainly seems to handle the demands of being a hometown hero, whatever they may be. Walker always seems affable and in good spirits around the ballpark. He’s certainly one of the quiet leaders on the team and it’s obvious that the team just isn’t the same without him in there on a nightly basis. He’s an integral part of their current winning formula.

Kudos to Neil Walker for not cracking under the pressure of Uncle Joe’s batting tips. 

Andrew McCutchen Has The Look

Andrew McCutchen has the look.

Much has been said, written, videoed, blogged, tweeted and whatever other social media is out there these days about the Pittsburgh Pirates‘ 1st-round pick back in 2005. Yet, I’m not sure any of it quite captures how good McCutchen is. Still, at just 26 years old, the native from Ford Mead, FL is one of the top five players in the MLB, at least as far as the complete package goes. The proverbial five-tool player “Cutch” can do it all. Hit for average? Check. Hit for power? Check. Throw? Check. Defense? None better. Run like the wind? Check.

But this isn’t about how good McCutchen is or isn’t, right now anyway. This is about how good he will be. And he will be good enough to be in the Hall of Fame. Unless injury or some other unnecessary set of circumstances prevents him from doing so, he will be there. You can mark your calendar 7/6/2013 as the date I wrote it.

In truth, it’s really not that bold of a prediction; akin to maybe saying Apple computers will still be in business 20 years from now.

Still, how can I be so confident in my prediction, especially without firing off a bunch of numbers that will prove my point?

McCutchen has the look. Exactly what do I mean by the look?

Perhaps a better words is focus. And his, as with all the great ones, appears to be laser-like. But more than that, consistent and constant. Unrelenting. Like a shark that never stops seeking it’s prey.

Every MLB player knows what it’s like to be “in the zone” out there on the field, when everything you do just works, but what separates the best from the not-so-best are the one’s who can maintain it over the long and grueling MLB baseball season. The average fan does not see (or feel for that matter) the wear and tear on the body a professional baseball player must endure, at least the starters who play 90 percent or more of the games. And anyone who’s played a little basketball, or any sport for that matter, knows that when you get tired you loose focus. The same easy 10-foot jump shot in the first quarter is not the same easy 10-foot jump-shot in the fourth quarter. Same principal applies to baseball.

So maintaining focus is the real challenge at the professional level. And just when you think you “got it”, the other guy has it “more” and beats you.

But not Andrew McCutchen. More often than not, at least in terms relative to baseball, he beats you. So that’s why, without listing a bunch of stats and extrapolating the numbers over a 20-some-year career, as long as Andrew McCutchen remains Andrew McCutchen, I can confidently predict success and the numbers will take care of themselves.

McCutchen has the look.

Russell Martin Catches On With Bucs

Russell Martin seems to like being a Pittsburgh Pirate. Maybe it’s just me, but I get the feeling he really likes playing in the ‘Burg. And the guy can sure catch. Jason Kendall-type catch. While everyone raves about Yadier Molina, and rightfully so, Martin quietly goes about his business of calling and catching an excellent game.

And while Martin may not be better than Molina, he’s right up there with him. He hasn’t made an error all season, and his .488 percentage of base runners caught stealing is tops in all of the MLB.

And the guy always hustles. Always. If anyone can be excused for taking it easy running down the first base line in the 10th inning after he hits an easy ground ball to second base, it’s the catcher, but you won’t see Martin doing it. Martin rarely, if ever, takes the free pass. He’s all-out 24/7.

After last season’s base-stealing fiasco where Pirate catchers threw out only 19 runners all season, Martin’s stability behind the plate cannot be understated. He’s already nabbed 20 potential base stealers this year, and as a result, teams are simply not attempting as many stolen bases as they used to. This helps take pressure off the defense as a whole and immeasurably improves team defense.

If all this wasn’t enough, Martin’s bat has contributed more than expected, as the three-time All Star has homered eight times and knocked in 32 runs, both from fourth in the Pirates’ current lineup.

When all is said and done, the free-signing of the 30-year-old from Ontario, Canada last November is one of the best in the last decade by the Pirates.

Pirates Deserve More Recognition

Ho-hum. Another win for the MLB-leading Pittsburgh Pirates.

You may hear something about it, but I wouldn’t count on it. The team doesn’t seem to be getting much credit where credit is due.

Is it my imagination or are the Pirates being pretty much ignored these days by the major media outlets?

ESPN, Fox, Yahoo, MLB itself… you name it. No one’s saying much about the Pirate’s winning ways. Either that or I’m just turning on my TV or PC at the wrong time. Maybe it’s like the boy who cried wolf or something, as we’ve seen this scenario the last two seasons before from the team — a pretty good first half of the season, only to be followed up by a pretty bad second half  — and the media doesn’t want to invest too much time on what they consider another mirage of wins by the Bucs. Maybe. Or maybe the media doesn’t know what they’re doing.

Because this time it’s not just a pretty good first half, it was a franchise record setting first half, as the 2013 Pirates became the first team in franchise history to win 50 games before July 1. That’s a lot of good baseball teams they just passed. Five World Series winners and nine pennant winners didn’t do what this team has done this season. Pardon me, but I think that deserves a little more than usual quick blurb about “the much improved Pirates team,” that is “just trying to finish .500 for the first time in the last 20 years.”

I guess it’s only fitting that Franciso Liriano, a Pirate I’ve dubbed The Invisible Man because of the lack of recognition he’s been receiving all season, would pitch his second career complete game and first for the team this season, to put the Pirates back on track and atop all of MLB with the best record in baseball at 53-32 . Liriano pitched a full nine innings of four-hit two-run baseball to win his eighth game in just 11 starts, as the Pirates downed the Chicago Cubs, 6-2, in the first of their three game series in the Windy City.

Since joining the Pirates on May 11th, no NL pitcher has more wins than Franciso Liriano, but you probably won’t hear or read much of that outside the local Pittsburgh media.

Some say winning is it’s own reward.

Probably those who don’t want to give credit where credit is due.

Modern MLB Scheduling Short-Changes Fans

After watching the Philadelphia Phillies and Pittsburgh Pirates square off this week and culminate their three-game series on the 4th of July, one can’t help but feel Pirate fans are getting short-changed. And Phillies fans too.

The Phillies and Pirates! 4th of July! Day baseball! A sellout crowd! A pennant race! It doesn’t get much better than this.

Well, it could.

What used to be an 18-game hardcore season-long rivalry between two blue-collar baseball teams back in the days of Roberto Clemente, Willie Stargell, Steve Carlton and Mike Schmidt is now a mere three-game wham-bam-thank-you-maam short visit to each city, that can only leave fans from both teams wanting more.

No doubt some of the rivalry remains, but with only six total games over the entire season now being played these days between the two cross-state Pennsylvania foes, it’s hard to build up any good old fashion animosity or any kind of a dramatic storyline. There just isn’t enough opportunity.

Before 1994, when MLB went from two East/West divisions in each league to the current three East/Central/West setup, teams like the Phillies and Pirates had a natural geographic rivalry that played out in 18 games over the course of the long season like a good dramatic film. A few years later in ’97, when MLB adopted interleague play, it all but cut the film into little more than a coming attraction’s trailer.

With hundreds of Phillies’ fans in the stands after making the five-hour car trek west to the ‘Burg to spend their holiday watching the two teams do battle this week, one can only wonder what it would do for both team’s fan bases, as well as baseball fans in general, if there were more games being played between the two geographic rivals. And others as well.

MLB and the major sports networks have no problem shoving the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox rivalry down our throats every year, as if it was the only series that mattered to every single baseball fan on the planet, so the league must understand the value of a natural rivalry. By not playing teams like the Phillies, New York Mets and even theWashington Nationals more than a handful games, Pirate fans are simply getting the short-end of the scheduling stick.

Maybe, since the line between the American League and National League gets blurred more and more every year, MLB should just scrap the whole present AL/NL divisional setup and regroup every team according to a more geographically friendly format. Then they could come up with a real balanced schedule instead of the unbalanced joke they have now. Do Pirate fans really care about playing teams from the AL West division this summer? Seeing them in the World Series is fine, but before then, who cares?

Would Pirate fans really rather see the Seattle Mariners or Oakland A’s than the Phillies, or the Mets for that matter? Are the Mets even in the same league as the Pirates anymore? Do they still play each other? Blink and you’ll miss it.

As a kid living on the east coast, after watching the Mets and Pirates play 18 times a season on local New York TV, year after year after year, the Mets’ old theme song is forever ingrained in my brain…

Meet the Mets! Meet the Mets! Step right up and greet the Mets! Bring the kiddies, bring your wife, guaranteed to have the time of you life! Because the Mets are really sockin’ the ball, hittin’ the home runs over the wall. East side, west side, everybody’s comin’ down, to meet the M-E-T-S Mets of New York town!

Could I have ever learned such a valuable piece of information with only the handful of games they play now? No. It just wouldn’t have been possible.

Or how about the Mets’ sponsor, Schaefer Beer and their most-excellent ol’ jingle?

Schaefer, is the, one beer to have, when you’re having more than one. Schaefer, pleasure, doesn’t fade, even when your thirst is done. The most rewarding flavor in this man’s world, for people who are having fun… Schaefer, is the, one beer to have when you’re having more than one!

Yes, baseball fans everywhere are truly getting short-changed these days with the modern schedule.

MLB All-Star Game Ain't What It Used To Be

The All-Star Game, I already said it ain’t what it used to be, before naming the five Pittsburgh Pirates who I thought most-deserved to make it, at least among themselves anyway. It’s hard to argue they ALL should go though, without pretty much ignoring the rest of the league’s best players. But that’s what a lot a fans will do. They’re thinking is, “If he’s a [insert any MLB team name here really], he’s goin’ to the All-Star Game, the rest of the league be damned!”

Not that it matters because, like I said, the game ain’t what it used to be. It’s pretty much become some hippie-love-fest-everybody’s-a-winner-look-at-us-we’re-all-All-Stars type of “event” instead of a real competition to see who has, at least for one night, the best baseball team. The classic example most-often given of just how much the player’s attitude toward the game has changed, and everyone else’s I guess, is Pete Rose barreling over Ray Fosse* at home plate in the bottom of the 12th to win the 1970 All-Star Game for the National League. That play would never happen now. Now they just run out of pitchers and call it tie.

[*That play incidentally DID NOT ruin Ray Fosse's career as many, myself included at one time, erroneously believe. Fosse played 42 games in the second half of the season AFTER his monumental collision-felt-'round-the-world with Rose, and even made the All-Star team the very next season in '71; winning a gold glove also I might add. Why the argument is made probably has more to do with Pete Rose and who he is than anything else, but the reality of Fosse's decline, if you look into it with any detail, simply does not jive with the initial contention Pete Rose ended Ray Fosse's career.]

But back to the game itself and just why it stinks so much now…

It’s merely a popularity contest now based on the media manipulation of the masses. An American Idol with bats ‘n balls ‘n bases. Like some Hollywood Oscar’s show … A Night for the Stars! (yawn) Excuse me while go watch a rerun of 8 Men Out, or something worthwhile. I don’t know, Downton Abbey maybe. Anything but the sickening doting love-fest the All-Star game has become. I’ll probably harp on a million-and-one different things as to why the game ain’t THE game anymore from now till the end of time (or longer), but for the moment, I’ll start with the process of selection…

Exactly why a person should get 25 votes for something when another person gets 25 votes for the same thing doesn’t make sense to me. Unless you’re giving the former to a commercial market with a larger fan base, say ah, oh, I don’t know, New York, LA or Chicago or … oh, you know what I mean. Or where I mean, I should say. If you got more people to vote than I got more people to vote, and you multiply those votes 25 times by the more people you got than I got, well, you’re going to “win” any election more often times than not, simply because you got more of what they call, clout. You simply have more voting power based not only on the more people you got than I got, but also by empowering those “more people” with “more votes”.

It’s like an exponential-Einsteinian-thing or something. I don’t know, I’m not a mathematician; but you don’t have to be one to see that one group has a numerical advantage over the other group to begin with, even before you give them the extra 24 votes each. Under the present system, 25 votes a piece by 1,000,000 Yankee fans goes a lot further than 25 votes a piece by 300,000 Pirate fans in getting your player elected. But then again, 25 votes a piece by 1,000,000 Yankee fans goes a lot further than 25 votes a piece by 300,000 Pirate fans in consumer purchasing power also, which ultimately is, boys and girls, what it’s all about these days. But it didn’t used to be that way.

Just ask Pete Rose and Ray Fosse.

No No-No's

No no-no’s this season?! What gives?

After seven no-hitters were tossed last year in 2012, there has not been any yet as we approach the halfway point of the 2013 MLB season. A few close calls, but still, no no-no’s. So what’s the deal?

Well, despite last year’s flurry of no-hitters, the fact is, it remains a very rare feat. Only 279 have been thrown to date in nearly some 400,000 major league baseball games. Give or take a few thousand, that’s roughly seven every 10,000 games. With some 4,860 games a year (not counting postseason), that allows for only about two per season. So with seven from last year, odds are there won’t be another for three or four more years.

The seven no-hitters last year matched the modern record for one season, tying 1990 and 1991. (There were eight no-hitters in 1884, but the rules were a bit different back then to say the least. Without going into a lot of specifics, six “called balls” were a walk. Suffice to say, things were a lot different back then, thus the differentiation of the “modern” era.)

The first recorded no-hitter was thrown by Joe Borden in 1875, pitching for the Philadelphia White Stockings against the Chicago White Stockings. (Apparently white was a popular color back in the 1800′s and stockings were all the rage.) Borden, who played under numerous surnames, reportedly came from a prominent family. If they had known he was playing baseball for money, they would have greatly disapproved of his bourgeois activities. My, how times have changed.

The last no-hitter thrown, as many will no doubt remember, was thrown by one David Dewitt Bailey, Jr., otherwise known as “Homer” by many of his teammates, fans and just about everyone else who follows the game of baseball today. Bailey tossed his no-no for the Cincinnati Reds last September against the Pittsburgh Pirates; a 1-0 game that doomed the Bucs to 20 consecutive non-winning seasons, a major North American professional sports record that Pirates fans hope will finally come to end this year. (So far so good.)

But beyond the mere statistics of no-hitters, the fact remains that hitting a baseball is not an easy thing to do. Striking a small-round object with a relatively long-skinny stick as it travels anywhere from 85 to 100 mph towards you can be like trying to catch a bullet in your teeth … Well, okay, it’s not quite that difficult, but you get the idea. But any activity where you can fail 66% of the time and that still gets you in the Hall of Fame (providing you do it long enough), cannot be anything but hard as hell.

So if it’s so hard to hit a baseball, why then aren’t there more no-hitters?

Well, if you watch enough baseball games, you’ll notice that most balls don’t get hit the way the batter had in mind. A ball off the end of the bat that bloops over the infield for a base hit, a jam-job that results in a perfectly placed swinging bunt or a misplayed ball by an outfielder that gets scored a double are just a few examples of “hits” that fall into the “luck” category; or “bad luck” category if you’re the pitcher. So over the course of nine innings of baseball, something’s bound to fall in between the fielders, whether it’s intended to or not. That’s what really makes it so hard to throw a no-hitter.

So, as luck would have it, yep, no no-no’s so far this season.