they saved all the offense for this game?
Hughie Jennings played excellent defense from beyond the grave again yesterday, somehow preventing Craig Biggio from being hit by any pitches, but the Astros won 18-1, suddenly deciding to score all those runs they've been saving all year. Biggio did get a hit - his 3,053rd - tying him with Rod Carew on the all time list. He's now two hits behind Ricky Henderson at 3,055 but that's the last rung on that ladder he'll be able to reach. (Barring a surprise 2008 comeback).
Joel Piniero is pitching for the Cardinals tonight. He's never hit Biggio with a pitch, and he's probably not going to get the chance today because Biggio is expected to be out of the lineup until Sunday. But, maybe if they score another 18 runs tonight, they'll use him to pinch hit somewhere along the way.
Salomon Torres hit Biggio with a pitch on September 21, 1993, but Biggio hs not been plunked on this date since then.
In other news, the Astros named Ed Wade their new general manager, which is nice and all, but they could have been a real MLB trend setter if they had gone in a different direction. Why not take the plunge and become the first team to promote someone directly from "lunatic blogger" to General Manager? Isn't it the next logical step after the wave of stat focused GMs that have been getting jobs around the league for the past few years? It's time someone got into the front office who knew what the most important batting stat is, and it's initials are not OBP.
2 Comments:
I'd love to see you as GM because it would lead to some unorthodox moves. You could trade for serial plunkers like Brian Lawrence and Kaz Ishii, hire Dan Baylor as manager, and, of course, persuade Craig to play another year.
Well, the team that gets hit by the most pitches in a game has won the game 59.6% of the time, over the past 20 years, so I figure if you can assemble a team that's all but guaranteed to get hit more than the other team, you've got a 96 win team. If you can get hit at least 2 more times than the other team all year, you're probably up to 109 wins (teams win 67.3% of games they out get-hit there opponent). So all you really need to do is corner that rare market of guys who are great at getting hit. (Then have Biggio teach them to properly use an elbow pad so guys like Youkilis and Utley can stop getting hit in the wrists and missing weeks at a time.)
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