Good morning.
Here are several links from the past week that will make your Monday at the office a bit more bearable:
- A diving catch attempt resulted in a season-ending, torn-labrum injury for Avisail Garcia; meanwhile, Matt Moore appears a likely candidate for Tommy John surgery to address a tear of his ulnar collateral ligament, meaning he may be unavailable until after the start of the 2015 season.
- Not only did Garcia’s teammate, Jose Abreu, slug two home runs against the Indians on Thursday evening, reports Lindsey Foltin of Fox Sports Ohio, he managed to tear open a brand-new ball with another swing.
- Abreu’s 439-foot bomb in the second inning of that game came off Danny Salazar. Gammons Daily’s Bill Chuck noted that the 24-year-old fireballer had a most peculiar outing:
Salazar faced just 18 batters [over three and two-thirds innings,] allowing six hits, including two homers and a double, and walked two and permitted five runs.
Now here’s the amazing part . . .
He struck out every other batter he faced.
Check out his BABIP yesterday — the White Sox were perfect [1.000].
- On a related note, Bryan Grosnick of Beyond the Boxscore asks, “Why is every young starting pitcher amazing these days?”
- In the wake of the Michael Pineda’s pine-tar-smeared-hand kerfuffle, ESPN SweetSpot’s David Schoenfield argues that MLB needs to address declining offensive numbers and enforce the existing rule against pitchers using foreign substances to get a grip on the baseball.
- Rob Neyer of Fox Sports charts the demise of the R-O-L-A-I-D-S Relief Award and, in an amusing postscript, the introduction of brand-new MLB-sponsored reliever hardware.
- Adam Wieser of Disciples of Uecker looks back at Buster Olney’s introduction in 2003 of an anti-Moneyball statistic, productive-out percentage (POP).
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- Andrelton Simmons can gun you out at first base from anywhere, including the seat of his pants.
That’s it. Have a walk-off week!
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