I was alerted to this post written by BoSoxBob of AthleteXchange.com from fellow Bloguinite CollegeWolf (of TWolves Blog fame). I thought it was hilarious and needed to be posted for all to see, so I volunteered to put it up here at Wezen-Ball.

It's a thorough and scientific look (obviously commissioned by Dayton Moore) at what has gone wrong with Gil Meche and the rest of the Royals pitching staff over the last few years. You'll never guess what his findings were...

(Click "Read More" to read the post from BoSoxBob.)

Yesterday afternoon, Milwaukee's beloved Bob Uecker announced his last Brewers game for at least two-to-three months. The Brewers did their best to keep him in the booth as long as possible, playing 14-innings against the Pirates after Trevor Hoffman blew the save in the top of the ninth inning, but it had to end sometime.

Famous the world over for his roles as the 1980s Miller Lite Guy, the dad from "Mr. Belvedere", and Harry Doyle, the Cleveland Indians announcer in the "Major League" movies, Bob is best known as the voice of the Milwaukee Brewers, a role he has had since 1971. With the announcement that he would undergo heart surgery on Friday, the state of Wisconsin and baseball fans across the country were shocked and saddened. Thankfully, the procedure is routine enough that the team and Bob's doctors expect him back for the stretch run. We wish Bob the best of luck and a speedy recovery. He truly is one of the best baseball men in the game, and Brewers games won't be the same without him.

As a long-tenured radio broadcaster, Bob isn't exactly unique across baseball. There are still a few teams whose current generation of fans are being raised by the same voice who raised the last generation of fans (and even the generation before that). They are a rare breed, though. The chart below shows a sample of some of the game's greatest voices, current and recently retired/departed, and how long they've been calling games (and points out a few of their career highlights). When you listen to someone like Vin Scully or Bob Uecker, you are truly listening to someone who has seen it all. It'll be a sad day when the last of these great radio men step down. Until then, let's appreciate what we have.

So a lot of strange things happened in the Brewers-Pirates game last night, the least of which was the 17 runs the Brewers put up against the Pirates after being nearly shutout all weekend by the Cubs. As Disciples of Uecker has pointed out, the Brewers now have a +49 run differential against Pittsburgh and a -35 run differential versus the rest of the league. Strange stuff.

Strangest of all, though, was Gregg Zaun's first inning struggles to get the ball back to the mound. That's right, a 39-year old catcher couldn't throw the ball the 60 feet, 6 inches between home plate and the mound. He botched the throw three separate times (see the video).

In light of that, I thought I'd bust out this Peanuts strip from April 17, 1955:

(Click "Read More" to continue reading.)

Just wanted to take a moment to point out that, in today's Wall Street Journal "City edition", there is an article (and a nifty graphic) about how long it takes Yankees hitters to trot around the bases after a home run. And they even take a moment to mention me!

David Biderman, the WSJ writer, took the time himself to go back and view all the home runs hit by current Yankees last season and time their trots. He found, unsurprisingly, that Alex Rodriguez is the slowest Yankee, while Curtis Granderson is the quickest (Derek Jeter's got a nice time, too). None of those players have hit enough home runs this year to get a good gauge on their 2010 pace, but early signs point to similar numbers.

Go take a look!

It's pretty easy to look at the seventeen consecutive losing seasons that the Pirates have put up, or the perennial 90-100 loss teams that the Expos/Nationals have keep fielding, or any of the other string of lousy teams that exist today and think only about their failures as a franchise. We've seen the Royals be bad for so long, for example, that some of us don't even remember a time when they were good.

But of course it's a silly thing to be stuck on the present like that. Major League Baseball has been around for well over a century, and even the most recent franchises have nearly 15 years under their belts. With so much history, it's virtually guaranteed that each franchise is the best at something.

In fact, to prove it, here is a list of all thirty teams and one single-season record that the team, or a member of the team, owns. All-time franchise records, like most World Series championships or most losses, aren't included. With some franchises being 130 years old and some only 13, that didn't seem fair. Instead, the list counts single-season records set by a player (or group of players) while wearing the uniform. Most home runs in a season, then, is considered a Giants record, for Barry Bonds' 73 home runs in 2001. The four 20-win rotation of the 19691971 Orioles is also counted here.

Not all the records are positive (where would the fun be in that?), and some are more interesting than others, but at least now no one can say that the Royals (or Nats or your-least-favorite-team-here) sucks at everything. All records were found using Baseball-Reference's Play Index.

(Click "Read More" to continue reading.)

We're two weeks into the baseball season, and, despite a less-than-stellar start for the Brewers, it's been a great start. It also means that we are now two weeks into the Tater Trot Tracker, and things are going great. If you missed it last week, the great Joe Posnanski wrote a nice piece about movies, bullpen cars, and home run trots inspired by the Tracker on Friday. It always feels good to be acknowledged by someone you respect so much.

As part of the growth of the Tater Trot Tracker, I'd like to announce two things. First, the main Tater Trot Tracker page (available in the menu bar at the top of the page) can now be reached directly at TaterTrotTracker.com. That should make things easier to remember. Second, and more exciting, I've opened up a Tater Trot Tracker store, where you can buy t-shirts reflecting your personal home run trot philosophy.

We all love home runs, but we don't all agree on the best type of home run trot. For those of us who like big, majestic flies, we don't mind if the batter pauses for a moment to admire his shot (we're admiring it too!). But many of us prefer to see batters take the trot a little more seriously, and expect them to just put their head down and run. No matter which camp you belong to, you'll find an appropriate shirt at the Tater Trot Tracker shop. Either you want to "Savor the Moment" as the ball soars, or you "Swing Hard, Run Hard" to get around the bases - you won't be left out.

So click on over to the Tater Trot Tracker store and find the shirt and slogan that fits you best. Not only will you look awesome, but you may just be leading a movement. How can you pass that up?

(And since this is my first foray into stores and t-shirts, if you have any comments about the store or the shirts, I'd be happy to hear them.)

It's not exactly groundbreaking to say that, yes, ten years is a really long time. But sometimes it's fun to be reminded just how long ten years really is.

I got home from work this afternoon to find a package waiting for me that my brother had mailed out a few weeks ago. It was a box of baseball books that he wasn't going to be able to use anymore when moving from Hawaii back to the mainland. There were a few random books, a number of older Sporting News, etc. preview magazines, and five or six years' worth of old Stats Inc./Bill James Handbooks from the early part of the decade.

If you know me at all, then you know that this is a great little windfall. In fact, it didn't even take me more than one book to find something interesting

Looking through the 2001 "Bill James Presents Stats Inc. Major League Handbook" (complete with a very fresh-faced Alex Rodriguez on the cover), I found the section titled "Career Assessments" (or "Aaron Watch") at the back of the book. This is the section where Bill James gives the various chances that his method predicts for a certain player to reach key career milestones. For example, how likely was it, after the year 2000 season, for Ken Griffey, Jr., who was sitting on 438 home runs, to reach 500 career home runs? The answer: 96%.

It was in perusing this table (of any active player who had a 1% chance or more at reaching either 500 career home runs or 3,000 career hits) that it occurred to me just how long ten years can really be. Here are some interesting names or percentages on the table at the time.

The "Good Call" Guys

Ken Griffey, Jr.: 96% chance at 500 HRs, 90% chance at 600 HRs
Barry Bonds: 100% chance at 500 HRs, 89% chance at 600 HRs, 21% chance at 700 HRs, 6% chance at 756 HRs
Sammy Sosa: 94% chance at 500 HRs, 89% chance at 600 HRs 
Rafael Palmiero: 93% chance at 500 HRs
Derek Jeter: 33% chance at 3,000 hits

(Click "Read More" to continue reading.)

I don't think I've ever mentioned the excellent Rogue's Baseball Index here. For those who don't know, RBI is a website that attempts to define the more, shall we say, unique terms in baseball. From their "About" page:

The Rogue’s Baseball Index is a growing dictionary of the baseball terms that they didn’t teach you in Little League, and that you won’t hear about in the director’s commentary to Angels in the Outfield. This is baseball as the fans know it, as we know it, from the bleachers to the couch, and from Single A to the Show. RBI is baseball like you’ve already thought it.

You might think you know what they're talking about from that cute little description, but you don't really know until you see their definitions of phrases like the Jesus Christ Superstar, the Shadow Legend, or Walking Hank Greenberg (don't forget to click through to the wiki entries at the bottom of each post). You can spend worse time today reading through RBI's (relatively new) archives.

RBI's most recent entry is "Old Milwaukee". The definition:

(Click "Read More" to continue reading.)

Here's something a little different and (hopefully) a little fun for today:

Last week sometime, someone on Twitter (sorry, I don't remember who) noticed that Todd Helton's middle name is "Lynn". Someone else quickly pointed out Helton wasn't the only famous player named "Lynn" and that, in fact, you could find a trio of pretty memorable players each named Lynn in their own way: as a first name (Lynn Nolan Ryan), as a middle name (Todd Lynn Helton) and as a last name (Fred Lynn). That seemed like a pretty interesting little tidbit, and it got me wondering: is Lynn the best single name in baseball? Can we find another name that can give us a better player in each "position" (as a first name, a middle name, and a last name)?

Using the Rally WAR database, I did a little name parsing to answer the question. Players with identical first, middle, and last names were joined together and those trios with the highest WAR values were pulled out. After a little more work than I expected, here are the best single names in baseball. This kind of information won't exactly win you your fantasy league, but, then again, when did you ever come here for that?

The Best Name in Baseball

Thomas
Thomas Glavine (67 WAR), George Thomas Seaver (105.3 WAR), and Frank Thomas (75.9 WAR)
There are a few other notable Thomas's to consider (most notably Tommy John & Mel Ott), but this trio is the clear favorite. How it ranks with the other names is a little more up to you.

(Click "Read More" to continue reading.)

As this holy week of baseball continues and teams across the country honor the old - legendary players, memorable moments, meaningful anniversaries - and the new - a new season, new ballparks, new management - I thought it might be fun to think about some of those players and/or franchises that have no one left to remember them: the defunct ballclubs of baseball's past.

Listed below is an All-Star team made up entirely of players who made their mark on baseball's defunct ballclubs. To put it simply, if a player were to be elected to the Hall of Fame and the most likely candidate for which cap to include on his plaque was a now-defunct club, then he'd be considered for this list. Players like Pedro Martinez or Larry Walker don't quite make the grade.

My definition of defunct is hard to elucidate with anything other than "I know it when I see it", but I'll do my best. To me, a team is defunct if it has moved across the country somehow, changed it's name, and refused to embrace the old franchise. Teams like the Angels don't count here because only their name is changing. Teams like the Giants and Dodgers also don't count because their history transferred with the clubs. For the purpose of this list, the defunct teams that I considered were the Montreal Expos, Seattle Pilots, St. Louis Browns, and Washington Senators (both versions).

With that out of the way, here are your All-Time Defunct All-Stars. Feel free to tell me who I left out in the comments below.

Catcher: Gary Carter, Montreal Expos
One of the easiest choices for this team. Carter may be more famous for his time as a New York Met (though I think that's only true for those raised by the New York media), but, when the Hall of Fame made the choice to put an Expos cap on his plaque, it was the absolute right call. In terms of WAR, Carter earned 52.6 of his 66.3 career WAR in Montreal.

Firstbase: George Sisler, St. Louis Browns
Another no-brainer. Sisler's career may be a little overrated these days (batting average isn't all it's cracked up to be, of course), but that shouldn't diminish him completely. And, as the greatest St. Louis Brown of all time, there's no way we could forget him here. If we were to expand the team to include a few bench players, Washington Senator Frank Howard would be the first one added.

(Click "Read More" to continue reading.)