Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Life as the Arizona GM

Well this season has been a wild ride so far.

The ownership was pretty excited after least seasons wild card finish. The young pitching staff seemed to be maturing and the rookie LF and MVP candidate Dennis Magadan (49HR, 143 RBI, 15 stl, .267 avg) had the fans buzzing. The growth of Carlos Canseco the young SS also held great promise. FA acquisition Junior Tabaka was solid and the much sought after Ernest Hodges set the table at the top of the order.

But then Season 4 began and the bats were silent, and the pitching less than special. The season seemed to be slipping away. But suddenly things have corrected a bit and the team is playing much better. The question now is.......Is the early hole too deep or will they be ok?

The hitting has come around and so long as the pitching improves the Sun Spots hope to be in the thick of things. Julio Martinez continues to baffle. He is highly paid, highly rated, but yet seems to continue to be a pedestrian starter. He needs to perform like a #1 starter for this team to compete.

At 30-12 Cheyenne is once again running away with the division title. Currently at 19-23 the Sun Spots are looking up at the 24-18 Las Vegas squad as well. Internal emails show that the Spots hope to be 5-7 games over .500 by the break. That means they need to go about 24-15 over the next 39 games. That goal is attainable. Let's see if it happens.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

BASEBALL HISTORY (Why 9 innings?)

WHY IS A GAME 9 INNINGS LONG?

Under the earliest baseball rules laid out by the Knickerbocker club in 1842, there was no set number of innings. Rather, the first team to score 21 "aces"(or runs) was the game's winner. This lasted until 1857, when leading baseball figures held a convention in New York and revanped the rules of baseball, essentially making it the game it still is today. Instead of 21 aces, they decided that games shouuld last a set number of innings. An initial proposal called for seven inning games, but for reasons lost to history, they decided on nine instead - perhaps to match the number of players per team, whiich they also standardized at nine.

Imagine how baseball history might have unfolded if games were 7 innings. No-hitters might triple, four man pitching rotations might still be in vogue, The closer's role would have diminished in importance (top save seasons around 20?), Position players would get about 20% fewer at bats. How different would baseball history be had those 2 innings not been tacked on back in 1857?