Results tagged ‘ Los Angeles Dodgers ’
Yet again, a lack of instant replay looms big in another no-hitter
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before…
Hardball Talk‘s Matthew Pouliot chimes in on the latest umpire assisted no-no:
Just like in Johan Santana‘s no-hitter exactly a week ago, a close play that could have been overturned by replay loomed large in Seattle’s combined no-hitter against the Dodgers on Friday night.
Dee Gordon, maybe the National League’s fastest player, led off the bottom of the ninth with a broken-bat flare to shortstop against Tom Wilhelmsen. Brendan Ryan, just in the game as a defensive replacement, grabbed the ball and made a strong throw to first, getting the out call.
Replay, however, showed that Gordon may have beaten the relay.
In this case, the evidence wasn’t so solid as last week’s fair-foul call on what should have been a Carlos Beltran double.
The play at first base was so close there’s a good chance it wouldn’t have been overturned on whatever replay system baseball eventually implements. Still, it did look like Gordon was safe. Besides just disrupting the no-no, it was a huge call in what was just a 1-0 game at the time.
It’s one of those calls MLB will someday need to make its best effort to get right, instead of just letting one man try to call it at real speed.
Whether it’s the blown Jim Joyce call that actually cost, the now infamous “No-han Santana*” incident or now this, too many of these “historical moments” are being affected by things so easily remedied.
When Armando Gallaraga lost his perfect game on a blown call just over two years ago I wrote that baseball needed instant replay, but “if change comes, make no mistake it will come for entirely the wrong reason” and for me, nothing has changed.
We need instant replay expanded to ensure the integrity of the game, to make sure that a botched call doesn’t determine which teams make the playoffs (or God forbid, the actual outcome of a playoff game).
BUT if the catalyst for change comes in the form of your average baseball fan’s infatuation with no-hitters & perfect games, I’ll take it.
Say it ain’t so: Hal Steinbrenner could put Yankees up for sale in wake of LA Dodgers’ $2 billion price tag.
By Michael O’keeffe AND Bill Madden / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
The Yankees without the Steinbrenners?
Rumors are flying in Major League Baseball and New York banking circles that the family that has owned Major League Baseball‘s premiere franchise since Cleveland shipbuilder George Steinbrenner purchased the club for $8.8 million in 1973 is exploring the possibility of selling the Yankees.
Multiple baseball and finance sources told the Daily News they are hearing that the team the Steinbrenner family has led to seven World Series titles could be put on the block in the wake of the record sale price of $2.175 billion the Los Angeles Dodgers went for in April.
“There has been chatter all around the banking and financial industries in the city for a couple of weeks now,” one high-level baseball source told The News.
“I can say to you there is absolutely, positively nothing to this. The Steinbrenners are not selling the team.” And managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner, George’s younger son, weighed in with his own denial Thursday morning, saying in a statement: “I just read the Daily News story. It is complete fiction. Me and my family have no intention to sell the Yankees and expect it to be in the family for years to come.”
“It would definitely be the right time for the family to sell,” said another baseball source familiar with matters involving the league’s owners. “The value of the team couldn’t be higher, but at the same time, it’s an older team in a division with younger teams getting better at the same time a lot of the Yankees‘ core veterans are starting to go into decline.”
“I’m a finance geek. I guess I always have been,” Steinbrenner said during spring training. “That’s my background; budgets matter and balance sheets matter. I just feel that if you do well on the player development side and you have a good farm system, you don’t need a $220 million payroll. You can field every bit as good a team with young talent.”
“All of that will present a very good financial picture,” the baseball source said.
Another factor fueling the speculation is the fact that Hal Steinbrenner doesn’t seem to share his father’s passion for baseball, and his brother, Hank, has virtually disappeared from the baseball landscape since he approved an onerous 10-year, $275 million contract for Alex Rodriguez before the 2008 season.
“Hal’s a smart businessman,” the source said. “And I’m just not sure that he considers baseball to be a smart business. I think he looks at some of these other owners, throwing $200 million at players and thinks they’re idiots – idiots that unfortunately can affect the way he does business. You have to understand, it was in Hal’s formative years in the ’80s when he saw George at his worst in terms of throwing more and more good money at bad players like Pascual Perez, Dave LaPoint, Steve Kemp, Ed Whitson and Andy Hawkins.”
The Yankees also face an uncertain future on the field.
Mariano Rivera’s freak knee injury may have ended his Hall of Fame career, while Rodriguez and Derek Jeter are in the twilight of their careers. Players the Yankees hoped would emerge as future stars, such as Joba Chamberlain and Phil Hughes, haven’t panned out. The rise of the Tampa Bay Rays and the Baltimore Orioles have made the American League East, a division the Yankees dominated for years, that much tougher.
Worst. Blown. Call. Ever. (Seriously Folks, This Was Pathetic)
You often see an umpire call the runner out even though the first baseman steps away from the bag a bit after fielding the throw. Or especially on plays at second base where a middle infielder’s good faith effort to prevent having his legs broken results in an “out” call even if he doesn’t touch the bag at exactly the same moment he has the ball.
It’s called the “neighborhood play” and it’s not something that people normally get too bent out of shape about. But one just happened in the Dodgers-Rockies game that deserves people getting bent out of shape about.
Tell me: what “neighborhood” was Todd Helton in here when Jerry Hairston was called out by first base umpire Tim Welke?
I don’t expect anyone from MLB to comment.
But man, really? You tellin’ me that a fifth umpire in the booth couldn’t have and shouldn’t have fixed this in about ten seconds?
But hey, Human Element, man.
Source: Hardball Talk
