Saturday Night Open Thread

August 10, 2013 by Mike Axisa 38 Comments

As you probably know, Yankees bench coach Tony Pena had an 18-year big league career with six teams (mostly with the Pirates) as an unorthodox yet very good defensive catcher. I’m sure you’ve seen clips of him squatting behind the plate with his right leg fully extended, for example. Pena also had a knack for stealing called strike threes by faking an intentional walk — he did it at least twice — something I didn’t know until today. Isn’t that awesome? The fist pump pulls it all together.

Anyway, here is tonight’s open thread. The Mets are playing the Diamondbacks (Wheeler vs. McCarthy) and MLB Network will air a game as well. Who you see depends on where you live. The (football) Giants and Steelers have a preseason game at 7:30pm ET on NBC, if preseason football is your thing. Talk about Pena’s awesomeness, either of those games, or anything else right here. You folks know how these things work by now, so have at it.

[h/t Maury Brown]

trr

Giants vs Steelers, too
- forensic
  
  I don’t really bother to pay much attention to the NFL offseason anymore so I have no idea who’s still on the Giants or who’s new to them. Gotta try to figure it out when I watch the first half of the game later.
  - vicki
    
    chicks dig pre-season. for the hot david carr action.
    - forensic
      
      Watching it now. 1st and goal from the 5 yard line after the blocked punt and they settle for a field goal? Good to see Gilbride and the offense are in midseason form.
      
      Less than 5 minutes into the first preseason game and I’m already annoying at them. That can’t be good.
      - forensic
        
        *annoyed
pat

Here’s the other one against John Olerud.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LCpdeOOLE4
- pat
  
  And I gotta say, that fist pump is downright Cervellian.
Pasqua

I’m trying to figure out a situation where, with 2 strikes, a hitter would think, “Yeah, this intentional walk makes perfect sense.” With a 3-1 count, okay. 3-0, definitely. But 2 strikes? Shouldn’t that raise a question in the batter’s mind?
- vicki
  
  in the case of the top game:
  
  astros trailed 1-2, bottom of the 8th @sfo. runners had just been bunted over; men on 2nd and 3rd, one out. hubek comes in from the bullpen. brian johnson had hit a solo homerun to go ahead in the 7th.
  
  the ibb is a no-brainer.
  
  tony had just been traded from the white sox to the stros at the deadline. this was one of the last games he’d start for his career.
- RetroRob
  
  I can see a situation where the AB starts out as a potential intentional walk situation. Yet they go ahead and pitch to the hitter and quickly get ahead 0-2, but then falls behind 3-2 and the manager makes a call just to walk him. The hitter relaxes, but the trick play is on.
- vicki
  
  okay, the other game took more digging, because pena caught dennis martinez for several years.
  
  runner on 2nd, two outs. tribe are down 3-1. with the open base, lefty olerud thinks he’s being walked by rhp martinez to get to righty charlie o’brien. makes sense.
  
  http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/CLE/CLE199607300.shtml
  
  and the astros/giants game,
  
  http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/SFN/SFN199709050.shtml
  - Pasqua
    
    Thank you for doing that research. That is awesome information; however, I guess it’s the “2-strikes” scenarios that confuse me, even knowing the game situation. If the context calls for a IBB, why are there 2 strikes? RetroRob’s explanation / theory above is a good one, but still…odd, right?
    
    Again, thanks for the digging.
    - vicki
      
      absolutely, yes. i got lost on my quest, which was to find a pitch-by-pitch account of the two at-bats. rob’s right. we’ve often seen the intentional walk decision come late in the count. meanwhile, i really enjoyed my time rooting around in 90s baseball.
      
      fun fact: olerud k’d only 37 times that season.
  - forensic
    
    I thought for sure that the home plate ump was Eric Gregg for the Olerud one, but your link showed that’s not the case. Given the aesthetics and how far outside that pitch looked, I put 2 and 2 together, but I guess I was wrong.
pat

Just something I gotta get off my chest: WHY THE F*CK DID KANSAS CITY GIVE THE RAYS WIL MYERS FOR 2 YEARS OF JAMES SHIELDS???????
- Joe R
  
  Not defending the move, because I didnt agree with it, but trying to answer your question. I believe it was because there were talks of Dayton Moore’s job (Royals GM) being on the line shortly and he decided he needed to go for it to try and save it. So he made some moves to try and turn the Royals into a contender.
  - pat
    
    Awful. IMO that’s shameful. Doing a disservice to the team by trying to cover your own ineptitude.
- vicki
  
  andrew friedman must be all kinds of seductive. dude does not lose trades.
KEN

10 things to do on a weekend better than watching a yankee game on tv.
1 mow the grass.2wash the car. 3 pull weeds in the garden. 4 put the hazmet suit on and change the twins diapers.5 go to the mall with the wife. 6 go fishing. 7 visit the in laws. 8 take a paper out of the to do jar. 9 go to yard sales with the wife and twins. 10 have sex with the wife.
- pat
  
  You forgot self defenestration.
- And in merrie olde England
  
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=di4qCwWkTlU
vicki

anybody who thinks soriano isn’t doing much, tell it to kabak’s hat.
Big “Nostradanus” Member

Nice video i did not know that pena and kuroda go way back
Improbable Island’s Dirty Midget Whores (formerly RRR)

I don’t know about you guys but I’m having a ball watching the new NY Cosmos.
WhittakerWalt

“That was the one bad pitch I made in the inning and two-thirds, and he made me pay for it. You can’t change it. You’ve obviously got to make a better pitch right there.”

Nice to see Jobber still has rocks in his head.
vicki

and to chase the fake ibb’s, the ol’ hidden ball trick.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/9557115/tampa-bay-rays-pull-hidden-ball-trick-los-angeles-dodgers
WhittakerWalt

Let’s everyone just calm down with the Austin Jackson love-fest. The guy’s got a .750 OPS. Yes, he’s killed us the past two days, but he’s still not all that great.
- forensic
  
  Well, that would be the second best OPS on the Yankees. Yeah, that’s more an indictment of the Yankees than praise of Jackson, but still. He’d also be tied for the 2nd youngest player on the team.
  - WhittakerWalt
    
    Youth does not necessarily equal good. I’ll take a great player whatever age they are.
    Not that that rule has any relevance to this Yankees team.
Brian Strawman

What’s the difference between a “crafty veteran baseball move” and a “bush move showing up the other player”?
- Pat D
  
  Likability of the individual player.
  
  Tony Pena was generally always likable. Now if say……A.J. Pierzynski had done that, probably a different story.
- Bob Buttons
  
  depends on the public perception of the guy, plus game situation (up/down by x, x games out of wild card, spring training vs postseason), media bias towards teams, etc.
  
  For example people loves Puig even though some of his antics are down right jackass.
  Rodney and Valverde do their dance and nobody gives a shit.
  etc.
Captain Turbo

Didn’t Johnny Bench get deked with the fake IBB once? I seem to remember that.
- Pat D
  
  I think that was the plot of all of his Krylon commercials.
- Steinbrenner’s Ghost
  
  in the 72 world series by dick williams and rollie fingers.
Steinbrenner’s Ghost

ARod was getting “protein shakes” from Victor Conti in 2012.

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/i-team/exclusive-a-rod-dirty-secret-yankee-star-roid-gurus-article-1.1423513

ARod has shit for brains by getting anywhere near Conti. It’s like gettn investment advice from Madoff.
- forensic
  
  So, now an athlete looking into legal supplements is somehow news?
  
  What’s next? A-Rod was seen going into GNC and buying creatine?
  - Manny’s BanWagon
    
    Theres’s probably a thousand ways Arod could look into getting legal supplements.
    
    Showing up at Vctor Conte’s office, a convicted felon for steroid distribution with Bill Romonowski, who was an NFL bad boy and noted PED fiend, just shows incredibly poor judgement. Behavior like that is why he’s in this situation.