Results tagged ‘ Mike Trout ’
Voting For The Post-Season Hardware
Before delving into dissecting the 2012 season for the Texas Rangers and looking ahead to potential off-season moves by Jon Daniels and Company, it’s time to cast my votes for the Baseball Bloggers Association post-season honors. Seeing as this blog concerns itself for the most part with the American League, my votes will be cast strictly for the American League honorees.
CONNIE MACK AWARD (Best Manager)
Four weeks ago, I was totally prepared to waste my vote. I had a litany of reasons why Ron Washington of the Texas Rangers should finally get his due. After the last four weeks and even more specifically the last four games, there’s no way my rationale applied anymore. There are three other candidates: Buck Showalter of the Orioles, Bob Melvin of the A’s and Robin Ventura of the White Sox. At season’s start, I had all three of those teams pegged to finish at or near the bottom of their divisions. The White Sox faded at the end, which is about the only reason I eliminated Ventura from the discussion. From a Rangers perspective, I have reasons to vote for both Melvin and Showalter. What swung my vote in the end was how one pitching staff kept going, no matter the obstacles thrown in their way. Starter suspended? Plug someone else in. Ace gets cracked in the skull by a line drive? Here’s another guy. The guy coming back from the DL goes back to the list after five starts? No problem! My vote goes to Bob Melvin.
WILLIE MAYS AWARD (Ouststanding Rookie)
Mike Trout (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
You know, if I really wanted to drive up traffic on my site, this would be the easiest way to do it: Come up with a heartfelt, at least sane-sounding argument why Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels WASN’T worthy of this award because of the accomplishments of (Insert A Rookie Player’s Name Here). Then watch the sparks fly as reader after reader blasts that choice, then tweets all his or her friends to send their vitriol my way as well. Yep, sure-fire way to increase traffic to the site.
Not gonna do it. No doubt. Mike Trout. But feel free to tweet all your friends and tell them to visit my site anyway.
GOOSE GOSSAGE AWARD (Outstanding Reliever)
You know what? My man Joe Nathan had himself a pretty darn good year in 2012. He only blew three saves all year. It sure didn’t help that the last one he blew turned out to be at the worst possible time, in the last week of the season. So I have to go with Fernando Rodney of the Tampa Bay Rays. Yet another guy that comes out of the blue in Tampa and regains his past glory. Outstanding season.
Jered Weaver (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
WALTER JOHNSON AWARD (Top Pitcher)
Lots of choices here. Justin Verlander of the Tigers. Jered Weaver of the Angels. David Price of the Rays. Earlier this season, I sang the praises of Matt Harrison and bemoaned the fact he wouldn’t get much serious consideration for the award because he’s not a strikeout pitcher and argued those type of pitchers should get MORE consideration because it makes it even harder to make that upper echelon. Well, you know what? Weaver doesn’t have that blistering fastball either and his K rate isn’t where Verlander’s and Price’s are and he did just fine too. My friends Kristen and ICE will be happy with my second vote towards an Angel this year. Jered Weaver is my vote here.
STAN MUSIAL AWARD (Top Player)
There are constant arguments here on an annual basis and 2012 is no exception. The main question is this: How do you define this award? I always ask this because I do find a distinction between calling someone the Player of the Year and the Most Valuable Player. The year he won 27 games, Steve Carlton was easily a Player of the Year. Some would say since his team finished in dead last place that didn’t qualify him to considered the Most Valuable Player (let alone because he was a pitcher). So it is with this award. There are tribes in two camps. There’s the Mike Trout camp and the Miguel Cabrera camp.
Miguel Cabrera (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Trout had a rookie season for the ages in 2012 and accomplished things in combination that no rookie had ever done before. Cabrera was Cabrera, which means the best player in baseball over the past five years. Trout has a higher WAR. Cabrera plays for a team in the post-season. Trout accomplished what he did despite starting the season in the minor leagues. Cabrera was hotter in September when the playoff push came. Trout was a better defensive player. Cabrera had more power. I could go back and forth all day. In the end, putting your team over the hump for the playoffs when they were all but dead just three weeks from the finish line won out. Miguel Cabrera gets my vote. If Anaheim had made the post-season, my vote would have been different.
Playing Tight
Wow, is this team playing tight or what?
Even the Rangers know it. Following Saturday night’s 3-2 loss to the Angels, the team held a closed-door meeting to talk about it, and it’s no wonder. Saturday’s game was a microcosm of everything that’s been wrong in Rangers Land over the past three weeks.
Runners in scoring position? Can’t cash ‘em in. Bad defense? Where do I begin? In this case, the pitching was good, maybe even more than good. Certainly it was good enough to win and should have been good enough to win but in the end, it wasn’t.
All you need to know about this tightness Texas is playing with appeared in the 7th inning of a 1-1 game. After the Rangers tied the game at one in the top of the 7th, Erick Aybar led off the bottom of the 7th with a bunt single Yu Darvish couldn’t come up with cleanly. Personal opinion was the scorekeeper was generous in giving Aybar the hit. If Darvish fielded it cleanly, I think he would’ve been out at first. Mistake #1. Aybar proceeded to steal second. Mike Trout then hit a ground ball past a running Aybar to Elvis Andrus at short. Had Andrus thrown to first, Trout would have been out. Instead, Andrus decided to complain loudly when the umpire ruled Aybar hadn’t been hit by the batted ball. Andrus apparently thought the ball had clipped Aybar’s jersey. Whether it had or not is immaterial. Andrus should have thrown to first for the out, then complained about Aybar. Mistake #2. Trout then stole second to put runners on second and third with nobody out. Alberto Callaspo then singled to right, plating Aybar and making it a 2-1 game and sending Trout to third. A walk to Albert Pujols loaded the bases and ended the night for Darvish. Koji Uehara came on to face Kendrys Morales, who lofted a fly ball to right. Trout tagged and came home. The throw to the plate appeared in time to get the out, Yorvit Torrealba turned and applied the tag and th umpire ruled he didn’t get the tag in before Trout crossed the plate with the third run. Torrealba was livid, was ejected rightly for his tantrum and may face a suspension for his actions. Mistake #3.
I saw the replay several times and while I thought Trout indeed was out at the plate, I also know it was such a close call you can’t say definitively the ump got it wrong. Just no excuse for Torrealba to go off like that after the play, but it said a lot about how little things have been mounting on this team for a while and it took something like this to release the pressure valve and get this team playing again the way they’re capable of playing. Maybe Aybar would have made it a 2-1 game regardless of the Trout at bat, but if Elvis had done his job, Trout never would have been in position to score that third run, which proved to be the decisive one.
Texas can still take some positives out of Saturday’s loss. They became the first team to score a run off of Scott Downs this season, even if it was of the unearned variety, keeping Downs’ ERA at 0.00. And they became the first American League team to get a hit off of Ernesto Frieri in 14.1 innings of work, when Mike Napoli got a clean single to lead off the 9th. At the same time, seeing Josh Hamilton strike out with the bases loaded in the top of the 9th was as disheartening to me as David Freese’s walk-off in Game 6 of last year’s World Series.
I’m sure all these things were discussed in that closed-door meeting following the game last night, as well as a few things I’m not even aware of. Hopefully, this club plays with a renewed focus this afternoon, because the focus hasn’t been there for a few weeks now.
The Tarnished Gem: Angels 1, Rangers 0
Good old-fashioned pitchers duels don’t come along as regularly as they once did. Yet major league baseball has seen two dandies this week alone.
The first was the Tim Lincecum-Clayton Kershaw match-up between the Giants and Dodgers a few days ago. The second was yesterday, when CJ Wilson went up against Jered Weaver in Anaheim, with the Angels prevailing over the Rangers 1-0.
Obviously, this scribe was disappointed in the final outcome. From a sheer fan perspective, however, this was one of the outstanding games of 2011. It had constant drama, all the way to the last out and one could even say the better pitcher in the game was the one who lost the game.
The Rangers made only three mistakes the entire game. Unfortunately, all three came in the same inning, the 2nd, and they all contributed to the only run of the game scoring.
Endy Chavez gets the blame for the error that allowed Howie Kendrick to cross the plate with the lone run of the game. Wilson, though, made the other two mistakes that put Kendrick in the position to score in the first place. Kendrick reached first because he was hit by a Wilson pitch. Judging by the radio play by play I heard, one could debate whether the pitch actually hit Kendrick or not (there was a delayed ruling and not even Kendrick seemed to indicate he’d been hit), but he was awarded first. Mark Trumbo then struck out, but the pitch went past the catcher for a wild pitch, sending Kendrick to second. Without those two things happening, Chavez’ booting of Mike Trout‘s fly ball wouldn’t have brought about the result it did.
Wilson ended up allowing only two hits in eight innings, walking one and striking out 8. Weaver allowed his share of hits, but most of them came with two outs and the bases empty.
The Angels ended up taking two of three from Texas, but the Rangers maintain a three game lead over their nearest rivals. As much as it would have been nice to see Texas take the series 2-1, they still had a 5-2 road trip, which any team would be happy with. Now they have to take care of business at home.
Some might look at the Texas schedule and think the wins will be easy to come by with seven home games against the Blue Jays and the Twins followed by three at Toronto. Both teams, though, have given the Rangers fits the past couple years. Texas is 1-2 at Minnesota in 2011 after going winless at Target Field a year ago and they’ve already dropped three of four home games against the Jays this season. I actually was worried about the Rangers and Twins possibly matching up in the playoffs a year ago. I was more worried about that pairing than the Yankees or the Rays.
This the R’s first home series since the All-Star Break. Sounds like a good reason to start a new winning streak.
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