Opening Day 2015 Red Sox 8 Phillies 0

Photo: Dustin Pedroia, in Baltimore, 2012.  From his Wikipedia page.

It's just one game.  But my observations so far:

--You can't ask for more than 7 shutout innings from Buchholz.  He struck out 9 and allowed only three hits and a walk.  He'll face teams better than the Phillies this year, but he came through in a start in which he had to show he could step up and be the Jon Lester fill-in.  He did that.

--And don't miss the work by the unknown starting catcher (with Christian Vazquez on the shelf), Ryan Hanigan.  He called a good game and caught a good game, and even had a base hit and a walk.

--Dustin Pedroia, of course, had two homers and two Gold-Glove calibre plays.  Good to see that his finger injuries are behind him for the first time in a couple of years.

--And Hanley Ramirez's 2 homers and 5 RBIs, including an Opening Day grand slam.

--And Mookie Betts had a homerun, a walk and a single so far.  Experts have picked him to lead the league in runs scored.  Let's hope he does.

--Pedroia had seven homers all of last year, and has had two already.  Thou shalt not try to sneak a fastball inside on Pedroia.

--Or Mookie Betts, apparently.  Also, Mookie Betts has one of the great baseball names today.

--As does umpire Fieldin Culbreth.  That's right: Fieldin.

--Pablo Sandoval turned two walks into two outs when he flailed on garbage with a 3-2 count on him each time.  He needs to take more and sport a better OBP.  But he's clearly a better fielder than Middlebrooks was.  I'll say it again as I said it frequently last year and already this year: I do not miss Middlebrooks.  Except for how he kept Jenny Dell happy, of course.

--Jenny Dell can do better, by the way.  The word is that she's actually a very nice person.  She'll talk to anyone, and went to a kid's prom, and didn't just treat it as a publicity stunt.  She'll sign and take pics without a problem, too.

--Right, Salad?

--Speaking of Salad, I dedicate this year's blog posts to ya, big guy.  Thanks for all the games.

--First up: April 14th, the second Fenway game of the year.  Against the Washington Nationals, so I'll probably blog about their pitching staff--the best since the Braves' staffs of the mid-90s. 

1958 Topps Eddie Mathews VG-EX

Photos: Eddie Mathews' 1958 Topps baseball card, front and back, from my collection

Okay, so we'll start off the revamped site with one of my favorite HOF players nobody remembers.  I'll start off with him because I've always tried to Remember James (he was Jesus's brother), which is what I call an attempt to purposely remember someone or something who everyone else has forgotten.  (It's the title of one of my WIPs, too.)  I'm also starting off with this exact card because it was one of the three awesome ones my better half gave me for Christmas.  (She also gave me Sox/Rangers tix, too!)  I thought it'd be nice to start it off with one of the three she gave me, rather than the one of the several thousands I owned beforehand.

The Card

The card is in very good shape.  Well, it's PSA-graded very good to excellent, but you know what I mean.  The corners are sharp; the front and back are clean.  The picture is still a little glossy.  The only blemish, really, is the truly bad cut of the card: it's very off-center.  Since this card is not for sale, that doesn't matter as much to me.  (My better half bought it for me because she liked the blue backdrop and white stars.)  It's got a great aesthetics look, and it looks great in the case--and it has nice sentimental value.  The back has a grid layout with his 1957 stats for the season, and against each team in his division.  It doesn't have his career totals.  (This is odd for any Topps card.)  The grid on the back was a Topps staple, in one form or another, throughout the 50s and up until 1960.  Topps cards throughout the 50s looked great.  The card number is in the upper left in a star, and the blurb is written by the editors of Sport Magazine--as it says.  The copywriter pre-dated Bill James by a few years when he made it a point to notice that Mathews hit many more homers on the road than he did at home.  His 30 road homers (out of 47) was a Major League record.  I'll bet that his home ballpark cost him quite a few homers in his career--and he still managed to hit 512!

Career

Nobody remembers Eddie Mathews today because he played on the same team, for a great many years, as Hank Aaron.  Though Aaron was clearly the better player, it wasn't always very clear that he would be.  A quick glance at the opening day lineup in 1957, when the Braves won the World Series, showed that Aaron batted second (?!) and Mathews third.  Joe Adcock, a power-hitting first basemen, hit cleanup, if you're wondering.  You should be, because though Adcock was a good player, he wasn't Mathews or Aaron, and the fifth-place hitter was Bobby Thomson, whose name you should know.  He hit the Homer Heard 'Round the World, which was a big deal because he normally did not hit homers or drive in runs--which Mathews and Aaron did, prodigiously.  For those who don't know, the 1st and 2nd place hitters in a lineup are supposed to get on base so that the 3rd, 4th and 5th hitters can drive them in.  Hank Aaron should not hit second--ever.  That's a waste of his resources--which were among the best ever, as were Mathews, on a lesser level.  Mathews was Aaron lite, you might say.  You want a line-drive, walking, taking pitches guy hitting second, not Hank Aaron.  Though Dustin Pedroia can drive in runs hitting 4th, it is very rare to have a contact hitter who is valuable hitting 2nd and 4th--and I'll bet Pedroia has more value for his team overall hitting 2nd.  Aaron wouldn't.

Why all this?  Because if you look at Mathews stats, for 1957 and for his career (which you should here, his stats page at baseball-reference.com--my source for all stats unless stated otherwise in the text), you'll see that he didn't drive in as many runs as he should've.  You would think that on Opening Day of a World Series winning year, the manager would put his best hitting lineup out there, barring injury.  The manager thought, for some reason, that Aaron should hit second, and Mathews third.  (I'd put Aaron third, Mathews fourth and Adcock, or whoever, fifth.  Aaron hits third because his average is a lot better than Mathews', with equal or far greater power production, so you'd want him to bat more often, on average.)  If the lineup was jockeyed like this, this would be one reason why Mathews didn't drive in as many runs as he should have--even with Aaron still hitting in front of him.  (Aaron hitting 2nd makes even less sense when you consider that the pitcher hits, so Aaron has the 9th and 1st place batters hitting in front of him, which drastically reduces his chances to drive in runs.)  Mathews did have some monster years--135 RBIs one year, 114 another--but he drove in over 100 just five times, which is a low number considering that he batted on the same team as Hank Aaron for a long time.  They had good supplementary hitters, too, like Bobby Thomson, Joe Adcock and Wes Covington, and so on.  The point is, someone hitting with these guys is expected to drive in a lot of runs.  Mathews did--1,453 of them--but with 512 homers, and hitting with those guys just mentioned, that isn't a ton.  He had a lot of years with 80-95 RBIs, hitting with Aaron and Thompson, and I'd need more time to research why.  He'd hit over .300 one year, then .260 the next, with medium to high walk totals and low strikeout totals (for a homerun hitter).  Oddly, he scored over 100 runs frequently, but with totals between 100 and 109.  You'd expect someone hitting with these guys, who walks a lot (and consistently among the league-leaders in on-base percentage), to score more runs than that.  He hit .265, .263 and .233 for three straight years, with decent power and OBP numbers, then had a very good year for power (32/95) but with a bad batting average and OBP.  Then his skills eroded.

He still had enough in the tank to win a World Series with the Tigers in 1968 (if you knew that, go to the head of the class), after appearances with the Braves, against the Yanks, in 1957 and 1958.  He was considered the National League's best third baseman before Mike Schmidt came along, and he was elected to the Hall on his fifth try in the late 70s.  (You wonder why the best power-hitting third baseman in baseball history before Schmidt would need multiple tries to get into the Hall.)  He died of a pnuemonia-related illness in 2001.

In short, as great as he was, Mathews wasn't able to put it all together and have many consecutive monster years, and he fell off the grid after 1966.  He played 17 total seasons, but only about five great ones, and maybe six or seven good or above-average ones.  Hitting on a good hitting team with great pitching (Warren Spahn won the opening game of '57), he could've, and should've, done better.  The lineups didn't help; the home ballparks hurt him; and I suspect a lingering injury or succession of injuries that he just played through.

P.S.--He was thought a very handsome guy.  He was sort of quiet, but a fiery and intense competitor when the time called (not all the time, like Brett), and, despite some heavy drinking, was well-liked and well-respected.

5 Baseball Musings

Quick randomness:

--Trevor Hoffman retired too late.  If you're a player having spent your entire career for one organization over a span of 15 years or more, you must reflect upon your decision to play for another team.  Trevor Hoffman finishing his career with the Brewers isn't like Tony Gwynn doing the same, but it's close.  He's free to do what he wants, and certainly the money was outstanding, as the Brewers severely overpaid, but...leaves a slightly bad taste.  Not like Favre leaving the Packers left a bad taste, but, again, it's comparable.

--With the trade of Matt Garza, the Rays have almost completely dismantled its playoff teams of the past few years.  They're going down now as the Rangers continue to ascend.  The lousy attendance at Rays games and the small fanbase were going to catch up with them sooner or later.  Hard to figure, as the Rays have been a winning and exciting team for some years now, certainly for long enough to build a solid fanbase.  But it didn't happen.  You might remember when the Braves weren't selling out home playoff games in the 1990s and 2000s, and when the Marlins couldn't draw during their 2 World Series winning years.  Sinful.

--If the Rays' rookies come through, they'll give the Yanks a fight for 2nd place.  Either way, though, don't look for the Wild Card team to come from the American League East this year.

--What happened to the Angels?  Why doesn't anyone want to play for them anymore?  Nobody's changed in the administration, and I'd play for their manager any day.  They have trucks of money to dump on players, as they always have, and yet nobody's taking it anymore.  They're losing players like they're the Expos, and they can't replace them.  The ones they've lost in the last 3-4 years could form an All-star team.  The players union knows something about the Angels that I and the more-than-casual fan don't know.

--I'll be in the stands for at least 4 Sox games this year.  I have a truly awesome friend who brings me (we travel for the other two games).  I TOLD YOU--I'M LOOKING FORWARD TO IT!!!

Parity

Cliff Lee to the Phillies.  That gives them an embarrassment of riches on pitching and offense.  I was surprised when Philly didn't go deeper in the playoffs last year, and I'll be shocked if they don't make the Series this year.

I'll go on a limb and pick a Sox/Phils World Series.  Sox in six.

Having said that, it seems to me now that the teams to beat in the majors now are the Red Sox, Yanks, Angels, Rangers (replacing the Rays as a potential division-leading team without deep pockets) and Twins (perennial leaders also without the cash of the first three teams) in the American League and, in the National League, the Dodgers, Phillies (which has more money now than ever before), Mets (constant disappointments despite deep pockets), Braves (which doesn't spend as much as the others, without reason), with the Giants contending for now, but with little money to keep up after The Freak leaves.  The Padres are an example of this now.

I say this because I suppose that there is better balance in MLB, yet the same teams--with the sporadic surprises every year--keep making the playoffs, don't they?  Anyone expect the Nationals or Royals to make the postseason?  I'm glad I'm a fan of a team constantly in contention, that's all I'm sayin'.

Take a look at my writers/readers blog, and look at the entry for this blog.  One of those subjects will be on this blog soon.  Topics include HOF voting (Why did Ruth, Williams, etc. have a surprisingly large percentage of voters vote against their inclusion in the Hall?); Pedro's greatness as measured in different ways than maybe you've seen before; a positional analysis of the Sox (and whatever other team I feel like); and a trip around the American League, and a coast through the National.  Lots to get to.  Just tryin' to find the time.