The 2023 Running Baseball Thread

I always thought the conventional wisdom was that you should never trust a Pfaadt.

 

Juan Gonzalez definitely. Pudge. Couple deeper cuts would probably be Ian Kinsler. Pitchers, less so, but Kevin Brown comes to mind.

 

Didn't realize he won 211 games. To be literal about it, he's not a majority Ranger. Merely a plurality.

 

Buddy Bell, Jim Sundberg, Toby Harrah, Jeff Burroughs from one era. Michael Young was a very good player on very mediocre Rangers teams in the 2000s.

 

No love for the all-time hits leader, Michael Young.

 

No Ferguson Jenkins love??

 

Bell was the first guy I thought of (well, besides David Hulse). Super underrated both within the Rangers (ranks fourth a/t in WAR behind HOFer Pudge, would be a HOFer if not for Miggy Tejada's tainted B-12 shot Palmiero and surefire HOFer Beltre) and among 3B. Outside of Beltre, who will cruise in on the next ballot, Bell & Graig Nettles are the only 3B among the a/t top 15 in WAR not in the HOF.

 

As was noted, the series you're thinking of was probably Milwaukee-Phoenix, and that series had the double whammy of taking place in July 2021, IIRC. Partially because of the Superteam era, the NBA hasn't served up many Finals lately that were too obscure for TV, though Spurs-Pistons or Spurs-Cavs (unless you found young LeBron compelling) didn't have much juice. Their bigger problem has been lopsided leagues leading to bad Finals. Since 2000, the Finals has had three sweeps and seven 4-1's, and only three Game 7's.

As was mentioned, we have now been doing interleague play for 28 years. As for "too much," that goose was cooked when the American and National leagues went to 15 teams, meaning there has to be at least one interleague series going on at all times. I'm biased. I've always enjoyed weird-ass matchups, and though Rangers-Diamondbacks is very weird-ass, I believe those two teams are interleague "rivalry" partners (meaning they play four games a year, two in each park), hard as that may be to believe. From a business standpoint, it's a bad idea to restrict half your audience from seeing certain parts of your product, even more so now with the way TV is. Were it not for interleague play, Shohei Ohtani would never play a game within a 300 mile radius of Atlanta, or Bryce Harper fans in Seattle would have to drive 800 miles to SF.

There won't be, and it goes without saying that Dusty probably gets in on his "clubhouse guy" reputation alone, practically.

Funny, I just looked him up last night for another post in this thread. He appears to have been the starting second baseman for the Nats' AAA team for most of the year. He's slight, not high on their prospect lists and will probably never be more than a utility infielder/defense guy in the bigs, but it seems like he's basically one injury to a second baseman away.

 

A clean Pfaadt is fine, but watch out for wet Pfaadts.

 

I denounce myself.

Just to do it right, here are the top 10 Rangers in WAR for position players. I bolded everyone who spent at least 50% of their career with the Rangers in Texas (looking at you Frank Howard):
Pudge, Palmeiro, Beltre, Bell, Kinsler, Sundberg, Harrah, Gonzalez, Andrus, Howard

And for pitchers:
Hough, Rogers (big miss for me), Jenkins, Darvish, Brown, Perry, Ryan, Rick Helling, Jose Guzman, Jon Matlack.

Kind of not hard to see how the Rangers have never won a World Series.

 

It is possible to give Melvin a 2- to 4-year deal and have Farhan put-up-or-shut-up in 24. He talks a big game about Melvin being someone who is going to push back on the computers, but at the end of the day, we’re still getting platoons, mediocre rookies, and signings that turn to crap. Melvin can push back all he wants but until Farhan puts a real team together, Giants are going to be an also-ran in the NL West that starts OK but flames out in July. He really needs his feet to the flame not to be sucked off by an ownership that is still patting itself on the back for lowering beer prices.

 

Steve Buechele once hit on my cousin at Bobby Valentine's restaurant. All I got.