MLB 2014 season thread

Giants pull Lincecum after five no-hit innings and 96 pitches. Guess they didn't want him to outdo last year's 148-pitch no-no.

Cubs later get a hit, avoid the first no-hitter against them since Koufax in 1965.

 

Lincecum still has pretty nasty stuff one time in four.

 

Another one of those days on the shores of McCovey Cove. Six pitchers combine to two-hit the Cubs, but the really big news? Hunter Pence's scooter is returned:

http://blog.sfgate.com/giants/2014/05/28/hunter-pences-scooter-returned/

 

I'm surprised you don't hear more about that streak. As consistently shitty as they've been you'd think somebody would have no-hit them by now.

 

The streak has its own twitter feed.

 

Weird nostalgia. Freep posted this on FB yesterday to celebrate Gibby's 57th.



Photo by Mary Schroeder/Detroit Free Press

What a great capture, that moment. Seems forever ago, 1984. I was a 13-year-old in L.A. and Detroit seemed like a million miles away.

Tiger Stadium had such a wonderful feel to it when you watched games on TV. I grew up Dodger but always watched Angels games on KTLA, especially when they played in Detroit of Yankee Stadium or Fenway.

Anyway, this photo makes you think a bit. Tigers beat the Padres that year; the Padres, who had been so woeful forever. But then they got World Series guys like Garvey from the Dodgers ('83) and Gossage and Nettles from the Yanks ('84) and Gwynn became a first-time starter and hit .351. And Wiggins and Templeton, etc etc.

Padres won the West with a 92-70 record and beat the East champion Cubs. Cubs!

The Cubs who had 2 other World Series Dodgers in Ron Cey and Davey Lopes.

That got me thinking about Garvey vis-a-vis Garvey, Lopes, Russell, Cey.

Garvey. Lopes. Russell. Cey. From '73 till '82, that was the Dodgers infield.

Garvey. Lopes. Russell. Cey.

Are we ever going to have something like that again?

And then Kirk Gibson, 4 years after Mary Schroeder of the Detroit Free Press captured this moment, provided the most iconic World Series moment of my lifetime. Only he wore Dodger Blue.

1984 and Tiger Stadium and Gibson and Garvey the Padre were a million miles away.

That's why this photo is spectacular.

 

"Kurt" Gibson?

 

Kirk. The mom of a Bennington grad came in as I was writing and threw my concentration off.

 

You mention how the Padres had been terrible up till then, and it makes complete sense, considering they were one of the four 1969 expansion teams.

The Royals were the first of those teams to win a division title. In fact, they won three in a row from 1976-78, losing to the Yankees in the ALCS each time. They first made the World Series in 1980.

In 1981, both the Milwaukee Brewers and the Montreal Expos won "half-season" division titles in the strike year. The Brewers lost to the Yankees in the divisional playoff, the Expos lost to the Dodgers in the NLCS.

A year later, the Brewers made their first and only WS. The Expos still haven't made a WS. And the Padres made their first WS two years after the Brewers.

The Royals have the only WS victory in 1985, topping in-state rival St. Louis thanks to the greatest blown call ever.

It's sad to see how each of those four teams suffered through looooooonnng droughts in the 90s and 2000s, much in part because of the game's incongruent economic system. With the luxury tax and new stadiums in Milwaukee and Washington, the Brewers ('08 and '11) and Nationals ('12) have now made the playoffs recently and the Royals have been building up and up.

The Padres opened their new stadium in the mid 2000s and won two division titles and should have won a third in 2010 before a last-week collapse. They've been to two World Series ('84 and '98), where their combined record is 1-8.

The 1994 Expos have one of the most tragic "coulda beens" in sports history. They were the best team in the NL in a season where a strike cancelled the World Series.

The Royals haven't been to the post-season since winning it all in 1985.

Thus ends today's rant about the expansion class of '69.

 

A:

1, Mickey Mantle (16)
1, Edwin Encarnacion (16)

Q: Who holds the record for home runs in the month of May?

 

Since these posts are about events 15 years apart ('69, '84).

___________ in 1999.

 

BaseballReference.com has Barry Bonds with 17 in May 2001.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.cgi?id=bondsba01&year=2001&t=b