Wednesday, May 21, 2014

A's Win On One Hit and Three Runs in Bizarre Game for the Record Books

 

 First - Ever Regular Season A's Win With Only One Hit
 
 
If Your Team Gets Nine Hits and the Opponent Gets 1 Hit  You Would Expect Your  Team To Win. Not so for the poor Tampa Bay Rays, May 21.
Furthermore, your team gets two runs but the 'one hit wonders' still beat  you. How is that possible?  And, we're not talking music here...
 
The Oakland A's won their 11th in 12 games in unlikely fashion in one bizarre game at the Tampa Bay Dome, or whatever you call the indoor stadium. The A's  were able to bunch their one hit  , a homerun by Brandon Moss  with  walks and errors  by Tampa Bay;.
Meanwhile, Tampa Bay was NOT able to bunch their NINE hits.
Credit Oakland relievers Abad for getting out of a bases loaded jam in the eighth and Doolittle for blowing his fastball by the Rays after a ceiling-aided single in the ninth. 
 

CEILING-AIDED SINGLE

That's right. Even with the assistance of a 'sky rule' base hit in the ninth inning, Tampa Bay was unable to beat the dominant Oakland A's , who seem to find new ways to win. Tampa Bay's second  batter in the ninth hit a high  popup that hit the dome ceiling ring cross bar, altering the downward flight of the ball, causing John Donaldson to miss the ball. Perhaps an odd baseball book ruling allows such balls in play.
 
 
Oakland has never before won a regular season game when only scoring one hit and they managed to still win when the other team scored two runs. They did win on one hit in the 1974 World Series when Catfish Hunter - who else? - was pitching for them.  Only four teams have one a game on one hit in the last five years, but none scoring as many as three runs on one hit.
 
The A's also managed to win against their old closer, Grant Balfour, who closed out the ninth inning for Tampa Bay.  A game for the books...The Oakland A's have been called many things before and now they can be called One Hit Wonders.
Hopefully ,for the A's - who now have the best record in baseball -  they'll get more hits next time and not count on such an unlikely game.

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

INSTANT REPLAY IN BASEBALL BECOMING A JOKE WITH GIANTS 'STALL BALL'

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then scroll down to find Oakland - Texas June game offering
discount tickets PLUS FREE Parking!








INSTANT REPLAY IN BASEBALL  BECOMING A JOKE WITH GIANTS 'STALL BALL'



Bruce Bochy didn't get mad. He got critiquin'. The Giants manager went into his studious mode, getting a signal from his first-base coach, Roberto Kelly. Watching the body language of his runner, Juan Perez. Most of all, waiting for his video guy on a walkie-talkie, Shawon Dunston, to confirm the umpire got it wrong. In other words, in the Giants' first spring-training crack at exercising their replay rights, Bochy took his sweet time alerting the umpires he was challenging the call. On that front, the new replay system is over the top. It allows teams to use replay to determine whether to go to replay. Is that...more »  *(SFGate 3-18-14, John Shea)



SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS  FIRST TO WORK INSTANT REPLAY IN BASEBALL TO ITS BENEFIT



Leave it to the San Francisco Giants to figure out the latest loophole/cheat in baseball - and Major League Baseball either not notice and/or not do anything about it... First it was the Giants   popularizing illegal PEDs with Bonds and friends while continuing to seek out known tainted players to this day, then  'selling out' 250 straight games without really selling them out and now  beating the replay game while stalling games and continuing to make a mockery of the grand old sport .   



 It goes something like this, in case you haven't noticed, eg: 

A close call happens late in the game with the score tied 1-1, eg a runner is called out at first base on a close call. Manager Bochy SLOWLY walks out to complain while the Giants video department is looking at it's own video replay of the close call. Only after the Giants video people see close up and personal that the umps blew the call does Bochy speed his step and lodge a complaint with the umps. The umps then check with MLB video headquarters in New York. Of course, the call is overturned. The Giants win all these replay challenges because they see it first! 



INSTANT REPLAY IN BASEBALL MAKES FOR UNEVEN PLAYING FIELD



On one hand, slap the Giants for , again, taking unfair advantage but on the other hand give the Giants credit for taking advantage of the loophole that MLB continues to allow - again, falling down on the job as it has done for years with it's lax drug testing, failure to take a position on the Bay Area baseball stadium issue , etc.  Perhaps other teams have fallen in the Giants footsteps by now but the Giants didn't HAVE to go to the extreme measure, whether one calls it cheating or not - and baseball should have caught and tightened this loophole by now...




 Now, that   the Giants have got this 'stall ball' tactic down to a science they are , not surprisingly,  winning all of their replay challenges,  which have resulted in a number of wins they wouldn't have had last year before replay .  Lets see how long it takes until other teams finally wake up  and either play the stall game with their videographers, themselves, or MLB  comes out of its latest stupid, er, stupor... . REAL accurate, effective Drug testing STILL hasn't been actuated more than 10 years  since Bonds made PEDs vogue (see previous posts in these pages),   so this replay flaw could go on indefinitely. You'd think other teams would either complain about the Giants or join the stall game themselves if MLB continues to allow this unfair 'loophole 'and the Giants , of course, happily taking advantage of it.

Saturday, May 3, 2014

MICHAEL MORSE SF GIANTS LATEST TAINTED ACQUISITON TO RISE ABOVE PAST RECORD


MICHAEL MORSE SF GIANTS LATEST TAINTED  ACQUISITON   TO  RISE ABOVE PAST RECORD




Giants owner,  Larry Baer and his  'trustworthy' GM  Sabean of the SF Giants are full  of it  when they say they 'try' to stay away from PED tainted players per recent SFGate (3-19-14)  ..  Baer just admitted he took on another player with steroid background in Michael Morse, who other teams weren't so interested in because of that. Suddenly, the normally .250 Morse is hitting .300 with mammoth, league leading  homers - playing in AT&Ts difficult hitters  ballpark, no less -  (similar to Marcos Scutaro,  sans homers,when the Giants brought in the .262  37 year old from Colorado who raised his average almost 100 points after joining the Giants. So Morse   hasn't been caught since 2005 with PEDs.  Few have been caught with the league's still weak drug testing  that still can't detect the new designer testosterone.  ( SEE  HERE)   Even one conviction of a player is enough for a team  to stay away from . But the Giants just keep on loading up with normally average, suspicious players they get cheap because other teams aren't so interested in their background... e.g.  the string of Venezuelans  such as Machi, Petit, Sandoval (who has hit amazing when he's on drugs and lousy when off them, like now...  Scutaro, whose transgressions may have caught up with him and the  'late' Melky, back on the stuff with Toronto and getting away with it again, despite his PED conviction with Giants.. Telltale PEDs (performance enhancing drugs)  include Anabolic steroid, Banned substances in baseball, Blood doping, Bodybuilding, Ergogenic aid, Ergogenic use of anabolic steroids, Steroid use.











But don't let the Giants kid you .  I believe the Giants just like I do their 250 straight 'sellouts' (with hundreds to thousands of empty seats at most games).  If Baer was serious he would say 'We don't want tainted players , period.'... not this, 'leave the door open' stuff... Now , suddenly , the Giants aging starters are pitching amazing after starting the season terribly.  And, of course, the no name bullpen  continues to thrive- players who did very little before coming to the Jints only  to become world beaters! The Giants are by no means the only team continuing the 'dirty little secret' but they are , by far,  leading the way with even Baer admitting as much but only with lip service and not actions.  When another player goes  bad he and old Sabean will be right back there looking for the guys other teams don't want, only to see them become sudden late-career stars.  Who was Petit before he came to the Giants - and so many others? ...  If ever caught, they get fined and suspended - big deal?-   and the Giants continue the San Francisco Treat   - and we're not talking about Rice a Roni; the Giants but the most liberal team in most liberal town in baseball.   Problem is Sabean couldn't make a legit trade for a legit player if he wanted to. He got Hudson as a free agent only because he overpaid him - more than any other team offered.   That's why he continues to go after tainted players, including re-signing his own; they only succeed , at times,  because of this sad state of affairs in baseball - with the Giants , again, leading the way.  Take away convicted  Melky and Jose Guillen -mnot to mention the non-convicted  from the 2010 and 2012 Giants wouldn't  have come close to the World Series.


 MICHAEL MORSE SF GIANTS LATEST TAINTED  ACQUISITON   TO  RISE ABOVE PAST RECORD