This week I received the missing piece(s) of my hyper-specific Tigers baseball card collection: the 1983 team set. (I’ve never learned if a set’s designation is the last season listed on the back, or the year it came out.)
Anyway, an unexpected bonus was receiving two Jerry Ujdur cards.
Daz Cameron, Armando Galarraga, George Cappuzzello and the late Luis Alvarado, Mike Marshall, Steve Gromek and Grover Lowdermilk.
⚾️ Immaculate Grid 654 9/9 — Rarity: 22
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Have a great day.
Armando Galarraga, according to this headline, appears to be a popular Diamondbacks player already, which is relative, of course.
In this city, fans are more likely to know the Suns’ 12th man than the Dbacks’ fifth starter. But columnist Dan Bickley says Galarraga’s reaction to the blown call and the aftermath could make him “the most popular losing pitcher in baseball history.”
Here’s a sampling of Bickley’s column in yesterday’s Arizona Republic:
Though he’s only 23-26 as a starter, Galarraga enjoys a lofty reputation among baseball fans. He is viewed as a professional athlete with a heart, a player who can step out of his world and walk in someone else’s shoes. He credits his parents for teaching him to step back and cool off “when something is going wrong, when something makes you want to scream.”
(snip)
Question is, will we love Galarraga in the coming months? That’s hard to say. He will compete for a spot in the starting rotation, and many baseball observers aren’t convinced he’ll ever morph into an impact starter. Still, if his command is as good as his self-control, he has a fighting chance. And he’s very happy for a fresh start, for the chance to throw a perfect game in the National League.
“I’m very excited. I can’t wait to hit. I really like Arizona. That’s a great stadium for pitching,” Galarraga said.
Of course, he’s dead wrong about Chase Field, which is notoriously friendly to hitters. That’s OK. We’ll forgive him. It’s the least we can do.
I’m still not convinced that Dbacks’ manager Kirk Gibson won’t be infuriated by Galarraga’s lack of aggressiveness. I guess we’ll see.
A year ago, we were still stinging from Game 163 and not certain how the Tigers would respond to a crushing end to the 2009 season. Would they regress to 2008’s disappointment or regroup to erase the memory of the ’09 collapse?
The answer was: they’d be relevant. And that, ladies in gentlemen, is the extent of the analysis in this post. Instead of a deep dive into 2010, let’s look at the year in the form of randomly selected lists:
2010 At A Glance*
A couple days late, but here’s what Dan Le Batard and Bob Ryan have to say on ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption about Sunday’s set-to between Armando Galarraga and Alex Avila.
http://video-insider.espn.go.com/pvs/build/core/assets/espneplayer.swf
Armando Galarraga‘s brilliance on Wednesday night has been tarnished enough by a bad call.
Any move by official scorers, Major League Baseball, the Players’ Union or Amnesty International to “correct” the umpiring gaffe and hand Galarraga a perfect game 18 hours later will tarnish his performance even more.
Isn’t one asterisk enough?
Seriously, how can the official scorer charge an error on the penultimate play? He can’t ding Miguel Cabrera for the throw, it was fine. He can’t penalize Galarraga either; he made the catch, he tagged the base.
For me, the bottom line is that this can only get worse if “they” start tinkering with the results. In many ways, this game will be even more memorable because of Jim Joyce‘s goof.
Think about it, even if Galarraga never wins another major-league game he’ll always be remembered as that guy who threw the perfect game that the umpire blew. Not ideal but not Bill Buckner either.
And what, pray tell, is Galarraga expected to do if he was suddenly — what’s the appropriate word here, awarded, handed, reimbursed? — a perfect game? It makes no sense to try to right this wrong.
It stinks, yes, but it’s how baseball works — or doesn’t sometimes.
What has gotten lost in all the calls for do-overs and commissioner over-rides is the remarkable precision with which Armando Galarraga pitched against the Indians Wednesday night.
A quick look at the bottom-line stats are stunning on their own:
As ESPN.com’s Jerry Crasnick points out, that pitch count includes the five pitches Galarraga threw to Trevor Crowe for the final out.
Awesome, right? Well, it actually gets better.
Thanks to a Pitcher Report Card produced by the good folks at Inside Edge, we gain insight into these nuggets of statistical goodness:
In fact, out of the 23 categories Inside Edge uses to grade a pitcher’s performance, Galarraga earned an A+ in 20 of them. The three in which he fell short were:
As you might have guessed, Inside Edge graded the outing an A.
Galarraga’s surgical approach to the Cleveland lineup also included first-pitch strikes to every right-handed batter he faced (73 percent to lefties). Remarkable.
For a while, perhaps a long while, baseball fans will remember this game for what happened when the 27th batter hit a ground ball to Miguel Cabrera. That’s fine.
But I hope Tigers fans will also remember how tremendous — rather, how virtually perfect Armando Galarraga’s pitching was on June 2, 2010.
It’s pretty clear that the Tigers don’t have big plans for newly acquired Billy Buckner.
Yesterday Dave Dombrowski described the right hander’s role in the organization thusly:
“He gives us depth at Toledo.”
Didn’t they say the same thing about poor Mike Hessman?
Given Buckner’s numbers — a 6.56 ERA for the Diamondbacks in 29 games (16 starts) in parts of three seasons — and a 0-3, 11.08 ERA record this season, you can’t argue with the Tigers doing nothing more than simply plugging a roster opening at Toledo with Buckner. And, because tonight’s starter, Armando Galarraga, appears set to stay in Detroit for a while the Mud Hens needed a body.
So, play along as we noodle the idea of Buckner arriving in Detroit some time this summer. Is he as bad as his stats would indicate?
dailyfungo.com 