12 years ago today many of us woke up to the news that Nick Adenhart’s life had been cut short just hours after his greatest moments on a baseball field. While Nick’s time with the franchise was brief, his impact lives on.
The first game back after Nick’s death was an emotional experience I’ll never forget. One fan did a solid job of filming the pregame tribute.
A blast from the past, This Week In Baseball’s tribute to Nick.
RIP Nick Adenhart, Courney Stewart, and Henry Pearson. My thoughts and prayers are with your loved ones today.
2009 was an unforgettable roller coaster of a year for Angels fans. Going from the passing of Nick to Vladdy’s clutch hit to sweep the Sux in the ALDS. It also included my favorite moment attending a live game.
On to the links….
Dylan Bundy has a quiet super power. This is really great reading here. Hopefully the front office reads this and gets on board with an extension.
Does it get any better than watching a local guy fulfill his childhood dream and play for his favorite team? I don’t think so. Jose Rojas faced a lot of obstacles but kept the faith and is now suiting up for the Angels.
Joe Maddon thinks “anything is possible” with Chris Rodriguez. Chris is a reason for optimism this season. If he can stay healthy and give the team 90 good innings, that will be huge.
Great visualization on how Mike Trout just keeps getting better. Every year, almost without fail, his swinging strike rate improves just a touch.
A big topic throughout the year will be the expiring Collective Bargaining Agreement between owners and the MLBPA. Tony Clark sat down with The Athletic to discuss all things baseball, particularly the CBA.
While I’m known to dislike the Red Sox, many things go beyond baseball. Last year at this time Sox pitcher Eduardo Rodriguez was battling Covid which created heart inflammation. He was activated the day after his 28th birthday and took the bump for his first start in 587 days. Awesome belated birthday present.
Joc Pederson was gifted a waffle maker in the dugout after hitting his first HR as a Cubs. Apparently the North Siders don’t know that candlesticks always make a nice gift.
In other baseball movie news, The Sandlot debuted 28 years ago today.
Hey Hollywood, it has been a long while since we’ve had a good baseball movie. Hank Aaron’s life story is topical and waiting to be told. Come on, can’t you make one less comic book movie and squeeze in a baseball flick?
People complaining about the Angels wasting Trout’s prime need to look at how utterly the Mets have failed Jacob DeGrom. Those numbers are unbelievable.
Tough luck for pitchers in the AL West this week. James Paxton is recommended for Tommy John surgery and Trevor Rosenthal undergoes thoracic outlet syndrome.
Opening Day rosters featured 45 players from rounds in the draft that no longer exist. There’s some pretty interesting information about how many players have come from each round of the draft and which player is the last in MLB to have been drafted in the 90s.
Congratulations BoyWithApple for your tremendous piece on your favorite home run. Please email me your shipping address, shirt size and shirt preference and I will get your prize sent your way.
No Schebler and no Taylor Ward.
Jaime Barria incoming.
So two Angels pitchers are dealing with blisters. Ohtani and Cobb.
Ohtani won’t pitch this weekend. Cobb is pushed back to Sunday. So, that leaves C-Rod as an opener or more likely Bundy on normal rest for a 5 man rotation.
I wonder if the blisters are related to new baseballs or just random.
Bundy is a work horse.
Blisters sound like a short term problem, but we’ve heard that from Angels staff about pitcher injuries before.
I completely forgot Quintana, who is starting today.
I’m beginning to have nightmares with Ismael Valdes in them.
Robert (Rob) Manfred as a Major League Commissioner just does not understand the sport he is in charge of. He believes the sport of Baseball is slow. Is it? If I had to answer this in just one word of yes or no, well I then would not answer and would prefer to just move on down the road.
So in concerning the speed of the game and I answer is it slow and I came up with a “why yes, yes it is slow” here why. With Hockey and Basketball there seems to be constant movement and Football in comparison really is slow. But because MLB fails to recognize that they alone are responsible to manage the tempo they have chosen to look the other way. Allowed today is a player like Kole Calhoun that will look where a just thrown pitch went over the plate for a little bit of extended time and then walk in front of the catcher and umpire right over the Homeplate and then preside to adjust his batting gloves. Finally moving into his place in the batter’s Box to await the second pitch. Just before the pitcher is in the set position Kole being a “Lefty” raised his left arm and move back and out of the Batter’s Box to readjust his righthand glove. Now he steps back in the Box and the pitcher takes a back step off the rubber. 30 years ago we would be watching the 5th pitch at this point. So can we speed up the game, Yes We Can by simply no longer allowing this fiasco to take place.
So how do we achieve speeding up the game? By not allowing the player to get out of the box but once an AB and the pitcher to back off the pitcher’s plate at all other than one foot off the back of the rubber but once an At Bat other wise the Blue calls a ball or strike against either one.
Back to Rob. He has shown time and again that he thinks that he has to change a 150 years of the history of the sport to satisfy people who just do not understand the sport of Baseball. But the good news is that the basics of the game most folks know and that those who claim it’s the speed of said games are the issue we can fix. So why have they not fixed it? MONEY. If I keep you longer the more you spend. Move TV commercials. More radio ads. Follow the money.
So the newest pitching change rules, have they sped up the game? No because scoring is up because of the new rules. The runner on second who should not even be there has made extra innings go lickety-split as it’s getting late and at the seventh inning they shut down food and beer sales anyway.
Manfred, is he the worst MLB Commish ever? Right now possibly but that stills leaves Selig who as the Steward of the sport Dam Near ruined it but got lucky. More later as this went longer than anticipated, but than you for hanging in there to read this. But next week I will follow up on this Manfred and why he needs to go.
as everyone knows who has played the game, it doesn’t take long for one side to return to the dugout as the half inning ends and for the other team to take the field. But we have what? 3 minutes of commercials every switch? Over 8 innings and into the top of the 9th that’s 16 times 3 minutes = 48 minutes of commercials. When the time of the time is listed as 2 hrs, 45 minutes that’s probably really 2 hrs, 15 minutes. But like Grandpa says, “money”.
Wow – do the memories of that awful Adenhart news come flooding back. Even though 12 years have unbelievably passed, I vividly remember the complete shock and sadness and anger that I felt throughout my whole body reading and listening to the news that morning. I felt sick.
In trying to figure out a way to positively vent, my buddy and I attempted to buy Adenhart jerseys to wear to the tribute game. But there were none. So we bought blank jerseys and my buddy’s wife had them customized- it was all last minute so we received our completed jerseys literally 5 minutes or so before we had to leave for the game (to make it to Angel Stafium in time for the pregame tribute). Being there in the church-of-baseball with the community of good people grieving together over the lost life of a young talented man taken too soon really helped.
The next time I felt the power of community and healing at a baseball game was attending the tribute game for Tyler Skaggs. That night, while tears flowed multiple times, and while I got lost in the revival-like no-hitter and the Jersey tribute on the mound, I thought back to the Adenhart tribute game a decade before and wondered how this could happen to two young men on the same team only a decade apart.
I only wore the Adenhart jersey that once since it took on a meaning that I felt would be lessened if worn to any other games. I almost pulled it out for the Skaggs game, but just could not bring myself to doing it.
First off, does anyone have a link to the MLB playoff commercial about our team in 09? I’ve been trying to rewatch that for years. I’ve watched the TWIB feature many times. The TWIB always makes me emotional.
I think the 2009 team was the best team of the decade despite our lack of an elite closer. That team deserved a title.
One more thing, you may all remember the day it happened I posted my anger because I know who the drunk passenger in that car was, the partner in crime that got virtually no punishment and today I see walks around town a happy life as a shit head doyer fan. Happy life with children and a family
Shohei won’t pitch this weekend.
https://www.cbssports.com/fantasy/baseball/news/angels-shohei-ohtani-scratched-with-blister/
Oh, no. Why do I get the feeling that this blister thing is going to persistently hamper him all year?
It’s probably best. The collision at the plate was enough to warrant a week off. And this will allow the blister to fully heal. He can focus on hitting which the team needs against this Toronto team.
I wonder if he’s tried the Moises Alou treatment yet? Asking for a friend!
Agree about the Aaron movie. Could be great. Manfred has been a complete disaster as a commissioner. Destroying the minors to save comparative chump change? Shortsighted and foolish. Never saw The Sandlot until a couple of years ago. That’s a great movie. Still like Bull Durham best, though.
I’d expect more Angels in the Outfield love on this site 😉
Sandlot, Mr Baseball, Major League are my top 3. Bull Durham and Field of Dreams are right there too but I think my favorites speak to the age I first saw the movies and also the need to make another baseball movie!
Great links with Adenhart. Those were nice to look at this morning.
Nice to see ESPN show some love to Shohei and the angels:
https://es.pn/39YnMap
https://es.pn/39TyD5w
While I loathe Manfred as well, I’m not as down on the contraction of the minor leagues (thus reduction of draft rounds) as others. Seems like so many affiliates before was a bit of overkill. Each team now still has 5 development levels, and so many players previously were just being drafted/signed literally to be filler players for the top prospects, with virtually no chance of making the majors anyway (any getting paid literal peanuts for their efforts). I think there will ultimately be a net benefit to this, and also the overall quality will be enhanced in indy ball leagues. A lot of the lower-end draftees didn’t get the attention and development they needed before, but perhaps they’d be better served in an alternate indy ball setting. Former affliated clubs can gain a bit more independence that way and bring in guys who may have been overlooked in college ball. It will also greatly reduce the number of HS draftees, whittling that down to mainly the top prospects. 18yo kids who aren’t the cream of the crop that still want to play would probably be better served developing in college.
Embeds are back! Just paste the twitter, etc. URL into your comment. Not during gamethreads though 🙂
https://twitter.com/abaseballchick/status/1379923990098051076
Great embed. I’m sure Key will now crap on the Seattle fans for his struggles.
. Looks like Manfred moved the All Star Game without owners approval.
Damn, the link is dead now. Anyway, WCBS 880 claims that Manfred made th call to move the All Star Game without consulting the team owners, or the MLBPA.
That seems like a bad way to go..
Regardless of the politics, viewpoints, or validity of that decision– doing this without the owners’ approval might be the first domino leading to his downfall. Technically the commissioner works for the owners, and doing something this drastic, unilaterally by himself is setting a bad precedent.
Fortunately he’s made so many other bad decisions regarding the game itself, tinkering with such meaningless and stupid stuff, so maybe this will finally push some of the owners to make a change. But then again Bud Selig kept his job for ages, so I don’t hold out much hope there.
I think that most of Bud’s errors — other than “This time it counts!” — were sins of omission.
Looking the other way at steroids, domestic violence, etc….
Manfred, on the other hand, is deliberately trying to turn Baseball into basketball.
This makes sense. Business owners are disproportionately center right to right on the political spectrum. I doubt many MLB owners (and certainly not Arte) were up in arms over GA’s law.
They were not up in arms over the law, especially when they compared it to the existing voting laws of Colorado. Oooof Manfred, you face planted again.
The “voting laws in Colorado” argument is just a talking point with hardly any truth to it. See here for more detail. For starters: CO sends mail ballots to everyone automatically and allows up to 16 forms of ID. The latter includes things like utility bills, pay stubs, college IDs, and other things that someone who’s poor, recently moved, or young will likely have in up-to-date form. Long story short: CO’s voting laws are intended to encourage the highest possible turnout. Georgia’s new law does the opposite by any objective measure.
But let’s be real here: The owners didn’t and won’t do any of this analysis because voting laws aren’t ever targeted at people like them. It’s not like I view Manfred as some great leader or champion of the people either, but he is charged with maintaining the health and public image of the sport and occasionally does seem to read the room of society better than most, if not all, of the owners.
Georgia’s law does the opposite? Extended in person voting days, including a couple of Saturdays. Oh the horror. When I started voting in 78, you had one day to vote, polls opened at 7 am, and you had to show picture ID. Now you have weeks to vote, including Saturdays, 8 or 9 different types of IDs are accepted, but that is considered trying to suppress the vote. Yeah, the Georgia voting law hysteria is nothing but BS rhetoric from far left operatives. If you can’t figure out a way to vote in Georgia then you probably have trouble fogging a mirror.
Just cancel the damn thing. While it does generate revenue for the surrounding host area, the game has become watered down. I would not reward a city after cancellation of Atlanta business owners from recovering from a pandemic.
Show some stones Manfred! Cancel the game, coward.
Yup, a relief pitcher with 90 innings is a thing of the past also, imho.
I don’t understand this. If starters can pitch 160-170 innings over a season, even with the typical 5-6 per game… it baffles me why there aren’t more guys able to pitch 2-3 inning stints and get in 40-50 games a year that way.
Which is why I think the 90 inning reliever will come back. Teams are only allowing starters to get two trips through the lineup, which leaves a lot of middle innings to be absorbed.
2 appearances at week at 2 innings per almost gets you there. In Chris case he might even open a few games and get 2-3 innings more.
That’s what I’m thinking too, Jeff. It’s all good to see the data about the 3rd time through the lineup, so as the trend evolves and starters barely make it out of the 5th inning, I think teams will develop more guys that have the skill set and the experience in the minors pitching in short 2-3 inning stints. It does make sense when you stop and think about it a bit.
Great minds, ha ha.
This is definitely a copy cat league and the success of teams like TB will be duplicated. There will be outliers who are studs and get to go a more traditional 6-7 innings when doing well, but for a guy like Heaney or Cobb it makes more sense to pull them after 4 or 5.
Will the league lower the inning requirement for a win to 4 innings?
Soon the Draft may only be just a few rounds unless the player’s can negotiate that 40 rounds are needed. While today it helps to be a billionaire to own an MLB team, all you have to be is greedy, not smart and you can help ruin the game too.
Seems like having previously had so many levels of minor league teams, with 20+ additional rounds of “filler” players was a highly inefficient talent development system. With only 5 affiliates per team now, plus adding in international signees, etc. there really isn’t a need for so many new draftees every year. And of course, there’s “always the low-rounders who make it” yes– but guys who aren’t quite good enough to be drafted in the 20th round still have tons of indy ball or other options if they want to continue their careers and showcase themselves in hopes of becoming a UDFA signee.
The 2021 draft if set to have 20 rounds and I think the number stays there for a while, or close to it.
MLB, AAA, AA, High A, A, Arizona League, Dominican League. That’s what the Angels have now. Considering the DSL is all international signings, that leaves 6 teams at 25 players per team for talent. That’s 150 players. At 20 rounds you are replenishing about 10% of your talent every year through the draft. That should be plenty.
Mike Piazza, Dodgers, 1988 (62nd round) disagrees….
the fact we can pull the one guy who made it (with the help of steroids) kind of proves the point. Look at the graph in the link above. Yes, there are a handful of players who do make it but most wash out in a year or two with no signing bonus or education.
….he just came to mind, supposedly done as a favor for Lasorda too.
and you’re correct that the vast majority wash out. It’s seems practical.
I wonder if it will create more independent teams/leagues?
Round 19: Bret Saberhagen, Royals, 1982 Don Mattingly, Yankees, 1979
Round 20: Ryne Sandberg, Phillies, 1978
Round 22: John Smoltz, Tigers, 1985 Andy Pettitte, Yankees, 1990
Round 23: Roy Oswalt, Astros, 1996
Round 24: Mark Grace, Cubs, 1985
Round 25: Mike Hargrove, Rangers,
Round 26: Dusty Baker, Braves, 1967
Round 27: Anthony Rendon Brendan Donnelly, White Sox, 1992
https://www.mlb.com/news/best-late-round-picks-in-draft-history
I’m thinking it will push more kids to college, which isn’t a bad thing, and create a couple of independent leagues.
A high school kid getting drafted in the 30th round is just asking to waste a couple years of life. Go to school, for a couple of years and see if your baseball stock improves.
I can’t imagine too many parents pushing their kids to an independent league over even a JC. But I can see plenty of former draft picks and a few college graduates who just want to keep playing going there.
The Sandlot is 28 years old and I admit that it never caught my eye until one evening my boys and I saw it on the TV and with my 3 youngest on either side of me watched what became one of my two favorite Baseball movies ever. (Tie is with James Earl Jones voice saying ” Build it Ray, they will come”). In less than two weeks I turn 69 yrs old, so I was just a kid then. What a great movie. Add to it that there was a famous line that is still quoted today from that flick. Another great Baseball movie had another famous line was “crying? Crying! There’s no crying in Baseball”.
Happy Brithday Sandlot.
Dammit! Just realized I’m three years older than Grandpa. Whatever shall I do?
It Depends (capital D intended).
Great GrandpaToad
RIP Nick
