SB Nation - Brian Buchanan

Royals Win Comedy of Errors

Jesse — Sun, 03 May 2009 10:46:24 -0000

An amazing game that lasted seven innings, it was as frustrating as it was fun.

Every time the Twins took the lead, the Royals would come right back. Every time the Royals took the lead, the Twins would come right back. Well, every time except once.

One of the reasons baseball is such a great game is because somebody has to win. There are no ties, and no matter what happens each and every game has that same finality. Saturday night was, truly enough, a game that neither team really deserved to win. Sadly for the Twins, not only did they not deserve to win, but they actually didn't.

Miscues

* In the first inning, with runners on first and second and one out, Justin Morneau struck out. Alexi Casilla, who was stealing third on the pitch, was cut down. It really wasn't even that close.

* Fast-forward to bottom of the sixth, and it happened again. This time, two men on and again one away, Casilla flew out to David DeJesus in left field. With Joe Mauer and his hot bat on deck, Nick Punto still tried to tag up and advance to third base. It was a close play, but DeJesus' relay to Mike Aviles was a good one, and Aviles' turned a nice one to Alberto Callaspo at third. Callaspo applied the tag to Punto's right knee just before his foot touched the bag.

* Why was Brian Buscher playing at first base? Morneau just had a day off. If it was imperative to give Buscher some plate appearances, Joe Crede and his wife just had baby Chase, meaning he was exhausted. Start him at third base. Or if he played because Jason Kubel was scratched due to flu-like symptoms, then why shift your starting first baseman to designated hitter? Either DH Buscher, or DH Young or Cuddyer and put Denard Span in the outfield. Bench guys need playing time, but when you're forcing the issue by playing guys at secondary positions you're asking for trouble. Buscher was unable to scoop a throw by Punto once, but the Twins were lucky enough to keep the Royals off the board.

* With two away in the bottom of the seventh, Crede laced a nice single to the right-center field gap. Jose Guillen cut it off in plenty of time and threw it in. Imagine your surprise when Crede was trying to take second. He was out by a mile. Honestly, a mile.

* In the top of the eighth, Jose Mijares came on with one out. After inducing a DeJesus ground out where Callaspo advanced to third base, he induced a Miguel Olivo routine grounder to Casilla's left. Casilla bobbled the ball and Callaspo scored; the 6-6 tie was broken.

* Buscher leads off the bottom of the tenth with a double; two feet from going over the fence to end the game. He was stranded on third.

* The entire top half of the eleventh inning.

Kansas City clearly had mistakes of their own. A poor throw by Aviles at short. Coco Crisp's inability to make a routine throw that led to a Twins run. Wild pitches by Juan Cruz, Ron Mahay and Joakim Soria. And, just like the Twins, an inability to keep runs off the board. But in the end they took advantage of a rough outing by Craig Breslow (3 BB, 0.1 IP).

By juxtoposition, the Twins had their bright spots. Joe Mauer can, and will, hit anything. His ninja-style shoe-string single in the first was impressive, as was his rip to the right-center field gap when Brian Bannister tried to come inside in a situation that was a bit too predictable. Delmon Young and Crede hit the ball hard.

It was a rough night by a pair of mediocre teams. The difference between them was that somebody had to win, and on Saturday it was the Royals who pulled it off. A lot of it seems to do with attitude; in years past, if the Twins had repeatedly pulled ahead or came back, at some point Kansas City would have simply folded. This time they didn't, and it's a sign of change for the boys in Royal blue.

Rubber match kicks off in a few hours, be sure to show your support. Minnesota is still the better team, but they need to play like it.

Stars of the Game
#3: Joe Mauer (4-for-6, RBI)
#2: Michael Cuddyer (2-for-4, 3 R, HR, RBI)
#1: Delmon Young (3-for-4, 2 R, 2 RBI)

Looking Back at the 1st Round of the 1994 Draft

erik — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 23:30:10 -0000

Call me a curmudgeon, but I really hate the NFL Draft. Captain Hair-Do aside, it is a slog of a television event that really could be done in a matter of hours rather than days. Because football has become America's most popular sport these days, Bud Selig thinks he has to mimic the NFL by broadcasting the draft in prime time, starting at 6pm eastern on June 9. Rather than getting through several rounds on day one of the draft, only three rounds will be drafted, and then the draft will resume the next day at noon. All told, it is going to take three days to get through 50 rounds.

Thankfully, the draft is going to be broadcast on the MLB Network rather than ESPN, so we're spared of Steve Phillips and Bermanisms. While I'm happy that televised drafts mean more exposure, I miss the old days when the first round was blitzed through within a half-hour, with simply names being called monotonously through a speaker phone at a feverish pace.

Now that I got my Andy Rooney moment out of the way, I thought it might be fun to do a little retrospect of the first rounds of various drafts. This isn't deep draft research, there is plenty of that out there already to read up on.

We'll start with 1994, which is bustier than a cabaret show.

Charted below are all of the first rounders and their total WAR compiled for each player before they become eligible for free agency. A players' names that are italicized are those that did not play a single game in the majors.

	Pick	Team	POS	HS/College	WAR
Paul Wilson	1	NYM	P	COL	0.5
Ben Grieve	2	OAK	OF	HS	8.4
Dustin Hermanson	3	SD	P	COL	8.2
Antone Williamson	4	MIL	3B	COL	-0.7
Josh Booty	5	FLA	SS	HS	0
McCay Christiansen	6	CAL	OF	HS	-0.3
Doug Million	7	COL	P	HS	0
Todd Walker	8	MIN	2B	COL	7.4
C.J. Nitkowski	9	CIN	P	COL	-2.1
Jaret Wright	10	CLE	P	HS	0.3
Mark Farris	11	PIT	SS	HS	0
Nomar Garciaparra	12	BOS	SS	COL	41.5
Paul Konerko	13	LA	C	HS	6.4
Jason Varitek	14	SEA	C	COL	10.7
Jayson Peterson	15	CHC	P	HS	0
Matt Smith	16	KC	P	HS	0
Ramon Castro	17	HOU	C	HS	0.2
Cade Gaspar	18	DET	P	COL	0
Bret Wagner	19	STL	P	COL	0
Terrence Long	20	NYM	OF	HS	6.5
Hiram Bocachica	21	MTL	SS	HS	-1.1
Dante Powell	22	SF	OF	COL	-0.2
Carlton Loewer	23	PHI	P	COL	-1.8
Brian Buchanan	24	NYY	OF	COL	-0.4
Scott Elarton	25	HOU	P	HS	3.8
Mark Johnson	26	CHW	C	HS	1
Jacob Schumate	27	ATL	P	HS	0
Kevin Witt	28	TOR	SS	HS	-0.4
Jay Payton	29	NYM	OF	COL	7.3
Russ Johnson	30	HOU	SS	COL	2.5
Mike Thurman	31	MTL	P	COL	1.3
Jacob Cruz	32	SF	OF	COL	0.7
Chris Clemons	33	CHW	P	COL	-0.3
Travis Miller	34	MIN	P	COL	0

Nomar and his "No-mah!" days aside, this is a pretty "ouch" group. Varitek and Konerko later became all-stars, but for other teams than they were originally drafted. Paul Wilson and Ben Grieve were supposed to become superstars, instead Paul Wilson fell prey to his poor mechanics and later became a Kyle Farnsworth tackling dummy. Ben Grieve allegedly had no heart. Them washing out is like the equivalent of Matt Wieters and David Price both going bust. Bad times.

Josh Booty probably has the most interesting story out of this group, and it's worth telling. He was considered to be Peyton Manning's equal coming out of high school, but elected to take the big signing bonus and play baseball instead. After hitting .198/.256/.356 in the minors, including a record-setting 195 strikeout performance in 475 at-bats while in the Midwest League, Booty went back to football and quarterbacked at LSU. (Amazingly, Booty was on the post-season roster when the Marlins won the World Series). For the Bayou Bengals, Peyton Manning he was not, but he wasn't totally awful --- over two seasons he completed 49.3% of his passes for 3,951 yards and 24 TDs. Booty has been a third-string QB in the NFL for the Browns and Raiders, but never has taken a snap in the NFL.

Booty married one of "Barker's Beauties" from the Price is Right, a model who on the show dinged a prize car on Stage Door 3. Then there was also a DUI and taser incident involving Booty a year ago. His brother, John David, quarterbacked at USC and is now a backup for the Vikings. (Thank you, Wikipedia)

Sorting them out into groups ---

Group	#	Total WAR	Avg. Per Player	Avg. WAR per yr.
High School P	6	4.1	0.68	0.114
College P	9	5.8	0.64	0.107
College Hitters	9	68.8	7.64	1.27
High School Hitters	10	20.7	2.07	0.345
Non-Nomar Col. H	8	20.6	3.43	0.572

Not all drafts classes are equal, and while first-rounders don't have as high rates of attrition as players drafted from other rounds, the attrition rates are still high. For this draft at least, there seems to be a lot more sad stories than usual. At least it boasts of one (former) super-star.

WAR data from the ever-resourceful BaseballProjection.com