I called it:
"Despite strikeouts, Red Sox love working the count; Long at-bats wear out pitchers" by Peter Abraham | Globe Staff, October 22, 2013
It’s one, two, three strikes you’re out at the old ball game. But that’s really not so bad these days. The strikeout, once something hitters did all they could to avoid, now has a degree of respect within baseball.
As the Red Sox prepare for Game 1 of the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals on Wednesday night at Fenway Park, it’s with the knowledge they are going to strike out quite often.
The Sox set a franchise record with 1,308 strikeouts during the regular season and have whiffed 106 times in 10 postseason games.
But the Sox led the majors in scoring this season by wearing down opposing pitchers with long, patient at-bats. Strikeouts, hitting coach Greg Colbrunn explained Monday, are a cost of doing business.
“There’s an awareness of pitch counts and starting pitchers sticking to a pitch count. So when guys go up there and battle for six or seven pitches, a strikeout is a good at-bat,” Colbrunn said. “I know how that sounds, but it’s true.”
The Red Sox and many other teams are willing to accept high strikeout totals if their hitters are disciplined at the plate and, when they do connect with the ball, provide the home run hitting power that is so difficult to find in baseball’s post-steroids era.
Strikeout totals have risen for four consecutive years in the American League, but the number of runs scored and home runs hit have risen, too.
Twenty-one players in baseball this season hit at least 25 home runs while striking out 100 or more times. Seven were selected to the All-Star team. Strikeouts aren’t quite cool, but they are accepted.
“You’d prefer somebody hit for power and not strike out often,” Sox assistant general manager Mike Hazen said. “But those guys are the superstars and they’re fairly rare. Sometimes you have to have an appreciation for what a good strikeout can do. You have to look at those long at-bats as contributing to the overall good of the lineup. Power is hard to find and you learn to live with the strikeouts.”
Red Sox first baseman Mike Napoli is a good example of the tradeoff teams make. Napoli set a team record with 187 strikeouts this season. But he also contributed 38 doubles, 23 home runs, 92 RBIs, and 73 walks to the offense.
“I wish I didn’t strike out as much as I do. It’s embarrassing,” Napoli said. “But I don’t feel like I’m really helping the team if I get defensive at the plate and cut down on my swing. I have to do what I do.”
Napoli struck out on three pitches only 17 times all season. On 120 occasions, he saw at least five pitches before striking out, and there were 17 times Napoli saw seven or more pitches before going down.
Napoli averaged 4.59 pitches per plate appearance, the best in the majors.
“If you strike out four times but see 25 pitches, that could be a quarter of somebody’s pitch count by one hitter,” Hazen said. “There’s a lot of value there.
“When you talk about the value of outs, a double play is the worst play. You’d rather see a guy work the pitcher and strike out with runners on first and second and one out rather than hit a ground ball.”
The postseason offers an even clearer view of how a hitter such as Napoli can be frustrating and fruitful at the same time. He has struck out 15 times in 33 postseason at-bats. But Napoli’s home run in Game 3 of the American League Championship Series was the difference in a 1-0 victory. Napoli then homered and doubled to help win Game 5 against the Detroit Tigers.
Napoli stayed true to form and struck out three times in Game 6. But nobody in the dugout minded....
I really didn't mind much of this front-page feature.
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Took one whiff of that story and thought it stunk. No wonder the games last forever.
Related:
Hotel prices skyrocket as World Series opens
It's called price-gouging robbery.
Police to focus on security during World Series
Man accused of trying to steal Red Sox mitt
Diehard Red Sox supporters bond over their beards
And look what has made this season so special:
"Red Sox and bombing-scarred Boston rise together" by David Filipov | Globe Staff, October 23, 2013
Fenway Park became the venue where, throughout the summer, crowds cheered the victims and the healers as they walked — or were helped — to the mound for the ceremonial first pitch.
And now that this bearded band of ballplayers has reached the threshold of baseball’s highest crown, its rise from last place to the World Series has taken on a deeper meaning in a city rising from one of the most shockingly violent episodes in its history. Boston needed the Red Sox a bit more than usual this year, as a distraction, a measure of comfort, and a unifying force. And more than ever, the team took on the personality of its recovering city.
I can't take anymore repeating of conventional myths and tragedy worship, readers. I'm sorry, but I just can't.
“There is a magic to this team,” said Dan Lebowitz, executive director of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University. “The Marathon happens, it was so injurious to the city . . . and the next thing you know there’s this team of destiny rising through the ashes. It creates this dynamic of hope for the city moving forward.”
Do I even need to type anything?
Like the New Orleans Saints team that brought a Super Bowl victory to a city devastated by Hurricane Katrina, or the New York Yankees’ World Series run a few weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, this year’s Red Sox have embodied the way sport can bring together a community sundered by disaster. Even a nation, at times, united to the strains of “Sweet Caroline” in ballparks across the country.
For the other times it is used to distract per protocol, but in either case it is a vehicle of jingoistic propaganda. Doesn't the fact that banks making record-profits are the big advertisers of $port$ tell you $omething about $ports?
Related: Please, banish ‘Sweet Caroline’ from Fenway Park
That I agree with. What an annoying song.
It started with the Red Sox jersey reading “Boston Strong” with the city’s 617 area code the Sox hung in their dugout for a 7-2 win in Cleveland the night after the bombing. A gesture that, according to team executive vice president Charles Steinberg, was initiated by the players.
But as the season progressed, and as the team defied predictions of mediocrity and its personality started coming through, fans recognized attributes New Englanders have always embraced: the almost stubborn adherence to a team’s patient strategy of driving up pitch counts, the unbridled, genuine enthusiasm of the players, and, of course, an uncanny ability to grind out wins against the odds.
Readers, I just want to say for a minute that I have been raised with this New England supremacism all of my life. That and stereotypes of other regions of my nation and world, and I am sick of it. I'm sick and tired of Zionist Jew supremacists constant program of hatred and division along all lines unless it comes to Jews.
Even those most deeply affected by the bombings found in the team a welcome distraction from the grim aftermath of the bombings....
I know a friend who was at the game that day. He was headed out long before the alleged bombing.
One did not have to be a Red Sox fan to be caught up in the sense of community and recovery in the magical summer of 2013....
Yeah, everyone is a Sox fan at heart just as everyone is a Jew at root. I know I saw or heard that implication somewhere in my jewsmedia before.
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Yeah, such a magical(?) year!
Also see: Worcester lawsuit delays sale of Boston Globe
Oh, I hope there isn't a rain out tonight!
