This is kind of funny, there are a lot of stories about the fallout between Harry Caray and the Cardinals, including one about Harry fucking Gussie Busch’s daughter-in-law. The others involve him not getting along with Jack Buck and Milo Hamilton. It’s fairly well known the Milo hated Harry Caray but that goes back to Caray being chosen as the Cubs’ Jack Brickhouse’s replacement after it had been promised to Milo.
Rabbit trail post: My son and I were having a conversation about quality starts over the last couple of days that caused me to do some digging.
I would expect most teams to have more wins than Quality Starts, but that his not the case.
Teams with as many or more quality starts than wins:
Mariners - 26 QS/24W
Tigers - 22 QS/21W
Blue Jays - 19QS/19W
Pirates - 19 QS/19W
The flip side the team with the number wins greater than number of QS
Cleveland - 26W/11QS +15
Brewers - 26W/12QS +13
Yankees - 29W/17QS +12
Cubs - 25W/14QS +11
Nats - 20W/9QS +11
Orioles - 27W/17QS +10
(The average difference is +5.733, the media was 5 and the mode was 5)
I then wondered what roll does their offence have in the difference between QS & W. The ones with the large positive differences - not much. For example the Guardian’s team OPS ranks 15th but they still have many more wins than QS. But on the negative difference it appears have an impact - here are their OPS ranks:
Mariners 20th
Tigers 26th
Pirates 28th
Blue Jays 23rd
I looked at bullpen ERA but didn’t see any coorelation there. The Mariners and the Tigers both have top 10 bullpen ERAs at 3.33.
I looked at blown saves and the Tigers and Pirates both have 10 each but the Orioles and Cubs, who have a significant positive gap have 9 each. The Mariners have only 3 blown saves but a negative gap.
What other things would you look at to explain the QS to W gap?
Maybe some starters don’t get the QS because of the innings pitched requirement rather than the runs allowed portion?
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Quite a second career start from Skenes. 6.0 IP, 11K, 0 H, 1 BB.
That dude’s pretty good.
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Started the game with 6K’s, apparently.
7 straight
Bill.Mercer told me stories about drunk-in-the-booth Caray. He could not stand working with him either.
Bill Mercer is great.
Indeed. He became a friend when I was working with Capps. Bill is his mentor.
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Another really good article on how to think about the new statcast swing data:
https://theadvancescout.substack.com/p/whats-in-a-swing-a-metrics-explainer
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MMPUS one of four venues to host 2026 World Baseball Classic games.
With that and the world cup later in the summer, I’m pretty excited.
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Two rounds! That’s awesome.
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Hopefully we don’t see any Astros in it!
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I love the WBC! Will definitely be going to a couple of games
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I really like it too. I thought last year’s tournament was great, and the final epic. It’s good for baseball. I’m go on a try to go too.
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This is pretty inexplicable umpire dumbassery:
https://x.com/awfulannouncing/status/1793840566356398089?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^tweet
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“I’m at a loss and I’m trying to keep my job” – Sox announcer
No hyperbole, that has to be among the 5 worst calls I’ve seen in my life.
It was terrible. Not only was it probably not interference in the first place, it had absolutely no bearing on the play at all (and couldn’t, really, since infield fly had already been called). Making it the game-ending out is the cherry on top.