Sunday, June 10, 2007
Stupid freaking tree-gnawing paddle-tail-having brown scruffy hideously-pinstriped cheap-hit-getting Beavers.
Let me tell you something: Zach Putnam pitched the game of his life. The game. Of his life. His fastball had sink on it like you would not believe if you didn't see it yourself. It seemed to fall out of the sky in a way you almost never see with a fastball; it almost looked like a curveball, except that I don't think it was. He was almost short-arming his pitches, which I guess is his way of keeping that sink on it (really 'sinky' pitchers are often sidearmers... see this kickass Hardball Times article for more on that).
It was like watching Derek Lowe when he threw his perfect game. I know how whacked-out that sounds, but I'm not kidding. It was the same. kind. of sink. I mean, pitchers get in trouble when they leave the ball up in the zone. Putnam hardly seemed to scrape the upper parts of the strikezone. It was MASTERFUL.
OK, obviously it wasn't a perfect game. Zach Putnam is not Derek Lowe (this makes it a lot easier to wholeheartedly root for Zach Putnam). There were a few walks, and in the end there was one hit. That was all it took. If you didn't see the game I can't impress on you how suddenly it was all over. A guy walked. There was a sac bunt to move him up to second. Putnam got another out, I think it was a strikeout. Then Joey Wong stepped up, dumped a single into left that was weakly thrown home by Derek VanBuskirk, not nearly fast enough to catch the runner, and that was that.
Maybe VanBuskirk thought it would come back to him quicker than it actually did on that weird carpet turf they have in Oregon, and his throw was off because of that. Maybe he just couldn't set himself properly. Maybe he never got a good grip on the ball. Maybe the animal spirit of a beaver rose from the ground beneath the turf and bit his ankles with its unnatural giant ghostly beaver teeth, surprising him enough to slow down the throw. Who knows?
That one hit, that was it for the Beavers. I mean that was IT. Zach Putnam threw 8.2 innings of HITLESS BASEBALL. He threw 129 pitches. It was.... I can't describe how amazing it was to watch him pitch this game. Maybe it's just that his delivery looks different when I'm not watching it through the back end of a camera, but he seemed to be pitching with a greater clarity of pitching than he has before. I guess that doesn't make sense. I can't really think of any other way to put it.
And you know what, there were a lot of dubious calls in this game-- A LOT, and some of them were SERIOUSLY off-- but I will give the homeplate umpire credit for one thing. He called balls and strikes based on where the ball was when it crossed the plate, not when it ended up in the catcher's glove. This is, of course, what they're supposed to do, but it doesn't always work out that way and can sometimes hurt a pitcher like Putnam, whose pitches often end up dragging dirt as they cross into Pickens' glove because they've dropped so far AFTER they've crossed the plate. The homeplate ump correctly called a lot of these strikes, and infuriating as some of his (and his crew's) miscues were*, I have to give him props for that.
The problem is that while Putnam was busy throwing this beautiful, miraculous game, the opposing pitcher was busy doing the exact same thing, and every time Michigan got men on they were unable to bring them home. Frustration? Yes.
I waited a long time after the game had ended to write this post, in the hopes of allowing myself to calm down a little, but I find that I'm beginning to get riled up again, so bollocks to that, I need to ask a vital question about the Oregon State uniforms, that question being: WTF?!
Gray. With dark pinstripes (I couldn't tell if they were black or dark brown or navy or what). With orange piping around the jersey front closure and collar that COMPLETELY failed to work in any way, shape, or form with the pinstripes. That would be a visual mess by itself, but the numbers were orange satin and were unreasonably large, on the front and the back, and they ALSO did not really work with the pinstripes... pinstripes and shiny satin, I think, is too many textures. THAT would have been horrible enough, but they ALSO had the letters "OSU" across the front, ABOVE the overly large and shiny numbers, in UNBORDERED WHITE, which failed to work with the pinstriping, the piping, and every color/texture already on the jerseys.
Their socks might have been black, but looked navy blue. Their hats might have been black, but looked a kind of dark faded brown. Neither shade of possible-black referred back to any color on the jerseys.
It's possible that the Michigan hitters were rendered so speechless by this sartorial horror that they were unable to muster up more than a few hits today. I would believe it. They also might have been hypnotized by the dancing layers of stripes and piping, or maybe by the shiny, shiny orange. Or maybe they were just terrified of the Oregon State people who designed these uniforms. Who knows what goes on in the sick minds of people who think this combination is a good idea?
I would believe almost anything after a game like that. Ugh. What a frustrating loss, what a frustrating waste of a pitching performance.
If you desire mental relief from this agony, I recommend bathing yourself in the fetid waters of yesterday's baseball mascot rant.
*Major miscue the first: Early-ish in the game, Joey Wong watched a pitch go by, too low to be a strike. The umpire(s?) called it a strike, saying he had gone around. Replays showed that he had barely flinched. Nobody seemed to know what the umpire(s?) had been looking at.
Major miscue the second: The leadoff Beaver in the 7th inning bunted inside the first base line. Putnam picked it up, threw it to first. Out. Only... not. The homeplate ump called the batter back, saying that the ball was foul because it had hit him (the batter) before he left the box. Replays clearly showed him bunting the ball a good foot or two in front of himself, well away from his body before it made its first bounce. The ball remained inside the baseline and Putnam picked it up inside the baseline and long before it reached first so... fair in every particular. Should've been an out. The kid ended up working a walk, so this could have been disasterous, but Mitch Canham grounded into a lovely double play for us to clear him off the bases.Labels: baseball, Beavers, college baseball, loss, Michigan, NCAA, Oregon State, Wolverines
11:22 PM
Monday, June 04, 2007
They won!!
Michigan baseball! They won Regionals!
I know nobody who reads this cares, but eeeeeeee! First time since 1989! They had to beat NUMBER ONE RANKED Vanderbilt.... twice! And, goodness, they did! They lost the middle game, but it was unlikely that they were going to make it out of this round, because, you know... Vanderbilt! Ranked number one in the country! And Michigan DID make it out of the round, they're on to the Super Regionals, and Vanderbilt... now they've fallen to THE WOLVERINES!
I saw that the game was tied 3-3 in the 9th, but I couldn't watch the little online stat-tracker thing because I was a) too nervous and b) afraid of jinxing it. I know, I KNOW how irrational that is, but the one game I tried to follow on the stat tracker was the one they lost, so. No more checking. It was all I could do to restrict myself to that small glance in the 9th. And just now I thought that surely the game must be over, it should be safe to check again, and it was over, and we'd won!
For those of you who don't follow NCAA baseball, Michigan "won" the Big 10 regular season, coming out of it with the best record. They lost the Big 10 Championship to Ohio State, though, and thus were not assured a spot in the NCAA tourney. They received an at-large bid, though, which was right and proper because they had been the highest-ranked Big 10 team on the national boards throughout the year (in fact, they might have been the only Big 10 team to be nationally ranked... but don't quote me on that, I think Minnesota might have been on there too).
Michigan fans were grateful to see them in the tourney at all. Anything beyond that was assumed to be gravy.
They were matched up against Memphis first, which seemed a tough battle because the tourney is in Tennessee and Memphis then should have a home field advantage. No such luck, though, and Michigan beat them only to suddenly find themselves scheduled to face an even more fearsome opponent in Vanderbilt.
Whom they defeated! The middle game, which Michigan lost, even that wasn't some kind of insane Vandy blowout, like one would maybe expect from the nominally best team in the nation. It was a 10-7 score, and Michigan had come back from a 6-2 deficit, I believe. But the Wolverines won the first game, and they just now won the last game in extra innings, sending me into a series of overwhelmingly happy squees.
SQUEE!
Opponents to be announced for the Super Regionals... I guess we have to wait to see who wins the other games and whatnot before we know who Michigan plays next. In any event, the team's already done more than most people expected them to do, and it is nothing short of painfully exciting.Labels: baseball, college baseball, NCAA, win, Wolverines
10:53 PM
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Obviously, I never should have left Ann Arbor.
The Wolverines won nearly every game I saw in person. I head home for the summer, and they come out on top of the Big 10, but are knocked out of the Big 10 Tournament in the minimum two games. Too bad. They won it all last year, of course, and it would have been nice to see them do so again, especially with a relatively young team.
If they had won the Big 10 tourney they would have an automatic bid into the NCAA Tournament... now we don't know. I think the selection is tomorrow (Monday), so I guess we'll find out then. Michigan was nationally ranked for much of the season so our chances of getting in are still OK, but we suffer the permanent baseball-in-the-midwest bias. It's hard to give an at-large bid to a midwestern school when you have schools in the south who live and die by their baseball teams, but who don't win their conference championships simply because every other school in their conference is the same way.
We definitely still deserve it. Uh, not that I'm inclined to lean one way or the other. But really, we WERE nationally ranked (respectably so! I think we were up to 16th in the nation at one point), which is a BIG HONKIN' DEAL for a Big 10 school known infinitely more for football, basketball (even if our basketball team sucks of late), and hockey.
I don't like the double-elimination format of the Big 10 Tournament. It's just not suited to baseball. It's more a football kind of thing... even the AL/NLDS gives teams 3 games before minimum elimination. Baseball games can be so quirky that you need a lot of them to really get at the true skill of a team; this is why baseball seasons are so long and why so many games are played over the course of that season, especially compared to other major sports. To give a team only two games before they get sent home is cruel and unbaseball-like.
In both games Michigan kept it close. The first loss, to OSU, was only by two runs, and the second loss, to PSU, was only by one, in the 10th inning. It's not like Michigan got blown out by vastly superior teams. I know that this is a good baseball team. If they'd been given more games, it would've been completely unsurprising to see them win it all.
Now, I'm not crazy. I know it WOULD be a huge upset if they did well in the NCAA tournament. But I'd like to see them get a shot at it.
Ah well. We'll find out tomorrow.
Relive happier Wolverine baseball times with some photos!
The home opener, which Michigan won over Oakland University 9-2.
A Michigan/OU doubleheader, both of which Michigan won, 4-1 and 4-3.
A Michigan/OU blowout, 17-0 in Michigan's favor.
A Michigan/Eastern Michigan doubleheader. Michigan lost the first game 10-2, but won the second game 10-7.
A Michigan/Purdue doubleheader. Michigan won both, 6-5 and 7-2.
The last game I went to this season, Michigan/Purdue. Michigan won big, 10-1.
Alright. I'll be at the Sox/Indians game tomorrow, assuming it doesn't get rained out and assuming the ticket thing works out (it's complicated). So that'll be Trotter's return, and should be interesting. Hopefully Michigan will get into the NCAA tourney and I'll be in a good mood heading down to Fenway.Labels: baseball, Big 10, college baseball, Michigan, NCAA, Wolverines
10:07 PM
Monday, March 26, 2007
By the way, Michigan baseball is baaaaaack. Post about it here. The photo album from Friday's game is here. The album from Saturday's double header is here.
Once I get the shots from Sunday's game up, I think I'll take a break and do the post for that over here. Just as a heads up.Labels: college baseball, Dennis Eckersley, drawn, Wolverines
1:28 AM
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