A few scattered observations from my perch in the Cheap Seats (it's not like we pay to get in, right?)


It was fun to see GGZ back behind the plate, and he was in the thick of it last night. First and foremost (as any catcher will tell you), he got an outstanding game out of his starting pitcher. At the plate, he crushed a ball to the wall in centre, with enough on it to score Frank Thomas from first base (OK, there were two outs, but still!)  Zaun almost had another extra base hit in his last at bat, but Langerhans made a stupendous play to take the hit away from him, forcing him to settle for a sac fly and another RBI. And while the Blue Jay defenders had pretty well nothing but routine plays to make on this night, Zaun managed to be the exception, diving after Lopez' little squibber, bare-handing it just before it went foul, and throwing to first for the out. (Millson said the only way Zaun has the energy to make that play is because he's been sitting for a month!)

Langerhans was in the the thick of the action for the Nats -it was truly a remarkable catch he made on Zaun's liner in the bottom of the eighth, running into the gap, diving, and making a back-handed grab. In the top of the inning, his two run homer finally persuaded John Gibbons that Doc's night was done. Which reminds me - I'm not really sure why Halladay was still out there at that point. The only reason I can think of is that Gibbons wanted to give him a chance to go for the shutout, and Halladay is quite capable of getting six out in a hurry. But the game was already 2 and a half hours old (as many readers will remember, the amount of time the pitcher's been working is a much bigger deal to me than the number of pitches he's thrown), and once Schneider singled to lead off the inning... well, I probably still would have let him face Logan who was absolutely helpless against him all night long. But not Langerhans. As I told my neighbours at the time. Not that anybody listens to me...

Langerhans was also in the middle of that bizarre moment in the third inning when the home-plate umpire lost track of the count. He fell behind 1-2, hung in there, fouled off a couple of pitches, and trotted down to first when Halladay missed him a 3-2 fastball. And then C.B. Bucknor began calling Langerhans back to the plate, and Pandemonium broke out briefly. All eyes in the press box turned to yours truly, and the GameDay person beside me - as one we said "that was Ball Four." They eventually got it sorted out, but it was the first sign that Mr Bucknor (who was in fact feeling ill, and was forced to call it a night a few innings later) was not on top of his game. That, and the fact that he never corrected the scoreboard. Normally, when the scoreboard has the count wrong, the home plate umpire always makes a point of making sure everyone knows what the count really is. Bucknor didn't do that, although the scoreboard (which in this case, was correct) did not agree with what he believed the count to be.

I was charting Doc's pitches tonight, just for the hell of it, and I hope to say something about it in a day or so, when I've had a little more time to go over my notes. But I did have one thought about pitchers and hitters. You will notice sometimes, when the broadcasters are really into the game, they'll get into speculating on how to work the hitter and what pitch to throw next. This normally happens only when a former catcher is in the booth. And how often, after a hitter has been fooled by a breaking ball, does someone say "I'd come right back at him with the same pitch."

Well, I seem to hear it a lot.

It's not an idea I think very highly of myself. Major league hitters sit on the fastball. They look for the fastball, they expect the fastball - they adjust when they see a breaking ball. A curve ball or a slider can be spotted as such very quickly after it leaves the pitcher's hand. But not a change-up, which is the beauty of the pitch - it looks like a fastball, until you're too far gone and committed to salvage the situation. A true master, like Tom Glavine, just changes speeds on a seamless continuum between his change and his fastball and has hitters off balance all night long.

The Nationals young starter, Mike Bacsik, is no Glavine but he's the same type of pitcher. He spots his 85 mph fastball, and mixes in his 75 mph change-up at very opportunity. Unlike Glavine, he doesn't change speeds on his change of speed, nor does he have Glavine's command and control. So he's not going to win 300 games - he's still got something he can succeed with.

But. The second batter of the game was Vernon Wells. Bacsik threw him a 1-1 changeup, and Wells was fooled badly and barely made contact, fouling it off. Bacsik came right back with another change, and Wells was still off-balance and fouled it off again, although this time he made better contact.. You'd never expect him to throw that thing three times in a row would you? But he did - element of surprise! - and while Wells may have been surprised, he was also very well prepared to recognize the pitch for what it was drive it into the gap for a double. When you keep going to the well with an off-speed pitch, the element of surprise is more than cancelled out by the hitter's enhanced ability to recognize the pitch. (All this reminds me of Dave Bush throwing curve after curve after curve after curve to Angel Berroa - until first Berroa laced one into the stands, just foul; and then crushed the next one into the stands for a home run.)

Halladay, by the way, in his 7.1 innings, through consecutive breaking balls exactly once in the entire ball game. In the fifth, with two out and nobody on, he threw a 2-2 curve that Schneider fouled off. Doc came right back with another curve and Schneider lined a base hit.

Ahem.

One other odd note from last night's affair, although this may only be of interest to people who score games or are really, really obsessive about minutiae. Flores came up to bat in Schneider's spot in the ninth - he was announced as a pinch-hitter. I thought for a moment - that's weird. There's a RH (Frasor) on the mound. Why is there RH backup pinch-hitting for the LH catcher? But I thought, well, they do lots of strange things in Washington. Maybe this is just another.

After the game, the official scorer went crawling through the videotape, and was able to determine that Flores had actually come into the game as a defensive replacement for Schneider in the bottom of the eighth. Nobody noticed. If Frasor had retired the Nats in order, it's possible that no one would have ever known.

This stuff still happens, even today - despite all the videotape, and scorers, and media people, and reps from both teams. I remember a game during the World Series years. In the top of the ninth, Cito Gaston sent Alfredo Griffin out to play second, giving Alomar the rest of the night off. I made the lineup change on my game account. When the game was over, the STATS office asked me if I was sure - no one else had Griffin coming in. I checked with the official scorer. He hadn't noticed. Howie Starkman of the Jays hadn't noticed. No one in the press box had noticed. We went back, and looked at the tape - and there was nothing there to help us. The inning lasted about seven pitches, and there were no balls hit to an infielder.

There's simply no way, no way on earth that I, or any long-time Blue Jay watcher, could possibly look at Alfredo Griffin and think I was looking at Roberto Alomar. But it doesn't matter - officially, Roberto Alomar played all nine innings. I know better, of course - me and Alfredo and Robbie and Cito. We know what really happened...

Now you might want to consider the thousands and thousands and thousands of games before there was STATS and GameDay and VCRs and computers and 45 people in the press box writing every last little thing down - most of the game's history, in fact.