#25---CHA @ CLE, 3/31/2008

The opening day game between the White Sox and Indians was a fun game to watch and an interesting game to score.

Jim Thome’s two two-run homers kept the ChiSox in the game despite Cleveland’s seven run outburst in the second. They chipped away at CC Sabathia and the bullpen until drawing even in the seventh. Meanwhile, Nick Masset was brilliant in relief of Mark Buerhle, shutting the Indians out over 4 1/3, fanning four and allowing just two hits.

In the top of the eighth, Crede and Uribe led off with doubles, yet Crede did not score and was held as third at third. After an intentional walk to Nick Swisher, Orlando Cabrera grounded to short. Peralta’s throw home was high, but Kelly Shoppach was able to tag Crede (or at least that’s how home plate umpire Gerry Davis saw it). Then Jim Thome grounded to second; Asdrubal Cabrera flipped to Peralta for the out, and Orlando Cabrera wiped Peralta out, but also grabbed him around the leg, leading to Thome being called out for interference.

In the bottom of the eighth, Casey Blake’s two-out, two-strike three-run double gave the Indians a 10-7 lead, and Joe Borowski was able to hold the White Sox to one in the top of the ninth for a 10-8 victory.

Re: the scoring, you can see that I’ve reduced the use of letters like “L” or “B” to modify other codes. The idea of using lines under the location for groundballs, above for line drives, and arcs for flyballs comes from Paul Dickson in The Joy of Keeping Score. The groundball line can be seen on Martinez’ second inning single, the line drive on Peralta’s single in the next plate appearance. The final play of the game, marked `5, is a foul out to third, which I previously would have marked as “f5”.

There were a couple interesting things to score. One was Cleveland batting around in the second. During Peralta’s second at bat, Victor Martinez was thrown out attempting to advance to second on a wild pitch (it is not in fact a wild pitch, since he didn’t make it (he would have had he not fallen and injured himself on the way), but I mark it as “CSWP” so that we know it wasn’t a straight steal). This meant that Peralta’s box would have to be used again when he took his turn in the third inning. So I drew lines under and adjacent to the balls and strikes listed for the first at bat, and wrote “I” in the ball column and “E” in the strike column for inning ended, which is how I would mark such an event in a normal situation. Usually, though, you just move on to the box in the next inning. Here, I kept going in the smaller space this created, since it was already in the box for the next inning.

The aforementioned interference double play was marked by a subscript “INT” after the part of the play that was actually completed. I’ve used parentheses or brackets in the past (i.e. 64[INT]3), and that works too.

#24---TOR @ CLE, 3/13/2008

I still can’t help myself when it comes to scoring spring training games. Here is a 2008 example of this.

Since the game is a run of the mill exhibition, I’ll instead discuss the changes I made to my scoring this year. I decided that I had too many letters and numbers on the sheet, so I changed the way I score hits and modify some out codes. My old method of scoring hits was a three symbol code, something like “=8L”. The “=” indicates that it is a double, the “8” is for centerfield, and the “L” is for line drive. I decided to eliminate the letter describing the trajectory of the hit.

The decision I made was to use a small horizontal line over the location to indicate a line drive (see Zaun’s first inning single), a similar line under the location to indicate a groundball (see Barfield’s first inning single), and a curved line over the location to indicate a flyball (not seen on this scoresheet). Additionally, I decided that all outfield hits would be considered flyballs by default, and so a hit with an outfield location but no symbol is assumed to be a flyball (see Hafner’s first inning single). Any infield hit (not seen here either) is assumed to be a groundball.

I also used these to modify outs, so a 7 with a line over it is a line drive caught by the left fielder, which I used to mark as “L7” (again, there are none of these in this particular game). A squiggly line underneath the location indicates a bunt, which can be used for a hit or an out. A combination of the line drive and flyball symbols indicates a looper, which is my designation for a ball that straddles those two categories (I used to mark them “LP”). A mark like this “`” to the side of a play indicates that it was made in foul territory. “1-43”, in the case of Sandoval’s fifth inning at bat, indicates a ball that was deflected by the pitcher to the second baseman, who threw to first for the out (I used to mark this d143). I will point out some of those when they come up in later scoresheets--this game didn’t have many unusual plays to record.

I also changed, ever so slightly, my method for recording when a pitcher enters the game. I used to mark something like “Parrish 3-4”, which means that the first batter John Parrish faced was the #3 hitter in the lineup, and it happened in the fourth inning. As you can see, I still do that, sometimes. But now, if a pitcher enters at the start of an inning, I omit the lineup slot portion of the code (ex. “Laffey 5” means that Laffey took over on the mound at the start of the fifth inning). This just serves to reduce a small bit of unnecessary clutter.

#22---KC @ CLE, 5/16/2006

Somehow, I managed to miss #22, so here it is, batting out of turn. I also apologize for the horrific formatting on this page, which is a product of 1) Blogger's mangling of what I copy and paste from Word and 2) my lack of motivation to go back and correct it all (and my lack of HTML skills that make it a real chore).

This game is a good opportunity to show the new pitch coding system I began using in 2006. Rather than treating all strikes the same, when I scored a game from TV or the internet, I distinguished swinging, called, and foul strikes. Called strikes received a plain letter (ex. B), while fouls got a bracket on the left (ex. [B), and swinging strikes a brace (ex. {B).

Tracking swinging strikes can be eye-opening, because you will find that major league hitters just don’t swing and miss that often. I was aware of this before, of course, but tracking it brought it more to my attention. There were 16 swinging strikes in this game on zero or one strike counts.

This game also has a “d163” notation (Sizemore’s first inning AB) for a ball deflected by the pitcher to the shortstop, who threw to first for the out. I would now mark this (1-63).

The sixth inning flyball hit by Emil Brown is marked 9 with a subscript 8. This means that the right fielder made the catch in center field. This notation is useful for shifts; for example, 5(subscript 6)3 indicates a play in which the third baseman throws out a runner at first while positioned around where the shortstop should be.

The ninth inning walk drawn by Tony Graffanino is marked “aW” for automatic; in this case, Jason Davis was called for an automatic ball for illegally going to his mouth. The ball symbols can also be marked this way, but in this case only the fourth ball was automatic.

The game pitted former Royal Paul Byrd against former (just a season ago) Indian Scott Elarton. KC touched Byrd up for three runs in the first, but the Indians matched that in the third. Matt Stairs homer to leadoff the sixth gave the Royals a 4-3 lead, and the score held as Ambiroix Burgos was summoned to close the game out. Grady Sizemore shattered that chance with a leadoff homer. After fanning Jason Michaels, Burgos lost Jhonny Peralta, and Andy Sisco was summoned to get the platoon advantage on Travis Hafner. Pronk took a ball, then slugged a homer to center to win it for the Tribe, 6-4.

#23---WAS @ ATL, 4/12/2007

On April 12, the Nationals were hurting. They were off to a dreadful start, 1-8 having already lost the first two games of their series at Turner Field. Atlanta was almost a mirror image at 7-2.

A pitching matchup of Jason Bergmann against John Smoltz did not inspire a great deal of confidence. Nonetheless, Bergmann held the Braves hitless until Andruw Jones led off the fourth with a double. In the mean time, Smoltz shutout Washington through seven. In the eighth, the Nationals put two across to take the lead.

Meanwhile, Bergmann left after six. Jesus Colome and Jon Rauch were perfect in the seventh and the eighth, respectively, and the Braves still had just one hit when Chad Cordero entered in the ninth. Chipper Jones got a one out single, and Andruw worked a walk. Cordero struck out McCann looking, then managed to walk Jeff Francoeur of all people to load the bases. It was up to the haplessly performing Scott Thorman, but he struck out on eight pitches and Washington pitchers had combined to two-hit the Braves, 2-0.

#21---CLE @ MIN, 5/31/2005

With apologies to any friends or family of Juan Gonzalez, I thought this was one of the funniest games I had ever seen, solely for an event in the top of the first inning. Gonzalez had signed with the Indians during the off-season, and on team-controlled outlets like the radio and TV broadcasts, his return was much-anticipated. An injury during spring training was a blessing in disguise for the Indians, as it allowed Grady Sizemore to make the trip north with the team, and he was a big reason why the team shot into contention.

Nonetheless, after missing nearly two months, Juan Gone was set to make his debut in the Metrodome. A two-out single by Travis Hafner allowed him to bat in the first. After working the count to one and one, he hit a feeble grounder to third and jogged down the line as Michael Cuddyer threw him out. Even this was too much, though, as he pulled him hamstring. He would never play for the Indians again, or anyone else for that matter.

Watching this on TV, I had an actual LOL moment. I felt bad for Gonzalez of course, but I wasn’t particularly concerned about the effect on the team, and after the silly hype, it was hilarious.

From that point, the game wasn’t bad either. CC Sabathia went eight efficient innings, allowing three runs. Ben Broussard and Victor Martinez went deep for the Tribe to provide three of their four runs. Ron Gardenhire was ejected for arguing balls and strikes after the third pitch of Jody Gerut’s sixth inning at bat; this is the first sheet I’ve posted which shows off my symbol for a managerial ejection.

#20---BOS @ BAL, 4/4/2004

This was a Sunday night opener (I don’t recall if it was the opening game of the MLB schedule or not, with the recent trend of opening every other year or so with an overseas series, and am too lazy to check) in which the eventual world champion Red Sox fell to the Orioles 7-2. Pedro Martinez yielded three runs in the third, but was otherwise fine, working six and fanning five. Sidney Ponson made a lot of pitches (112) for allowing one run in 5 2/3. Mike Timlin was rocked in the seventh to put the outcome of this mundane opener out of doubt.

#19---PHI @ FLA, 9/24/2003

For much of 2003 and 2004 (and for 2008-) I used an Excel version of my usual scoresheet, which is on display here. Otherwise, the scoring remains very much the same, as it will through 2005.

Much more fun is examining the game through the scoresheet. This late-season game between the Phillies and the eventual world champion Marlins had serious playoff implications (Florida held a one game lead over Philly for the wildcard), and matched two young righties: Brett Myers and Josh Beckett. Florida got the better of it, touching up Myers for five runs and leading 6-0 entering the eighth inning. Through the first seven, Beckett had a two-hitter, with two walks and seven Ks. But Philadelphia was not conceding, as the first four batters in the inning knocked out hits and knocked Beckett from the box. Michael Tejera could not stop the bleeding, and Chad Fox was summoned with runners at first and second and still nobody out. A wild pitch put the tying run in scoring position, but Fox coaxed a sac fly and got another fly before walking Jimmy Rollins. He managed to strike Chase Utley out to wriggle out of the jam with the lead intact 6-5. Ugueth Urbina had a 1-2-3 ninth and Florida moved closer to the playoff berth.

#18---South Carolina v. Texas, 6/22/2002 (College World Series championship game)

I kept a scoresheet as I watched the national title game between the Gamecocks and the Longhorns. Texas jumped out with three tallies in the first inning and went on to win 12-6. Notable names later in the professional ranks (or for being as of yet unsuccessful first round picks in three cases) include Brian Buscher, Drew Meyer, and Landon Powell for South Carolina and Omar Quintanilla and Huston Street for Texas.

#17---NYA @ BOS, 9/1/2001

New York held a seven game lead on Boston as play opened on September 1, but the Red Sox hoped that Pedro Martinez could pitch them to a much-needed win. Pedro was excellent, going six shutout innings while scattering two hits and fanning six. Orlando Hernandez yielded a leadoff homer to Trot Nixon, but pitched through the next eight innings without further damage. Meanwhile, Chuck Knoblauch’s single off the green monster tied the game off Ugueth Urbina in the eighth, and Bernie Wiliams’ leadoff homer in the ninth increased the New York edge to eight in the standings.

Scoring wise, not much had changed, but the sheet did get a minor cosmetic upgrade with the lineup section being boxed in.

#16---TEX @ CLE, 4/16/2000

My scoresheet got some much-needed cosmetic work for 2000, with solid lines to separate the scoreboxes. This early season game between two defending division champions matched up Chuck Finley and Esteban Loaiza.

Finley went the distance on the hill for Cleveland, making 125 pitches and allowing a single run in the third inning. Loaiza looked to be even better though, holding the Indians to just one hit through the first seven innings, while striking out ten, including five in succession heading into the eighth. After getting David Justice to ground out, he allowed a hit to Travis Fryman and was pulled after 110 pitches for 1999 relief sensation Jeff Zimmerman. He worked out of the inning, leaving John Wetteland a save opportunity in the ninth.

Wetteland was in his final major league season, and it was one of his worst with a 120 ERA+. After retiring Roberto Alomar, Manny Ramirez hit his payoff pitch out of the park in center field to tie the game. Jim Thome did likewise on a 2-2 pitch, and the Indians had a dramatic 2-1 victory.