Or: And you thought the channel 9 commentary team was bad…

Inspired by a comment on an amusing post from David Barry saying “Dodgers-DBacks coverage just started. The host has an excruciatingly slow voice. I hope he’s not the main game caller….” I need to vent my frustration with the two idiots that I have to put up with whenever I watch baseball.

But first, I should probably answer Dave’s question:
- If you were listening to the Dodgers’ feed* you heard Vin Scully. He does speak painfully slowly but is beloved in LA and the entire country. He’s been calling Dodgers games since they were the Brooklyn Dodgers in the ’50s.

*baseball games all have two feeds, one home and one away. And even if you pay to be able to watch every feed in the country you are blacked out of the other feeds for teams playing against the team(s) that you are in the home territory of. So I have to watch 150 games a year on Fox Sports Net Arizona. It’s horrible.

- If you got the AZ feed then the two main guys were away on Saturday (Mark Grace was on a nationwide Fox game and Daron Sutton was calling a high school game I think) so you got 2 of the backups. Last night it was Matt Williams and Greg Schulte. Matt Williams is also very slow and boring so it might have been him you heard.

But what really grinds my gears is the “Gracie and Sutt show” that the Dbacks broadcast often becomes. It’s a bunch of catchphrase based humour, out-and-out lies, forced hokiness and ignorant comments. Examples:

- Catchphrases: “that’s big league!”, “let’s get some runs!”, “big John Rauch”, “Jonathon Broxton, the biggest man in the world”, “big Adam Dunn”, “give that man a contract” (when a fan catches a ball), “car” (when there’s a break in play), “gas”, “we need more signs”, “right down broadway”, “letting it travel like Andruw Jones”, “that play hasn’t worked since Edner Doubleday was a boy”,
- sponsorship: the Aflac trivia question, the Qwest high speed internet high speed pitch, the Brown and Brown Chevrolet key to the game, the Taco Bell free tacos
- claiming that a players nickname is ’shoes’ when it really isn’t
- the kidcaster
- When the trivia question is asked either Sutton just looks up the answer on his laptop and ruins it for everyone or they spend about 10 minutes pretending to receive text messages from former dbacks players with horrible guesses in them
- arguing about which mascots are the best*
- mark grace saying that tacos with arms freak him out
- mark grace saying he prefers soft tacos

*actually this is quite interesting. I like Mr Met: he’s just a man with a giant baseball for a head.

It’s like Roy and HG but they’re serious and it’s not very funny.

1. Sydney-born-and-bred Diamondbacks outfielder Travis Oeltjen has recently made his major league debut (the reasons: Conor Jackson has Valley Fever, Eric Byrnes broke his wrist, Justin Upton injured his right oblique and the team finally realised that Chris Young really stinks*).

*The baseball media would say that Chris Young is ’scuffling’, a usage of the word that I don’t think has made it to the dictionaries yet.

Oeltjen is doing incredibly well – going 12 for 29 with 3 home runs in his 6 games so far. Unfortunately his minor league record suggests that the power he’s showing is a fluke. His strengths are batting average and speed but hitting .300 in the Pacific Coast League isn’t that impressive and his stolen base percentage (about 70%) is low enough that he probably hurts the team in that department.

Still, despite his improbably large Guy Smiley style head making him look American, he certainly sounds Australian in his interviews so I hope that he can stick around for the rest of the season and maybe be the backup guy next year.

2. After believing that this financial crisis could only be good for me (I earn the same amount of money, prices go down) I have finally been hit where it hurts. Setanta UK folded and it appears that some of the Setanta USA contracts were somehow linked to this. I can no longer watch AFL or NRL on TV as I am used to doing. My AFL watching will now be done by MHz worldview (a weird international channel that also shows SABC news among other things) and ESPN360 via VPN to the university network.

The fact that ESPN has picked up the rights I suppose is good for getting USAians to watch Australian sport (the AFL grand final will be on ESPN2 this year, so be able to be seen by about 100 million people) but I doubt that coverage will be as reliable or extensive as I’m used to, even including the online stuff.

Things that are not acceptable in baseball
- Aggressive base running when you are winning by a lot.
- Bunting to break up a no-hitter.
- Admiring your home run as you trot around the bases.

Things that are acceptable in baseball
- Throwing the ball at the head of a player who does something on the list above.
- Managers abusing umpires for a long time from very close range.
- All-in brawls.

- Travis Blackley starts for Australia. Strikes out the first batter.
- I don’t have tv coverage yet as the Dominican Republic v Netherlands game is in the 11th inning. Netherlands have the winning run at third base with one out!
- Blackley gives up a single and a double, gets a guy stealing and strikes one out to get out of the inning.
- The Netherlands hit a ball through the first baseman to win the game!!
- And we’ve got pictures. It’s 0-0 in the middle of the second.
- The Cuban starter Chapman is a lefty throwing 99mph. The defence looks good too: second base got to a ground ball up the centre, flipped it to the shortstop who threw the runner out at first. Collins hit one out to the warning track in right field and that was the inning.
- Cuba scores one run on a couple of hits plus a sac bunt but Blackley prevents any further damage: 1-0 in the middle of the third.
- Beresford hits a nice double the other way but Chapman dominates the rest of the Australian hitters and is up to 5 strikeouts in 3 innings. He’s thrown 40 pitches out of the maximum 70 though so he might not last more than a few more innings. 1-0 in the bottom of the third.
- Despite giving up a double and a balk(!) Blackley gets a groundout and strikeout to strand the runner at third. Still 1-0.
- Hughes doubles, a balk(!!) from Chapman and then after a few outs Risinger gets an RBI single! 1-1.
- Chapman gets a bit rattled with runners on base. Throws a wild pitch, Huber fouls off a few pitches. The game really slows down but the Cubans get the strikeout. 1-1 bottom of the fourth.
- Blackley has another good inning, only besmirched by a Beresford error at second base. 1-1 middle of the fifth.
- “accounts of this game may not be disseminated without the express written consent of the world baseball classic”. Well I’m breaking this rule.
- The new pitcher for Cuba throws a scoreless inning. Blackley hits the pitch limit and has to leave. 5 2/3 innings, 5 hits, 1 run. Great outing. In comes Damian Moss. Still 1-1.
- Moss gives up a homer to Cespedes! Gets the next out so it’s 2-1 to the bad guys in the middle of the 6th.
- A walk, a balk(!!!) and a sacrifice fly gets Hughes to 3rd base. Cuba brings in their closer Lazo. Pretty early move.
- Justin Huber singles to right field to bring in the runner. 2-2.
- Beresford up with the bases loaded and two outs! The Cubans are looking a little sloppy. And he gets a hit down the left field line. Two runners score! Lazo replaced! 4-2.
- Damian Moss gives up a two-out walk and a double that scores one. Then he gets the third out: 4-3. I don’t know too much about the Australia bullpen but I think we need some more runs….
- Cuba is really slowing this game down. A lot of visits to the mound. No one ever talks about the need to speed up baseball but this really is unnecessary.
- OH NO!! Rich Thompson was looking good with his curveball but some fat Cuban just hit a 2 run homer to take the lead. Score is 5-4 in the middle of the 8th.
- A few scoreless innings and we go to the bottom of the ninth. Here it is: 3 outs. Need a run or two.
- Oeltjen strikes out.
- Hughes grounds out to short. One more out.
- Snelling grounds out to second. Game over.

Australia plays Mexico tomorrow. Tough loss to bounce back from but who knows. I don’t know if I’ll be liveblogging but feel free to check out gameday on mlb.com

- Game coming from Mexico city. It’s at 10000 ft elevation with short corner outfield fences so we should see some action.
- Australia scored 3 in the first inning with an Oeltjen single and home runs from Hughes and Snelling. The Mexican starter Oliver Perez (who is getting $12 million a year from the Mets) struggled.
- Craig Anderson got the start for Australia. As I predicted earlier he wasn’t fooling anyone, giving up 5 runs in the first inning.
- Anderson struggled further, leaving in the second after giving up 6 runs. But the relief crew of Mildren, Hendriks, Moss and Thompson were somewhere between good and lucky holding the Mexicans to 7 runs through 7 innings.
- Meanwhile the Australian bats kept talking and the Mexican pitching and fielding got sloppy. Oeltjen, Snelling, Harmon all had some good numbers.
- Currently it’s Australia 14, Mexico 7 in the top of the 8th. The Mexican body language is bad and Australia looks like moving on to play Cuba tomorrow Tuesday!
- Risinger hits a three run homer to take the score to 17 to 7. If we can hold the Mexican team scoreless in the bottom of the 8th then the game ends by the mercy rule.
- Rich Thompson pitching. Gets the ground out from Amezaga. Hairston strikes out looking against a nice curveball. Gives up a hit to Adrian Gonzalez – 2B Beresford can’t get the glove down quick enough on the artificial turf infield. Cantu strikes out swinging at the high heat.
- There it is. Early termination! Australia wins 17-7. Come back tomorrow Tuesday for Australia v Cuba.

- Who in Peoria is starting an “Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi” chant?
- I thought Australia was meant to be all pitching, no hitting. Well, they’re currently up 10-9 in the 6th inning against the Seattle Mariners.
- I like the look of Risinger, Huber and Roneberg with the bat. Of course it’s baseball so seeing someone hit 4 times tells you next to nothing about whether they are any good or not…
- The Australian fielding looks a bit dodgy – there were a couple of popups taken by the shortstop that I might have liked the outfielders to catch.
- The Australian uniform looks like the Oakland A’s.
- Craig Anderson doesn’t look like a very good pitcher. He just throws up these weird left hand floating things.
- Ryan Rowland-Smith (the turncoat who would rather earn money than pitch for Australia) was in the broadcast booth for a while. He at one point was about to explain the difference between rugby league and rugby union – one of my favourite topics of conversation – before the broadcasters cut him off.
- Adam Bright (the son of Ray Bright, really) faced one hitter in the 9th inning and gave up a double. Australia is defending an 11-9 lead. It would be more exciting if the Mariner’s cared about winning but still – Go Australia!
- Crawford gets the last three outs and that’s a win for Australia. Good warmup.

I went down to Tucson Electric Park with my housemate Nate yesterday to watch a Spring Training game between the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Texas Rangers. It was a beautiful sunny day in a nice little ballpark. It was a spring training game so there isn’t too much I want to say about it (half the players were nobodies who won’t even be on the dbacks major league roster). But much more excitingly for me, I also managed to get a look at a couple of Australian players from the dBacks farm system before they left to join the World Baseball Classic team.

Travis Blackley, the Australian left handed pitcher, got the start and pitched two innings, giving up 3 hits and 1 run. He looked pretty good, pitching inside to righties with decent velocity. Travis is a chance for one of the final spots in the Arizona bullpen this year but is more likely to be a starter in AAA.

Trent Oeltjen, the other Australian, played left field and went 1 for 3 with a walk. He’s a non-roster invitee for Dbacks spring training and will be hoping to have another good year in the minors.

The Australian world baseball classic team has been announced. Three of our best pitchers didn’t make it: Balfour, Rowland-Smith and Nakamura all decided to concentrate on making their pro teams. Ryan Rowland-Smith has a good quote when asked if there was pressure from back home to play: “In Australia? They couldn’t care less”. Well if you’re reading Ryan – I care.

The team is not entirely terrible – it’s a good minor league combination. But we’ll have to be pretty lucky to beat Mexico. The lineup could look something like

C Joel Naughton
1B Michael Collins
2B Luke Hughes
SS Brad Harman
3B Stefan Welch
LF Justin Huber
CF Chris Snelling
RF Trent Oeltjen
DH Ben Risinger

Starters:
Drew Naylor
Travis Blackley
Damian Moss

Closer:
Rich Thompson

In our warmups so far we beat Taiwan 6 games to 2 in Australia and lost two games to Japan in Japan. The team is in Peoria (a suburb of Phoenix) for the next 5 days or so training and playing warmup games against the Mariners, Brewers and White Sox. Then it’s the real thing against Mexico in Mexico City on Sunday the 8th.

The preliminary Australian team for the world baseball classic is here.

There’s a good review of the Australian team here. It looks like we’ve got AA/AAA level players plus major league first base Huber and pitchers Rowland-Smith & Balfour.

Rowland Smith will hopefully start one game. See article here

Balfour wants to be the closer apparently but I’d rather him be used as a relief ace – bring him in in relief at any time the starter’s out and we’re tied, 1 run behind or 1 run ahead.

You can see the schedule here. It’s double elimination which basically means that as long as we beat South Africa (should be easy enough) we go into a one game playoff with either Cuba or Mexico to reach the second round. That’s a tough game but you never know.

Grant Balfour, everybody’s favourite Australian middle reliever playing major league baseball, just threw a scoreless 8th inning for the Tampa Bay Rays against the Chicago White Sox in game 4 of the American League Division Series.

Being a National League purist who hates the designated hitter I haven’t seen much of Grant’s season but with an ERA of 1.54 he’s doing pretty well and his unfancied team is looking pretty, pretty good.

But the real fun for me is waiting for the announcers to comment on his Australianiaty:

Announcer: I talked to Grant yesterday about growing up in Australia. He said he played rugby which explains why he’s so crazy. You’ve got to be a tough man to play that game.

p.s. From the list of Australian major league baseball players, Peter Moylan has one of the better trivia sections I’ve ever seen on wikipedia.

The baseball postseason has begun. My beloved Arizona Diamondbacks are nowhere to be seen despite leading the awful National League West for most of the season. They had a great start but then slowly bled the lead away until the LA Dodgers acquired Manny Ramirez and started winning games at the end of the season to take the division.

The last few weeks of the baseball season are very interesting. Throughout most of the 162 game season, with teams playing about 6 games a week, it really doesn’t matter whether you win today or tomorrow. The best record in the major leagues (out of 30 teams) this year was the LA Angels who won 100 games and lost 62. So you have your rotation of 5 starting pitchers, give people a day off whenever they need it, and try to come up with a way to win 3/5 of your games.

But in the last week it suddenly becomes real. You’re 1 game behind with 5 to play and you say to your best pitcher: “You’ll pitch on short rest and we need you to pitch the whole game.” CC Sabathia pitched 3 games in 9 days for the Brewers down the stretch and did an amazing job.

But today Sabathia gave up 5 runs in less than 4 innings so maybe it takes a toll.

In many ways baseball is the opposite of cricket. Games are worth much less because they’re so random and so numerous. Another duality is the worth of an out. In test match cricket a top 6 batsman who’s in double figures should be expected to contribute another 50 runs so should only take a single if he’s 98% certain of making his ground. In the White Sox – Twins game the other day I saw a runner tag up at third and head for home on a fairly shallow fly ball (that was the second out) to centre field. He was thrown out at home ending the innings. But it wasn’t a bad play: the next guy up would have had a maybe 1/3 chance of scoring the runner plus a smaller chance of scoring himself. So in that circumstance a 50% possibility of a run is worth taking.

I watched a fair bit of the AFL finals series. It was surprising to see the Hawks get up without Buddy kicking 10 goals but good on them.

I’ll watch the NRL grand final this weekend. I don’t know who to support though. It’s hard to hate a suburban Sydney team these days but I still dislike Manly. And I certainly dislike the Storm. I worry about rugby league: it was my childhood brand of football and from this far away it just doesn’t seem like it is a viable professional sport.

But the sporting question that takes up most of my thoughts is the composition of the Australian test team to take on India. I don’t believe that Krejza is worthy of his spot on the team. Perusal of David Barry’s facebook status updates will verify that I thought this before he bowled 20 overs and took 0/123 this week. I’d play Casson straight off the plane or McGain straight out of the physio room. But if neither of them turn up I wouldn’t pick four quicks. The last time Australia played four quicks Tait barely got a bowl and Ricky got into over rate trouble. I’d recognise that Clarke/Katich will do a fair bit of bowling and pick Watson as the all rounder with Haddin at 8 and just the three specialist bowlers. But I’m not at all confident that that’s the right thing to do….

I have less trouble picking the India team. After watching some of the India-Sri Lanka series I would drop Dravid and Ganguly and pick whichever of these talented young batsmen the selectors like: Sharma and Kohli will have got some confidence from their last innings so bring ‘em in.