Wrapping Up The Weekend

Good morning, Fackers. I hope your weekend was more exciting than the one that the Yankees and Red Sox had on the field.

It feels like there is almost always at least one tightly contested game between the Yanks and Sox in every series they play. In the first series of the season, each of the games were decided by two runs. Even last year, when every time the two teams met, except for one, the result was a sweep, there was usually at least one game that was engaging. This weekend, the losing team scored three runs each time out while the winners plated nine or more. Games decided by six or more runs are rarely exciting and these were no exception.

Watching your guys pile it on in a blowout win can be enjoyable, but it's not all that interesting to see two teams playing out the string when the game has basically already been decided. There are mop-up guys on the mound and replacements in the field. On Saturday, there was even a replacement fielder doing the mop-up work. Friday's game was over in the 6th inning, Saturday's dragged out by a rain delay and decided by the seventh and you could have turned off last night's in the third and been 95% certain of who was going to win, at least according to WPA.

I don't want this to come across as whiny or anything; that's what we sign up for as baseball fans. You take the exciting along with the boring. One of the many things that makes the sport rewarding to follow is that it's rare that it lives up to its billing. A great game could break out between teams that have no natural rivalry and something unforgettable could go down when you least expect it. And that's exactly what happened yesterday in front of 12,228 fans in Oakland.

There have been 19 perfect games in the history of baseball, and now one of them belongs to Dallas Braden. If it wasn't for Braden's spat with A-Rod, his performance against the Rays would have probably been an even better story. His mother died of melanoma when he was a senior in high school and it would be hard to pick a more symbolically significant day for him to pitch the game of his life. It happened for him in front of his hometown fans not far from where he grew up and his grandmother, who he is very close with, was in attendance (although she, unlike A-Rod, took the low road).

More relevant to the baseball side of the story, as Joe Posnanski pointed out yesterday, Braden was never really a prospect and has the type of velocity and skills that make him seem like an unlikely candidate to be wearing a Major League uniform, let alone go 27 up and 27 down against the team with the best record in baseball. On a certain level, you have to respect that.

Interestingly, as Kevin Kaduk pointed out, the third baseman on the Rays broke an unwritten rule along the way. With no one out in the 5th inning, Evan Longoria attempted to lay a drag bunt down and was lustily booed as a result. At Big League Stew just this week, Jason Turnbow named trying to bunt for a hit when the pitcher has a no hitter of a perfect game going as one of the 10 unwritten rules you might not know about. Being aware of the value Braden places on that kind of stuff, perhaps Longoria and manager Joe Maddon thought they could get under his skin by squaring up and trying to get on base on the cheap. The bunt rolled foul and Longoria ended up striking out, so if Braden did take offense to the attempt, unlike the A-Rod situation, he didn't let it bother him too much.

It was because of that pointless dust up with Rodriguez that my first reaction to hearing that Braden had pulled off a perfecto was one of disgust. Really? That fucking guy? Since then, though, I've come around on it. Good for him. Hopefully people will stop asking him about crossing the pitcher's mound and maybe this will mellow him out enough to not do something stupid the next time the Yankees play the A's. I'm with Craig, if Braden's accomplishment yesterday means that we can leave the drama with A-Rod behind, then we should all be happy about it.

Everyone Has An Opinion About A-Rod & Dallas Braden

Good morning, Fackers. You'd think that a game with a triple play would be the enduring topic of conversation stemming from the game yesterday afternoon, but alas it is not.

By now you've probably seen or read about what happened between Alex Rodriguez and Dallas Braden just before Robinson Cano grounded into an inning ending double play in the top of the 6th inning yesterday, but if not, here is Chad Jennings' breakdown (with audio) and the most complete video explanation I could find:

Let's see what people are saying about it:

A-Rod:

I thought it was pretty funny, actually.

Braden:

The guy was tasting himself too long to apologize.

Michael Duca (author of a book on baseball's unwritten rules):

It was very common (to observe the rule) in the '40s, '50s and '60s. Bob Gibson was very well versed in protecting what he called his office. He told people to say the ... out of my office. Had that been Gibson on the mound, A-Rod would have picked himself off the grass to get back to first. He would have decked him. No question about it.

#2: Alex Rodriguez is one of two types of player: A guy who’s profoundly ignorant of much of the Code, or a guy who actively disdains it.

Bill James:

I've never heard of such a rule. To be honest, people are always coming up with unwritten rules that you're not supposed to do something that they don't happen to like, but usually, it's some old manager who is upset about a kid bunting to break up a no-hitter or something. THAT'S annoying, but when it's a fairly anonymous player springing an unwritten rule on a 34-year-old Hall of Famer who has been on the All-Star team since Dallas Braden was in the 6th grade. . .well, what can you say?

Craig Calcaterra:

I've never heard of the unwritten rule about not walking on the mound, but I want to think less of A-Rod for it all the same if that makes any sense. Mostly I just want someone to recut the video of Braden jawing at Rodriguez with the audio from the "get off my f------ obstacle" scene from "Full Metal Jacket" because that would be cool.

Rob Neyer:

No, the Yankees won't be intimidated by Dallas Braden or anyone else. They're too good, too experienced, too confident. But Braden wasn't yelling at the Yankees. Not really. He was yelling at himself, and at his teammates. Players have won MVP Awards for such things.

Kevin Kaduk:

On one hand, it's nice for A's fans to see that one of their young guns won't cede any ground or be intimidated by one of the best players on the defending world champs. I'm also always up for any time a baseball player breaks cliche-mode and goes off the script.

But on the other, there's something to be said for knowing your spot in the game and earning enough capital to call out a perennial All-Star over something so petty.

Keith Hernandez:

“I don’t know if there is an unwritten rule, but I would never do that.”

SoSHially Unacceptable (commenter at BBTF):

Not having heard of this rule either, I called my buddy who pitched a couple years in the minors. I asked him what he would have done in this situation, and he basically said he would have reacted the same way as Braden. And, he added, he wouldn't have thought any player in the majors would even consider running across the mound, knowing how pitchers would react.

And for what it's worth, he's a big Yankee fan.

Dan Reiner from Bronx Baseball Daily:

Now, being a pitcher myself, I’d understand if Braden got slightly upset. But for him to scream at Alex and proceed to throw a Carlos Zambrano-like tantrum in the dugout is a little much in my opinion.

Lisa from Subway Squawkers:

Dude's played in a grand total of 65 MLB games, and all of a sudden, he's the enforcer of all the unwritten rules of baseball? Please.

Denton from Surviving Grady:

Add it to the list of lowlights for A-Rod. He will never get it. The two teams don't face each other again until July, but pitchers seem to remember these things.

In regards to the last one, Braden is 6' 1", 190 and throws 85 MPH. It would likely not be in his best interest to retaliate.

I think this boils down to two points. A-Rod probably shouldn't have run over the mound. It probably takes less effort just to jog around it. There is a disembodied voice in the clip above (Barry Larkin?) that suggests there's some sort of gamesmanship involved on A-Rod's behalf, but I tend to doubt that. I think it was just a thoughtless mistake. If he was trying to intimidate him, I doubt he would have just played dumb afterwards. The dismissive hand waive in the clip above says it all.

The other half is that Braden threw a complete temper tantrum over this, kicking stuff on the way back to the dugout after already having said his piece at A-Rod. We get it buddy, you feel disrespected. But it was CC Sabathia's mound for the other halves of the innings too. It's a purely symbolic thing and it's your problem if you let yourself get all worked up about it.

If that was A-Rod's goal, he certainly succeeded, but the end result was Cano's double play ball, so it backfired in the grand scheme of things. Let's just hope this is a dead issue. I don't want there to be an injuries or suspensions that result from this the next time the teams meet in July.