Check out this fantastic photo (dated 1940) of a teenage Roy Campanella (on the left) as a member of the Criollos de Caguas ballclub in the Puerto Rican Baseball League. It was shared on twitter by Jorge Colon-Delgado. He shares a bunch of great vintage pics that are worth taking a look at; including a 1954 photo of Don Zimmer when he played in Puerto Rico that you can see here. Jorge also has some fantastic mics of Willie Mays, Hank Aaron and Josh Gibson.
Below are more links to check out:
- Uhy-oh! Via Mark Saxon at ESPN, "Dodgers' Adrian Gonzalez, Yasiel Puig leave game vs. Reds."
"I felt it a little more than when I hurt it in Oakland," Puig said in Spanish. "... It wasn't that severe that time. Now, God willing, this one isn't that severe, either."
- Ken Gurnick at MLB.com adds that, "Adrian bruises knee, says he'll play Friday." Hopefully, this is a crisis averted.
"It's good," Gonzalez said. "It started to swell a little bit and we didn't want it to swell too much. Take today off and be able to play [Friday] rather than play the rest of the game not feeling good."
- Via Pedro Moura at the OC Register, "Reds star Joey Votto has advice for struggling young Dodgers slugger Joc Pederson."
Votto has heard the complaints about Pederson’s batting average. Early in his career, he cared only about his home runs and his average. Now, he cares not, preferring to focus on the direction and trajectory of the balls he puts into play, and how much he’s striking out and walking. Those are the elements he can control. He cannot fully control his average, which sunk to .255 a year ago before returning to MVP-like levels this season. And neither can Pederson.
“He’s doing so many other valuable things,” Votto said. “He plays center field, he hits for power, he gets on base, and you can’t ignore that. Nobody wants to see a low batting average, because it doesn’t reflect well, but you can’t deny the value of what he’s doing.
- Via Roger Schlueter at MLB.com, "Stats of the Day: Greinke on an historic pace."
In his 26th appearance of the year, Greinke lowered his ERA to 1.61. Since 1968, the five-lowest season-ending ERAs were Bob Gibson's 1.12 in 1968, Dwight Gooden's 1.53 in '85, Greg Maddux's 1.56 in '94, Luis Tiant's 1.60 in '68 and Maddux's 1.63 in '95.
- Alberto Callaspo has now officially been released by the Dodgers, via Eric Stephen of True Blue LA.
- This is well worth your read. Via Jeff Sullivan at Just a Bit Outside, "The Superficially Underachieving Dodger Offense."
The way I figure, it comes to four things. Very slightly, the Dodgers have underachieved with men on base. They've been a bad baserunning team. They've very infrequently reached on errors. And then some of this is probably just simple bad luck. Combine those and I imagine you can account for the missing half-run a game. You at least get close. That's why the Dodgers haven't scored as many runs as you'd think.
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