First Pitch Strikes

First pitch strikes is a stat kept in baseball. I’ll try to look it up for the Braves (I don’t see it anywhere). I certainly agree that getting the first pitch strike, and staying ahead in the count, has proven to be in the pitcher’s advantage.

57% MLB first pitches are strikes

.068 MLB batting average on first pitch strikes

92.8% of all first pitch strikes are outs (or strike one)

66.8% of all strikeouts begin with a first pitch strike

74.3% of all walks begin with a first pitch ball.

You’ll be happy to know: the Braves are the only MLB team who haven’t had a sacrifice bunt all year. You’ve got to like their manager for that. The Braves have the number one offense in baseball. Yesterday they picked up two new pitchers from other teams. Fried and Wright and Chavez and Matzek will be back soon. That’s replacing over half the pitching staff. They might’ve made more moves today. It’s hard to keep up.

A friend won the right to buy Masters tickets in the annual lottery yesterday. I did not. Neither did my adventurous coworker Rachel, who entered the lottery for the first time this year. Rachel is single and sits next to bachelor Ben, a fun sports nut who just happened to also win yesterday’s Masters lottery. We’d like to set up Rachel with Ben (or any other eligible bachelor). Rachel is cheerful, fun, pleasant, likes baseball and dogs and dotes on her young niece and nephew.

So at lunch today Angie told Ben that Rachel had lost out in the Masters lottery, in an effort to get Ben to take Rachel to the Masters. Instead Ben replied “Better luck next time – you’ve got to keep trying!”. Angie should’ve said “that’s what we were doing!”

One year back when I was single and not dating too much I kept track in my scrapbook calendar of how many movies I watched all year – over 365.

Busyness – I am considering taking the year off from small group, since I’ll be working such long hours the rest of the year.

Monday: left work shortly after five and headed to our men’s Bible Study at Dave R’s house. I was first to arrive so we had a nice chat. Tommy led on Psalm 86. Rob from Coke and my other friend Reid filled out the group. Rob mentioned something that happened after I left the week before. I hadn’t left early. When the study ended Tommy left but the rest of us kept chatting. We moved out to the parking lot and talked past 10:15. Kinda late for me.

Up early this morning to run three miles at the gym. Donuts in the office today. Three miles forward, four donuts back.

I intend to remaining active, hopefully 6 or 7 days a week, for the rest of my life. I read a book that said the same thing. C walks Winnie most every day and is okay shape, but doesn’t work out as much as me. When I retire hopefully I will be even more active (and get more sleep). More on this…

Guy from Hot Stove retired and really upped his walking / running – and lost a bunch of weight. I need to ask him if he’s keeping it up.

When coworker Randy retired he took to working out, lifting weights and running road races. Lost a bunch of weight to get down to his high school graduation weight.

My new friend Tommy retired on June 1, but is having trouble carving out time to do the things he wants. Everyone is hitting him up for stuff. He still works a little part time. He’s not too much over his high school weight of 150 pounds.

BABE RUTH [SABR Bio] hit home runs 712, 713, and 714 while playing for the Boston Braves on 25-May-1935 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. His final career G was in Philadelphia six days later. The batter whose style Ruth most admired was Joe Jackson. Ruth got advice from Jackson when he began playing every day. Ruth had 123 total stolen bases in his career, but no attempts or steals in his first four seasons. He stole home ten times.