Former Guardian, Rangers, DBack and Angels outfielder Kole Calhoun spoke up about Alex Pretti’s killing, ICE deployment in Minnesota, treatment of immigrants and the political division in the country over multiple Instagram stories. Very eloquently spoke. Worth a read.

The Los Angeles Dodgers social media account today went out of their way to officially welcome/promote the California Post, a brand new sister outlet of Rupert Murdoch's conservative tabloid, the New York Post.

As we can not link directly to the social media here, I've shared the ongoing discussion in r/Dodgers.

This is really tough to square considering how much money Bezos is worth... The Nats also have a new GM and manager. Might be good for the beat writers to — I don't know — interact with them?

Offseason post??? :-)

They made it to game 7 of the ALCS!!

Inspired by u/StrategyTop7612's post about crazy baseball stats, and the fact that there's a lot of snow on the ground and not much else to do.

One of the quirks of Derek Jeter's HOF career is that he hit only one grand slam: at home against the Cubs on June 18, 2005.

At first thought, this might not seem that unusual. After all, Jeter wasn't much of a home run hitter. However, considering how many chances to hit grand slams, it's a statistical anomaly that he only had one.

Jeter is one of six players to have at least 300 plate appearances with the bases loaded. The others hit far more grand slams than Jeter:

Expanding the sample further, 38 players had at least 250 bases-loaded plate appearances, and all of them hit at least three grand slams. Jeter is a massive outlier in that group.

Here's the bottom ten of players in that sample in terms of PA/HR and percentage of plate appearances with a grand slam:

While Jeter wasn't known for his home run hitting, as noted earlier, he was still far less productive with the bases loaded than any other hitter in this sample.

Jeter had 12,294 plate appearances and hit 259 home runs without the bases loaded. That means he hit one home run every 47.47 plate appearances and homered 2.11% of the time. Only Julio Franco (57.39 PA/HR, 1.74% HR rate) and Enos Slaughter (53.20 PA/HR, 1.88% HR rate) had worse numbers without the bases loaded.

If you apply those stats to his PAs with the bases loaded, Jeter should've had between six and seven career grand slams. However, he hit only one, for a grand slam differential of -5.49, the second-worst among players with at least 250 bases-loaded PAs.

Among players in that sample, here's the ten biggest grand slam overachievers:

And the ten biggest underachievers:

Here's some other grand slam fun facts:

• Five players had more than 200 bases-loaded plate appearances without a grand slam: Luke Appling (237 PAs), Ossie Bluege (227), Nellie Fox (207), Sam Rice (204), and Ozzie Smith (202). However, none of them were home run hitters; they hit only 185 career homers between them.
• Seven more had at least 200 bases-loaded PAs and hit only one grand slam (including Pete Rose). Only three began their careers after 1980: Jeter, Jason Kendall (203), and Royce Clayton (206).
• The record for most career home runs with only one grand slam is held by Prince Fielder, who hit 319 total home runs. He homered once every 21 PAs without the bases loaded, so he would've been expected to hit seven grand slams in his 146 bases-loaded PAs.
• Jeter is one of four players with at least 250 homers and one grand slam; the other two are Ian Kinsler (257 PAs; 5.34 expected grand slams) and John Mayberry Sr. (114 PAs; 4.59 expected grand slams).
• The record for most career home runs without a grand slam is held by Glenn Davis, who hit 190 career home runs, but none in his 76 bases-loaded PAs (he would've been expected to hit 3.51 grand slams).
• On the other side of the coin, John Milner is one of the biggest grand slam overachievers I found. In 79 bases-loaded PAs, he hit 10 grand slams, meaning he homered in 12.6% of his bases-loaded PAs, and homered once every 7.9 bases-loaded PAs. That's a dramatic outlier from the rest of his career. In his other 3,906 PAs, he homered once every 32.28 PAs, meaning that he would've been expected to hit only 2.44 grand slams.

Finally, an oft-cited fun fact is that Don Mattingly hit six grand slams in 1987, and never hit another.

He hit those six grand slams in 21 bases-loaded plate appearances. Before and after 1987, he had 127 bases-loaded PAs, meaning that he would've been expected to hit three and four grand slams in that stretch.

Came across this moment on an Angels-Red Sox Monday Night Baseball broadcast. As Fenway anxiously awaited Yaz' 400th HR, Ueck got the pre-game interview and took the hit. (Knowing him, the gag was probably his idea.)