Diamond Reflections

Back when TigerBlog was in the newspaper business, he worked with a man named Rick Freeman, who, in addition to being a Navy veteran, a scholar, a baseball coach and a sportswriter is also one of the absolute nicest people you'd ever want to meet.

For many, many years Rick wrote a Sunday baseball column, and the name of it was "Diamond Reflections." TigerBlog is borrowing that today as he writes about three separate baseball-related subjects, two of which relate to Princeton:

* Do you know how many active Major League Baseball players have at least 2,000 career hits? 

The answer is not a lot. Actually, it's six. That's it. 

The idea that a pitcher will reach 300 wins in these days of pitch counts and limited innings is pretty much out the window. If anything, a relief pitcher has as good a chance of getting to 300 wins as a starter, and maybe even better.

But 3,000 hits? Maybe it's because of how many at-bats now end in either home runs or strikeouts, but players don't seem to be piling up the number of hits that they used to. 

There are 33 players all-time who have reached 3,000 hits, and only 10 of them got their 3,000th hit this century. Of those 10, two — Cal Ripken Jr. and Rickey Henderson — did so in 2000 and 2001.

There were also eight who reached 3,000 between the start of the Major Leagues and 1970, when Willie Mays became only the ninth to do so. That means there were 15 total between 1970 and 2000. What was it about that era? It had to be the way the game was played. 

TigerBlog remembers a lot of singles, doubles and triples when he watched baseball as a kid. He also remembers that there weren't a lot of strikeouts. 

Still, it's a bit surprising that only six have 2,000 hits. Only one active player, Miguel Cabrerra, has at least 3,000. The other five with at least 2,000: Joey Votto, Nelson Cruz, Elvis Andrus, Freddie Freeman and Andrew McCutcheon.

Oh, and 300 wins? There are 24 pitchers who reached that milestone. Only four of them — Randy Johnson, Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and Roger Clemens — have done so since 1990. That's 33 years ago.

* Congratulations go out to Alex Jurczynski on being named the head baseball coach at Siena. Jurczynski was most recently part of Scott Bradley's staff at Princeton for the last six seasons.

Jurczynski takes over a team that went 14-41 a year ago. Of course, he can tell you all about turning a team around in a short time, and he and Bradley led the Tigers from a 7-33 season in 2022 to a .500 record this year and a spot in the final round of the Ivy League baseball tournament. 

Jurczynski's resume has a little bit of everything on it. 

Division I assistant at Princeton? Check. Division III assistant at SUNY-Oswego, which happens to be his alma mater? Check. Junior college head coach (at Hudson Valley Community College)? Check.

He grew up not far from the Siena campus, which is just outside of Albany. The Saints compete in the MAAC, which is a really, really good baseball conference. Like Bradley, Jurczynski was also a catcher, and that turned out just fine at Princeton.

Jurczynski is a young head coach at 32 years old. If he wants to break the Siena record for longest baseball head coaching tenure, then he'll be coaching there until he's 86, since Tony Rossi led the Saints for 54 years before stepping aside midway through this past season.

Good luck to Alex, who has been a tremendous part of Tiger Baseball and, for that matter, Princeton Athletics as a whole. 

* Scott Bandura, drafted earlier this month in the seventh round by the San Francisco Giants, signed a pro contract earlier this week. Where will he start his Minor League career? TB isn't quite sure yet.

By signing, Bandura obviously cannot play his senior season with Princeton. Like quite a few others before him, Bandura will be finishing school, coming back to campus this fall after his first pro summer. As you recall, former Tiger Chris Young did that, doing the first semester of his senior year on campus and then writing his senior thesis on buses while he was in the Minors. 

TigerBlog as you know hates giving drafts grades immediately after they happen, but he did find one pretty solid analysis of the Giants' picks. They give Bandura a reasonable shot to make the Majors and referred to him as "the best pure hitter to come out of the Ivy League in years."