FJM is a closed forum, but we welcome reader feedback. We're especially interested in corrections of our work, and research (usually number-crunching) that we may not be able to do ourselves. Please check the comments section as well, where we often post readers' opinions, and, less frequently, announce that we were wrong about something.
You can e-mail dak,Ken Tremendous,Junior,Matthew Murbles, or Coach individually.
We Need the Bad Starting Pitcher Named Zambrano. Why Don't We Just Trade 'Em That Centerfielder, What's His Name? Kazmir?
Steve Phillips on Baseball Tonight: The Red Sox are closing in on a deal with the Padres with third baseman George Kottaras coming back (for David Wells). George Kottaras (a man with his own Wikipedia page!) has played all but three games at catcher this year. The other three were at DH.
EDIT: Trading Kazmir for Zambrano was not a Phillips move, of course. That was Jim Duquette. But would it have surprised you to see Phillips do something like that?
Of course, this is coming from a man who supports a team whose front office traded Mike Gonzalez and Freddy Sanchez for Jeff Suppan.
BETTER EDIT: This is extremely confusing. Let's just forget I wrote that headline. The new title post should read: "Minor Factual Error on Baseball Tonight Noticed, Then Needlessly Blogged About."
WILL THIS BE THE FINAL EDIT? EDIT: Reader Ryan correctly takes me to task:
The Red Sox didn’t trade Mike Gonzalez and Freddy Sanchez for Jeff Suppan. Mike Gonzalez was originally part of the Scott Sauerbeck deal, but when Pittsburgh discovered an injury to Brandon Lyon (one of two players they were getting back in the deal, along with Anastacio Martinez,) they accused the Red Sox of foul play, and so Boston, as a show of good faith, took Brandon Lyon (and Anastacio Martinez) back and returned Mike Gonzalez. When all was said and done it was essentially a Sanchez-for-Suppan-and-Sauerbeck deal. Still not a good deal, but not as terrible as people would have you believe.
When Sauerbeck was traded he did an interview with the Boston media and referred to himself cockily as a "curveball-flipping freak." I remember reading that and thinking, "This is not going to go well."
Today, I am happy to say I was wrong. Congratulations, Scotty Sauerbeck, on your induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame!
Mike: (York, Pa): Hey joe, how did you enjoy the Little League World Series? I know I enjoyed listening to you. Have fun.
Joe Morgan: I thought it was great.
Ken Tremendous: Cool.
It was a fun event.
KT: Good. Glad you had fun.
It was the first time that I had ever been there.
KT: Huh.
The excitement and pagentry was great.
KT: So, you liked it.
I thought it was great.
KT: Right.
I hated to see one team lose...
KT: I'm bored.
... but it was great for them to get there.
KT: I am asleep.
Nick Chicago: So is Jermaine Dye finally the top canidate for AL MVP? .326-39-106 are all in the top 5 and with Big Papi out indefinitely the only competition I see is Jeter who is only leading in batting avg by 11 points. What are your thoughts?
Joe Morgan: When I was in Boston a couple of weeks ago, I said Derek Jeter was 1 and Big Papi was 1A and Dye was the other candidate. The other two guys are in heightened situations, but I think Dye is the most consistent producer from Day 1. Remember for a while, Big Papi was only hitting .250-.260. But Dye has been consistent, but he was overshadowed by Thome for a while.
Joe is actually pretty right on with his assessment here. However, he is only right because the Indians stink, and thus Indians are probably not really in the MVP discussion right now. Hafner is the best hitter in baseball, and I seriously doubt that his 15-run lead over Jeter in VORP is made up for by Jeter's mediocre defense. If there were any justice, Hafner gets it, and Jeter's second.
And before you write in and yell at me and call me a Jeter hater -- which I am on a personal level, but which does not impair my ability to evaluate him statistically, btw -- look at some of these stats and try to tell me Jeter is better than Hafner. I dare you. (Be sure to look at MLV. And if you're old-timey, check out SLG as well.)
Clay : (Savannah, GA): Joe, do you remember a season where 3 players had 30+ game hit streaks?
KT: Fifty bucks says Pete Rose gets a mention here.
Joe Morgan: No, I don't remember any time like that. I was on the time when Pete Rose had his 44-game streak and it was fabulous.
KT: You all owe me $50.
kevin cali: Who is the best man to call a baseball game, if you had to pick one? (It's a shame that baseball fan ouside of LA cannot listen to Vin S. everyday, he is the best.)
Joe Morgan: Well, I don't think you're alone. I think a lot of people think Vin's the best, maybe ever. He used to do national broadcasts on TV. But I think he's better on radio than on TV.
KT: Somewhere, Jon Miller is crying.
David (Chicago): Joe, How good do you think Josh Barfield can be? He has surpassed most expectations this year.
Joe Morgan: I haven't seen him play much. We've only done one Padre game. We're going to do one next week in San Francisco. But I've noticed that he has nice reactions and he looked like a good player. I agree, he has surpassed the expectations. I talked to him and he has a good attitude.
KT: Add the Padres to the list of, I'd say, 25 MLB teams that professional baseball-watcher Joe Morgan has not seen play enough to comment on their players. Unless you play for the Yankees, Red Sox, Giants, Mets, or White Sox, Joe will plead ignorance when asked about your rosters. To wit:
Brent (Bakersfield, CA): Do you think Barry Bonds can stay hot for the rest of the season if hegets an off day here and there? Will the Giants pitching hold up to make a run at the Wild Card?
Joe Morgan: Well, I live in the Bay area, so I get to see a lot and read a lot on the Giants.
KT: I live in the Bay Area, so I get to see a lot and read a lot on the Giants. I finally understand this problem. Joe, despite being a nationally-televised broadcaster, does not realize that we are living in an era where people in any part of the country -- nay, verily, the world! -- can access information about events that occur in other parts of the country or world. Someone needs to alert Joe immediately that he can learn about the Padres without physically being in San Diego, California.
Dan (NYC): Hey Joe, Late last night Hideki Matsui was cleared for BP. If he is able to come back by October, how do you see him fitting into the Yankees lineup? And how much scarier does this make the Yankee offense, considering many of the contenders pitching lack playoff experience?
KT: See if you can follow the möbius strip of knowledge that Joe drops here:
Joe Morgan: First and foremost a guy that sits out that long won't come back and make the same impact. He won't be the same Matsui that we saw last year at this time. We'll have to see what kind of production he can give them. I think right now, they're doing a good job with the players they have. Damon, Abreu are going to play every day. You're not going to get much better with Matsui, you will with Sheffield. I say that because Sheffield can dominate a game and carry you for days at a time.
KT: (1) A guy that sits out for a long time can't come back and dominate. (2) Matsui is one of those guys. (3) Plus, they have reserve outfielders who are doing a good job. (4) And yet, Gary Sheffield -- also injured for a long time, also an outfielder -- will make the team better, because (5) he can dominate.
mitch (mo val, ca): pedro or koufax in their primes?
Joe Morgan: That's a tough question, because you're looking at different eras.
KT: Yes, true. But, we have stats like ERA+ that adjust for those eras. Now, I'm not saying that these stats are perfect, but they give you some indication about who was better relative to the league and era in which he played. And at least by that measure, Pedro is better. Let's take each guy's two best years (arguably, in Koufax's case...)
Pedro: 1999: 245 ERA+, .923 WHIP, 313 K's in 213 IP 2000: 285 ERA+, .737 WHIP, 284 K's in 217 IP
Koufax: 1965: 160 ERA+, .855 WHIP, 382K's in 335 IP 1966: 190 ERA+, .985 WHIP, 317 K's in 323 IP
Now, Koufax did have a better WHIP year -- 1963, when he sliced through the NL at .875. And obviously he threw more innings, but Pedro's K/IP ratio is a lot better. If you go by all-time adjusted PRAA, Koufax's two best years are 64 (1966) and 59 (that amazing 1963 year), and Pedro's are 62 and 56. Gosh, it's darn close. But I would say that Pedro's 2000, with a ridiculous 285 ERA+ and .737 WHIP, is possibly the single best season relative to his league that anyone has ever had. Overall, it is almost a dead heat, all things considered. Let's see what kind of statistical analysis Joe comes up with to compare the two...
Koufax had charisma and power and people liked that. Pedro had some charisma too. I'd probably go with Koufax, but it's a very tough decision, because I like to see them both pitch.
KT: Huh. Okay. I didn't think to run their numbers through the Charisma-Power Index. Or the Liked-By-People Metric. Let me do that fictional and stupid thing, and let's see what we get:
Pedro (career): 288.7761489 glorpulons; VV6*3 Likeability Factor (33[13] power rake J-bones 7) Koufax (career): 288.7761489 glorpulons; VV6*3 Likeability Factor (33[13] power rake J-bones 7)
A dead heat!!!!!!!!! Unbelievable!!!!!!!!
Sean (Attleboro, Mass.): As a fmr. player, how do you feel about Carl Pavano holding back telling the Yankess about the injury sustained in his car accident?
Joe Morgan: My take is that he was wrong for not telling them. But I understand why he did it, because he was already injured and he didn't want to add more fuel to the fact that he hasn't been able to perform in New York. He was still wrong, you have to stand up and tell them and he didn't do that.
KT: Ladies and gentlemen, the world's only Carl Pavano Apologist.
Mike (Lansdale,PA): I think the Little League World Series is great for the kids, but they need to get the camera's and the mic's out of the kids faces and the dugouts! What do you think?
Joe Morgan: I'll say that I agree with you. I don't want to get any deeper than that, because I work for the people that put the cameras and microphones there.
KT: Ladies and gentlemen, the World's Greatest Company Man!
Chris (St Louis): What should the Cardinals do with Mulder?
Joe Morgan: That's a very good question and it's also a very difficult question for me, because I'm not there to see how he's throwing and his mental state.
KT: Jesus Christ on a popsicle stick, will someone please get Joe a St. Louis newspaper so he can evaluate these players?! How do you expect him to talk about the St. Louis Cardinals?! He's in Pennsylvania for God's sake! What, is he supposed to like, get a pair of super binoculars so he can see all the way to St. Louis?! You are asking too much of this poor man!!!!
But I do know this that Tony La Russa will make the right decision.
KT: Oh. Never mind. It won't matter. He's an idiot.
Dave (Florida): Todays pitchers are supposed to be stronger than pitchers 25-30 years ago, but in your day they threw 20-25 complete games a year. Now a days pitchers cant even get into double digits, why did that change?
Joe Morgan: Well, it changed because we started babying pitchers. By that I mean that we didn't force them to finish what they started. Things are more specialized. Gibson, Koufax went out there to win. Now I see headlines where a guy goes five and gets the win.
KT: You see headlines? You have never seen this happen in person? I used to joke about this, but I seriously doubt if Joe watches a single baseball game other than the ones he broadcasts.
Mike (Milwaukee): Joe, As a hall of fame 2nd baseman I was wondering your thoughts on Rickie Weeks and his future in the League?
Joe Morgan: I haven't had much of a chance to check him out, but I have heard some good things.
KT: He has HEARD SOME GOOD THINGS about Rickie Weeks. This is getting serious. He has definitely never watched a baseball game other than the ones he has broadcast. Is anyone else reading this?!
But I like to see a player myself before I say what he's going to do.
KT: Don't yell at the chatters for asking you your opinions on players, you dolt. You are supposed to know things about players. Don't you dare get snippy and say that you like to see people before you give an opinion. WE HAVE ALL SEEN THE PLAYERS. WE WATCH BASEBALL GAMES. YOU SHOULD BE WATCHING BASEBALL GAMES TOO, BECAUSE YOU ARE A BASEBALL ANNOUNCER.
Justin FJM (Denville, NJ): Hi Joe - What do you think is the most important aspect of being a leadoff hitter? Steals? On-base percentage? Something else?
KT: A special shout-out to loyal reader Justin, who managed to work FJM into the text of a JoeChat. Nicely done. Let me just add a word of caution here, though -- and this is not directed at Justin, per se -- that we do not want to get into a situation where loyal FJM readers start like disrupting the chats or anything with "Stern Rules"-style interruptions. It will only be fun for us to keep reading and dissecting these things if they are allowed to run unabated. Asking questions is fine -- as I did a while back, perhaps recklessly -- and little hidden shout-outs are much appreciated. But let's not go all crazy now that Justin has broken the ice. Deal? Awesome. Now, to the answer:
Joe Morgan: I think the most important thing is having a leadoff hitters mentality.
KT: Or OBP.
By that, I mean is at the start of the game, taking some pitches so your teammates can see how the guy is throwing. You need that mentality.
KT: I'd call that a "skill," but okay.
Rickey Henderson was perfect for that. The second part is making things happen from that position. Rickey made things happen when he was on base, Reyes does too. Then, it's getting on base.
So, in order of importance, it goes: (1) Having a mentality. (2) Doing things when you're on base. (3) Getting on base. Who else besides ol' Kenny T. sees a problem with the order of (2) and (3)?
Joe Morgan: I enjoyed the questions this week and I look forward to talking to you next Tuesday.
One of our annoyingly astute readers, Adam, wrote in with this annoyingly correct comment:
"Hafner is the best hitter in baseball, and I seriously doubt that his 15-run lead over Jeter in VORP is made up for by Jeter's mediocre defense. If there were any justice, Hafner gets it, and Jeter's second."
You are incorrect here. Players who play in the field are usually judged by their defense above the average -- BP calls this fielding runs above average. But if you don't play defense, you don't even get to accumulate ANY defensive runs. That is, you're not an "average" defender because you don't play; you're below replacement level because you don't play. Hafner has -1 fielding runs above replacement, while Jeter doesn't really have to be particularly good to gain those 15 runs back -- he could play a below-average defense, but he's still accumulating defense above replacement level (since replacement level is horrible defense). In this instance, Jeter is actually good defensively -- 25 runs above replacement so far this year. That gives him a 26-run advantage in defense over Hafner, more than enough to make up for the hitting.
He is absolutely right. I don't know exactly what happened, but I believe that when I checked BP's DT Card for Jeter, I saw his FRAA of 1 and thought I was looking at FRAR -- not crazy, since he had a FRAR of zero in 119 games in 2003. (The site has adjusted Jeter's totals after yesterday -- his FRAA is now -1, adjusted for all-time. Which reminds me -- how flukey is that 17 he put up last year? What the hell is that? It makes me very suspicious of the whole metric, that he can be solidly negative his entire career and then one year suddenly add a win and a half through defense?! My guess is, it was Wang's power sinker forcing easy grounder after easy grounder to be tapped right to him. But I digress.)
Anyway, Adam is totally right, although Hafner is at 10.0 WARP3 and Jeter at 10.1, so even with a slightly negative defensive component, Hafner is almost exactly as valuable as Jeter. By the end of the year, I expect Hafner to pass him.
Some people wrote in to add Carlos Guillen's name into the mix, though Jeter is way ahead in WARP3, 10.1 to like 7.3 or something. Jeter also has a higher EqA, .315 to .307. Jeter's better. And you know how much it pains me to say that. Although, I would like to amend my comment about Hafner getting it "if there were any justice," and say that the catcher in Minnesota, with the .927 OPS and 9.4 WARP3 and .321 EqA is a better choice than Jeter. I was riled up about Joe and laid my eggs in the Hafner backet, partly because he is fast becoming one of the truly great hitters of all time, and no one is paying attention. But for MVP, assuming the Twinkies make the playoffs, I would go Mauer 1 and Jeter 1A.
Got a bunch of very thoughtful comments about the Pedro-Koufax section, including this one from Matthew, which has a good (I believe) discussion of what exactly IP means in the comparison:
I think Koufax is better, although not by much. If someone says it's a dead heat, I don't really have a problem with that. But anyway...
Koufax threw 320+ innings in his last 2 seasons. Other pitchers threw a lot more then, too, but only 3 threw more than 300 innings in those 2 years.
The ERA+ argument with Pedro is not really helpful, either.
The problem is that you can say that Pedro did a 250 ERA+ or whatever in 210 innings, but Koufax did that, too. Plus he did another 110 innings of 110 ERA+, which adds extra value.
Pedro's best ERA+ was 285 in 217 innings.
Sandy Koufax's best ERA+ was 190 (in 323 innings).
Now a 285 ERA+ in 1966 context would equate to a 1.15 ERA.
And Koufax did exactly that, for 217 innings! For the other 106 innings he pitched that year, he was merely above average -- 2.89 ERA (league ERA, 3.28).
It may seem like a too quick-and-dirty way of analysis, but Koufax was as valuable as Pedro in 1999-200 PLUS 100 innings of a good reliever or an Andy Pettitte-level pitcher.
Another way to think of it is this: Would it be better for Pedro to miss the first two months of the season because he is not 100 percent and you KNOW he'd have a 285 ERA+ for 217 innings that year, or would it be better to have him pitch at less than 100 percent, but still effectively (113 ERA+) for two months, and THEN have exactly the same last four months (285 ERA+ for 217 innings)?
Plus, there are twice as many sh*tty pitchers making a living in the 1990s/2000s, thereby widening the gap between best and worse, separating the good pitchers even more from the floor.
Do you really think it would be more likely that Koufax could put up mind-bending ratios-in-comparison to the league, when the league comprises 50 pitchers like Julian Tavarez accumulating 20 percent of the innings, while squeezing by at 200 innings a year; or that Pedro could stretch out and dominate a league where he'd have to face Juan Marichal and Bob Gibson 10 times a year and pitch 25 complete games?
But back to the ERA+ argument -- I don't think you can just look at ERA+ and say, ok, Pedro's is higher, he's better (which, by the way, I am NOT accusing you of doing). And this is because it's different that OPS+ in that there is a floor ( i.e., 0.00 era) which is physiologically impossible to attain. And so when Pedro has a "better" ERA+ than Koufax, it's not necessarily because he's better. Because of the floor, the lower your era, the harder it is to increase your ERA+.
Expounding, it's important to note that the ERA floor, while theoretically 0.00, just can't be expected to be zero. Guys play poor defense that isn't charged an error. Vlad takes a ball about to hit the ground and slams a solo shot. Etc. and so on. Bob Gibson's 1.12 doesn't match Pedro's best seasons (as far as ERA+). How much lower could Gibson really be expected to go? I'm sure with a good break or two, maybe it's .99 or something, but he was already rubbing against the floor.
That's the problem.
To me, I guess it comes down to the fact that Koufax could give you a Pedro-like performance for 2/3 of his season and then a pretty darn good performance for an extra 100 innings. The postseason favors Koufax as well. The arguments for Pedro, however, are that he pitched in tougher ballparks, off a lower mound, and faced the DH for most of his career (and certainly in his prime). So yeah, calling it a dead heat is fine, but I put a lot of value in IP, so I give the edge to Koufax.
I was delighted to happen upon a chat between Messrs. Dan Patrick and Joe Morgan this morning on the radio. Here now, a series of Joe Morgan Paraphrased Points I listened to this August 30th morn.
JMPP #1: Derek Jeter is statistically inferior to Alex Rodriguez, but by standing on the field, he inspires confidence in his teammates.
Joe is something of an A-Rod apologist, but even he can't help but recognize the majestic aura surrounding the Captain. Funny thing is, this year may be the first that Jeter is actually statistically more valuable than his teammate. Joe began by admitting that others accuse him of "not valuing the home run" as much as he should, but that Jeter does, yes, "all the little things" that help a team win. And A-Rod, by implication, does not. Then, the coup de grace: simply by standing on the field, Jeter wills his teammates to have confidence. No wonder Chien-Ming Wang is pitching above and beyond his expectations! In contrast, when A-Rod stands on the field, his Negative Energy Rays sap his teammates' strength, leaving them pathetically Bruce Bannerish in the face of adversity. Sorry, Randy Johnson!
JMPP #2: Joe is asked why, when Barry Bonds hit two home runs and robbed the Braves of another in the field, he was not celebrated enough. Joe somewhat peevishly replies that "for some reason, we've pushed Barry aside."
Okay, so that wasn't really a paraphrase. I'm ninety percent sure those were his exact words. Certainly I didn't misremember the "for some reason" part. The reason is steroids, Joe. Barry took steroids. I know you didn't personally see Barry inject himself, so you can't comment. But it's true. Then Joe went on to lament that at the Little League World Series, not one kid picked Barry as his favorite player. It just goes to show you: eleven-year-olds are smarter than Joe Morgan. (Barry Bonds is one of my favorite players.)
JMPP #3: Dan wonders aloud whether Joe Girardi should be the NL Manager of the Year. Joe's pick is Willie Randolph. Why? Because not only is his team in first place, he manages in New York, and we all know that people who manage in New York, for instance one Joe Torre, never get the credit they deserve.
He actually said this. Believe me. Never mind that Joe Torre is widely heralded as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, manager in the game today. Never mind that he's twice won the Manager of the Year award. Never mind that HatGuy always sculpts his ice cream sundaes into the shape of Joe Torre's face before devouring them. Joe Torre. Doesn't get enough credit. Because he manages in New York.
There's more. Joe Morgan discounts what Joe Girardi has done because all his team has done is win a few games in an era where -- you guessed it -- there aren't any great teams anymore. And as if it wasn't obvious enough why Joe is picking Randolph (and Leyland in the AL), he lays it all out for us: Joe is still angry that his manager with the Reds, Sparky Anderson, didn't get enough credit because people were always saying he had the best talent.
To be honest, I don't really care about the Manager of the Year award. Let's just go with Joe's method: always choose the manager of the team with the best record. Why not?
Why is it that QB Rating has become accepted as a mainstream statistic, while similarly complicated metrics like EqA have almost no place in parlance even among baseball fans and journalists?
Look at the formula for QB Rating. It's a fucking nightmare. Yet NFL fans -- NFL fans! -- are smart enough to realize that regardless of how hard it is to compute, it gives us a basic overall understanding of how good a quarterback is. It may not be perfect, but it's better than just looking at a QB's, say, completion percentage.
Sure. EqA is also tough to compute (though I would argue actually easier than QB rating). But it's a very useful statistic. So why can't baseball fans latch onto it a similar way?
Say it with me: "Oh, okay. It's a weird equation, but at least now I have a pretty good sense of how good this particular position player is at hitting. .260 is average, .300 is really good, and .350 is like top of the league shit. This is like QB rating only better because it's about baseball and baseball is better because it's untimed and beautiful and doesn't feature guys hitting each other super hard and people like John Updike write about it more and stuff!"
Someone at MSNBC.com is keeping tabs on us. For six whole days, the Mike Celizic article that I just wrote about sat untouched, obvious factual and grammatical errors be damned.
Four and a half hours ago, I pointed some of the aforementioned errors out.
Two and a half hours ago, a few of them were fixed.
Can you imagine the possibilities if Joe Morgan read this site and forced ESPN to rerecord his audio for Sunday Night Baseball and air it again the following night, error- and banal Morganism-free?
I saw the post title, and thought for a brief second that the BBWAA had agreed to use a combination of VORP, EqA and RC27 to determine the MVPs of each league.
This article is a week old, but I just read it today for the first time. As we've come to expect from HatGuy, it's wrong about almost everything.
Here's the title and subtitle. Yes, this is important.
119 losses? Detroit revival looks like 100 wins After disastrous ’04, Pudge, Leyland ride Tigers' turnaround
Okay, first of all, Detroit had 119 losses in 2003. You could argue that 2004 was perhaps "disastrous," since they did lose 90 games that year, but in that case, it would certainly be no more disastrous than 2005, when they lost 91. We can agree, then, that he means "After disastrous '03." Or can we?
Also, this is quibbly, but "Pudge, Leyland ride Tigers' turnaround" makes it sound like Pudge and Leyland are riding the coattails of the other Tigers, or at the very least, that they're less responsible than certain other Tigers. This may in fact be accurate, but we'll soon see that this HatGuy thinks otherwise. "Pudge, Leyland drive Tigers' turnaround" is what he might have meant. Or not.
If the Detroit Tigers play just a little more than .500 the rest of the season, they’ll finish with 100 wins, or just 19 fewer than the number of games they lost two years ago.
Hold on. It was 2003. We've already talked about that. That was three years ago. Three, not two. This is your first sentence. Could you maybe have glanced at this page before you wrote your first sentence?
If they were playing in New York, they’d be the Miracle Tigers, and the two people most responsible for their success, team leader and veteran catcher Pudge Rodriguez and manager Jim Leyland would be posing for sculptors looking to cast them in bronze.
This from a HatMan who himself can't stop HatWriting about the Yankees. We've catalogued in this space how often this very man obsesses over Torre, Rivera, Jeter and the gang -- it's pretty much every other article at this point. And now he's going to call out the media in general for being too New York-centric?
Worse: these two men are not the two men most responsible for the Tigers' success. They just aren't.
What’s amazing is that 11 players on the team — nearly half the roster — was around for that 119-loss season in 2003.
So you admit it. It was 2003. Will you go back and change the mistakes you made earlier in the article? No? How about just the one in the subhead? How about we give you one whole week's head start? You can go back and change it anytime. This is the Internet. No one will know. Just do it.
No, you're good? Great.
That’s where Rodriguez comes in. He joined the Tigers fresh from a world championship with the Marlins in 2003. Although he doesn’t hit home runs as he did when he was younger — and, perhaps coincidentally, since baseball started seriously testing for steroids — he’s a solid, .300 hitter head for the Hall of Fame.
He's a .300 hitter head. This is a beautiful turn of phrase. He's so good, his head hits .300. In the AL, no less. Cooperstown-bound, for sure. I'm making fun of a typo, and that's dumb, but keep in mind he's already made a factual error that he himself corrected later in the article.
No one has yet come up with a formula to quantify how many wins a great catcher adds to a pitching staff.
I don't know. One? Keep in mind, in 2004, with Pudge at catcher, the Tigers' top five starters "won" (recorded a W in) 48 games. The next year, in 2005, with Pudge still the catcher, the top five again won 48. This year -- same dude is catching -- 58. The data is less than compelling.
This reminds me of that Sporting News issue last year where they claimed Brad Ausmus was the best pitch-caller or something because his "Catcher ERA" was the lowest. No matter that the men throwing the bulk of the pitches to him were Roger Clemens, Roy Oswalt and Andy Pettitte. Certainly, in 2004, Rodriguez didn’t make much difference to a team that couldn’t buy a victory.
Right. Exactly. Now you're talking sense.
But no one doubts that a great catcher makes a difference — maybe an enormous one.
I do. I think maybe it's a non-enormous one, if there's a difference at all. The burden of proof is on you, people who believe a catcher can account for a large decrease in team ERA.
With managers, it’s also a subjective affair.
Because they don't do that much. Be honest with yourself, HatGuy. What is a manager worth in baseball? We've already established that batting order -- almost any batting order -- is virtually meaningless. What else is left?
But there’s no doubt that Leyland, who honed his skills with some very good Pirates teams back when Barry Bonds was a pup and teaming up with Bobby Bonilla.
There's no doubt that what? This is not a sentence.
Give Detroit general manager Dave Dombrowski a big dollop of credit first for being able to see the promise in the train wreck of a team the Tigers were two years ago.
Three years ago.
This I agree with. Except for the use of the phrase "big dollop of credit." Wait a minute. I just thought of something. Remember that comment on a Ken Tremendous HatGuy post, oh, I think it was July 8th? Here it is again. Reader Zac wrote:
June 28, 2006, Mike Celizic writes "Sox Fans must boo Pedro heartily," and makes a choppy, hot fudge sundae/whipped cream joke:
"If anything else happens — the fans cheering wildly or the commentators congratulating them for booing boisterously or no one taking notice of the occasion at all...[I'd] be as disappointed as I’d be if I set out to construct a hot fudge sundae and discovered I was out of whipped cream."
July 7, 2006, Mike Celizic writes "Not Time for Yankees to Panic" and makes eerily similar whipped cream reference:
"It’s hard to make panic seem banal, but that’s what the Yankees have accomplished over the years... [blahblah] ...Panic should be saved for special occasions. For the Yankees, a day without panic is like a hot fudge sundae without whipped cream."
Two whipped cream jokes. And now a dollop ... non-joke. Or whatever it is. We're delving deeper into the psyche of HatGuy. And at its creamy center -- past the ornery, cantakerous crust, past the lava-y Yankee mantle, we find ... dessert.
It's all so clear now. This guy just thinks about dessert all day. That's all he wants. That's why he writes articles about baseball, a thing he doesn't care about at all. To get money. Money he can use to buy desserts. Delicious, whipped creamy dollops of desserts.
Other than Rodriguez, Dombrowski hasn’t gone after big-ticket stars, instead taking guys like Magglio Ordonez, a good hitter, but one who is in no danger of hitting even 30 home runs.
When he signed with the Tigers, Magglio Ordonez was a big-ticket star coming off of one injury-plagued year. He was almost the definition of a big-ticket star. Here were his home run totals for the five years preceding his signing: 29, 38, 31, 32, 30. He was so much of a big-ticket star he inked a contract worth $75 million over five years, with options to make it up to $105 million over seven. He's only "in no danger of hitting even 30 home runs" because he's wicked banged up now, something they certainly didn't bargain for or want when they got him for that kind of money. You can question just how great a manager Joe Torre is with the Yankees. After all, he’s got a $194 million roster loaded with All-Stars and future Hall-of-Famers. He’s supposed to win.
But you can’t question Leyland’s greatness.
Just you watch me. This is purely rhetorical, but here goes:
Jim Leyland happened to take over the Detroit Tigers in a year when their developing starting pitchers hit their stride. Jeremy Bonderman had already been coming along nicely. He has a very neat progression of the following ERAs: 5.56, 4.89, 4.57, 3.92 (this year). How much of that 3.92 do you want to attribute to Leyland? I say almost zero percent. Justin Verlander, not on the major league team last year, came in and immediately became one of the most valuable pitchers in the bigs. How much of his 3.42 ERA do you attribute to Leyland? I say not much. Nate Robertson has been improving just like Bonderman has. ERAs the last three years: 4.90, 4.48, 4.10 (this year). Leyland? I say no.
And how about that bullpen? Jamie Walker 1.49, Joel Zumaya 2.03, Wilfredo Ledezma 2.08, Fernando Rodney 3.14, Jason Grilli 3.59. The only Red Sox reliever with an ERA lower than any of these guys is Jonathan Papelbon. Leyland's superiority to Francona, or better guys having better years?
He took a core of players who knew nothing but losing and refused to allow them to think of themselves as anything but winners.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why Jason Grilli was able to will himself into having a career year. By the way, why isn't anyone talking about Jamie Walker? He's allowed six runs all year. I'd say he's a heck of a lot more valuable than a guy who hasn't played a game for the Tigers all year. He’s climbed on them just twice, early in the season when they stumbled after starting out 5-0 and during the recent 3-9 streak. In between, he’s just insisted on playing the game right.
Again, unlike Francona, who has repeatedly been telling Manny Delcarmen to kick the baseball at the hitters' nuts as hard as he can, "rules" be damned. He’s the AL Manager of the Year.
Probably.
And, while the same naysayers who have said all year that the Tigers are headed for a fall are sure to say they won’t be able to stand up to teams like the Yankees in the playoffs,
Obligatory Yankee mention. Second of the column. Third if you count his New York rant in the beginning.
by now, it should surprise few if he proves those people wrong.
Just like two young men by the names of Burt Baskin and Irv Robbins proved people wrong when they said they could never come up with 31 different flavors of ice cream, much less actually make them.
Whipped cream. Dollop. Hats. Baseball.
(I bet he keeps ice cream in his hat. Even when he's wearing it.)
To be fair, that first New York reference was to the Miracle Mets, who hot fudged their way to 100 victories and the 1969 World Series where they defeated a highly favored banana split in 5 games.
Not a big deal, certainly, but didn't Jim Leyland win a World Series Championship in 1997?
Let me rephrase that. Jim Leyland won the World Series as a manager in 1997 for the Florida Marlins. Why is FoxSports.com trying to convince me that he has some sort of Championship monkey on his back?
Gentlemen, We Have Another "Clogging Up The Bases" Sighting
Thank you, Matt from Chicago. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Matt sent us this link to a seemingly innocuous "News and Notes"-type write-up of the woeful Chicago Cubs on MLB.com.
Writer Carrie Muskat poses the outrageously easy-to-answer question,
Do the Cubs need to improve their on-base percentage next year?
and immediately follows with all of the information necessary to answer the question.
They currently rank last in the National League with a .318 OBP.
But wait. I'd like a second opinion. Preferably from Dr. Crazyballs himself, Dusty Baker.
"On-base percentage is great if you can score runs and do something with that on-base percentage," Baker said.
And everyone hold their collective breath. Let's drum roll this shit.
...
Are you ready?
"Clogging up the bases isn't that great to me."
Thank you. Someone had to say it, Dusty. How are we going to score runs with all these damn men clogging up the bases, getting in our way? Cubs Baseball 2006: No One Clogs Our Bases Up! Why in the world did they get rid of Neifi Perez? He was the undisupted king of Career Not Clogging Up The Bases Occurrences.
Dusty's quote also begs the question, what is that great to him, keeping in mind that batters getting on base for the professional baseball team he manages, the Chicago Cubs, is not that great? My guesses appear below:
Horses Frosting The innocence of a young child Stolen bases A Beautiful Mind Oldies
I want to go on record as saying that hating players for "clogging up the bases" is the absolute #1 all-time dumbest thing anyone has ever said about baseball. Dusty Baker should be fired just for this. What is he looking for, for offense? A long consecutive streak of solo homers?
There was an article a few days ago in a journal called the Boston Metro. It's not available online, except on page 20 of this digitally unwieldy pdf file. A few different readers pointed us to this one, so a specail FJM thanks to Patrick D., Bart L., and Fake G.
The author, Bob Halloran, not only writes for the Metro, but covers sports on-air for WCVB. My Dad once told me that the "V" is the roman numeral for "5," as in Channel Five Boston. Thanks Dad. Anyway, Halloran also used to work for ESPN. Go get 'em, Bob.
Say good-bye to “Moneyball.” We didn’t need on-base percentage (OBP) or on base plus slugging (OPS) to tell us that Ted Williams and Babe Ruth were great hitters.
You guys remember “Moneyball,” right? The book by Michael Lewis, where he chronicles the fight to prove that Babe Ruth and Ted Williams were great hitters by using only two statistics: OBP and OPS?
If you haven’t read it yet, you should really check it out. You’ll just fall in love with the main character, William Beane. For decades, not one human being could prove that either Ruth or Williams were great at baseball. Call it the baseball equivalent of Fermat’s Last Theorem. You’ll never guess how Beane finally proves his case – or maybe you already have! That’s right, he invents two new statistics called OBP and OPS. It’s like Andrew Wiles or that Beautiful Mind guy all over again.
Well, anyway, this Halloran dude doesn't seem to think very much of Beane’s efforts. Apparently – and I don’t know where people come up with this sort of thing – he thinks we could’ve known that Ruth and Williams were great without OBP or OPS.
I don’t know who to believe anymore!
Baseball remains a game of scoring runs and preventing runs. The best hitters are the ones who either score the runs or drive them in. It’s that simple.
It’s way more complicated than that. But let’s try to keep it relatively simple anyway. In general, yeah, the best players are usually around the top of the league in runs and / or RsBI. Sometimes they’re not. But sometimes great hitters don’t get the chance to score a lot of runs, or drive a lot of them in, for a number of reasons. Here are some of those reasons:
1) They hit in front of players who are bad 2) They hit behind players who are bad 3) They have a manager who insists on hitting them in, say, the 7 spot in the order because the manager thinks the player is “too young” or “not a great contact hitter” or some other bullshit 4) The majority of their at bats come in a “pitcher friendly” ballpark
Of course, the converse is also true. Players often have their run or RBI totals “inflated” because, say, they bat at the top of a tremendous line-up, or they bat behind Barry Bonds, or whatever. (There’s a great example, for those who own the 2001 Bill James H.B.A., of a hypothetical season in which Gino Cimoli drives in 151 runs batting behind Babe Ruth. It’s a bit of a cheat in this case because they’re walking Ruth every time, but you get the point. Fellow baseball nerds willing to spend inordinate percentages of disposable income on giant books can turn to page 785.)
Yes, individual performance influences Runs and Runs Batted In to a great degree. Unfortunately, they’re also influenced by the team you play for and the line-up you hit in. And that’s why they’re bad to use when evaluating individuals. Am I wrong in thinking that this is pretty basic stuff? Bob Halloran is paid by multiple news outlets to cover baseball. Do any of them care that he doesn’t get this?
[silence….a night watchmen at WCVB takes a slow sip of coffee…somewhere in the Boston Metro offices an old man empties a garbage basket into a larger garbage basket…Bob Halloran sleeps peacefully in his beautiful New England colonial home in Medfield or Concord or Westerham (pronounced “Wesham”) or North Southborough] Batting average, home runs and RBI are the only categories needed to tell us who the best hitters are in the game. All the other stats created by disciples of “Moneyball” and fantasy league geeks are redundant, superfluous and redundant.
I feel like I’ve seen that joke on a t-shirt before.
I’m going to give Halloran the benefit of the doubt here, and try to deduce that the point he’s making is that the 3 “Holy Trinity” stats of the Old Guard – BA, HR, RBI – at least tell you different aspects of a player’s abilities.
To say that newer statistics don’t do the same only makes sense when the only "new" stats you understand are OBP and OPS. Certainly EqA gives us a different story than say, P/PA. (I know, not exactly a “new” stat, but one that’s become a little more valued in recent years.) Or K/BB vs. WHIP – 2 “geeky” or “fantasy” stats which are simple enough that even Halloran should be able to understand them.
If you want three stats to determine how good a position player is, well, fuck, I’ll take a player's WARP3, Games Played, and his Middle Name over Batting Average, HR and RsBI.
While it’s true that heading into yesterday’s action, 18 of the top 30 in batting average are not among the top 30 in-base percentage. The hitters that replace those 18 include Travis Hafner, Jim Thome, Jason Giambi, Ryan Howard and David Ortiz. With sluggers like them, it’s not their on-base percentage that jumps out at you. It’s their run production. Those five guys are in top eight in homers and the top 13 in RBI. To tell me they’re also in the top nine in OPS and top 11 in slugging is just overkill.
Bob. You see, everyone except you understands that OPS is made up of on-base percentage and slugging percentage. We get that. No one’s forcing you to look at OBP, SLG, and OPS. That’s not overkill, that’s wasting your time. Nobody does that. Stop doing that.
Also, am I wrong here or is he disproving his whole case in second sentence by giving us this list of amazing hitters who excel at getting on base but not at BA?
The “Moneyball” theory was really created to find productive players at a cheaper price. The long-ball hitters make big bucks. So, small market teams need to find productive players who lack the flash, less obvious players like Kevin Youkilis, Scott Hatteberg or Nick Johnson. But “Moneyball” has the potential to backfire, because it can be misleading. Heading into yesterday, Youkilis ranks 23rd in on-base percentage. But the reason he’s a bargain at $350,000 this year is because he’s 16th in runs scored.
There are 2 reasons which explain 99% of why Kevin Youkilis is 16th in runs scored, in my opinion. 1) He gets on base at the 23rd best clip in the league. 2) He’s spent most of the year hitting at the top of the line-up featuring two historically ridiculous batters in the 3 and 4 spot.
Hatteberg is 13th in OBP, but he’s only scored 51 runs and driven in 38. Sometimes, a walk is not as good as a hit.
Right. He also has 150 fewer plate appearances than Kevin Youkilis. True: a walk is very often not as good as a hit. This has very little to do with why Scott Hatteberg has only 51 runs.
It’s true that you have to be on base in order to score – unless you’re blasting home runs – but among the leaders in runs scored – Chase Utley, Jose Reyes, Grady Sizemore, Jimmy Rollins and Alfonso Soriano – only Utley (at 28th) ranks in the top 40 in OBP. What they lack in OBP, they more than make up for in SPEED.
Here are the ranks of those same players in total number of Plate Appearances in all of baseball:
Chase Utley (11) Jose Reyes (17) Grady Sizemore (4) Jimmy Rollins (5) Alfonso Soriano (7)
I’d call that a lurking variable.
As far as "SPEED" goes -- by the way, really? All caps on that one? -- sure, some of these guys are fast. But then again, Carlos Lee has more steals than Chase Utley. Sizemore has 18 – these aren’t exactly Roadrunners. They’re good hitters (one in particular is amazing this year) who hit at the top of the line-up.
Do you like Michael Young as a hitter?
I like him. I don’t love him. He’s not having what I’d consider an outstanding year. Do you?
He led the league in average and hits last year. He’s 85th in OBP right now.
Yeah, that’s what I was trying to tell you. He’s having a pretty mediocre year. Did you know that his EqA this year is only .276? Pretty pedestrian. I’m sorry – what was your point?
If you’re trying to figure out if a guy is a good hitter or not, just look to see how often he’s crossing home plate and how often he’s driving someone else across. That’s what’s money.
“And by ‘money,’ I mean largely dependent on the performance of every other hitter on your team who is not the hitter in question.”
So, we're in the process of enrolling in Google's Ad Sense program, which means, yes, there will be advertisements on the site. They should fit in pretty seamlessly and hopefully won't get in the way of your favorite HatGuy criticisms, or ramblings about Jason Bay's EqA.
Guys, come on. Why? Well, mostly to pay for the small costs of running the site, the domain name (firejoemorgan.com), and all the e-mail accounts. These things add up over time and, listen, we're not going to get rich off this.
Now that you're going to see some income, shouldn't you pay someone to design a better looking site? Nah, I'm good.
But dak, don't you subscribe to Adbusters and everything? Yes, I do. Believe me, I have mixed feelings about the situation. But we hope you'll visit our sponsors and continue to support us.
Hey, this isn't totally relevant, but since we're doing this whole Q and A thing...I keep e-mailing you guys and I never get a response. What in Robinson Cano's codpiece is up with that? Yeah. I'm sorry -- we're not the best at getting back to people. We read every e-mail though and often use suggestions from readers. I will say one thing to keep in mind: we're just not going to publish anything unless we can verify that it was said or written verbatim. What that means is, we'll totally read your account of what that Mariners' color guy said about Jamie Moyer's incredible poise or whatever, and we'll probably enjoy it, but we're not going to post any paraphrasing e-mailed to us.
Also one of the Angels announcers just described Coco Crisp as having a "calm, confident swagger." At the time Crisp was standing on first base following a foul ball.
batting order almost entirely doesn't matter and this isn't about sports commentary, but did anyone else notice that the team with the best record in baseball is batting Neifi Perez (.266 OBP, .202 EqA) leadoff tonight?
Let's keep this in mind when writers start the loud, raucous, inevitable Jim Leyland for Manager of the Year chorus.
I go out of my way to think of reasons to be late to the office just so I can listen to his show, which starts at 10 a.m. in New York.
What HatGuy is saying is that the only benefit of the Colin Cowherd radio show is that it increases the chances, however slightly, that HatGuy will miss his deadline and fail to turn in a HatGuy column.
If you read on in HatGuy's blog, you will find that he believes the mistake Paul LoDuca made was cheating on his wife with a "girl" instead of a "woman" because "girls blab" and "women don't talk."
A Meta-Post (Original Title: "Dan Shaughnessy Still Hates Theo Epstein")
I'm torn. Genuinely so. At around 6 pm PST today, I put up a post called "Dan Shaughnessy Still Hates Theo Epstein." It was okay. A little light on hard analysis, perhaps. A lot of digs at Shaughnessy. Mainly, I felt the need to respond to Shaughnessy's most recent column because he took some fairly cheap, name-calling-style shots at the Red Sox front office, most of them in the computer-nerd-bookworm-cyber-spreadsheet vein. You know, he entered the Plaschke zone. That kind of stuff boils my blood.
But then I got to thinking: sure, Shaughnessy didn't write a good article. I disagree with the way he went about attacking Theo Epstein (basically, through insinuation, strange veiled threats, and schoolyard name-calling rather than substantive roster move analysis). That said, isn't the Red Sox front office partly responsible for what's happened in the years following the 2004 championship? If you're a Red Sox fan, you have to start considering the 2005 and 2006 (barring a miraculous turnaround) seasons as failures. Why? The team has an enormous payroll and a core group of talent that theoretically could be built around to form a championship-level team. I'm speaking mainly of two MVP-caliber hitters performing at peak or near-peak levels and a near-Cy Young-caliber starter. And yet for whatever reason, championship-level ballclubs have not been assembled. Essentially: shouldn't Red Sox fans be worried that David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez' remaining superstar-type years are being squandered on teams with next to no pitching? And shouldn't some blame for that lack of pitching be placed at the feet of Theo Epstein and those working with him? I think these are legitimate questions, so I'm a little concerned about whether my defense -- if you want to call it that -- of Epstein in the post below is completely fair. If a front office is failing to do a competent job, they should be criticized, no matter if they're using sabermetric methods or picking players' names out of badly soiled stovepipe hat.
Let's not forget, however, that (let's get horribly, stupidly nerdy) the philosophical telos of this site isn't to assess whether front offices are doing a good job or not. It's to lambaste bad sportswriting and commentary. And I think this Shaughnessy piece is unequivocally bad. Am I bending over backwards to defend Theo because he doesn't claim Moneyball was written by a three-headed robot made of tin, wax and papier-mache? I don't know. Tell me what you think.
Here's the original post.
---
You're Dan Shaughnessy. For years, you pay your bills selling the idea of a magical curse dooming a baseball franchise forever. The more famous the curse becomes, the higher your profile. You write a book about the curse. Documentary filmmakers come to you for your curly-headed opinions on the curse. You're pretty much known as Dan Shaughnessy, That Curse Guy.
Then, sudddenly, it's all over. You write your cash-in book about the end of the curse. But uh-oh, now no one cares about the curse anymore. It's done. It's almost like this supernatural curse was never real to begin with.
There's a guy who a lot of people are cheering as the non-player most responsible for reversing the curse. He's young, handsome, and he has used a computer before. Perhaps numerous computers. He hasn't paid his dues. He's not a "baseball man." And he's a pretty boring quote.
Do you a) hate this guy or b) really, really hate him and take every opportunity to needle him in your columns whenever possible?
The Red Sox brass set sail on John Henry's big boat last night. The owner held a party to celebrate the engagement of his star general manager, Theo Epstein. Nice gesture. Toasts all around, no doubt. A three-hour tour.
Funny stuff. I remember that show. If the Professor could build a radio out of a coconut, why didn't he just build a boat? Am I right, people? (general silence, the soft clinking of glasses)
It was undoubtedly nice to get away for a few hours, but there is no safe place for Epstein and Sox management at this moment -- not even on the high seas. The SS Red Sox is sinking fast in the American League. The sun no longer shines on the handsome head of young Theo (wonder if he's signed his much-celebrated contract yet).
I only mentioned that Theo was handsome earlier because Shaughnessy really likes bringing it up all the time. Also, did you know that he's young? Shaughnessy would like everyone to know that.
The computer-geek management style has been thoroughly exposed in the last two days and there's a perfect storm brewing upstairs on Yawkey Way.
Ah. Here we go. Get those claws out, Shaughnee! These geeks can't run a baseball team! They don't even chew tobacco or drive mud-splattered pickup trucks to minor league games in the boonies. What exactly has been exposed in the last two days, no matter how horrific they've been for the Red Sox? A lack of pitching? That Josh Beckett is severely underperforming almost everyone's expectations? That the Yankees' lineup is capable of feasting on chumps like Jason Johnson and Kyle Snyder. I think we knew these things? I don't see a lot of solutions to these problems, and I didn't see too many at the trading deadline. If you want to go back further in time, the Beckett trade doesn't look all that great now, but I don't recall too many people objecting to it at the time. Hardly anyone projected Beckett to stink as much as he has. Bronson Arroyo for Wily Mo Pena? Still doesn't look that bad. Maybe what's being exposed is that Matt Clement was a terrible signing? Is Shaughnessy still misty-eyed for Pedro and Lowe?
The way things are going, Young Theo --
He's young.
-- might don that gorilla suit again, but this time he might need it to hide from an angry Nation of paying customers who want to know why nothing was done at the trade deadline and how you try to win a pennant with no lefty in the bullpen and a collection of dead arms and dead presidents (Mr. Van Buren, I presume) posing as major league pitchers.
Get it, "Nation"? You should be angry! Angry at Theo Epstein! Not angry at Beckett for being terrible or Wells and Wakefield and Foulke for getting hurt or Seanez and Tavarez for totally falling off from what they did last year. Did anyone think Seanez and Tavarez would both pitch this historically badly? Or that Ramon Ortiz would have a better ERA than Beckett? I see a few hands raised. Fine. Congratulations.
Three of the five crucial games against the Yankees have been played, and the numbers are more ghastly than snakes on a plane.
NICE. That'll get the kids on board. First hit 'em with Gilligan, then boom! SoaP. Dano, my boy, you've still got it. The first three games of this series have been equally hideous, and young Theo,
Not old.
who was unavailable after yesterday's carnage, is getting his lunch fed to him by one Brian Cashman as the Sox threaten to suck all the wind out of what's left of summer.
Brian Cashman, who personally drove in 23 of the Yankees' 39 total runs. Brian Cashman, who led the team in pitches per plate appearance, eating up the Sox' bullpen. Brian Cashman, who hid in Jason Varitek's wine cellar for weeks before sneaking into his bedroom and inserting a time-release poison capsule into his left knee, causing its cartilage to rapidly deteriorate.
I'm not saying that you can't talk about the construction of these ballclubs when you see one beating up on the other so thoroughly and devastatingly. But is the story here that the Red Sox front office has unconscionably failed? I haven't seen any actual analysis yet. Wait, here we go:
Oh, and is anybody rethinking that Johnny Damon decision now?
Sort of? I think it's pretty clear that the problem here is pitching, not hitting. Even after those three amazing performances by the Yankee offense, guess how many more runs the Yankees have scored than the Sox this season? Seven. I'm pretty sure that as recently as about four days ago, the Red Sox led the majors in runs scored.
Then Shaughnessy has a quote from Larry Lucchino. Hmm. The article bashes Theo and includes thoughts from Lucchino. Anyway, the quote is boring. Let's skip it. Manager Terry Francona, ever the company man, will not state the obvious and tell us, ``How am I supposed to beat these guys with this pitching staff?" but he is clearly as frustrated as a lot of Red Sox fans. Yesterday he watched the talented and hard-headed Josh Beckett walk nine (most by a Sox pitcher since Rogelio Moret in 1975) while giving up a career-high nine earned runs in 5 2/3 innings.
So ... maybe Beckett is at least partially to blame for what happened?
Beckett's ERA is 5.35 and he looks like he needs to stop listening to Dave Wallace and Al Nipper and go see Dr. Phil.
Another sweet reference, man. The Shaughn-man is on fire.
To his credit, Beckett answered all questions and assumed full responsibility for his outing (``unacceptable, brutal").
To his discredit, his performance so far is one of the biggest reasons you're bashing Theo Epstein.
The last time the Yankees scored in double digits in three games in one Fenway series was in 1927 when the Pinstripes had guys named Ruth and Gehrig in the lineup. The Yankees have batted around five times in three games. One wonders if perhaps even cyberowner Henry has seen enough spread-sheet baseball for one season.
That's what I call bad pitching. Spread-sheet baseball. Ooh, that John Henry! Maybe if he would stop hitting on girls on MySpace all day he would learn how to build a damn baseball team! Computers bad! Computers make baseball team lose! Odd that Henry would be celebrating Epstein's engagement at a time when the honeymoon is officially over for the most popular and bulletproof general manager in Boston sports history.
What exactly is odd about this? Odd that John Henry likes Theo Epstein and wanted to do something nice for him? Odd because you're forcing a false connection between an actual engagement between two humans and a theoretical "honeymoon" that you made up in your brain? It seems like you're angry that Theo Epstein seems to be "bulletproof." Is it really so strange that people sort of like a guy who was the general manager when the team finally won the World Series after 86 years? This paragraph has too many rhetorical questions in it. In fact, this whole post is infested with them. I apologize. I'll try to do better the next time. The cruise is over and so is the free ride for Theo. No disgrace in that, it happens to all of them, but the Sox need a quick turnaround to keep Epstein out of the shark-infested waters that devoured the likes of Lou Gorman and Dan Duquette.
The crazy, crazy, crazy thing about this concluding paragraph is that Dan Shaughnessy is one of the very sharks in the "shark-infested waters" he's writing about. He's basically saying, Hey Theo, you better watch out -- if the team doesn't start winning more games, people are going to try to get you fired. In fact, watch: I'm doing it right now. Me, Dan Shaughnessy. I am one of the sharks I'm talking about here.
Joe Morgan, in the 8th inning of tonight's game, was talking about how the way to get out Yankee hitters is by pitching them inside. Then Papelbon struck out Cano, and Joe said:
"[K zone] shows that the ball was over the middle of the plate, but that was inside."
Hmmm.
Earlier, he also called Cano, and I quote, "One of the best fastball hitters in the league."
In the bottom of the 6th, Joe was talking about how, with the emphasis on home runs and such, it was harder for middle infielders to win the MVP award, for their on-field leadership, etc. To prove his point, he listed the last 5 AL MVP winners, two of which were middle infielders at the time (ARod and Tejeda).
You heard it here first. Or second, I guess. My apologies if you've been watching the Fox broadcast of the Sox-Yanks game today. If you have, you heard Tim McCarver say the following:
As baseball and those around it continue to do, keep -- keeping track of pitch counts, seems like more pitchers are going down the more that people keep track of pitch counts.
Yes, Tim, that must be it. It couldn't be weight-training or performance-enhancing drugs or perhaps your own antiquated prejudices causing your imagination to produce a world where more pitchers are going down when in fact, they aren't. Also, seriously: read his rambling "thought" one more time -- what?
Then, once you think it's over, he comes at you again with the crazy:
The thing about pitch counts for starters, I think there are a lot of people in and around the game that think that once a guy reaches 110 pitches that there should be cause for alarm. It stands to reason that guys vary as far as their strength is concerned from start to start. Sometimes 90 pitches is too much. Sometimes 130 pitches are not enough. A guy could throw 150 pitches per start. Until -- and if they come up with a gauge that could gauge a guy's potential, then to me, I think it's obscenely obsessive to continue to talk about pitch counts as though they were the only determination of a guy's success or not.
I was with you until you went with the 150 pitches a game thing. Actually, who am I kidding? I was never with you. Everything you say is batshit insane. The thing is, you could definitely make the argument that "it stands to reason that individual guys vary as far as the number of pitches they can throw." Maybe Carlos Zambrano can throw 120 pitches per game and Mark Prior cannot. I'm willing to listen to that reasoning. But "sometimes 130 pitches are not enough"? As if to say that, hey, if Livan Hernandez had become a worker in a drill bit factory instead of a major league pitcher, and on a specific Tuesday, instead of throwing 145 pitches in a baseball game, he decided to manufacture 1,200 drill bits because that's his job, he would incur a terrible arm injury because hey, not enough pitches?
I hate to be dramatic about this, but I think this guy should be fired.
Every time I hear McCarver talk, I think of two things:
"You're a real man, Deion. A real man."
And, from 2004:
"This October, ordinary Foulke has been extraordinary Foulke."
...which is not a pun, makes no sense, has a false premise (that Foulke was "ordinary" before the postseason), mixes a singular verb with a plural (collective) noun that makes the whole thing incredibly wrought and confusing, and also sought to rhyme "ordinary" with "extraordinary." One of the worst faux-poetic things I have ever heard uttered by anyone.
