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and flip over to Baseball Tonight for some amazing baseball highlights.
Just kidding! What you would have seen is the miraculously-named John Pizzarelli ("The wonder of it all," Foxwoods, etc.) performing a jazzified rendition of "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" as the first of the nine-(9!)-part Battle of the Bands series on Baseball Tonight.
You know. Battle of the Bands. Baseball. Pizza. The wonder of it all. Jazz. Analysis. This guy.
Next week: Dannii Minogue and Lou Bega collaborate on a 44-minute cover of "Whoomp! There It Is." No baseball footage. Just bands battling on and on and on. If you're setting your DVR, remember to tack a couple of hours of extra time on, because this battle might go into EXTRA INNINGS.
It's Baseball Tonight Bold Prediction Time! You may recall Krukie's brilliant "Randy Johnson will win 30 games" prophecy in 2005. (I certainly do, fondly.) I love that the producers force these already mentally-taxed guys to make increasingly outlandish, totally baseless guesses just so the graphic beneath them can say they're "bold." The on-air guys are doing poorly enough on their own. Now you're basically holding a gun to their head until they crack and say that Jason Schmidt will record 400 strikeouts.
You're up, Orestes Destrade:
All right, you want bold? I'll give you bold.
He says this in a totally unconvincing tone of voice.
Ichiro Suzuki will be the first guy to hit .400 since Ted Williams. How about that?
He clearly doesn't believe this. Why are you making him say this thing? This is great.
If he can walk more and strike out less, this guy has the opportunity to do that.
Ichiro has walked more than 49 times once in his career. As a point of reference, the year Ted Williams hit .406, he walked 147 times. It was only the fourth-highest walk total of his career.
And by the way, he's a free agent. 20% spike. They have done a survey and it's quantifiable. 20% spike. Guys that are in their survey year.
What? What "survey" is he talking about? Can anyone produce this for us? Also, it's solid gold that he ends this insane rant by mumbling "Guys that are in their survey year," a nonsense phrase that got stuck in his brain because he just said the word "survey" (and used that incorrectly).
Steve Phillips goes with the following retarded nonsense: Alex Rodriguez is going to be the MVP of the All-Star Game, the 2007 season, he's going to be the MVP of the World Series.
Who the fuck cares about the All-Star Game? This prediction made me laugh out loud.
He's going to finally become a Yankee,
This actually happened February 17, 2004. Unless you left out the word "True."
and he's going to opt out of his contract for next year.
So Steve Phillips understood the request "make a bold prediction" as "make five predictions and combine them together in an awkward list."
This segment has proved that in the context of the Baseball Tonight Bold Prediction, bold = crazy = pointless. Great TV, gentlemen.
Peter Gammons goes with "Grady Sizemore is going to be the MVP" and follows it up with some numbers or some shit. WRONG. Too defensible. Too uncrazy. Totally unpointless.
Just as a reminder, there was a chapter in Baseball Prospectus's "Baseball Between the Numbers" that showed something like a 10% boost in walk-year performance.
Baseball Prospectus used WARP to compare the walk years of 212 "prominent" free agents ('76 to '00) with their immediate pre- and post-walk years. Dayn Perry found that players experience a 9.4% spike in their WARP. Further, the average age of these FAs was 31, so the spike is probably not age-related. Perry also found that players played/pitched in more games in their walk years, by a margin of 6.3 pre-walk and 4.8 post-walk.
They signed Brett Myers to a long-term deal. That makes him a happy person. And I think the maturity that he has gained from the incident that happened last year in Boston is gonna propel him to stand up and be the ace of this staff.
You heard it first from Kruk, folks. Hitting your wife in the face in front of Fenway Park improves your pitching ability.
Karl Ravech is killing it out there. Take this exchange with Steve Phillips:
SP: Jeff Kent in the walk year of his contract, motivated to put up big numbers. They lacked power last year. They lacked Jason Kent's production -- er, Jeff Kent's production. I think they are a very well balanced team with great pitching.
KR: (skeptical) Is there tangible evidence that in a walk year, players produce better numbers?
SP: I don't think there's any question about it. Motivation -- particularly Jeff Kent. He's always put up huge numbers in that last year.
KR: (Tired, so very tired of all of this even though the year has only just begun. Seriously, he asked this question in a hilariously weary-sounding voice. This question was basically an eight-word-long verbal sigh.) What motivates you, Peter, in the NL West?
On the Padres: I think this guy right here, Marcus Giles, is going to make a big difference also. He's a gritty, gutty player, and when you talk about the San Diego Padres, gritty and gutty sometimes don't always go in the same sentence.
Krukie, around here gritty and gutty always go in the same sentence. That sentence is "Fuck gritty and gutty."
Let's hope gritty and gutty Marcus Giles can bounce back from his gritty .259 EqA and gutty .387 slugging percentage from last year. The guy's had a couple of great years in the past, when he wasn't so g and g.
Karl Ravech: Team to watch in the American League East? John Kruk: To me it is the Yankees, Karl, because I think that now they're embarrassed. They haven't won a World Championship in how many years, so they are embarrassed.
My team to watch in this division is the Minnesota Twins ... we're not sure about their pitching right now. Brad Radke retired. Nelson Liriano injured, who knows when he's coming back?
He'll be back this year, and he'll pitch better than any 43-year-old retired utility infielder ever has before.
I hope someone else is watching Baseball Tonight right now, because I want to be sure I'm not experiencing some sort of FJM-wish-fulfillment hallucination.
Your lineup: Karl Ravech John Kruk Harold Reynolds Steve Phillips
Andy Pettitte's getting lousy run support tonight, and Ravech asks his friends, the baseball experts, how you get run support. My first reaction: that is a bad question, Mr. Ravech, sir, and I believe the correct answer is that you get run support by having a team that is good at scoring runs, plain and simple. That, and being lucky. My second reaction: three men are about to embarrass themselves on national TV. And they do not disappoint.
(GRAPHIC: (I shit you not) Harold: it's easier to hit with poor starting pitching)
He means poor starting pitching on your own team.
HR: I think a lot of times you see these clubs with great pitchers, and the great pitchers struggle to get runs, I think a lot of times, teams go in there and go, "We're not going to get a whole lot of runs today, you know, with this guy pitching." I think a lot of times when you have poor pitching (he really punches these two words) going, you know you gotta score some runs! (Really emphatic there.) And it becomes a mindset. You change the style of play that you play, you end up trying to bang a little bit more, you do a lot of things differently. I think when you know you have to score runs, it changes your style of offense.
Harold Reynolds must have a Ph.D. in mind-reading from the Sorbonne. It's easier to hit with poor starting pitching? "Easier"??? This is astonishing news. No wonder the Yankees are such good hitters. They're always trying to bang a little more, what with Jaret Wright constantly bumbling on the mound in the other half of the inning. Honestly, guys, who's going to acknowledge that the pitcher isn't responsible for getting his own guys to hit? Oh no, John Kruk is about to talk.
JK: See, I think it's easier to score runs when you have a pitcher on your side who's pitching for you --
As opposed to the embedded spy pitchers.
-- that is a great pitcher, because you know you don't have to score that many. And what it does, is, you know if you go up with a runner on third with less than two outs and you don't bring the run in, you think to yourself, "All right, well, so what? They're not going to score either. We'll have more opportunities."
So Krukie disagrees with Harold, but only because he thinks the exact opposite -- guys perform better for good pitchers! He did it -- he said the only thing that could possibly be dumber than what Harold said!
JK: Problem is, when you have a bad pitcher, and you don't deliver --
KR: (dull monotone) You're dead.
Ravech glassy-eyed, barely functioning.
JK: You know you're done!
(Crosstalk.)
HR: That means you gotta execute all the time!
JK: Not with a great pitcher. You can relax with a great pitcher.
HR: With a bad pitcher, you got to score runs.
This is amazing. You've got two guys arguing, extremely agitated, unbelievably passionate, and they're both wrong. It's like watching two Visigoths argue over whether the earth is square or shaped like the outline of a duck. Will somebody please speak up for reason? For logic? For just plain common sense?
SP: You're both wrong.
Thank you.
Because I don't think it's about the quality of the pitcher, it's about the pitcher and the atmosphere he creates for the team.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
(GRAPHIC:
Steve: pitchers earn their run support)
What the hell? Do you think he really believes this? Does Steve Phillips really think that Freddy Garcia (5.96 RS in 2005) "earned" better run support than Mark Buehrle (4.15) last year? How about David Wells (7.97) and Tim Wakefield (4.79)? The Red Sox hitters gave their all for someone pretty much everyone agrees is a grade-A asshole and phoned it in for a devout Christian who loves his wife and kids? (Note: may not be accurate representation of either man.) Is that what happened?
There's a rhythm and a flow that happens to a team when things are going well. When you're scoring runs, when you're playing well -- pitchers who work too quickly sometimes get their hitters out of a flow; they work too slowly, they get out of the flow. And when you have a star on the mound, sometimes everybody stands around and watches. Roger Clemens shut out nine times last year when he pitched for the Astros -- shut out seventeen times. I just think it's about the environment that the pitcher creates!
Oh, that's why Johan Santana got the best run support of anyone on the Twins last year. Because he's not a star.
HR: You're not watching when you're hitting! He ain't pitching against you!
SP: It's about the environment that the pitcher creates.
KR: (incredulous) You believe that? (dripping with sarcasm) They're so enamored with Clemens, they're just -- they can't do anything?
To be fair, Karl, you brought this up. Or maybe this was a bad producer's idea.
SP: I think they watch on days he pitches.
JK: (outraged) If that's the case, then the Houston Astros -- apologies to them -- they are the dumbest hitters in the world. If they're watching their pitcher and not concentrating on scoring runs, they're the dumbest team in the baseball [sic] and I don't believe they are.
But, but -- you just said guys hit better for good pitchers ... meaning they hit worse for bad pitchers. Why is that any less crazy? Steve is talking about environment or flow or rhythm or whatever bullshit he just came up with off the top of his head, but you're clearly just guessing when you say guys are more "relaxed" when good pitchers are on the mound.
KR: (incredibly sorry he brought the whole thing up)
I guess I'll keep watching this good show about baseball!
I thought they could get through a whole one-hour episode of Baseball Tonight without saying something outrageously, brain-stem-tinglingly dumb. Of course, I was a fool to have any faith in the Murderer's Row of Idiots that is Chris Berman, John Kruk, Harold Reynolds and Steve Phillips. Thirty-eight minutes in, we were treated to the following exchange:
Chris Berman: Who's the best lefty right now in your guys' minds, other than Phil Mickelson, in the bigs?
Clever. Topical. Phil Mickelson is in the news.
Steve Phillips: Well, I'm gonna tell you, I'm gonna go a little bit different because I know that these two guys over here are rather predictable with their picks. I'm gonna go with Cliff Lee of the Cleveland Indians.
Cue highlight package of Cliff Lee accomplishing his astounding tied-for-25th in the majors WHIP of 1.22 last year. This didn't happen, but it should've.
SP: Won 18 games last year. 18 and 5. This young guy is coming into his own as a pitcher. I think over the next few years, he's going to emerge as one of the best lefties in the game. There's no question about it. This kid has dominating stuff. He can get the strikeout. He gets the ground balls, and he pitches in big games. Cliff Lee, developing into one of the best lefties in the game.
The analysis on BBTN has sunk to new lows, even for these guys. Picking Cliff Lee as the best lefty in the game is basically a direct "f you" to the viewing audience. Steve Phillips is essentially saying "I will feed you blatant misinformation if you continue to watch this show. Everything I say will in fact be the opposite of true. I know nothing about baseball."
The correct answer is Johan Santana.
(Crosstalk.)
SP: (Preemptively defensive, anticipating a well-deserved skewering.) Okay, give me some predictability now.
Harold Reynolds: (Incredulous.) I like Cliff Lee. C.C. Sabathia is the best pitcher -- the best lefty on that team!
Incredible. Harold Reynolds, in responding to one of the stupider statements of our lifetimes, manages to be nearly as wrong as Phillips. Last year, Cliff Lee was better than C.C. Sabathia in almost every way. Better WHIP, better ERA, better ERA+, more innings, even more wins, which isn't important, but still. It's close between the two, but if you look at the 2005 results, it's hard to make an argument for Sabathia. You could perhaps justify saying Sabathia is better based on his fine 2003 season, but he's been in decline for the past two years.
Anyway, Reynolds goes on to pick Randy Johnson, which is borderline defensible. John Kruk, of all people, saves the day and picks Santana. Thank you, John Kruk, for being right for the first time in your life.
Hats off to reader "thedudes2212," who has this to say about Steve Phillips's choice of Cliff Lee, and his assertion that Lee can "get the groundballs":
Cliff Lee lifetime G/F: 0.76 lgAVG G/F: around 1.2 Cliff Lee G/F rank among qualified starters in 2005: 88th of 93
What's the one piece of advice you have for any team in baseball? Keep in mind you've had the entirety of tonight's episode of Baseball Tonight to formulate your answer.
"My advice is to the Red Sox. They need to turn up the intensity volume."
