FIRE JOE MORGAN

Finally...the perfect pun. Nailed it.

Mauf to the races! (I can't turn it off, people.)

First off, reader Joseph Z. -- just to be sure, reader Joseph M. Z. -- reminds us that Dusty Baker is still a crazy person:

"Junior has given a lot to this game and this city," Baker said. "You go look at his body and his injury list, and he's left a lot of bones, muscles, tendons and ligaments out on that field. You dig up that field, and there's a lot of Junior bones in it."

What a weird fucking way to make a point. You guys, I'm not doing anything tomorrow night. Anybody want to go look at Ken Griffey Junior's body and injury list?

Interesting side note: if you do dig up the Junior bones under the outfield of the Funtimes USA Ballpark, Carl Everett will insist that those bones were merely put there to test us, and that Ken Griffey Jr. has in fact never existed.

Mauf with their heads!

Jeff B., hit my shit:

In case nobody has notified you guys yet, it appears the idea of the "base-clogger" has taken root among the MLB scouting bureau itself. Check out these official scouting reports on a few top prospects in last week's draft: Yonder Alonso; Eric Hosmer; Petey Paramore.

I'm sure there are plenty more, but these are a few among the biggest names in the draft. These reports raise a few questions. What is the cutoff speed between cloggers and non-cloggers? What "instincts" does Alonso have that keep him from being a clogger? Do Hosmer and Paramore have bad instincts on the basepaths? Does Alonso take a running start two seconds before the pitcher delivers? Could the folks at MLB.com really not find any better scouting reports than these to post on the web?

Really, no. They couldn't. It's only the official site of Major League Baseball. I wouldn't worry about it too much.

Several of you have written us about this unholy nightmare of a column from that most preeminent source of revisionist SABR-related material: The Huffington Post.

Wherever Cliff Floyd goes, his teams win. Not only do they win, they turnaround. It's as if before Floyd got there not only weren't they winning but his teams appeared to have little idea how to win...It's not like Floyd carries his teams. He's typically not the best player. It's something about his presence that does it.

We don't think is a joke, but you can never be sure. Dave Hollander says the 2008 Rays, the 2007 Cubs, the 2003 Mets, and the 1997 Marlins all have Cliff Floyd to thank for their success. I'm not exaggerating -- read the article. It's hysterical.

You ever notice how some guys, team after team, always end up on the championship teams? Why did Robert Horry, Dennis Johnson and Bob Dandridge always show up in the NBA Finals?...Why did David Eckstein, Paul O'Neill and Curt Schilling figure prominently in multiple World Series with multiple teams?

Would it be worth having a discussion with this guy? A discussion that turned into an argument? Almost everyone reading this website thinks the answer is something like "coincidence" or "just because they played for multiple good teams doesn't mean they have the power to lift their teammates' performance any more so than tens of thousands of ballplayers in the history of sport." In the other corner, Dave Hollander thinks Cliff Floyd is a demigod. How do you even start a dialogue?

The piece ends with more nonsense from Rays' skipper Joe Maddon:

Tampa Bay skipper Joe Maddon told MLB.com that Floyd's dramatic homer sent his jubilant Rays rushing onto Tropicana Field, but the celebration didn't erupt until Floyd got to home plate.

"They were waiting on Cliff Floyd ... and that really stood out for me -- what they think of him," Maddon said. "Cliff from the very first day I met him, among the position players, he had that influence."

Following a walk-off tater, when have you ever seen a team "erupt" in celebration before the dude gets to home plate? This article designed to convince me that Cliff Floyd is a special kind of player has only reaffirmed my belief that he is almost exactly like every other baseball player. I hate people.

Finally, Brian R. made a nice point about Jay Bruce, who I was pretty enamored with following his small sample size quote. Lest we get too excited...

Of course, he also said, "There's only one Ken Griffey."

(Yes, I know what he meant, but I still laughed at that.)

So did we, Brian. So. Did. W.

e.



Sign Bonds

Labels: bill james, clogging up the basepaths, dusty baker, gallimaufry

Anyone seen that HBO documentary "The Curse of The Bambino"? It's fine, whatever.

After the Scottish Dribbler (you know what I'm talking about), one Bostonian recalls heading out of his house in Newton MA, thinking he'd be going out for a long, solitary walk, only to find hundreds of other Sox-fans-turned-zombies walking the streets. A brokenhearted old man crosses paths and says: "Son, this is the dahkest day in New England since Jack Kennedy was shawt."

That's how I feel about today, after reading this quote.

"We haven't been able to cash it in very much," catcher Jason Varitek said, "but it puts an extra amount of pressure on the other team, which we haven't been able to do. We've got a lot of big donkeys who clog up the bases."

Ugh. Boots.

I guess it's not so bad -- he's kind of making fun of his slow, chunky brethren, and not saying something crazytaint like "Frank Thomas sucks because he doesn't steal bases." But it still hurts.

First Papi on the DL, then Hazel Mae, now this. Rough times.

Labels: big donkeys, clogging up the basepaths, david ortiz, hazel mae, jason varitek, red sox

The title of this post isn't a rhetorical question. Objectively speaking, yes, a fast guy is more valuable than a slow guy on the basepaths. So if Xavier Slowplayer and Yadier Speedygas both OBP-ed .315 and slugged .390 and you could reasonably expect them to maintain those rates, I think you could say with a straight face, I'd rather have Speedygas because Slowplayer clogs the bases.

Maybe not the terminology I would use, but the point stands.

The problem is, 99.99463% of the time when writers use "clog the bases" or "clog the basepaths" or some variant thereof, the guy they're accusing of base-clogging is way better at getting on base, hitting home runs (the opposite of base-clogging -- it's base-Drano-ing!), or both. So it makes little to no sense to complain about their lack of speed. It's like grumbling that your awesome Bugatti Veyron has shitty trunk space. It would be nice if the Veyron could fit more than one of those baby-sized Coke cans in its cargo hold, but in the grand scheme of things, it's just not that important.

And now I realize that the whole analogy is completely mangled because the Veyron is fast, and base-cloggers are slow. Avert your eyes from this car crash of a mixed-metaphor clusterfuckfest.

Gwen Knapp has a theory that speed is undervalued in today's game, so the A's should abstain from signing Frank Thomas for the minimum. Too late, of course, but still. She pushed our clog the b-paths button, so here we go:

Sweeney is hitting .309, and he has already become an important clubhouse presence for the A's, much as Thomas was in 2006. Thomas or a hitter of his ilk would add a fear factor to the middle of the lineup, which is currently almost indistinguishable from the top. But Thomas would be an equal threat to clog the basepaths, where the A's move faster and more efficiently than they have in a long time.

Sweeney is off to a good start. OBP-ing .391, slugging .418. But we're talking 55 at bats. Thomas is off to a miserable start -- but in 60 at bats, he's already only four home runs shy of the total number of homers Sweeney hit all of last year, when, for the Royals, Sweeney went for a sweet .260/.315/.404.

Thomas got on base at a .377 clip and slugged .480 while appearing in 155 games. We could go back a year further and see that Sweeney put up a respectable .258/.349/.438 in 2006. But Thomas was a monster who (sort of undeservedly) got MVP votes in 2006, with his .926 OPS and 39 home runs -- for Oakland!

So Ms. Knapp: should we really be fretting about how clogged those bases are when it's pretty clear that Thomas is a way more valuable offensive player? Granted, he's 95 years old, but Sweeney's the one who appears to be in more drastic decline -- he hasn't even played a full season since 2001.

Verdict: I still haven't seen anyone use "clogging up the basepaths" in a way that makes any sort of compelling argument. Aren't you glad you know what I think about this?

Next post will be more shrill and have more jokes about barf and testicles and stuff, I promise.

Labels: clogging up the basepaths, frank thomas, gwen knapp

Instead of "Hurt," get it? You guys do get it? You're giving me a raise? You guys are the best.

It's not me saying he's dead, though -- it's Gerry Fraley. I think he'll be the Big .830 OPS or So. Fraley is convinced that the man's arms have run out of what a Super Nintendo game instruction manual might call Ultimate Hit Power. He also sort of hates him as a person.

Here, you should just read this thing:

Self-absorbed Frank Thomas smelled a rat --

Bang! Is there a word for Internet-character-assassinating someone? E-slamming? iFuckage? It's not "pwned." Do not say it's "pwned." Anyway -- Fraley just www.crucified Thomas, and we're six words in.

-- when a rapid sequence of events led to Toronto releasing him. Thomas claimed the Blue Jays benched him on Saturday -- and subsequently released him on Sunday -- to prevent him from getting enough plate appearances to guarantee his $10 million salary for next season.

I'd say this is 100% accurate. How could saving $10 million not factor into anyone's decision about anything? If Mexican uberbillionaire Carlos Slim gets his bathroom re-grouted and the grouter is like, "That'll be 10 million two hundred thirty-six dollars," Carlos Slim would be all like, "You said it would be just two hundred thirty-six dollars no way what the fuck?!" And he's Mexican uberbillionaire Carlos Slim. The last guy who should care about money.

The point is, the Blue Jays could save some serious scratch by hoping Thomas got hurt or simply denying him the at bats. Why wouldn't they consider this?

"The Big Hurt" always has been unable to see beyond his own situation.

Yes. What a class-A Selfish Sally, caring about 10 million dollars. He ought to be given a stern talking-to, this Large Injury gentleman.

A year ago, the Jays could afford to wait as Thomas found his way out of a slow start and finished with 26 homers and 95 RBIs.

So you're saying he started slow last year...and yet he finished with very solid all-around numbers? I don't know, isn't it possible THE VERY SAME THING COULD HAPPEN AGAIN?

Last year Thomas hit .250 in April and .193 in May, but he kept walking and he kept hitting for power when he made contact. This year he's hitting .167 so far, but he's walking and hitting for power (3 home runs, tied for most on the team).

We're talking about 60 at bats, people. Nate McLouth has a 1.111 OPS. It's so early John Kruk is calling 40 wins for Randy Johnson.

They do not have that luxury this season. The reality, which Thomas does not recognize, is that he represented a hindrance to the club.

After 60 at bats, you're willing to make that call. David Ortiz was negative 6 for his first 60 this year. It's so early the Washington Nationals haven't played an official game yet (Fake Ed. Note -- fact check needed).

Thomas was a deadweight. He was hitting only .167 with three homers and 11 RBIs. Nothing indicated that Thomas, five weeks from his 40th birthday, was going to break out of the slump.

Other than the three home runs and the eleven walks. In 2006, Frank Thomas hit .190 in April with five home runs and seven walks. There was no indication this 37-year-old man was anything but completely toasted bread. He finished the year with 39 freaking home runs and a .926 OPS (and 114 RBI if you're into that sort of thing, which I assume Gerry Fraley is).

In his last 35 at-bats with Toronto, he had only four hits -- all singles -- and one RBI. Those few times Thomas reached, he

PARADE PARADE PARADE

PPPPPPPAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAADDDDDDDDDEEEEEEE

PARADE MAGAZINE

clogged the bases.

And now we're talking about 35 at bats. During which Thomas reached base 8 times. Not good, certainly, but not exactly the kind of Vladivostok-cold stretch that would compel you to release one of the greatest hitters of the past twenty years.

Except that -- gasp -- he clogged the bases, of course. Drop the bum.

With Thomas as the designated hitter, Toronto received little production from a vital spot in American League lineups.

Sorta like Boston the first fifteen games. I think they released Ortiz, though. Let me check MLB.com.

Yep, they did.

The Jays had already dropped him from batting cleanup last season to fifth this year.

Fifth! They outright released their number five hitter! The more Fraley argues against Frank, the more I think dropping him was a big mistake. The Fraley Effect, I guess.

Releasing Thomas puts the Blue Jays in position to craft a more suitable lineup. They will be a better club offensively and defensively without him.

Last year, of guys with more than 400 at bats, Frank Thomas led the Jays in:

OBP
OPS
Home Runs
RBI
Walks
OPS+
Adjusted Batting Runs
Batting Wins

He was 39 years old for the majority of the season. But now, at the age of 39-almost-40, after 60 lousy at bats, he's worthless. Worse than worthless -- he makes other guys sad!

Also, replacing Thomas in the clubhouse with Scott Rolen, who's on track to return mid-May from a spring training finger injury will change the Jays' internal dynamics for the better. Rolen understands how to establish a productive atmosphere.

See? Thomas puts up team-killing RBI, Rolen puts up motivational posters with pictures of eagles and words like "INTEGRITY." Stick with Thomas if you want baseball. Rolen's more of an atmosphere guy -- Glade plug-ins, incense, and oh, he's got a great eye for wallpaper patterns.

Thomas never embraced the obligation of setting a tone for an entire team. That the Chicago White Sox won the World Series in 2005 when he was not around did not speak well of Thomas.

Revised Ingredients for a World Series Championship:

Strong starting pitching
Lights-out bullpen
Timely hitting
Lack of Frank Thomas

When Thomas clears waivers this week, he will become a free agent available for the pro-rated minimum. If Thomas expects a deluge of calls from teams eager to add him, he will be disappointed again. The Big Hurt is the last to realize that he is finished.

You're 0 for your last 4! You're licked, Hurt! Take a seat and watch Rolen color-coordinate. He's a wizard with paint samples.

I'm thinking about getting some cash together and signing Frank Thomas to play for my new independent team, the Bloggytown Basecloggers. We're going to lead the league in home runs and our clubhouse is going to smell like shit.

Labels: clogging up the basepaths, frank thomas, gerry fraley

Being a dad is crazy! Oh my God, it's so insane. If you don't have kids, you just have no idea what it's like. Kids are nuts. I'd like to share just a few little observations I have to make about being a dad.

1. Just kidding. Here's a dumb quote from Dusty Baker.

Baker has repeatedly talked about the desire to have a do-it-all leadoff hitter with speed.

Dusty is the only one who wants this?

What kinds of hitters is he looking for further down the lineup? Does he want guys with lofty on-base percentages? The answer will likely not sit well with fans of the book "Moneyball," because Baker said he believes the OBP statistic is overvalued.

I can't wait for what comes next. This is the single most exciting thing that has happened to me in the past week.

"I'm big on driving in runs and scoring runs," Baker said.

Huh. Seems like an odd way to go about winning baseball games, but okay. I mean, I would challenge your "driving in runs/scoring runs" strategy as outdated. Have you tried the modern and new methodology of: philosophizing about runs, and then sort of "surrounding" the runs with positively-charged ions, and then "inducing" runs with a combination of computer-aided design and game theory-based modeling?

Despair, Cincy fans. Your manager is giving an interview, and feels the need to announce that he is "big" on "driving in runs" and also "scoring runs." The man is a dummkopf.

"Guys in the middle should score about close to equal to what they drive in.

"About close to equal" is the set. Here's the spike:

On-base percentage, that's fine and dandy. But a lot of times guys get so much into on-base percentage that they cease to swing. It's becoming a little bit out of control.

And if they swing...and get on base...they have increased their...what, Dusty? Their...what? Their "On-blank-blank." Sound it out. Their "On-blank-Percentage." You can do it: their...okay. Forget it.

And yes, I know what he is saying. He is saying that he wants his guys to swing and get hits to "drive runners in," because he is "big" on that. But patient hitters, who walk a lot, are often better hitters, who hit better when they swing than impatient hitters, because they swing at better pitches. Forcing patient hitters to swing more = a bad idea.

Oh -- before, when I said that was the spike? I was wrong. Here's the spike. And it's a doozy.

"What you do is run the pitcher's count up, that helps," Baker said. "You put him in the stretch, that helps.

Correct. Correct. Now undermine it.

But your job in the middle is to either score them or drive them in. The name of the game is scoring runs. Sometimes, you get so caught up in on-base percentage that you're clogging up the bases."

Blammo!

Kerpow!

Bler-mump!

Sowpods!

I really can't understand how he can be "big" on scoring runs and driving in runs, but down on "clogging up the bases" with men who will (a) score the runs by (b) providing an opportunity for others to drive them in. You cannot score runs any other way. Unlessssssss -- I got it. He wants solo home run experts. That's it. He wants really fast runners, who will hit solo home runs and then run really fast around the bases. Okay. My apologies.

Despair, Cincy fans. Despair.

Next time: Dirty Diapers -- They're So Stinky!

Labels: clogging up the basepaths, dusty baker

Once again, allow me to congratulate the New Jersey Somethings on their richly deserved victory yesterday. For the record, I am disappointed but not upset. When one's teams have been on a run like my teams have since '02, it's dumb to complain. And the Pats losing yesterday will ultimately be about maybe 20% more irritating than them winning, and thus forcing me to listen to people say that their season wasn't legitimate because of SpyGate.

(For the record, you can't just add "Gate" to something to indicate "scandal." The hotel, as we all know, was the Watergate. It wasn't like there was a like Nixonian/"Chinatown" water scandal, and someone said, "Hey -- 'gate' is the LME root for 'cover-up.' Let's call it Water-gate.")

In any case, nice work, Giants. Nice work, Eli, and David Tyree's helmet, and Tom Coughlin. Super Bowls should be about upsets. It's what makes them fun.

To cleanse my palate as we head into the dark time when Michigan State basketball gets top billing on any given weekend, here's a quick bases-clogging sighting, sent to us by many of our eagle-eyed readers:

"On-base percentage is the highest thing on the list," manager Tony La Russa said at the team's annual Winter Warm-Up. "If you've proven that you can get on base, that will give you the best chance to lead off.

Sanity at last.

It doesn't mean it's the only thing. Say [Molina] has an on-base percentage of .700 in Spring Training. I don't think I'm going to lead him off because he clogs those bases a little bit. But I'm going to wait, let guys play."

Oops. And he was doing so well.

My friend, if anyone on your team ever has an OBP of .700 -- even someone as slow as one of the Molina Bros. -- I'd say you should definitely lead him off. Or hit him second. Or third, depending on his other numbers.

Once again, let us remind all baseball-minded persons out there that the object of the game is to "clog" bases. That is how you score runs. (And yes, I do realize he is not totally pulling a Dusty here. I just don't think anyone should ever use the term "clogging [up] the bases.")

Pitchers and catchers report in a few days. Eli Manning is your reigning Super Bowl MVP (which I'm pretty sure is my fault.) Ladies and Gentlemen, the state of our nation is: meh.

Labels: clogging up the basepaths, tony la russa

Behind Paleface St. Shortstuff, Alex Rodriguez might be one of our favorite guys to write about. Somehow, this insane baseball monster is -- I'll say it -- underrated. He's a choker, he has no rings, he's not a leader, he has periwinkle-colored lips...we've heard it all.

Nothing truly condemnable here, but Tyler Kepner had some thoughts on A-Rod in the New York Times this week:

Alex Rodriguez’s choice of music in spring training was perfectly fitting for his personality. As he prepared for the season, he played the Pat Benatar song “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” over and over, at high volume, in his earphones.

This is amazing. Perfect encapsulation of how incredibly un-baseball-cool A-Rod is. Do you think he stays up late playing "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" on Karaoke Revolution trying to get a perfect score on Expert?

With the Yankees starting their division series Thursday in Cleveland, Rodriguez is under immense pressure to prove he is more than a regular-season wonder.

Broken record alert: A-Rod has had some good playoffs before, but of course they do not count because they occurred in the uniform of a rainy Northwestern city's team. All non-Yankees playoff series are officially exhibitions and should not be entered into the historical record.

“What I’m looking for is more than a handful of at-bats,” Rodriguez said. “We need the team to play well, play deep into October. There’s been stretches this year where I’ve been 1 for 12, 1 for 10, 2 for 18; that’s just part of it. I’m hoping to get 50 or 60 at-bats and help the team win.”

Alex Rodriguez gets it. He gets it more than all of the people criticizing him, which must be frustrating for him. Even in this, another unbelievable MVP season, of course he had stretches where he made a bunch of outs in a row. That's how the game works. People are judging the man based on short strings of at bats scattered across years and years of baseball when in between those at bats, he's performing historic feats of greatness.

That said, I hope he goes 0-for-the-series and the media forces him out of New York. That would be sweet.

Rodriguez knows he is the last hitter opponents will let beat them. If the Yankees do not clog the bases in front of him, the Indians will probably force Rodriguez to chase pitches off the plate, the way the Angels did in 2005.

And we have a clog the bases sighting. I don't even understand what Kepner's going for, putting it in this context. Putting men on base in front of Alex Rodriguez is maybe the best thing you can do in baseball, and calling it clogging makes it sound so...Liquid-Plumr-y. Plus, the guys in front of A-Rod in the lineup are Johnny Damon, Derek Jeter and Bobby Abreu, three generally fairly speedy men.

Maybe Kepner is a secret ally and he's trying to take back "clog the bases" by spinning it as a positive thing, sort of like the n word. Yeah, that's definitely it. Clogging the bases is the n word.

Labels: a-rod, clogging up the basepaths, the n word

...for the better. Brattain took the criticism like a champ, and e-mailed me a link to a longer apologia on ballhype.com. It will help me sleep at night.

Labels: clogging up the basepaths, hardball times, john brattain

The Hardball Times is one of my favorite baseball-related infranort sites. Great writing, great analysis, fun for the whole sabermetrically-inclined family.

So imagine my surprise when I awoke to find dozens of emails sending me to this boner from John Brattain, in the article towards the bottom about the Jays' woes:

...guys like Thomas and Wells have yet to really get on track. Wells has been a tease and Thomas’ OBP is blunted by the fact he clogs the bases.

THT...talking about Frank Thomas...clogging the bases.

Has the world gone mad?

Flags at half mast, boys.

Labels: clogging up the basepaths, hardball times

Reader Taka, among others, wrote in about a "Clogging Up the Bases" sighting, on BBTN last night:

On the discussion of Bonds going to an AL team and DHing, Steve Phillips just showed his dismay by describing Bonds as "just like Giambi in that he walks a lot and hits some home runs, but when he's not hitting the home runs he's a baseclogger."

I did not see it. I assume he meant this in the pejorative sense.

If true, congratulations Steve Phillips, you have said the dumbest thing that anyone can say about baseball. Barry Bonds is (in the negative sense) a "baseclogger."

I was listening to ESPN Radio the other day -- SportsBash, I think -- and the first "who should be in the All-Star Game" moron call-in session was happening. Some guy called in to vote against Bonds, because he hasn't hit a HR in a while, and he "just hasn't been that good this year."

Barry Bonds is a bad dude, who used drugs and lied about it and cheated on his taxes and stuff. But he is the 6th-best baseball player all-time, and best active, in terms of not making outs. Which is, and apparently we still have to point this out -- the only real goal of baseball players.

His OBP this year is .487. At the age of like 70. His OBP, career, is .444. He is the all-time leader in walks.

Bonds, Henderson, and Ruth are your top three all-time in walks. Henderson, Bonds, Ruth are 1-2-4 all-time in runs. This is not a coincidence.

Bary Bonds: Clogging Up the Bases. Delightful.

Labels: barry bonds, clogging up the basepaths, gallimaufry, oh my god, steve phillips

This version of Giambi, unless he hits a home run you can forget about him. Clogs up the bases with a bad heel.

and

He (Mike Mussina) finished Stanford in three years as an economy major!

Thank you, thousands of people.

Labels: clogging up the basepaths, tim mccarver

Or so says Davey Lopes.

Too many teams are sitting back waiting for the 3-run homer. You've got a bunch of guys that are slow afoot, go one base at a time, clog up the bases, and that's pretty much what this game has become. A nonathletic-type game. We've got too many DHs.

I can't decide whether I'm getting bored of hearing the phrase "clog up bases" (in its various forms), or delighting in its contagiousness.

I just decided. I'm delighting.

There's another line in this article, by the author Mike Berardino, that's really puzzling:

Also, game instincts and a general understanding of situations and odds have steadily declined since Lopes ended his playing career in 1987.

Situations and odds...has this guy ever seen a run expectancy table? (Like this one.) I'm having trouble tracking down the dates of the first such tables, but I think it's safe to say that even if they were around before 1987, their popularity has mini-exploded. Anyone at all concerned with "understanding of situations and odds" has certainly come across them.

Except for Mike Berardino, who I am assigning a .19 heard-of-run-expectancy-tables-expectancy.

What?

Labels: clogging up the basepaths, davey lopes, mike berardino

We don't usually post things that emailers say they heard on TV because they're impossible to verify, but this is just too perfect. From reader Philip:

I caught some of the Mets-Braves game this afternoon which I believe was the ESPN debut of FJM favorite Dusty Baker along with Ric Sutcliffe and Dave Ryan. In the bottom of the first the three were discussing the Mets batting David Wright second in their batting order. Dusty says, "He (Wright) stole 20 bases last year so you don't have to worry about him clogging up the bases at the top of the order." For reference, first game, bottom of the first inning, first "clogging up the bases" quote from Dusty Baker.

Labels: clogging up the basepaths, dusty baker

Ever since Fire Joe Morgan was founded back in 1881, FJM readers have been clamoring for a glossary of the statistical terms, acronyms and abbreviations we toss around here. Such a thing already exists, but we're going to write a new one anyway.

FJM is far from a comprehensive or even occasionally accurate source of sabermetric information, but we will mention OPS+ from time to time, and if you don't know what that is, our site won’t be as informative or amusing. If you do know, the site is nearly always balls-to-the-wall genius, so it’s really in our best interests to help you all learn our terminology. A lot of sites, like ESPN.com’s MLB stats page, and baseballreference.com’s stats page, keep up-to-date records of many of the stats we use here, if you want to go and look up stuff for yourself.

So, here's a glossary of terms, statistical and otherwise, that you might encounter from time to time while reading the site. Like the Constitution, the FJM Glossary is a living document that will be updated as necessary, but unlike the Constitution, its contents can be used to befuddle the greatest second baseman of all time if you happen to run into him.

Let's get started.


BABIP (Batting Average on Balls in Play)
Exactly what it sounds like -- a player's batting average on the balls he puts into play. BABIP doesn't include strikeouts or home runs because those balls aren't in play. Make sense? This stat is helpful to show the effect of luck on a player's batting average. For instance, if two weeks into the season, Yuniesky Betancourt is hitting .573 and John Kruk is proclaiming him the next Honus Wagner, you can calmly point to the fact that his BABIP is an astronomical .494 (along with the two facts that it's two weeks into the season and John Kruk has never been right about anything). One way to calculate BABIP is (H - HR) / (AB - HR - SO + SF).

This stat can also be applied to pitchers. There's a guy named Voros McCracken who was, a few years ago, literally like living in his mom’s basement, and he was noodling around with a computer and he discovered something that made people freak out in re: pitchers, which is: pitchers can’t really control much of what happens when a ball is put into play. In other words, pitchers can basically control their Ks, BBs, and HR, but even the best pitchers in the world cannot really control how many hits they give up year-to-year. One year Greg Maddux will give up a ton of hits, the next year very few, the year after a ton again. It’s counterintuitive, but true. (If you want to read his article, here’s the link.) This is why the pitchers who are really good over a long period of time are guys who are good at the few things they can control: they strike a lot of guys out, don’t walk very many people, and give up few HR.

What does this all mean? Well, if your favorite pitcher gets off to a terrible start, but he is striking out roughly the same number of guys per 9 innings that he has in the past, and he’s walking about the same number of guys he usually has, and he’s giving up HR at the same rate he usually has, but he’s allowing a BABIP of like .390, do not despair – he has gotten a little bit unlucky, probably, since the league is not going to have a .390 BA overall for the whole year. His BABIP will probably regress a little over time, and his ERA will “magically” go down. And then Kevin Kennedy will attribute the decrease in ERA to “getting his confidence back” or something, and you will smile knowingly.

For some reason, by the way, ESPN uses “BIPA” instead of “BABIP.”

In 2008, the MLB leader for BABIP was Dave Bush, at .231. The average BABIP is about .290, which is what Johnny Cueto put up last year. The worst in the league was Kevin Millwood, who had a BABIP of .346.

BA (Batting Average)
Hits divided by at-bats; also, perhaps the stat that makes Ken Tremendous' blood curdle the quickest. Okay, maybe that's wins. Batting average is the backbone of traditional hitting metrics, and amazingly, is still looked upon as a good way to determine whether someone is good at hitting baseballs. It is not a good way to determine this. Why? Well, you already know why. You know it intuitively, and you always have. Because a guy who hits .250 but clubs 40 HR and 40 doubles and walks 100 times a year is way way way more valuable to his team than a guy who hits .310 with 2 HR and 19 doubles and 15 walks. That’s kind of obvious, isn’t it? I agree. So why should we keep talking about batting average, ever? We shouldn’t? Okay, we won’t. But Tim McCarver will, and that’s why he should be selling cookware door-to-door instead of talking to the country about baseball every Saturday.

In 2008, the MLB leader for BA was Chipper Jones, at .364 (Pujols was 2nd). The median BA for players eligible for the batting title was about .280 last year, or what Russell Martin and Curtis Granderson were able to produce. Jack Hannahan and Nick Swisher took the Doodoo Bat Awards, given to the players with the lowest batting averages (.218 and .219 respectively).

BA / OBP / SLG
Nothing more than a popular way of presenting a player’s 3 most oft-cited hitting averages. If you see three averages split up by forward slashes, chances are you’re looking at their Batting Average, On-Base Percentage, and Slugging Percentage, in that order.

DERA (Defense-adjusted Earned Run Average)
A pitching metric that attempts to be a defense-independent – in other words, it uses things a pitcher can actually control, like his BB-rate and HR-rate and stuff that doesn’t involve defense, and tries to calculate what his ERA is absent the influence of defense. 4.50 is average.

EqA (Equivalent Average)
I'll just quote Baseball Prospectus here: "A measure of total offensive value per out, with corrections for league offensive level, home park, and team pitching." EqA incorporates baserunning but not defense. EqA is derived from something called Raw EqA, which is calculated by (turn away, Rob Dibbles of the world) the following formula:

(H + TB + 1.5*(BB + HBP + SB) + SH + SF) divided by (AB + BB + HBP + SH + SF + CS + SB)

And you thought things weren't going to get that nerdy around here. EqA is basically like what you used to think BA was – a true measure of how good a hitter is. EqA is purposely formulated to be on a similar scale to BA so it won't scare off the normal people. .260 is average – which, as a point of comparison, is what Kevin Kouzmanoff sported in 2008. The league leader for '08 was Albert Pujols, at .372. He played the entire year with arthritis in his elbow.

LOOGY (Lefty One-Out GuY)
A left-handed reliever usually called upon to retire just one batter, usually in a critical situation. See Neal Cotts (actually, don't, there's no entry for him here), who led all pitchers in 2008 with a LOOGY raw index of 137/133. (Yes, sorry, this is a fake stat).

OBP (On-Base Percentage)
1. Read Moneyball.
2. OBP is the difference between Kevin Youkilis and Jeff Francoeur.
3. It's also the reason Adam Dunn is vastly underrated.
4. Very simply, OBP is a way to tell how good someone is at not making outs. It’s the total number of times a guy gets on base without being responsible for making an out (except for reaching on errors), divided by his plate appearances -- which are simply times a guy comes up to the plate and tries not to make an out. See why it’s valuable? (Plate appearances in this case are defined as At Bats + Walks + Sacrifice Flies.)

In 2008, Chipper Jones led all players with a .470 OBP (Pujols was 2nd). Michael Bourn held down the cellar (for league lead qualifiers) with a tight .288. That’s really bad. The league median among eligible batters in ’08 was .349 (Miguel Cabrera; Akinori Iwamura; Jimmy Rollins; and Kelly Johnson). And for historically ridiculous reference, in 2004, Barry Bonds’ OBP was .604; in 2002, it was .581.

OPS (On-base percentage Plus Slugging percentage)
It's not perfect. But on the plus side, it's not batting average. OPS gives you at least some idea of how patient and how powerful a hitter is. Unless, of course, you're a hidebound 263-year-old who enjoys ridiculing any advancement in human knowledge. In that case, OPS is your three-letter way to sneer at anyone who dares question the value of batting average, which was good enough for George Sisler and will be good enough for you, dammit.

Hard-core nerds will snivellingly tell you that OPS is stupid because OBP is way more important than SLG – Bill James himself, the king of all things stat-related in baseball, thinks that it is four times as important. Nonetheless, OPS has achieved some small toe-hold in popular parlance, so it’s important to know what it is and when to use it. If you really want to know how good a hitter is, however, EqA is way better. OPS is often cited with a “.” and sometimes without. Don’t be confused – if you see a number between like 700 and 1000, with or without a “.”, chances are it’s a player’s OPS.

Pujols was MLB’s 2008 OPS champ at 1.114; Michael Bourn posted the lowest OPS at .588. Jason Kubel wore the OPS Median crown at .805. The OPS Median Crown, by the way, is one of those Burger King crowns for young children.

OPS+
Anytime you see a “+” sign in front of a stat, it means that the stat has been adjusted for the specific season(s) to which that stat applies. OPS+, for example, is simply OPS measured against the league average OPS for that year/years, and adjusted for park factors (see below). 100 is defined as average. So, an OPS+ of 115 means that the player in question was 15% better than the average player who played in his league during the time he played. It’s a quick and dirty way of comparing hitters on a level playing field, because it accounts, obviously, for the general offensive trends that mark baseball history. In 1968, Carl Yastrzemski hit 23 HR and had a .922 OPS, which is very good. But his OPS+ was 171, which is excellent, because offense league-wide in 1968 was hard to come by. For contrast, Mark McGwire hit 65 HR in 1999, but his OPS+ was “only” 178, because the whole world was juicing balls into the stratosphere that year, so compared to his peers McGwire was roughly the same amount as awesome as Yaz was when he hit only 23 in ’68.

Albert was also the 2008 OPS+ champ at 190. Milton Bradley was your AL champ at 163. To give a little more cross generational perspective, your career OPS+ leaders are: (1) Babe Ruth (207); (2) Theodore Ballgame (190); (3) Barrold Bonds (182). Those guys were all really good at baseball.

ERA+
See OPS+. Same deal, but for ERAs.

Cliff Lee led eligible pitchers in MLB last year with a 175 ERA+. Timmy Lincecum took the NL title at 167. The all-time ERA+ champ, is, would you believe, Pedro Martinez at 166. (Think of all the ridiculously low ERA’s he posted in a hitter’s ballpark at a time when balls were flying out of the park.) [Note: since this was first written, Pedro's career ERA+ has dropped to 154...and Mariano Rivera is now the all-time ERA+ leader at 199. He met the requisite minimums to be considered a career leader, at least according to baseball-reference.com.]

Park-Adjusted or Park Factors
Baseball is a funny sport where human men play on fields that aren't all exactly the same. That's why it may not always be useful to compare raw statistics accrued in vastly different spaces. Say you have 16 HR and I have 1000 HR. I am a better hitter, right? Well, maybe not. Because you play for the Mariners in spacious SafeCo Field, and I play for the InterGlobal Moon Pirates, and we play in the MoonCo Moonadium, where there is no gravity, and so every ball hit into the air is a home run. You are probably a better hitter than me. Park-adjusted stats will help us figure that out.

It is important to look at things like Park Factors if you are a GM, because if you don’t you will trade for the entire Colorado Rockies offense and then they will come to your stadium and stink it up because their numbers were artificially inflated at Coors Field, and you’ll be like, “What the hell?!” and they’ll be like, “I don’t know, dude – we were awesome at Coors!” and you’ll be like “Ugh! I forgot to include Park Factors in my analysis!!!!!!!” And who wants that?

There are different ways to calculate Park Factors. According to ESPN, Rangers Ballpark was furthest on the Hitters’ Park end of the spectrum, while PETCO Park anchored the Pitchers’ Park side. Sounds about right to us. (Park Factors also vary from year to year more than you might think.)

Pythagorean Record (or “Expected Win-Loss”)
Remember the old Pythagorean Theorem? X squared plus Y squared = Z squared? Same idea, but instead of sides of a triangle, it uses runs scored and runs allowed. It turns out that this is a pretty good way to predict what a team’s record will be. The formula is RS^2/(RS^2+RA^2). If a team is 50-35 but has allowed the same number of runs that it has scored, you can bet that its wins have been a little flukey, and that it will cool off pretty soon. The Pythagorean did a bang-up job, for example, at predicting the precipitous decline of the 2005 Washington Nationals.

In 2008, the Chicago Cubs had the highest Expected Win-Loss of .619; the Mighty Nats were last at .376.

VORP (Value Over Replacement Player)
An offensive stat only, VORP attempts to calculate the number of runs a player is contributing above what a replacement-level player at the same position would if given the same percentage of team plate appearances. VORP is a counting stat, not a percentage stat – so, for example, as of July 22, Andruw Jones has a VORP of 31.0. That means that he has created 31 more runs for his team than the average AAA call-up guy would have by this point in the season. It also turns out that every ten runs a player creates is worth roughly one win, so Andruw’s offense alone has earned the Braves three wins. (There are other stats, like Fielding Runs Above Average [FRAA] that do the same thing as VORP, for defense.) See WARP below for more.

Old Baseball Men, this is another good one to bandy about if you're interested in tearing down a nerd's argument. Because it sounds funny. VORP. Please. What's that doing in baseball? Forget VORP, let's come up with a stat for the size of a guy's heart, am I right, people? We'll call it the Eckstein Quotient. No, wait, that sounds too nerdy. Eckstein Number. Nope. Still too smart. Eckstein Thing. How about just Thing? The highest Thing in the majors? You guessed it: David Eckstein. That's why they almost named it after him.

Once again, Albert Pujols was your VORP leader in 2008 at 98.7. Hanley, Chipper, Lance Berkman, and David Wright rounded out the top 5. Tony Pena was dead last at –24.9. Micah Owings (SP-Ari), by the way, had a VORP of 7.3 (as a hitter), which was better than, like, Kosuke Fukudome at 6.1.

WARP (Wins Above Replacement Player)
Sort of like VORP, but with a defensive component, as well. And it's calculated in terms of wins. It uses VORP and FRAA and all of those things to figure out how many wins a player is worth to his team, by himself, from all phases of his game. There are also WARP-2 and WARP-3, which adjust for various historical factors and stuff like that.

WHIP (Walks plus Hits allowed per Inning Pitched)
Pretty self-explanatory. Way way way way way better measure of a pitcher’s effectiveness – especially a relief pitcher’s effectiveness – than ERA or wins or anything that you’ve ever heard Steve Lyons talk about during FOX Saturday Baseball broadcasts.

Roy Halladay was best in 2005 (among eligibles, which basically means starters) with a WHIP of 1.05. Brandon Backe was last at 1.67. The median was 1.32, represented by the likes of Gil Meche, Paul Byrd, Daisuke Matsuzaka and Javier Vazquez. Sometimes you’ll see WHIP go into the thousandths, which in this case would have been helpful to avoid writing out four names of average-ish pitchers.

Wins
1. The only stat that matters. The only way to pick a Cy Young winner. The thing Billy Beane can't get in the playoffs, no matter how many fancy computers he hires to play baseball for him.
2. A simply awful pitching statistic that should be swallowed up by the earth itself, personified, given ears, and forced to listen to a tape loop of Bermanisms for all of eternity. The reason being – and again, you know this, intuitively, even if you have never quite expressed it to yourself – if Carl Pavano gives up nineteen runs in five innings but the Yankees score 20 runs, and they hold on to win, and Pavano gets the win, is Pavano a good pitcher? No he is not. (This scenario is assuming he ever comes back and actually pitches, btw.) If Francisco Liriano throws 9 innings of no-hit ball, but gives up a run on four consecutive errors by Terry Tiffey and gets a loss, is Francisco Liriano a bad pitcher? No he is not. Wins stink to high heaven as a way to value pitchers because they are in very large part dependent on the actions of the other guys on the team.

Of course, according to Joe Morgan, "Wins and losses are how you measure pitchers" (Baseball For Dummies, p. 289).

Cliff Lee and Brandon Webb led all pitchers with 22 Wins last year. Good for them. And, obviously, there were about 140 pitchers who tied for last with zero wins.

>>>>Some other terms you might find helpful:

True Yankee
A leader. A guy who’s full of intangible qualities that help him triumph – with class. Derek Jeter. A guy who has a certain look in his eye, like he knows what it means to don the pinstripes with some motherfletching pride. Bernie. Mantle. Joe D. Jeter. A guy who you want in the trenches with you. Mattingly. Joe Girardi. Derek. Jim Leyritz. Posada. Derek Jeter. A guy who stares adversity in the face and says, “I play for the Yankees, and that means something, and I am going to hit a HR off BK Kim in this World Series Game because I am a New York Yankee." Scott Brosius. Tino. Dave Justice. Derek Jeter. A winner. Derek Jeter.

Here are some people who are not True Yankees: Alex Rodriguez, Mike Mussina, Jason Giambi, Alfonso Soriano, Carl Pavano, Jaret Wright, and every other New York Yankee who has never been on a Yankees’ World Series winning team.

If you ever – ever – hear someone use the phrase “True Yankee,” for any reason, I want you to find the nearest exit, form an orderly line, and leave the premises quickly and calmly. Seek shelter. Cover head. Report the incident to your nearest FJM representative immediately. You are in great danger, because the person you are talking to is an idiot.

HatGuy
HatGuy is Mike Celizic, who writes a column for MSNBC.com. He is a very bad man who wears an old-timey fedora in his official MSNBC.com staff picture and does not know anything about anything, least of all baseball.

JoeChat
Joe Morgan does live chats with his admirers every Tuesday on ESPN.com. You have to be an ESPN Insider to view/participate in these chats. If you do not wish to be an ESPN Insider, you can check in with FJM weekly for a breakdown of all of the indecipherably weird things Joe writes when responding to perfectly innocuous questions about the game he claims to have loved for many years, but in reality has clearly never actually seen played.

Do not go to joechat.com unless you are a gay man looking for other gay men.

David Eckstein
David Eckstein is 4'10" and appears to suffer from borderline albinism. Despite this, he is a mediocre MLB shortstop. After he throws the ball to first base, it looks like he needs to lie down from exhaustion. He also runs hard to first base, as most baseball players do.

Baseball analysts have interpreted this data to be somehow indicative of something more powerful than mere "tangible" baseball skills, perhaps residing somewhere deep in the (non-human?) DNA of David Eckstein.

In fact, a new wave of baseball genetic experts believes that there may be a mutant patch of genetic code on chromosome 11 in some major league ballplayers. In most cases, this causes True Yankeeism. Eckstein, they claim, was born with a mutation of a mutation; the resulting phenotype features not only acute and heightened True Yankeeism, but stunted growth and fair skin and hair.

Sabermetrics
The Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) is like the sort of father organization for all of the stat-based stuff we use, and thousands of other forward-thinking people use, when we talk about the statistical side of baseball. Sabermetrics is a neologism that refers broadly to their/our brand of statistical analysis.

Moneyball
Moneyball is a very good book by Michael Lewis, which chronicles the ways in which Oakland A’s General Manager Billy Beane tries to keep his team competitive with a small payroll. The clunky and incorrect understanding of the Moneyball philosophy is that it simply involves getting players to walk a lot and hit home runs. In reality, what Moneyball deals with is the search for inefficiencies in the complex world of evaluating baseball players. At the time the book was written, Billy Beane and his crew had determined that there were players who weren’t fast runners, maybe, or were fat, or short, or otherwise had some kind of superficial thing “wrong” with them that made other GMs dismiss them as not good baseball players. But these players were actually good at baseball, and because other people had undervalued their skills (skills like walking a lot, for example) Beane was able to draft them or trade for them and not pay them a lot of money, because no one else wanted them.

These days, enough people have caught on to the idea that on-base percentage is important that such players are not undervalued anymore, and so GMs like Beane, who have to put a team together with a $50 million payroll instead of, say, the Yankees’ $200 million payroll, are looking elsewhere for value.

The book rubbed a lot of traditionalists the wrong way, because it takes the obvious and yet somehow controversial position that the massive amount of observable data we can collect from a baseball player’s performance is more important than that player’s like physical strength or speed in the 40 yard dash. Beane, and others like him, believe that it doesn’t matter if a guy looks like he should be awesome at baseball – it matters if he is actually good at baseball. It doesn’t matter if some crusty old scouts who have been in baseball for seventy years look at a guy and say, “He’s fast, he’s got a cannon for an arm, he’s got a strong jaw line – dadgummit, that thar boy’s gonna be a star!” It does matter if the guy walks a lot and can hit well or is an awesome fielder or something. Seem obvious? Try telling fans of Darin Erstad. They will tell you that he is awesome because he is intense and used to play football at Nebraska. You will blink, confused, and say, “But he can’t hit well,” and they will say, “HE WAS A PUNTER AT NEBRASKA! HE IS INTENSE AND A LEADER!” and you will slink away because they are spitting on you.

Moneyball is also famous because Joe Morgan rails against it constantly, even today, and on numerous occasions has pronounced it hogwash, despite freely admitting that he has never read it, and also for a long time believing that the book was actually written by Beane himself. When his error was pointed out to him, Morgan apologized profusely, admitted his mistake, rethought his stance, read the book and has now completely changed the way he thinks about statistical analysis. Oh, no – wait. I’m sorry. He didn’t do anything of the kind. He just dug in his heels and continued to claim that the book was hogwash.

Darin Erstad
A former punter at the University of Nebraska who had one good year for the Angels, signed a huge contract, and stinks at baseball, despite the strident arguments of hundreds of sportswriters who continue to talk about how important he is to the Angels and how he’s intense and a leader and the Angels would be nowhere without him. Trust us: he stinks at baseball.

Gallimaufry
A hodgepodge of brief reader e-mails cobbled together when the blogger is feeling too lazy, tired, or preoccupied with Turner Classic Movies to write a proper post. It's a true fact: "gallimaufry" was a word received by one of Junior's competitors in his sixth grade county spelling bee. The dude totally missed it.

“Not Hot-Dogging”
Something that ESPN Baseball Tonight commentator and 11-time Philadelphia Metro-Area Pie Eating Champion John Kruk once said should be a criterion for Baseball Hall of Fame Induction. I swear to God.

Fremulon Insurance
Fremulon Insurance is the employer of one Ken Tremendous. They currently hold offices in Partridge, KS; Los Angeles, CA; and Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Tim McCarver
The Fox Network’s #1 color commentator. And, without question, the worst color commentator in the history of the world, in any sport. By my estimation, Tim McCarver has said 94 of the 100 dumbest things anyone has ever said about baseball, and worse, he tries constantly to be poetic and witty in his speech, a skill I assure you he does not possess, so what you end up getting is a lot of weird puns and aphorisms spewing forth in a lackadaisical Southern drawl. His broadcasts remind me of a bad wedding toast given by a drunk family friend who’s a high school English teacher.

"Clogging up the basepaths."
In a now infamous episode of Baseball Tonight, Harold Reynolds and John Kruk accused players like Frank Thomas of taking too many walks when they should be driving in runs. In their words, "clogging up the basepaths.” We shit you not.

Many Cubs fans have written us to point out that the phrase might more accurately have been coined by Dusty Baker, and there seems to be ample evidence to support their claim. Regardless, it belongs in the Pantheon of Dumb.

Labels: clogging up the basepaths, darin erstad, david eckstein, eqa, fjm, fremulon insurance, gallimaufry, HatGuy, joechat, mother's basement, ops, statistics, tim mccarver, vorp, wins