FIRE JOE MORGAN

Ahhhhh, baseball! The crack of the bat. The sweet smell of dewdrops in spring. The checking of home/away splits. The improper substitution of a LOOGY just because the hitter is lefty even though the hitter has a like total reverse split. The whirring and clicking of massive Cray Supercomputers spitting out PECOTA Predictions. Swarthmore professors using something called "Chernoff Faces" to convert managerial tendencies into graphical/pictorial form. Baseball.

It's back again. And here's what we definitively learned from day one of the 2008 MLB Season: Nothing, dummies. It's a small sample size.

So instead, let's gallimaufry it up.

Several readers sent us to this article, which contains many of my least favorite words:

The Blue Jays felt like they needed an infusion of gritty players, the type who can spell the difference between winning and losing in tight games, and they believe they've added those pieces in third baseman Scott Rolen and free agent shortstop David Eckstein.

Rolen is going to cost them $12m this year, and he's already out for a few weeks with a screw in his finger. He turns 33 in a few days, and has played in 310 games in the last three seasons. But: he's gritty. Boy oh boy, is he gritty.

Eckstein is: Eckstein.

"When they take the field, they're both always on the ground," Gibbons said.

That's how fucking professional these dudes are. They obey the laws of gravity no matter what.

"They give us a toughness that I think we need."

They -- the left side of your infield -- will give you 800 AB combined and 15 homers, if you are lucky. (Did I mention Rolen had 8 HR in 112 games last year?)

Wells, Toronto's star center fielder, likes the idea of having Eckstein drive opposing pitchers batty with his knack for fouling off pitches, making contact and getting on base out of the leadoff spot.

For the ever-growing record, Eck saw an average of 3.64 pitches per AB last year, tying him for 317th on the list of all NLers with, among others, notorious hacker Jacque Jones. N.B. that fucking Roy Oswalt had a 3.76. You want a lead-off guy to see a lot of pitches and drive 'em batty -- go with Roy.

Many hundreds of thousands of you also pointed us to this article about tools.

The proverbial five tools for position players -- hitting for average, hitting for power, defense, arm and speed -- are covered throughout the survey [of MLB scouts], in one way or another.

Only one player really scored high in all of the above: Ichiro.

Really. Hitting for power. Huh.

Ichiro career: 67 HR in 4782 AB.

The panel of scouts rated him tops in all of MLB in the categories of Best Hitter, Best Bat Control, Best Outfielder, Best Arm and Best Baserunner. He also rated second in the categories of Best Bunter, Fastest Runner and Best Basestealer.

He also won Best Personality, Best Dancer, Girls' Choice for Brother, and Cutest Stubble. He is tearing things up at Central High, people! Rumor has it, this saucy little import has grabbed the heart of none other than Clarissa Prettyface -- Cheer Captain and Improbable Virgin -- and he is not letting go! But what will happen when her boyfriend Jock Fisterson finds out?

"You could put Ichiro down for almost everything -- best arm, best outfielder (when he wants to be), best basestealer, best hitter, and he could hit 50 home runs if he wanted to, but he'd rather get his 220 hits and bat .330," said one scout.

You guys don't get it. He's awesome. If Ichiro wanted to, he could play basketball and probably be like the best ever. So I voted for him for 2-guard in the NBA All-Star Game this year. He could fucking fly if he wanted to. That's why I put him down for "Best Bird Imitator." If Ichiro felt like it, he could totally discover important things about gamma ray bursts, which is why I voted for him for the Cal Tech Fellowship in High-Energy Astrophysics.

[Extreme side note. While poking around the internet looking at gamma ray burst articles and black hole articles and things -- part of my mandatory mom's basement/nerd study program -- I came across this article, which discusses the High Energy Astrophysics Division (HEAD) of the American Astronomical Society (AAS).

HEAD-AAS.

Why would you acronym yourselves to make HEAD-AAS?" What bunch of ass-faces.]

Diversion over. Let's take some mail, shall we? Edward writes:

In case you missed it, here's how David "I'm scrappy and pesky, and I should have gotten a 3-year deal for it" Eckstein's evening went:

• 1st inning: 0-1 count, lead-off groundout, setting up his team nicely with the first out.
• 3rd inning: Lead-off strikeout on 4 pitches, see 1st inning.
• 5th inning: With runners on 1st and 3rd and no outs. 1-1 count, grounds out to 1st, runner from 3rd doesn't score, though the runner on 1st does advance to 2nd.
• 7th inning: Runner on 3rd, 2 out. First-pitch ground-out to 3rd.

It must be said that he fielded his position flawlessly. But he did not remotely do his job as the lead-off hitter. 0-for-4, averages 2.5 pitches per at-bat, doesn't get the ball out of the infield.

Fun with small sample sizes. A lot of fun.

Adam writes:

The other day Steve Phillips said (this is a rough quote, the number is what is important): "The Detroit Tigers and Boston Red Sox could both score 1,000 runs this season."

The sheer stupidity of the statement is incredible. Now obviously anybody could score 1,000 runs in a season. Since 1900, however, only 7 teams have scored 1,000 runs in a season, with the modern-day record being 1,067 by the 1931 Yankees. Teams that have scored 1,000 runs in a season:

New York Yankees - 1,062 (1930), 1,067 (1931), 1,002 (1932), 1,065 (1936)

St. Louis Cardinals - 1,004 (1930)

Boston Red Sox - 1,027 (1950)

Cleveland Indians - 1,009 (1999)

Labels: cray supercomputers, david eckstein, gallimaufry, HEAD-AAS, hideki matsui's porn collection, ichiro, mother's basement, steve phillips

Just watched Wednesday's PTI. Le Batard and Wilbon talk new contract for Ichiro, and ten seconds in, Wilbon's making Le Batard look like Richard Feynman. (I have to admit, I've got issues with Le Batard, but if you ask me, that dude ranks in like the top two percent of people who talk about baseball on TV, in terms of "getting it.")

Here are four things that Michael Wilbon actually said, and three things that he did not say, but should have. Collect 'em all!

"I don't care about OPS! That sounds like -- what is that, OPS is a rap title?"

"Long before anyone discovered on base plus slugging, people talked about runs scored, batting average, and hits in a season!"

"Just so everyone remembers: there was a song called OPP that came out seventeen years ago. When I say OPS sounds like a rap title, this is -- I think -- the reference I am making. Cuz I'm [at this point he does some upper body pop-locking] down with it, yo!"

"(On base percentage) is not as important (as batting average.)"

"I do this weird thing where I button the top button of my shirt, but I don't wear a tie, and usually I wear the kind of shirts where you can't even see the top button. I do this for a reason. And that reason is: I'm a crazy man."

"Let me ask you this: when (Ichiro) goes to second or to third, and he's in scoring position, does that count in the OPP or whatever it is?"

"Here, I've got one for your new, fake statistics: 'OPS. What can brown do you for you.' Get it? Like UPS. Nevermind."

Labels: batting average, ichiro, michael wilbon, naughty by nature, ops, pti

Enough with telling us who should and shouldn't be famous. We get it. You want undersized fast gentlemen to get more credit, or at least more ladies when they go out to a bar or something. Big and strong bad. Small and weak good.

The thing is, sometimes you just ruin your own case. Take you, Tom Singer of MLB.com. You wrote an article with this headline (presumably written by your editor, with whom you should have words):

Table setters lack fame but spark runs

And then right under that headline you put a picture (perhaps not you, but the web layout guy, another guy with whom you should look into having a conversation) of this man:



Hey, here's the thing, Tom Singer: that guy is super famous. He is among the most famous of baseball men. If pressed to name any four baseball players, my mother would likely name that guy and then stop altogether. My mother barely speaks English. I would argue that this particular Japanese gentleman possesses fame just about equally as well as he "spark(s) runs." Not even counting Japan, where I believe his likeness can be found on the 1000, 5000, and 10,000-yen notes.

Then the subhead:

Indispensable pests find ways on base without elite power

Like, walking? No, of course you do not mean walking. Guys who walk a lot are already too famous. I am so sick and tired of the damn MTV generation and their infatuation with Brian Giles.

Thirty years ago, Neil Young musically reminded us that "Rust Never Sleeps," and the baseball cognoscenti's spin on that is, "Speed Never Slumps."

Does the phrase "musically reminded us" bother anyone else as much as it's bugging the shit out of me? I'm going to say bad writing on that one. Factor in the totally incorrect cliche, the word "cognoscenti," and you have one terrible sentence. I'm musically reminded of the Godspeed You! Black Emperor song "This Opening Sentence Stinks Like A Stinky Person's Stinky Ass" (warning: song may not actually exist).

In a game that celebrates and dotes on the big guys who clean up, there is still a major role for the little men who land opposing pitchers in a mess to begin with.

No one anywhere is arguing that there is no role for them. If you can get on base and play defense at a major league level, chances are you are playing for a major league team. Congratulations. I'm sorry you're not famous enough for Tom Singer.

Chicks, and the TV highlights, may dig the long ball, but your typical manager is equally fond of the short game of those able to play with nuance, not brawn.

I reject the notion that Kevin Youkilis refusing to swing at a pitch two inches outside is not playing with "nuance." Plus, he's not really even "brawny." He's more "sorta fat."

Chicago White Sox pitching coach Don Cooper said it all a couple of springs ago, when he dropped the names of Barry Bonds -- the game's most feared slugger -- and Ichiro Suzuki -- its primary skills player -- into the same sentence.

"I'd say they are the two most dangerous hitters in the game," Cooper opined, giving pitchers' perspective.

Now hold on a second. Ichiro is good. I'm not denying that. But he's nowhere near one of the most dangerous hitters in the game unless you're defining dangerous as "only capable of hitting singles." Plus, when Don Cooper said that, it made marginally more sense because Ichiro was coming off a season in which he hit .372, which is especially impressive to people who care about batting average. In the past two years since Cooper's comment, Ichiro has declined precipitously (not to mention what Bonds has done).

So basically: why the fuck are you talking about what Don Cooper said in 2005?

And here's a fun extra thing: in 2004, Ichiro's finest as a hitter in the American big leagues, he had a VORP of 68.7. Barry Bonds' VORP that year was 132.0. No real point there, just: wow, was Steroidy Barry Bonds good!

The Ichiros are the players who, in addition to setting the tables, give the manager something to fall back on when the power is unplugged. Very simple, really: You can't hit a home run at will, but, for those proficient at it, you can bunt and hit to the right side in your sleep.

There's a good reason baseball is called a game of inches, not a game of 400 feet.

Yes, I agree. We should allow the cliche "Baseball is a game of inches" to determine what works and doesn't work in the game. It's fortunate the song "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" includes the lyric "One, two, three strikes you're out at the old ballgame" because if it said four, we would have to change gameplay accordingly.

"A guy hitting 50-60 homers ... that's great, but that still leaves him with 500-some at-bats when he isn't hitting them," reasons Juan Pierre, now with the Dodgers and one of the best contemporary setup hitters. "So the home run is great, but just the chances of it happening aren't that great.

Now we're getting somewhere. How psyched was Juan Pierre to give quotes for this article?

Tom Singer: Hi, Juan?
Juan Pierre: Yes Tom.
TS: I'd like to write an article basically perpetuating the notion that guys like you -- you know, make a lot of outs, very few extra-base hits, career steal percentage of 73.7 -- are extremely valuable ... just as valuable as, say, Lance Berkman or Paul Konerko!
JP: Of course I will help you. I must thank people like you for a goodly portion of this $45 million I am sleeping on!

As Pirates pitcher Fritz Ostermueller said more than a half-century ago, with a nod toward matinee idol teammate Ralph Kiner, "Home run hitters drive Cadillacs; singles hitters drive Chevys."

I know for a fact that Michael Cuddyer drives a Sebring. Does that affect anything?

But you know what? Those "singles" hitters also drive championship teams. Do you suppose all the people over the years who have echoed Ostermueller's quote, turning it into one of the most legendary in history, ever stopped to think that Kiner's seven Pirates teams were among the worst ever, diving an aggregate total of 193 games under .500?

Pick a response:
a) WHO CARES
b) INCORRECT USE OF STATISTICS
c) ALREADY STOPPED READING ARTICLE, NOW REFRESHING CUTE OVERLOAD, LOOK, PUPPIES

Conversely, no National League team with a league homer champ in its lineup has appeared in the World Series since 1983, when the Phillies got in with Mike Schmidt.

I mean, really.

2006 St. Louis Cardinals, Albert Pujols, 49 HR
2005 Houston Astros, Morgan Ensberg, 36 HR
2004 St. Louis Cardinals, Albert Pujols, 46 HR (plus Jim Edmonds, 42 HR)
2003 Florida Marlins, Mike Lowell, 32 HR
2002 San Francisco Giants, Barry Bonds, 46 HR
2001 Arizona Diamondbacks, Luis Gonzalez, 57 HR

And that's just this century. These guys hit a lot of home runs. Why in the world would we expect the league homer champ's team to have that huge an advantage over, say, the second-place homer guy's? Or third? It's a difference of a few home runs, and it's totally outweighed by the other eight guys hitting and, um, all of the guys pitching.

This is what makes a two-time World Series hero of David Eckstein, and why there is room for 5-foot-9 Dustin Pedroia among the Boston redwoods.

Ed. note: Tom, per the recent league-wide memo, David Eckstein must be referred to in print as "1-foot-9 bowlegged asthmatic cancer survivor David Eckstein." Please revise accordingly. Thank you.

Says San Diego reliever Cla Meredith, a former Minor League teammate of the new Red Sox second baseman, "Don't sell him short.

Shouldn't "Don't sell them short" have been the title of this article? It's just perfectly awful enough.

If we define a table setter as someone with 500-plus at-bats who does not homer in double-figures, a total of 16 qualified in 2006. They included Pittsburgh's Freddy Sanchez, whose six homers were the fewest for a batting champ since Tony Gwynn in 1996.

Let me guess: half of your "table setters" are bad.

Besides obvious perennials like Ichiro, Eckstein, Pierre and Cabrera, others included Mark Loretta, Chone Figgins, Omar Vizquel, Willy Taveras, Dave Roberts and Jason Kendall.

Yep. Maybe not bad. Average, I guess. It's weird how specifically filtering out power eliminates almost everyone who is really good. Does anyone really believe that Mark Loretta should be more famous than he is? He is the definition of average and he should stay that way.

In 2002, Alex Rodriguez and Rafael Palmeiro combined for 100 homers, but Texas finished deep in the AL West basement. Meanwhile, with Darin Erstad and Eckstein combining for 44 steals and 41 sacrifices (bunts and flies), the Angels won the World Series.

Holy fucking atheism. This is so dumb it's not worth dignifying with a response. But I like dignifying. They call me the Dignifier. John F. Q. Z. Dignifier, Esq.

Here goes:

2002 Texas Rangers pitching staff ERA+: 95
2002 Anaheim Angels pitching staff ERA+: 118

Hmm.

(The Angels also had a higher team OPS+ because like seven of their hitters had decent offensive seasons. The Rangers were A-Rod, Raffy, Pudge, and shit.)

(Darin Erstad was the worst hitter on the team not named Bengie Molina. .313 OBP.)

The do-everything guys are doubly dangerous. The implied threat is as effective as the executed play.

Would it be fair to say that Tom Singer's favorite team would be the Portland Implications? Instead of ever getting on base, they could repeatedly fake bunts and then hit sacrifice flies for non-existent base-runners. They might end the year with zero runs but they'd lead the league in threats and plays-the-right-way. In their home ballpark, the Imagination Dome, neither team uses actual baseballs or bats. They just do a wonderful mime of pitching and bunting and stealing and then everyone goes out for ice cream.

Tom Singer: Hey Juan Pierre, hot soup. Tough one. I'm going to ask you, Juan Pierre, how important you think what you (Juan Pierre) do is to a baseball team?

"You're asking the wrong guy, because I think that's very important," Pierre says.

TS: Yes. Please. Expand on your own importance.

"Guys like me do so many different things. When you always got a man on base, it puts a lot of pressure on the defense and maybe gets the pitcher to give that home run hitter a better pitch to hit.

TS: Do you think it's strange I'm asking you to glorify yourself in this manner?

JP: Yes, very. I do like how you keep caressing my hair while we speak. It is very soothing.

TS: Yes, it is. Juan Pierre -- John Peter, can I call you John Peter? Can you provide me with a quote to end my article? Preferably something that insults the average fan.

"Everyone notices the home run. Bam! It's right there," Pierre says. "There's lots of stuff we do that the average fan doesn't see. You've got to know the ins of the game."

I'd say Pierre knows the "outs" of the game! Wink! (Juan Pierre led the league in outs in 2006).

The way this guy talks about home runs, you almost start to forget it's the single most valuable thing you can ever do when you are standing at the plate short of knocking Johan Santana out of the game by hitting him in the face with the ball.

Welcome to baseball outside the box score.

Welcome to a world where these players are everyone's favorite because we don't keep score at all. We just throw the ball up in the air, no one wears uniforms, and everyone on the field just dances. It's a dance party.

Labels: darin erstad, david eckstein, ichiro, juan pierre, table setters, tom singer

Is Making Me Distraught-a.

Thank you. Thank you.

This is what he said while discussing the Mariners:

And of course, probably arguably the best hitter in the last 25, 30 years in Ichiro.

Inverting those numbers, is Ichiro even one of the 25 or 30 best (most valuable regardless of position) hitters of this year?

Last year his EqA was lower than Pat Burrell's.

Labels: baseball tonight, ichiro, orestes destrade