Title is a half-assed play on words on a Richard Dawkins book title. Deal with it. Yesterday we saw a dude call Alfonso Soriano selfish because he had six bad games. (Has anyone noticed that noted egomaniac David Ortiz is 3-36? Diva!) Today's selfish oaf: Carlos Lee (HR totals the past five years: 32, 37, 32, 31, 31). I'm sensing a trend about selfish players -- they're freaking awesome.
There're some more gems in here, so let's get started, shall we,
Joe Cowley?
Williams emulates a Twinning formula
Sox GM realizes talent alone doesn't guarantee anything Talent, as we all know from years of sports journalism dogma, is anathema to winning. Teams win
in spite of talent. Talent creates egos, egos create selfishness, selfishness results in too many damn home runs.
Keep your talent. Give me guys who volunteer at soup kitchens. Then I'll have a baseball team.
He spent years watching, studying and even copying it, to the point where it won him a World Series in 2005.The truth is finally out there: Ken Williams is copying the formula of the 1989 Trumbull, Connecticut World Champion Little League team. Expect a call, Chris Drury.
Now White Sox general manager Ken Williams hopes he has moved a step closer to perfecting the model.
Thanks, Minnesota Twins.So Ken, you're going to emulate the Twins' uncanny scouting and player development machine and work on bilking Brian Sabean out of Joe Nathan, Francisco Liriano and Boof Bonser for one year of A.J. Pierzynski?
No, of course not. You're going to spout off some nonsense about
reducing the amount of talent you want on your team.
''This job is one in which you never stop learning,'' Williams said Monday, hours before the Sox rallied to beat the Twins 7-4 in the home opener. ''Early on, I thought throwing talent at the wall would bring a championship, and, for three or four years, on paper we had the best team in the division.
''There were at least two of those years where Minnesota won the division and then came out and even said, 'That team there [the Sox] has more talent than us.' That really made me rethink some of the things we were doing, the approach we were taking.''DON'T SAY GRINDER DON'T SAY GRINDER DON'T SAY GRINDER
It also forged the word ''grinder'' into his head.ARRRRRRRRRRRRGH
White Sox fans: your general manager is officially building a baseball team based on a nebulous buzzword that's a synonym for submarine sandwich. Fear him. Fear him greatly.
He saw players such as A.J. Pierzynski, the Twins' cocky catcher who needled opponents with his antics to no end, all in the pursuit of winning. Torii Hunter, Jacque Jones, Denny Hocking, Doug Mientkiewicz -- the Twins' roster seemed perfectly put together to play the game the right way, frustrating bigger-budget teams along the way.How about the fact that Hunter regularly hit 25 bombs a year, or that Pierzynski was an above-average hitter at the catcher spot, or that Mientkiewicz was one of the very best defensive first basemen in the game? No? Not important? You're right, it was probably Pierzynski's off-color jokes about what he did to Joe Crede's sisters that won the Twins the division. That's playing the game the right way!
Not only has Williams admitted to copying that model, WHAT MODEL?
All you've said so far is that they're "grinders" and the roster "seemed perfectly put together" to "play the game the right way." Oh, and that you shouldn't "have the best team on paper." How are these not just read straight off page 1 of
General Manager Press Conference Clichés, The Handbook?
but he also has had more money to budget his replica. Add a few tweaks of his own, such as adding players from outside the organization, rather than inside as the cheaply run Twins do, and ... ta-da!That's another thing. The Chicago White Sox have the fifth-highest payroll in baseball, just behind the Red Sox. They're one Gagne away from equaling Theo's budget. Consider that when you think about what kind of job Kenny Williams is doing. Baseball Prospectus has the South Siders finishing with a sweet 77 wins. Prove them wrong, Kenny. Prove them wrong.
Williams signed Pierzynski, traded away selfish, all-or-nothing hitters such as Carlos Lee and built a stellar starting rotation before the '05 season.Carlos Lee, EqAs since the trade: .274, .301, .300.
The guy they traded Carlos Lee for, EqAs since the trade: .264, .249, .244.
And last year Scotty Pods earned that .244 EqA in just 235 at bats because he was so banged-up and shitty the Sox never wanted to play him. Then, of course, at the end of the year, they just straight-up released him. The whole time, he was extremely grindy, though. He starred in that movie
Grindhouse. I think he was the lady with the machine gun for a leg.
El Caballo, meanwhile, just keeps putting up 90-30-100 year after year after year.
Get that shit off my team.Credit where credit's due -- it was a wonderful pitching staff the White Sox had in 2005. But let's be honest, a lot of dudes were having career years. Garland, Contreras, even Buehrle -- all of them posted the highest full-season ERA+s of their careers in 2005, and none of them have really been the same since. This is to say nothing of the freakish, otherworldly performances of Messrs. Hermanson, Cotts, and Politte, who, as we love to point out here on FJM, all had ERA+s of 220 or higher. That's 1989 Dennis Eckersley shit. Fun fact: none of these three guys are even on major league rosters this year. The Podsednik-Pierzynski effect? Or (ahem) just a little bit of good fortune?
Bullpens are unpredictable and fickle; it seems like every year the eventual World Series champ gets out-of-nowhere contributions from their 'pen. Just last year, the Red Sox had Okajima and Delcarmen pitching out of their minds. But seriously, to get 185 innings of sub-2.00 ERA ball from the ne plus ultra of journeyman reliever triumvirates -- Hermanson, Cotts, and Politte -- is remarkably remark-worthy. And for the last time, it has nothing to do with grinding or scrapping from hardworking, undersized, fiery white hitters.
But the underlying trait Williams searches for is what he calls a ''Chicago toughness.''You're right. I take it all back.
Labels: grinder effect, grinders, joe cowley, ken williams, scott podsednik, white sox
Ever get the feeling that Kenny Williams and Ozzie Guillen kinda sorta got really, really lucky that year they won the World Series? How about this Kenny comment from
the Chicago Tribune blog:
NASHVILLE - Despite earlier comments by manager Ozzie Guillen, general manager Kenny Williams said the White Sox have no interest in free agent center fielder Andruw Jones.
"Andruw Jones is not on our list," said Williams, adding that he liked Jones but wanted players who can help lower the team's strikeout total, raise their on-base percentage and work deep counts.
So Ozzie says they like him, Kenny says his OBP and ability to work deep counts aren't up to proud White Sox standards. (I'll grant him that Andruw strikes out a ton.)
The reader who sent this to us submits:
Jones has 152 walks in the last two years. I may have missed a player or two, but I have him ranking 26th in the majors over those two years. Number of White Sox ahead of him: One.I submit: Jones' P/PA last year was 3.96. Number of White Sox regulars who ranked higher: Two (Thome and Dye).
More to the point, though, what the hell is Kenny Williams worrying about OBP for? His manager is a guy who thinks the problem with the offense is not enough bunts and hits and runs and free outs and raw, unvarnished anger. You might want to talk to that guy if you're worried about getting on base, K-Dubs.
As I always say, the problem with these two men is their consistency. If they would remain consistent, everything else would fall into place. A consistent consistency is the most difficult part of being consistent. Keeping your consistency consistent is something I've dubbed consistinency.
Labels: andruw jones, ken williams, white sox
We've known for years that players like Darin Erstad and David Eckstein provide an extra five to ten wins a year to their teams regardless of how they perform on the field. Finally, though, Kenny Williams
has given this phenomenon a name:
"Aaron Rowand gave us an edge two years ago," general manager Kenny Williams said. "That grinder effect, if you will. We missed it last year. I've always thought that Aaron Rowand and Darin Erstad were the poster children for that style of play."Wondering if your team will benefit from the grinder effect this season? Here is a handy list of G.E.P.s (grinder effect producers) for the 2007 season:
Darin Erstad
Aaron Rowand
David Eckstein
Trot Nixon
Scott Podsednik
Adam Everett
Craig Counsell
Adam Kennedy
Mark Lemke (retired, will confer his G.E.P. to the Braves regardless)
And here is a summary of players who will not provide any G.E.:
Minorities
---
If I were a shitty version of George Carlin, I might do a routine about grinders that went something like this:
"Kenny Williams calls Darin Erstad a grinder because he thinks he's a hero. Well, I agree that Darin Erstad is a grinder, but only because I think he's really a sub."
This two-sentence "routine" plays on the little quirk of our language that there are several different regional names for a sandwich made on a long piece of bread.
Labels: aaron rowand, darin erstad, grinder effect, ken williams, punter
So you can go ahead and attack them. It's fine. They don't care. You might want to think twice before you accuse them of not giving a team enough "respect," though. 'Cause that sort of sounds like a feeling, you know, and like I just said, computers don't have feelings.
Dave van Dyck of the Chicago Tribune,
what do you think?
Computer crashes White Sox
Statistical program predicts aging team will win only 72 gamesIt's funny, the legitimate-sounding rationale for the prediction is already in the subhead. (It's aging.)
TUCSON, Ariz. -- After winning a World Series and more games the last two seasons than any team in baseball except the New York Yankees, the White Sox should have earned a little respect.
Right?Well, again, it's not really about respect. It's about looking at strikeout rates and walk rates and aging curves and ... there are a lot of variables. It's a computer program that does a better job on average than one person just making a guess. Except you're right, they probably only inputted a 3.9 for the White Sox' Respect Over Replacement Team (RORT) when they should've obviously given at least a 5.4.
Well, maybe from real baseball people, but not in the surreal world of computers.Got it? Anyone who has ever touched a computer is not a real baseball person. They are imaginary, and they hate baseball. And they (cue reality show confessional cam) don't give us enough respect!
(Warning: people who use computers may in fact be computers themselves.)
Baseball Prospectus, considered the new-age statistical bible, projects the White Sox to finish with a 72-90 record this season.Van Dyck's been reading
Murray Chass. Don't do that, van Dyck.
Re: new age -- please read the following, reprinted from February 27.
"New age" is touchy-feely. New age is spiritual. New age is intangible. VORP, Mr. Chass, is not new age. It may be relatively new, but it is not new age. It is the opposite of new age. It is an attempt to quantify, to measure, to analyze. You know, a more scientific approach to knowledge. Science -- that thing that humans do to find out more about the world around them. Not new age -- a fake thing that involves pan flutes and rubbing crystals on your body.A statistical bible is not new age.
What the White Sox will be battling, however, are their own statistics, their ages, historical comparisons and myriad other data fed into the PECOTA system at Baseball Prospectus.Exactly. See, it isn't so hard to figure out how this stuff works. People are working on this system. They tinker with it to improve it. It is not a random number generator.
How the computer arrives at its final projections is way above the average baseball mind, a sort of "objective" analysis of what the computer predicts is going to happen.Dave van Dyck has a low opinion of your mind, fellow baseball fan. He is the kind of guy who would put finger quotes around the word objective if he were reading this article out loud.
And the scary part is that the computer can be accurate much of the time. It projected five of the six division winners last spring and predicted the Detroit Tigers would finish with a better record than the defending champion White Sox.That's good. Good predicting. A computer did that? A surreal-world-living computer?
But 72 victories for a team that has averaged 95 the last two seasons? How could that be?Well, they won 90 last year. And their Pythagorean was 88 wins. So let's start there.
Last year, four batting men on the White Sox accounted for 28 WARP1. It's true. Those men were Jermaine Dye, Joe Crede, Jim Thome, and Paul Konerko. Now, if you follow baseball at all, you might know that Dye had an insane career year, Crede performed better than he ever has, Thome bounced back from injury and put up big numbers at age 35, and Konerko -- well, Konerko stayed good and stayed healthy. PECOTA, not unreasonably, projects Dye to return to Earth, Crede to come back to his previous levels, 36-year-old Thome to be banged up, and Konerko to decline a bit at age 32.
All told, for these four guys, the 2007 WARP projection is just 15.9. 28 minus 15.9 is 12.1.
88 minus 12 is 76. So we're basically almost there already. Just with these four guys. Dye is the main culprit. At age 32, he posted an 8.5 WARP1. This is what the last six years of his career look like: 4.5, 3.4, -0.5, 2.4, 2.9, 1.9. So you can forgive PECOTA for being skeptical.
Pitching-wise, PECOTA isn't optimistic for a bounceback to 2005 levels. Mark Buehrle, for instance, is predicted to continue being 2006 Mark Buehrle, and again: pretty defensible. The man had a K/9 rate of 4.0 last year.
But, Williams was reminded, the computer says the Sox are a year older.
"Maybe we're a year better then," Williams said.Um, what?
Labels: dave van dyck, ken williams, pecota, white sox
