FJM has gone dark for the foreseeable future. Sorry folks. We may post once in a while, but it's pretty much over.
You can still e-mail dak,Ken Tremendous,Junior,Matthew Murbles, or Coach.
Possibly pseudonymed reader Cletus points us to this slightly old, but still tasty nugget from Tom Singer over at mlb.com.
DP combos thriving throughout MLB Chemistry up the middle becoming a trend with contenders
Baseball's ever-isolating spotlight is one of the game's charming appeals. When the ball is pitched or when it is struck -- it's all on you, regardless of which glove you're wearing at the time, batting or fielding. So, on a ball field, every man is an island. Except those two in the middle, whose teamwork is crucial as two pistons of the same engine, the most critical links in a strong chain.
I have a 2002 Honda Civic. Good car, good mileage. Cleans up nice. Problem is, there's something wonky going on in the engine. Gets really noisy in the higher gears.
I brought it into a mechanic, and he explained my problem in a surprisingly long-winded fashion (it seems so obvious in hindsight!):
"You got a couple pistons in here...they don't like each other. You know -- chemistry issues. This one piston [pointing to a piston], he doesn't like this other guy over here [pointing to another piston]. One of them has been in the car for quite some time. The other is, you might say, a 'rookie.' New piston. Also -- and you may find this hard to believe, but I'm a mechanic, so trust me on this one -- they are from different religious backgrounds and like to play different kinds of piston music in the piston clubhouse. So I don't think that's helping neither...So, like I said, it's a chemistry thing. Teamwork problem. It has nothing to do with the fact that this one piston is very rusty and has the piston-equivalent of a weak and inaccurate arm, and I am 99.9% sure that your problem also has nothing to do with the fact that this other piston has trouble getting the pistonball out of his pistonglove quickly. I won't deny that those are vital components of turning a PDP, but in my expert opinion, this is clearly a teamwork / chemistry thing. Okay, so, anyway, just let me know when I can stop talking. I feel like at this point everyone should understand that (a) using inanimate engine-parts in a baseball chemistry metaphor is a bad choice by the author and (b) it's quite possible that the degree to which a DP combination excels at turning the DP depends more on their individual abilities than anything related to 'timing' or 'teamwork' or what have you. That will be 300 million dollars."
Holding onto these positions is as difficult as holding your ground in the storm of a take-out slide. Second and short are among the first positions targeted by teams seeking to reach the next level.
You heard it here first, baseball fans. If your team is trying to improve, there's a good chance that they'll go after a 2B and an SS. Well -- not quite. Those will be among the first positions they'll go after. Those two. Will be among the first. (Out of nine.)
Singer then goes on to point out which teams have the longest-running DP tandems (Phils, Yanks), and which teams may in the future (Mariners). I have no idea how this bolsters his argument. I'm actually not sure what his argument is, but, whatever.
Twins manager Ron Gardenhire's choice at second -- Brendan Harris (acquired from the Rays as part of the Delmon Young package), Nick Punto or Alexi Casilla -- will be influenced by how new shortstop Adam Everett relates to them.
"A lot of it is going to be about compatibility," Gardenhire said. "We're going to have to wait and see how it all plays out with those guys together."
Seems like sound reasoning, right? Forget how they handle the bat, or how good their defense is on the 97% of plays that don't result in double plays. (Please someone e-mail me to correct me on that number. I'm estimating.)
No. The most critical criteria on determining the starting 2B for the Minnesota Twins is, apparently: How does Adam Everett relate? Does Evy wanna hang? Can you drink brews with AE?? Or, slightly more fairly: How quickly will Adam Everett develop a nebulous unspoken understanding of where you're going to be on the diamond under different baseball circumstances? It's a long way from Spring Training to developing the sixth sense displayed by keystone soul brothers.
Note that the length of this way is mostly dependent on the fact that humans are incapable of developing a sixth sense.
As the Phillies' Utley says of his vibes with Rollins, "We definitely feed off each other. It's a lot easier playing second with Jimmy over there. I always know where he's going to be."
Forgive Chase. You see, while playing college ball at UCLA, Utley's DP partner was 2B Jack Santora, who was prone to positioning himself under a desk in the press box while the other team was batting. Chase never knew where he was going to be because he simply couldn't see him.
No question, had Baryshnikov picked up baseball, he doubtlessly would have played either short or second. The positions aren't played as much as they are performed, acts of athletic choreography best seen and appreciated through an action-freezing camera lens.
I agree with you on that point, Tom Singer. One can not even question that, if Mikhail Barykhnikov had played baseball, he would have played either short or second. Doubtless. As you said. In the same sentence where you said "no question."
Come on spring training. We need you. Only a few days left until we hear that beautiful, booming voice over the stadium PA: "Now batting...number 13...performing second base...Asdrubal Cabrera."
It should be noted that the most famous DP combo of all-time, Tinker to Evers to Chance, hated each other's guts during their playing days, with the feud not ending until the late 1930s.
And reader Joe, who I will call BioJoe, has some notes about the human body.
As a bored student with time to check these things out I thought I'd point out that humans are more than capable of developing a sixth sense contrary to your last blog. Senses are measure by us having a free standing sense organ to associated with it. Most of us have at least 9 but possibly up to 21 depending on who you ask and how you define a sense. The nine are: touch, taste, smell, sight, hearing, thermoception (sense of heat), nociception (pain), equilibrioception (balance), and proprioception (movement). The possible extra senses to make 21 mostly require sub division of these 9.
And Kevin has data closest to what I was looking for, though I'm not really sure what the sample is (surely there were more than 399 DP's in all of baseball last year?):
I think something is missing in the analysis you and commenters give. Namely when talking about the effectiveness of DP combinations, you have to include more than just the 399 or whatever that were successful, but also think about the times that could have worked if only the 2B and SS loved each other more. When the 2Bman's heart really isn't in it, the runner can beat the throw to first. Or if the SS just has a terrible, terrible arm, a play that would be successful by, say, the Marlins, would fail by, say, the Yankees.
A guy who has almost the exact same name as a former Heisman trophy winner (you know who you are) writes:
I decided to double check Joe’s work. His percentage is close, but his number is off. There were 3983 GDPs in 2007. I came up with a 2.131% rate for GDP compared to plate appearances.
He attached a spreadsheet that seemed to prove his case.
Reader Keith also attached a spreadsheet, and took a different -- and now that I think about it, probably more accurate -- angle on the situation:
In the 2007 regular season, MLB second basemen had 19,591 total chances and 2,765 double plays, which means 14.11% of 2B chances involved a double play. For shortstops: 22,108 TC, 3,223 DP, 14.48%.
BioJoe merely subdivides the traditional five sense to get nine. Thermoception and nocicemption are sub-divisions of the sense of touch. If they were truly independent senses, the loss of the sense of touch would not result in a corresponding loss of ability to sense heat in pain. Similarly, equilibrioception synthesizes hearing, sight, and touch to percieve balance. Proprioception would be a component of sight, since it would be impossible to percieve the movement of objects one cannot see.
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.
(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.
James sent the following. I like the way this guy thinks.
You shouldn't have been surprised that Singer's 500 at-bat, single-digit homer club was, in fact, very average rather than bad. This particular version of cherry-picking -- requiring 500 at-bats -- tends to single-handedly weed out "bad" players.
The more interesting question would be how those players stack up not against all of baseball but against other players with 500 at bats or more. Only 120 guys had 500 at bats. Given that the number of players on a 25-man roster at any given time is 750, which means roughly 450 offensive players, we're already talking about weeding out 2/3 of all MLB at-bats. So, really, if these guys are about average for all of baseball, they are way below average for the 500 at-bat club.
You know what's funny? The people who argue the vehemently-est that stats don't matter and that stats don't tell the whole story are often the people who most egregiously cherry-pick stats to prove their warped points. That's funny.
Just Say Whatever You Want And Hope No One Notices: Tom Singer Edition
Thanks to reader Sam for pointing me in the ultimate direction of this one, but let me start by saying:
Ever since late Thursday night, I've been thinking about this one really strange record that you may not have heard of yet. It was buried deep in the story of Boston's third straight loss to the Royals: Emil Brown homered in the Royals' sixth. But Schilling also went into the record book in a good way. His 54th straight start without allowing an unearned run broke his own major league mark...Schilling also set the mark by going 53 in a row with Arizona over 2001-02 without an unearned run. This current streak began after he gave up two unearned runs on June 14, 2004 at Colorado. [emphasis mine]
This seems like one of the strangest coincidences I've heard of since Scott Youkilis caught his brother's foul ball. I mean, it's impossible that Curt Schilling has some sort of incredible ability to prevent unearned runs (relative to earned runs), right? And yet this guy has not only the longest, but the second longest streak of starts without an unearned run in major league history.
I guess it makes sense that the record would belong to a very good pitcher; and certainly Schilling was excellent during the 01-02 span in Arizona (ERA+s of 154 and 136). Obviously, the fewer runs in general a dude gives up, the less likely he is to give up unearned runs.
Of course, there's another, much more important, super obvious reason why a guy might not give up a lot of unearned runs...but first, let's hear why Tom Singer thinks Schilling is so fucking good at not giving up ERs. Curt Schilling, the intense Boston right-hander, has not allowed a single unearned run the last two seasons. That makes him tops in an overlooked category we've always considered an important tell-tale sign of pitching verve: The ability to steel up, rather than let down, after mistakes behind you.
This Schilling guy sounds tough. I remember when he pitched that game with the blood and everything! Of course he steels himself better than other players. He's the guy with the bloody sock! I bet he likes hockey. Tell me more about this verve! It's an art, part of a pitcher's makeup. The knack of not only keeping your focus, but sharpening it, in response to peril.
He's tough and he's an artist? What a dreamboat! This guy's verve is so hot I want to suck on it. Next time you see a Schilling game and there is a defensive breakdown around him, watch closely. He'll pace behind the mound with deliberate steps, impatient to get the ball back in his glove. Once he's got it, he'll climb the hill purposefully, look in for the sign with a determined squint ... and make his subsequent pitches with an extra grunt. That I-got-your-back attitude helps explain the fact he has not permitted an unearned run in 260 1/3 innings over the last two seasons.
This sounds an awful lot like the Curt Schilling I usually see pitching, even if a defensive lapse hasn't happened. Determined squint? You mean, like, more determined that a non-defensive-lapse-has-just-happened squint? "He'll climb the hill purposefully"? Is he usually climbing the hill with a clown nose and a pair of flippers on?
To others, errors are a refuge from responsibility. Runs are diverted from their earned run averages, prompting them to waver, even if subconsciously. "I did my job, what happens next isn't on me," is a natural reaction in any workplace -- where it isn't as measurable as on a diamond.
Man, I hate those guys. The non-Schillings. The guys who secretly love it when a dude on their own team fucks up so they can somehow pad their stats by giving up runs (impossibly).
"Everyone strives for perfection -- but it doesn't happen," says Buck Showalter, the Texas manager. "Picking up for others is part of the job description. The game is played with human beings, not computer chips. There will be failures -- and how you handle it is what separates you."
It's true you guys. Computer chips can not be there to pick up for others. Unless they are programmed to do so. Overall this is a level playing field. Across a long season, every pitcher presumably runs into that monster: The Four-Out Inning! They all have an equal chance of taming it.
Well, yeah, they're all probably going to have at least one "four-out inning." But just how many will a given pitcher have?
And, here's where we finally get to the real point. It's pretty simple, really. The streak in question is comprised of starts without an unearned run. What, more than anything else, leads to the scoring of unearned runs? Errors. So what's the biggest factor in a streak like this? Errors.
-- 3 quick notes: 1) Yahoo! and Retrosheet have different dates for the last time Schilling gave up unearned runs, in Colorado. 6/14 or 6/16/04. Whatever. 2) The streak only includes starts. Schilling of course pitched in relief for some of '05. Though Martinez includes those appearances in his discussion, I'm not taking the time to look at them. 3) Yes, unearned runs can also be a result of passed balls and catcher's interference. But, come on.
Okay, so, the idea is: let's look at all of Curt's starts over this span and find all the times that Curt had to pick up his fellow teammates after they fucked up in the field. Remember, according to Tom Singer, it's something to watch for -- the guy steels himself and everything. I used retrosheet for '04 and '05 starts and Yahoo box scores for '06, fwiw.
In reverse chronological order, a list of games Schilling started that included an error by the Red Sox:
Ten errors total. In 54 starts. But wait, it gets better:
One of the errors on 7/4/06 was after Schilling was in the game. And the other was an error on Schilling himself. Schilling himself also had the only error on 9/10/05. And 4/23/05. The error on 4/13/05 was, again, after Schilling left the game. (I know this is boring, just bear with me.) Finally, the error on 6/27/04 was also post-Schill.
So the final tally for errors while Schilling was in the game: 3 errors by Schilling himself 4 by other players.
Four errors by other players. And Tom Singer has seen this enough to notice a purposefull climb and a determined squint? Wow. I mean this seriously: either that guy is really, really an insightful baseball analyst, or he is making shit up.
Here's what Schilling did on each of the four occasions when he purposefully climbed the hill following horrible relapses by his defense.
1) 4/30/06: With two outs in the bottom of the third, Joey Gathright steals second and takes third on a throwing error by Jason Varitek. Schilling squints to home and promptly walks Johnny Gomes. Then he strikes out Ty Wiggington.
2) 4/18/05: Two outs again, top 2nd. Bases loaded, and Bill Mueller drops a foul pop off the bat of Frank Catalanotto. Schilling then strikes him out on the next pitch.
3) 9/21/04: One out, top 2nd. Javy Lopez reaches on another Mueller error, sending Surhoff to second. So first and second, one out, and Schilling K's Jay Gibbons and Larry Bigbie.
4) 9/10/04: One out, bottom 1st. Randy Winn reaches on another error by Bill Mueller. Edgar Martinez succumbs to the squint and grounds into an inning-ending double play.
Granted, he struck out 4 of the 6 guys he faced after defensive "meltdowns" -- or more accurately, he struck out 3 guys in full at bats and threw one strike to strike out another. But it's not exactly like these were life-threatening situations. It's not like he was facing Albert Pujols with no outs in the bottom of the 8th in a 2-2 tie. And, of course, the bottom line is, we're talking six plate appearances over 2 1/2 seasons.
Seven errors in 54 starts. Four by players other than Schilling himself.
And I'm supposed to believe the reason for this guy's incredible streak is his squint.
EDIT: "less runs" to "fewer runs" (thanks to KT, who finds it acceptable to use "Occam's Razor" as a verb and still call out other people on grammar)
EDIT ALSO: Info on the Catalanotto at bat. There were two strikes already at the time of the error.
BIG EDIT: Somehow I thought this article was written by Buck Martinez. It was written by Tom Singer.
I have two questions and a comment. May I proceed?
Why did Bill Mueller personally want to make Schilling give up an unearned run?
Who are the other pitchers with long streaks of no UER-giving-up? I bet they're guys with a lot of Ks, like Schill. Or else they are just a random smattering of guys with no discernable link, since the very idea of a streak like this seems way more likely to be the product of luck than skill. Much like the list of guys who have thrown no-hitters. It kills me that people think that things like no-hitters and unearned run streaks are without question the result of skill. So dumb. Roger Clemens has zero no-hitters in his career. Len Barker threw a perfecto. It's flukey, people. Flukey. Where was I? Oh yes, the comment.
