- 07:48 AM
- 11/22/09
How exciting! And still, the Phillies almost blew it; those late inning runs from the Yankees are a killer. Still, we could very well see a game 7- not unthinkable with Pedro going tomorrow, provided Grady Little protege Charlie Manuel remembers to pull him at 100 pitches/leave him in for one baserunner only. And once you get to game 7, anything can happen...
I agree with rcade that the Series isn't over, but you have to admit that the inability to have a lights-out guy come in at the end of the game is a big weakness for the Phillies.
Speaking of lights-out guys... can someone please explain why Mariano Rivera is still so wildly successful? The guy basically throws one pitch; why have hitters not adapted to the mindset of "If I *try* to pop it up, I'll hit a line drive base hit!"? Hours of high def, high speed footage must be available to analyze the exact break of his cutter and come up with the strategy of how to intentionally swing to ground out/pop up and get a clean hit out of it. I think the only team that appears to have done that is the Sox, who haven't been intimidated by the Rivera mystique. But you'd think these Phillies hitters were surprised to see him enter a game in the World Series, the way they flail away and get themselves out of innings in under 10 pitches!
It also raises the question as to why Lidge moved to fastballs against the heart of the Yankees order in game 4; so what if the ball in the dirt potentially lets in one run? The fastballs hanging around the heart of the plate let in 3, and you only need one out. Let the catcher do his job, and you might get out of it 4-4 going to the bottom of the 9th.
posted by hincandenza at 12:29 PM on November 03
Actually, it's not just the PETA PR guys; I saw that and thought "Uh, gross!!!" I mean, shouldn't professional pest control/animal control people come in to deal with that? I'd actually side with PETA on this one: it totally wasn't necessary to kill the animal like he did.
By contrast, whenever these incidents happen in baseball, there's a jovial atmosphere as the crowd roars at the antics of the critter- squirrel, cat, raccoon, whatever- as it dances around the field and eludes the grounds crew, and always ends with a nice net or ushering into a secured area. It's an entertaining diversion, and no one- or no animal- gets hurt. The only time I think I've seen animal control kill the animal(s) was they beekeeper guy earlier this year. But can you imagine the crowd's reaction if someone just took a bat to a squirrel on the field?
Yeah. That's why I could side with PETA if they made a stink about this.
posted by hincandenza at 03:49 AM on November 02
I think the Angels coming back would be stupendous... the Yankees would cement their reputations as historically massive choke-job-artists. :)
But yeah... that's highly unlikely. I'm mostly just hoping the Yankees lose game 6 and have to use Sabathia in game 7; that'd leave the Phillies set up with a strong rotation advantage. Too much off time and the Phillies might get rusty, but they have a pretty good shot at winning this year.
posted by hincandenza at 02:36 PM on October 23
Well, congrats to the Phillies, but looks like I'm going to be nailing down the Costanza this year...
Too bad about the Dodgers- they were the only team left that I was rooting for (I dislike the Angels and they've won recently, I loathe the Yankees, and the Phillies won last year). It looks like unless the Yankees pull a 2004 on us, they'll be hosting the Phillies in Game 1. And I'm not so sure the Yankees have this sewn up: the Phillies have possibly a better starting rotation, and some pretty good bats themselves, and I think I will cream my jeans if Pedro pitches and wins against the Yankees, especially at Yankee Stadium (based on his LCS start, the guy's still quite the magician!).
posted by hincandenza at 11:43 AM on October 22
JButton: Whenever the Red Sox succeed (which happens as often as the arrival of Haley's Comet), this "buying a pennant" shit never comes up for some reason.The exact opposite: the Sox have had great success under the new ownership group, making the playoffs 6 of the last 7 years, getting just about 95 wins on the nose every single year (93, 95, 98, 95, 86, 96, 95, and 95).
And yes, with their recent success it's becoming more popular for non NY/BOS fans, such as the local Mariner fans here in Seattle, to hate on the Sox as "just another big market team, blah blah"- even though the M's payroll last year was $117M, only about $16M less than the Sox who won nearly as many games as the M's lost. The Sox earn their income, and spend it more wisely than most any other franchise in terms of player development, tools and scouting, and smart evaluation. They play top-notch Moneyball with a real budget and an ownership group committed to building a long-term winner.
What that payroll chart does show is that you can't really buy success quite so easily- the $65M Twins won one more game than the $115M Tigers- but it does help, since the bulk of the teams (5 of 8) are in the top 9 highest spending teams, while the Twins, Rockies, and Cardinals all made the playoffs with mid-range payrolls (and along with the Sox, none are in the 2nd round).
But while spending $115M instead of $80M might not guarantee success, it's actually pretty astonishing every time I look and see the Yankees have eclipsed $200M the last two years. It really isn't surprising that their talent pool has been able to do what they've done; it should be expected that they win 100+ and have the top-to-bottom lineup effectiveness. They don't really even develop so much as buy: the top free agents flock to the deep pockets of the Yankees, so of course when it all gels they become a very, very, very good team.
They can be stopped, though: the playoffs is a crapshoot, and one team geting hot can beat the Yankees in 4 straight.
posted by hincandenza at 01:31 PM on October 21
Well, to their credit Varitez didn't factor into this series because he never came to bat. If they'd done that earlier on, they'd have won 100+ games. And I'd argue that Papelbon might be one of the dead weights to let go this off-season, along with Bay- both might ask for bigger contracts than really they are worth, since closers are overvalued and Bay is on the decline with a DH/power skill set that doesn't age well.
But overall the pro-Sox-management view is vindicated. As evidenced in that John Henry/Theo Epstein thread a couple of days earlier, the Sox philosophy is about building long term winners. The strategy of the Sox has brought them WS in 4 years, and got within a game of it last year. They put up 95 wins year after year, get to the playoffs consistently, and sometimes they're just out quickly, sometimes they make the CS, and sometimes they win it all.
Yeah, they went 3 and out, and looked bad doing it- and the Rockies got eliminated tonight after being up 2 going to the 9th at home. It happens, that's the playoffs: if the playoffs were fair, then the 2001 World Champions would be the Seattle Mariners.
Working pitch counts is part of what makes them good- the Angels didn't really "figure them out", they just got cold at the wrong time. The bats started to look lively in Game 3, and had they won I'd have not been surprised to see them put up double digits in Game 4. Again, that's how baseball is: the worst team in the league can beat the best team 3 of 5 or 4 of 7 every now and then; when they're two solid, 95-100 win teams, anyone can take it and all t takes is a couple of bad series from key players and you're toast.
Sure Ortiz and Lowell were shadows of themselves, and it'll be sad when they have to deal Ortiz when he doesn't choose to retire, but that lineup was good enough to score heavily- they just all hit a cold streak. Catch them in a different week and the Sox could rattle off 11 straight against anyone. Ellsbury, Pedroia, Martinez, Youk, Drew, and Bay make a hell of a lineup, and even a weakened Ortiz and Lowell can hold their own. The SS and when he plays the C are the only real weak spots. And when it's on, that rotation is second to none: Lester, Beckett, a maturing Buchholz, and if he figures his shit out Dice-K can be hell of a 1-4. The Sox were well constructed, very very talented, had their flaws, but all in all could have easily gone 3-0, 4-0, and 4-0 as go out in 3.
All that said, disappointing for the Sox fans, and I know anti-Sox bandwagoneers were crowing about the loss, but 2010 doesn't have to be dramatic in a '98 or '02 Marlins fashion: just cut loose the people who are past their best days, and keep developing the right kind of talent and players. They'll be back in the playoffs, and every so often win it all.
posted by hincandenza at 12:39 AM on October 13
The Redskins are dicks, but the WaPo has with this move shown why newspapers are shrinking and in some cases closing their doors. The WaPo is completely useless! If they can't even take a stand over perfectly valid sports pictures- and if they threaten to remove access, then print the pictures anyway and report on that, you idiots- then why should we believe anything they write about the important stuff?
Disgusting, disgusting actions on the part of the Post.
posted by hincandenza at 12:20 PM on October 12
That was a bizarre and dissatisfying ending- the Sox lost the first two from not hitting, but this last one they- well really Papelbon- choked away in the last moment. This is more like the Sox from 1919-2003 than what we've seen recently, having an 0-2 count with 2 outs in the top of the 9th and then letting the congo line get started. Papelbon let two runs score (but charged to Wagner) with poor pitching in the 8th, and then struggles with two outs in the 9th.
The truth is Papelbon had been having issues all year, either through tinkering with his mechanics but he moved to an almost purely fastball pitcher and was never really dominating in terms of a strike-out laden 1-2-3 pitcher. But even given that, to give up 3 runs with two outs boggles the mind- as does Francona not been quicker with the hook when men started reaching base in a must-win game! In those situations, the first walk issued should bring a hook, period. I should think the cardinal rule in postseason baseball when it comes to bullpens is "Always have a spare bullet in the next chamber". Oki came in and got a quick 3rd out but the damage was done, and if he wasn't in earlier because Francona either had misplaced faith in a struggling Papelbon or because he wasn't ready, that's downright negligible in an elimination game.
The past few years, it'd usually be the Red Sox with that kind of late inning magic, but between the Sox and Twins (who haven't lost *yet* as I'm typing this but are down 4-1 after the Yankees tacked on two in the 9th, and missed an opportunity to tie it in the 8th with one of the worst baserunning choices I've ever seen by Nick Punto) we saw two teams play simply abysmal baseball. Normally rock-solid Youkilis was botching routine plays and giving away outs, and the whole lineup was just smothered in weak sauce. The Sox had every opportunity to win Game 3, and if they had maybe the gremlin creeps into the Angel's heads when they start thinking "Shit, we can't let this go back to Anaheim for game 5", but like the come-from-behind and fall-short of last year's ALCS, the Sox didn't quite have the streak at the right time.
It really underscores that link from the other day, how the playoffs are a crapshoot. If it had started a week earlier, the outcomes of the series might have been wildly different but the Sox bats went cold. In this case, I think the marginally better team lost, but I'm at a loss as to how the Sox could have done anything differently in terms of team construction: they just got cold in a short series and couldn't get warmed up in time.
posted by hincandenza at 10:39 PM on October 11
It's a bit long, but a good read. That one passage about the Steiner family- season ticket holders for 85 years, at one point during the depression the only season ticket holders, and still plenty wealthy enough to afford the new prices- refusing to get new season tickets after the hard and disrespectful sell from the ticket office really drove home the lack of connection to fans.
It's a pretty good microcosm of the last 10 years, really: a somewhat artificial boom drove up prices for these kind of bribe-y luxuries- no different in some respects to real estate prices, etc- and the Yankees organization doesn't understand that the era of stripclub/ballgame/wild private party business deals being closed isn't really the same as it once was.
posted by hincandenza at 07:23 PM on October 09
It's an interesting article, a bit overlong to make its point: the playoffs are an absolute crapshoot, where even the best record in the majors doesn't really win much more than the wild card team.
What's perhaps of more interest than the content itself is that the first link/article is written by John Henry- owner of the Boston Red Sox. When your team's owner is that kind of numbers-intense, smart guy who spends time writing a blog article about post-season success rats based on seeding, who believes in critical and unbiased research as opposed to results-based or gut-instinct analysis, and that attitude filters down into the hiring and decision making process of the GM (Theo Epstein) and even the coaches and players and minor league personnel... well, you can understand why the Red Sox succeed.
The Red Sox don't build a team to shoot for the WS in one year, they build a balanced team that will have greater chance of success by making it to the post-season as often as possible, because they realized that even having a 100+ win season doesn't guarantee you anything in these short series. They've made the post season 6 of 8 years since Henry and company took over, with one of the missed years being a 93 win season in 2002. Their win totals since 2002 are 93, 95, 98, 95, 86, 96, 95, and 95.
That's an insane level of consistency for a franchise to maintain, and it comes about not just because the Sox have money. Sure, their organization has found new ways to monetize the Sox experience, improve the stadium, while also putting out a great on-field product that keeps the seats filled even with higher ticket prices. But they win because they are the kind of smart, thoughtful, analytical organization that knows how to spend the money wisely, and that attitude starts from the top.
While this year may or may not prove otherwise, the Yankees by comparison have far more cash and spend it freely, but haven't the same consistency or success this decade; they take the "Shoot for the moon" approach each year, but simply have the money to do that year in and year out. Any other franchise that did that would either win the WS or not, but in either case would have 3-4 "rebuilding" years afterwards while all their big contracts and poor talent evaluation came home to roost.
For another example of their "We pursue the strategies we know will work, and don't let ourselves be swayed by talk radio, fan chatter, or small sample size aberrations", here's a great SI article by Joe Posnanski about the Red Sox, and in particular Theo Epstein's opinion of J.D. Drew, who is frequently underrated as dispassionate and underperforming because he doesn't have lots of RBIs.
The radio guys here protest a little ... they point out that while Drew's OPS is usually good, they aren't sure that it has led to PRODUCTION -- namely runs scored and RBIs. And this is when Theo really takes over. I bold out a few of my favorite thoughts in this wonderful little lesson:Emphasis my own. It's heartening to hear your G.M. speak like a hardcore sabermetric blogger, recognizing what's truly valuable versus what's superficially valuable, because it means these are people with the with and wherewithal to keep your team competitive for years to come."That's not true. With RBIs, yes. Based on his skill set, he's always going to have underwhelming RBI totals. I couldn't care less. When you're putting together a winning team, that honestly doesn't matter. When you have a player who takes a ton of walks, who doesn't put the ball in play at an above average rate, and is a certain type of hitter, he's not going to drive in a lot of runs. Runs scored, you couldn't be more wrong. If you look at a rate basis, J.D. scores a ton of runs.
"And the reason he scores a ton of runs is because he does the single most important thing you can do in baseball as an offensive player. And that's NOT MAKE OUTS. He doesn't make outs. He's always among our team leaders in on-base percentage, usually among the league leaders in on-base percentage. And he's a really good base runner. So when he doesn't make outs, and he gets himself on base, he scores runs -- and he has some good hitters hitting behind him. Look at his runs scored on a rate basis with the Red Sox or throughout his career. It's outstanding.
posted by hincandenza at 06:44 PM on October 09
Sweet jesus! And it wasn't just "He's gonna go deep today, no doubt about it", it was the Rain Man- like "Definitely on a 3-1 count, left center, definitely going deep in his 2nd at bat on a 3-1 count..." The best part, besides Niehaus on the edge of his seat from the 2-1 pitch was a ball, getting excited and then the hit... was the fact that the rest of the booth couldn't stop laughing.
That's outstanding. :)
posted by hincandenza at 02:49 AM on September 30
Wait- wasn't there a FPP here a few months ago about how Dykstra was part of some financial management program for athletes? Am I misrememberating?
If I'm not- hooboy, that's one steaming plate of irony. And yeah, there's zero excuse to be poor in such a case; first thing you do with $36m is to secrete a few million in various safe, secure, and unreachable locations such as Swiss bank accounts, et al. Yeah, it's fraud- but in a worst case scenario you flee to Monaco to live high on the hog while your US creditors argue over who gets the dented Maybach.
posted by hincandenza at 03:09 AM on September 27
If you read the article, he's not "pushing" the subject, nor does he want an education, nor it seems is he strapped for cash having earned $19m in his career and having a financial advisor.
Rather, it semes he sent the letter as a formality on the advice of his financial advisor. I suspect he doesn't care at all, as he says as much in the article- noting that if anything, he probably owes the Cubs. I wouldn't be surprised if this isn't like those cases where [MegaGiantCorp] sues [TinyMomandPopStore] for [SomeVagueLogoOrStyleInfringement]. It's not for the revenue, it's on principle to maintain a history of vigorous copyright protection for when it might actually matter.
There may be some nitpicky detail in Dunston's finances or whatever that his financial advisor feels makes this important to do as a finality. I don't think Dunston- or the Cubs- see it as anything but a legal dotting of an i.
posted by hincandenza at 12:36 PM on September 24
Sorry for the length, but there's a story I want to tell.
See, I've always hated the defensive indifference rule, because it's in that class of rules and baseball "tradition" that ignore what I think is the single best part of baseball: there is no clock.
Here's what I mean: in baseball, unlike other sports, you keep playing till it's done. Rules- both official, such as "defensive indifference", and unofficial such as "you don't steal/swing away with a huge lead"- that suggest there is a point when a team has won the game before the final out is recorded stand in stark contrast to this magical element of baseball: hope.
You can't run out the clock, so even if you're up by 8 runs in the bottom of the 9th... a team can come back and win it. Such comebacks have in fact happened, and not even against only weak teams. To a person who loves the game of baseball, no out should be seen as "indifferent". Earlier this year I saw a defensive indifference call in a 2-run game in the top of the ninth. Excuse me? That's not indifference, that's just stupidity. If the defense has lapses in judgment- including choosing to give up a base with no effort- then the offense should be rewarded for their effort.
Alongside that is the class of "rules" that say you shouldn't swing away on 3-0 in a blowout. None other than normally sane Rob Neyer praised Mike Cameron for not swinging away in a blowout game when he had a 3-0 count in his 5th at bat. This at-bat was particularly significant as he'd already had four at-bats in this game, and hit a solo homerun in each one- all before the 6th inning (including an amazing feat where he and Bret Boone both went back-to-back... twice... in the first inning alone). He walked in that 5th at bat to a chorus of boos, and in his 6th at-bat hit a deep fly ball to the warning track.
It can't be stressed enough how much immortality Mike Cameron would have had with a 5th homerun. To make it worse, that 3-0 pitch was a meatball down the heart of the plate, and Cameron didn't even flinch. It's a stupid notion to say it would "show up the team" to swing away, but I'd argue vehemently that not playing every out to your fullest is what's showing up a team. Wouldn't it be just as insulting to run out on the field with one arm tied behind your back once you're up 10 runs?
And there's another very good reason to play every out. Mike Cameron was on the 2002 Mariners when he hit his 4HR in one game, and some of you may recall the 2001 Mariners won an incredible, record-tying 116 wins. Yet they did not even get past the ALCS that year, to the heartbreak of Seattle fans. Let me tell you about a regular season game that I think prevented Seattle from reaching the World Series.
On August 5, 2001, the Mariners were demolishing the Cleveland Indians at Jacobs Field. The Mariners were 80-30 entering the game, an absolute juggernaut in the AL that year. After 3 innings, they were up 12-0. After 6 innings, the Mariners were up 14-2. For all intents and purposes, this game was purely a formality.
Except... it wasn't. See, the Indians stunned the Mariners by scoring 3, 4, then 5 runs in their last 3 innings, with those last 5 runs in the ninth all coming with 2 out in the bottom of the 9th. Improbably, impossibly, the Indians had tied the game by racking up 12 runs in the last 3 innings against the best team in the majors with one of the best bullpens. The Indians would go on to win in 11 on an RBI single.
It can be taken as an absolute baseball truth that when the inarguable best team that year- probably the best team of the last couple of decades- is up 12 runs after 6, they're going to win. When they're even up 5 runs with one out left in the bottom of the 9th, they're going to win.
But not always- and that need to play the game because there's never a guarantee is part of what makes baseball amazing. And that Mariners team would end up facing those very same Indians in the opening ALDS that year, and the scrappy Indians- no doubt emboldened by that astonishing comeback a couple of months prior- did not flinch and pushed the Mariners to the full 5 games. Tired and with their rotation completely out of whack, the Mariners would put up little fight against the rested Yankees and would fold in 5 games.
I can't say for sure, but who knows if a Mariners batter watched a fat hanging curve go by with a 3-0 count in that 2001 game. Who knows if one more run early on from a hard-earned steal when the game seemed "out of reach" would have let the Mariners squeak it out, 15-14 in regulation. Who knows if, with a record breaking 117 wins for the Mariners and no historic collapse that the Indians can use for inspiration, the Mariners don't trounce an Indians team that knows in the back of their head that they can't possibly win- and goes into the New York series rested with the rotation set up properly. Who knows what happens then?
If I were commissioner of baseball, there'd be no such thing as "defensive indifference", and anyone who disagreed should be made to watch that August 5th, 2001 game in its heartbreaking entirety.
posted by hincandenza at 01:30 AM on September 24
It seems to be the case that records have a significant psychological as well as physical element. When Roger Bannister broke the 4-minute mile, he bested the previous record by 1.4 seconds- a record that had stood for about 11 years. Yet only 46 days after Bannister ran 3:59.4, an Australian runner named John Landy broke Bannister's record by an additional 1.4 seconds, with 3:57.9 (rounded to 3:58.0 due to track conditions).
As soon as Bannister broke that plateau, the mile time began dropping regularly, setting off a sequence where others starting lowering the mile time by a good second per year. Indeed, from 1915 to 1954, the mile time was lowered about 11.2 seconds in those 40 years. Over the next 13 years, the mile record would drop an additional 10.2 seconds.
It's almost like the best runners of the world needed proof that the 4-minute mile, or other record, can be broken- and then they all started doing it. Sort of like the , except without the paranormal element: once Usain shaved .11 off his time, other runners start matching- and probably soon breaking- the previous level he set.
Granted, Tyson just ran the best race of his life, while Usain's 9.69 was widely commented as having not been very efficient, leading him to shatter his own record a few months later. Heck, in that video I believe Asafa Powell was still leading by about halfway, before Gay put on a crazy burst of speed. Maybe in a little while Powell himself will drop below 9.69...
posted by hincandenza at 12:50 AM on September 22
There was a guy in owlhouse's goalkeeping video that had MULTIPOST as the name on the back of his jersey (visible at 0:22)
That seems kind of cool in a meta sort of way.
posted by hincandenza at 01:57 PM on September 17
And no one's going to mention Ichiro's 2,000th hit, second-fastest all time? Some kind of huddle this turned out to be!!!
posted by hincandenza at 11:04 PM on September 07
Ha!
Btw, rcade, you have a nice little gig going of quoting people saying things they never actually said. Truly, print journalism is a dying industry... :)
posted by hincandenza at 01:42 AM on September 01
I think what happened to Nomar was Al Reyes (good Hardball Times writeup about the Rise and Fall of Nomar).
After those 1999 and 2000 campaigns, Nomar was on his way to being as well known, and as well compensated, as A-Rod has ended up being. His rookie campaign was one of the best ever- All-Star, HR Derby champ, rookie records in hitting, and all as a shorstop. He kept improving, such that by the end of 2000 I was vehemently arguing that Nomar, not A-Rod, was going to be the best shortstop of his generation. A-Rod had more HR power, but Nomar was a far better hitter overall.
Then he got a split tendon in his wrist at the end of the 1999 season from that Al Reyes pitch, and while his 2000 year (.372) was still fantastic, he seems to have dropped off the table after that; occasional flashes, but never what he once was. His wrist has nagged him since then, causing him to miss his 2001 season and while he had 56 doubles in 2002, he was was down in average, etc.
On the whole, he went from a sure-to-be-first-ballot HoF shortstop to utility infielder in his mid-to-late 30's. I think, not unlike Griffey (who also dropped off the table after about 2000), that's an argument against him using steroids: maybe if he were, he'd have repaired better and prolonged his career.
posted by hincandenza at 02:08 PM on August 28
You know it's a bad ref call when one of the first players to rush over and argue the red card is from the other team. :)
posted by hincandenza at 12:31 PM on August 26
Ultimately a non-issue, since the Sox pounded the Jays 8-1 on several homeruns, so it's not like this play was similar to Fred Merkle's famous gaffe.
I think the reason for two bases is the same reason for most of those "live ball thrown out of play" situations or a ground rule double: theoretically, the runners could keep advancing until the ball was back in play, but since it's not coming back into play the rules make it a compromise "two bases" rule.
In this case though, the rule is probably the sum of two separate base awards: the throw itself was a balk (although a dumb balk call because the spirit of the balk call is to prevent the pitcher from tricking the runners through fake motions, and this was clearly not intended to fool the runner) sending Bay to 2nd- good heads up by Ortiz to start waving him over- and then 3rd base was awarded on the ball going out of play.
I was actually listening to this game (btw, the MLB app for the iPhone is a phenomenal deal; $10 for the whole season, and you can listen to all games, both home and away feeds, with the extended game day and video highlights built in), and was kind of dumbfounded when the announcers described it. The Red Sox announcers were quick to identify what happened, though they like everyone else weren't sure what happened. But again, it was more a comic "wtf?" moment in an otherwise thorough trouncing.
posted by hincandenza at 03:08 PM on August 21
Are you nuts, rcade? Who would sell him that insurance policy? Why would they do it? And how could he afford the premiums, since he turned down millions in cash? You don't get an insurance policy against making millions of dollars without paying premiums that you'd have to be a millionaire to afford!
Matthew Purke did the same thing, although he's not a Boras client: turned down $4 million from the Rangers because he wanted $4.7 million. Now, instead of being coached by professionals, he's spending a year in school. Good luck kid- hope you don't have arm problems.
Plenty of these guys who hold out don't actually see more money the following year. In fact... do any of them? Some end up not signing at all; Aaron Crowd was drafted by the Nationals in 2008, didn't sign, was drafted by the Royals in 2009, and didn't sign. Way to miss your first two professional seasons, dude. How much are you being paid to do nothing?
posted by hincandenza at 12:58 PM on August 18
"Except the players have every right to be selfish in these cases. The ones who do make it to the pros and not many of any given draft class will are essentially entering indentured servitude for the first three years. Only after three years of service do players get a share of the money they've earned and potentially get a nice free agent contract. That's only for a small subset of these players, the rest are looking at their only real payday through baseball and have every right to try and get as much as possible."yerfatma (I know I'm not quoting you directly, but rather something you linked), I as much as anyone believes the players should get hefty signing bonuses especially based on their draft order. But we're not talking about players signing for $2,000 and a box of crackerjacks like they might have 40 years ago; it's already the case that the bonus system as it is today ensures that most players in the top rounds will get a significant enough payday that allows for their ensured comfort even if their shoulder explodes tomorrow. Here are expected payouts this year (the only place I can find with full listings of actual signing values is behind a subscription wall at baseballamerica.com), with a total of $160M in bonuses paid out in the first 10 rounds, or an average of $500k per person. And since the league minimum is $390K, a player who makes the pros for extended stints on the roster making the league minimum for those 3 years of service will be just shy of being a millionaire when he goes to salary arbitration. That's a poor situation to label "indentured servitude"!
Why should a player who's drafted very low be guaranteed anything? Why should any of them? Lots of the more talented players well-exceed the league minimum even prior to arbitration. I don't see why the system isn't already helpful for young players. Heck, guys signed in the fifth round still get bonuses of $150-200K; that's a nest egg that would be the envy of most people 10 years their senior! That can be parlayed into a modest but comfortable home, or diverse investment portfolio, that basically ensures the player he'll not be sweating bullets even if his career doesn't pan out. Pretty sweet deal for a mostly untouted player who hasn't done anything to earn it yet.
Beyond that, though... I'm with dyams and you about Boras essentially hurting his clients with these holdouts. One of the players in dfleming's link, first-rounder Levon Washington, didn't sign- Baseball America called him one of the "big losers" in the draft, since it turns out he's also not academically eligible to play in his preferred college- so he basically can't play baseball outside of junior college, and will have to hope for the best in the 2010 draft. Good work Boras- your guy could have been an instant millionaire, and instead is just some schmuck without a contract or signing bonus. If understand things that guy is not playing with any professional guarantee for a whole year. That's a whole year where he can fall on his arm, get in an accident, strain his shoulder, etc, etc, etc. And he won't have a penny to show for it.
That won't be MLB's fault- that'll be Scott Boras' fault, and ultimately, his own fault.
posted by hincandenza at 12:45 PM on August 18
Fuck you, Scott Boras. You are far more of a threat to the integrity of the game than any hand-wringing about steroids or PEDs.
On the one hand, the draft system's purpose is to prevent any one team from exploiting a financial advantage to always get first chance at all new promising talent. On the other hand, even if we disagree with it, Strasburg should have ever right to try to get the most money he can for his services. However! I think if Scott Boras wants these huge contracts, the game's rules should change to suit that. As TheQatarian notes, Strasburg hasn't thrown a single successful major league pitch, why should he get a contract that would pay him in excess of $12M up front (how much Boras is seeking isn't clear from the article), without any option by the signing team to back out of the contract if he turns out to not be worth $12M+?
I say, let him have a huge contract- but let that contract be laden with incentives and penalties that would severely punish Strasburg into virtual poverty if he doesn't live up to his promise. If anyone else in the world of business fails to meet the terms of their contract, they don't get to shrug their shoulders and say "Oh well, I guess I wasn't as good as I promised". Let Strasburg take that risk, but if he's not a top-5 pitcher from day one, he should receive zero dollars, as well as he and his agent Boras being faced with punitive financial penalties in civil court for failing to keep up their end of the contract.
Because what Boras wants with these contracts is all upside, and no downside: he wants his players to get tens of millions, and even if they don't pan out the teams still have to pay. Where else in business does this happen, the signing of a contract where there's no penalty on one party to meet their end of the contract? I'd love to see the opposite: a team say to Strasburg "Eh, we'd pay you but hey attendance was down since the team didn't do well, so we can't. Tough luck... oh well, I guess we weren't as good at promoting the team as you hoped".
This isn't 1919 anymore: maybe we should bring about the return of statistic-based incentives. For those who aren't familiar, one of the suspected motivations for the Black Sox scandal in 1919 was owner Comiskey's legendary miserly treatment of his players:
Injuries reduced Cicotte to a 12-19 record in 1918, but in 1919, he rebounded to win 29 games and once again lead the league in wins, winning percentage, and innings pitched, as well as in complete games. His 1919 salary was $6,000, but he had a provision for a $10,000 bonus if he won 30 games. Legend has it that as the season drew to a close, owner Charles Comiskey ordered manager Kid Gleason to bench Cicotte, denying him a chance at a 30-win season and the bonus money.There is evidence to suggest that even if this didn't happen in 1919, it happened in 1917 when Cicotte had a similar contract and was effectively benched for two weeks when he hit 28 wins.
I'd argue the "solution" is one of several possibilities:
The non-guaranteed contract, where the team is free to sever it at any time but if they choose to employ the player, they must pay him the listed amount. A team would then simply sever the contract of any player who didn't live up to their promise, or declined too quickly in ability, or wasn't really as good as hoped. That player would be free to pursue opportunities with other teams, or the same team at a reduced payrate.
The statistic-based contract. Currently, the rules of baseball prohibit incentive based contracts based on on-field performance, with the exception of basic "health" contracts such as bonuses for plate appearances, or optional bonuses for All-Star or seasonal award votes. However, if a player signs a huge contract, shouldn't the team be free to say "We expect that over the lifetime of this contract, you will be healthy enough to play a minimum of 140 games a year, have an output average of no less than 35 homeruns and a .300 batting average, with no less than 100 games available to play, 25HR and a .280 batting average for any given year. Failure to meet these terms results in a pre-determined reduced payrate for limited performance, or the option of the team to unilaterally end the contract".
A pre-set percentage of total revenue devoted to the players. I believe the NBA has a similar function, where a % of the total revenue is defined as for salaries, and all teams have basically the same portion of that rate to spend on players however they see fit. Perhaps MLB can take it further: a union-agreed flat rate total salary for all players, and the union itself- the players- then decide how each player carves up that pie. For example, to Scott Boras' point of the game's revenues increasing to $6.5billion, perhaps the union and the league can agree that say 45% of revenues are to be spent on payroll. The union then defines the salary of each player for a 1, 2 or 3 year period per player, effectively letting the players and their union determine how the players are compensated. Instead of Boras arguing that Strasburg is worth $12+ million, Strasburg would have to convince the other 750 major league roster players that he is worth that much of the pie.
posted by hincandenza at 12:09 AM on August 17
Actually, if you read the second half of that article it seems to imply that the 2003 tests were actually two tests: an unexpected test, and a later test where the players were advised to avoid all supplements and nutrition/energy drinks for 7 days. This apparently was to have a paired two tests and be better able to filter the "I took a legal GNC-type drink that have contained legal supplements that may mislead with symptoms affiliated with harder steroid use" with "I have been injecting illegal steroids for some time" since the latter would apparently not clear up after 7 days without supplements.
What Ortiz seems to be claiming- and actually, I believe him- is that he never took steroids, but he did use GNC-style supplements that were legal, and which may have caused him to get a positive rating on the unannounced test but that he may not have failed (got a positive result) on the 7-day cleanse test. If that's the case, his result would be listed as "negative" but that his name might still be on a list of people who tested positive on at least one test. Apparently those who did test positive on both tests were privately contacted by the doping agency, and that's why Ortiz is claiming he's surprised to have been called out as being on the list.
Apparently, because these results are sealed and technically we're not supposed to know any of these names, it puts Ortiz in the position that he claims he's innocent, but can't actually see the results to prove his case. And again, we're not supposed to know any of these names, so this whole thing seems sketchy: people are on some hidden, illegally revealed list of player names which may not even be accurate, but can't get access to the details to defends themselves.
posted by hincandenza at 05:42 PM on August 08
It seems top pitchers going from the AL to the NL dominate even more, if that's possibleI wonder, how much of that is that literally, the NL is only 8/9ths as good as the AL? Granted, they only get 8/9ths of the amount of offensive support as well. Or maybe it's that AL pitchers are used to going until they are tired/ineffective, whereas an NL guy might get pulled for strategic reasons, leaving the AL aces that make that mid-season transition coming to a league where they have more stamina, or are more used to working out of jams because there are no automatic outs, etc.
The Phillies getting Lee was a great move; they didn't really weaken in any way, and now they have a 1-2 that could send them deep into October. Love it or hate it, but you can basically win a World Championship on the backs of two hot starting pitchers with even league-average hitting.
The Sox started the season seemingly too deep in their rotation. Now they seem too shallow, but let's not be too quick to judge. Lester worked out his early kinks and is in the form that makes him a lefty ace, and Beckett is my hands-down Cy Young in the AL this year to this point. There are your two aces, and in the wings you have Wakefield as an 11-3 All-Star before his sciatica issue due back relatively soon. And who knows, now that Dice-K is "with the program", he may come back showing us more than just glimmers of what we've seen at his best. When you're potentially #4 after August 18th is a guy who went 18-3 with a 2.90 ERA last year, well-rested and apparently resolved to work with the Sox training and pitching regimen, the Sox might be in really good shape for that stretch run.
What may make that irrelevent is that even with apparently their whole lineup going into a slump for all of July, they didn't fall out of contention. Now, Bay, Ellsbury, Drew, Lowell, Pedroia, Youkilis and Ortiz are all hitting again and they've added V. Martinez to that pool so that C/1B/3B/DH can have rotating days off. That is a terrifically potent offense, when their weakest hitters are potentially league average or better in Lowrie and this kid Reddick (who is fighting to stick around). If that lineup is hot in August, even guys like Penny and Smoltz can go 5-6 semi-shitty innings, have the excellent bullpen finish up the last 3 frames, and still pick up the W with a bunch of crooked numbers from the offense.
posted by hincandenza at 11:23 PM on August 03
Atheist: Those coaches and managers must have been genius to figure out how to properly position outfielders without it. IMO Baseball is already way too data intesive and action deficient. It really isn't all that complicated.You must work for the Kansas City Royals. :)
For some of us, we can appreciate the sport as a sport and also as a discrete, scientifically analyzable game, where every action mostly occurs in a vacuum and can be aggregated, summed, averaged, and median'ed to within an inch of its life. And the teams, players, coaches, organizations, and even fans who do so will have an edge over those who do not. Maybe this particular tool, not so much, but if you don't think successful organizations use analysis of data such as where the balls are hit to ensure that their fielders are as well positioned as possible to turn hits into outs... then I gotta believe you really do work for the Royals! :)
Also, prior to analysis, players still played and coaches still coached- they just didn't do it as well. It's like saying that learning poker odds and strategy is useless, since people obviously played before Doyle's bible on poker, so they must have been geniuses... um, except they didn't play as well, and if they didn't adapt and learn all those mathematical strategies, they'd never make it to the final table with the guys who have 5 bracelets on each wrist.
As for the actual linked post: it's far more interesting than you give it credit for, since it's not so much just about plotting the game data on a real satellite image, but also on being able to place that elsewhere- such as seeing where a homerun would land if it was hit from the middle of an intersection, or park... or obviously in another stadium. For as many times as fans say "Man, that would have been out at Yankee Stadium", now you can actually see. It'd be super interesting to plot every homerun hit by a Yankee player away this year and map them onto Yankee stadium, and vice versa, to see how that would have affected their numbers.
But if you can't see value in that, then why not move on to another thread, if this one doesn't interest you?
posted by hincandenza at 11:06 PM on August 03
justgary, you win the thread. Your comments have been articulate, thoughtful, and thorough. I wish I'd have done half as well with my lengthy vitriol laden posts, but at least you were here to admirably carry water for the "let's have some perspective" camp. :)
posted by hincandenza at 10:57 PM on August 03
I don't know how much of his salary would have to be paid by whatever MLB signed him if he was going to miss an extended period of time due to these charges. I am not so naive as to believe collusion doesn't happen but I like to examine all possibilities before jumping to the "worst case" one.The key element is that he offered to play for the league minimum- and only because the union rules would prevent him playing for free- and then freely give up his entire salary to a local charity of the team's choosing. So basically... Barry Bonds offered to play for free, since I'm sure that team could find a way to juggle the books and make the salary payment directly to the charity, simultaneously "paying" Bonds salary and having it be a tax deductible charitable donation.
And still no team took him?!? Not one?! Bullshit- there's no way the GMs, behind closed doors, didn't have or weren't encouraged by Selig to basically "avoid Barry". It's happened before, and most of the GMs would probably not put up a huge fuss. That's why those of us who watched this play out call "collusion". Yes, he's 45 *now*, and has been out for two years. But that wasn't the case last year, or at the start of this season. It'll be self-justifying soon enough, when he's too old and been out too long, but it can't wipe away that even when he said "I will play for free for the first team that wants me" no one took the greatest hitter that ever lived, one year removed from a season when he had the highest OPS and on-base % of any hitter in the league.
Regarding the rest: I agree with you, I actually think Ortiz might have been blindsided by something he didn't think was anything bad, or even questionable (allegedly there was some Dominican Republic character who made the rounds back then pitching some energy drink to a number of players that might have had some unlabeled supplements in it). But in any case, as you and justgary have said, this is all media theater. They love the story, love getting on their high horse and castigating the players, but they don't actually care about the steroids or the health of the players. They just want something to write about, stir up controversy, and sell papers.
posted by hincandenza at 01:16 AM on August 02
By coincidence, linked from metafilter today: this link to an impressive demonstration of robot dexterity. Yeah, if they ever played baseball, it'd be with 300mph pitches and 2000fps visual processing in the batters. :)
posted by hincandenza at 06:15 AM on August 01
bender: If this situation comes up, I would like to hear a player say, "Yes, I used [whatever drug] back then. It wasn't banned at the time, and I'm not on it now." Is that so hard? I'm not asking anyone to come forward whose name hasn't been leaked. Just quit denying once it happens. I'm not stupid. I understand what was going on. Don't treat me like an idiot.To be fair, isn't that exactly what A-Rod said? He was outed, then not only copped to doing it, admitted that he'd been using this stuff for X period of time. So... maybe coming out like that with all the info doesn't really matter over staunch denials, since you didn't remember it as a special case deserving mention. :)
If SpoFi had "favorites" like MeFi does, I'd love to favorite this comment from justgary, for massive truth:
We have a set of fans that are very happy this has happened, led by a certain fan base. We have the media that for the most part, though they turned a blind eye while it happened, will now rise up on their moral high horse because doing the opposite doesn't sell. After writing that everyone was doing it and it's time to move on where does a sports journalist (and I'm using that phrase lightly) go? No, claiming the Red Sox, and baseball, are tainted is much more fun and much easier to write about than coming up with new topics. And we have fans that hear steroids, cry tainted, and put their heads in the sand. OMG STEROIDS!Too, too true. The whiny assholes like Dan Shaugnessy are loving that they can rip the hometown team and the great awful evil that was done by Manny and Ortiz... but it's all paper-selling bullshit.
The press are insects, and they are feasting on a morality tale they themselves have generated, not unlike the false outrage of the Lewinsky Affair- when the press wanted this to be their generation's Watergate but the nation unhelpfully said "we don't care, focus on the important shit".
Me, I don't care. This isn't an ABC afterschool special, this isn't the Lyle Alzado era of steroids yanked right from the gonad of a horse. These are sophisticated designer drugs, and if it's safe to eat genetically modified Monsanto soy in our food, why can't elite athletes use similar, safe drugs that help their bodies repair quicker? No one bats an eye when desk jockeys get an afternoon latte to push them through the day, or moms pop their "little yellow helper" or for that matter shove god-knows-what down their whiny brats' throats so their natural childlike curiosity is dulled to a complacent quiet schoolkid... but how is that any less problematic a PED than what these athletes use?
I'd like to also point out my favorite steroid fun-fact: Sandy Koufax, hall of famer and beloved 60's baseball icon, was a steroid user. He wouldn't have had those star years without steroids to keep his arm from distintegrating, much less had the minimal longevity to even qualify for the Hall of Fame. So... how are steroids bad again?
It doesn't "taint" the game any more than the advent of athletes using Nautilus equipment and weight-training, or doing yoga, or having macrobiotic diets and blood samples, or kinesthetic biomechanical analysis using computers and high speed video to determine hiccups in their swing or delivery. These advances in science can offer athletes the ability to keep their bodies healthy after a pounding that not one poster at SpoFi or elsewhere can imagine undergoing... yet we happily ask our doctors about Gleemonex when our moods darken, or our knees ache in our late 30's, or viagra when we can't get it up.
Quite frankly, I'm kind of sad that Ken Griffey Jr didn't at least take HGH; maybe then he wouldn't have lost all those at-bats and would have the HR record. At the least, how cool would it have been if both Griffey and Bonds were still playing in the game, Griffey not having missed that time, and the all-time homerun crown changing heads with each passing week? It'd make the drama of '98's homerun chase pale by comparison.
posted by hincandenza at 03:12 AM on August 01
A machine? That automates pitching?! What will they think of next?!?! Ah, but it's got three fingers; so I guess that at least would be new to baseball! :)
Ah, but seriously- the hitting aspect would actually be a fun AI project. Obviously with good software/hardware combination it would be quickly developed to hit 1.000 since it'd have a perfectly placed swing and perfect batting eye, so it's not like you could realistically build a robot that pitchers could train against the way hitters train against pitching machines.
The pitching side, though... there could be some legitimate revenue and use for that, with work. I can't find a link, but some years ago Rob Neyer wrote in his ESPN column (back when it was free to read) about a pitching machine develop a little south of Seattle that was not only a very high quality pitching machine, it combined it with a human-sized video display (presumably behind shatterproof plexiglass) that would display video of for example an actual Randy Johnson windup from the batter's perspective, with the ball appearing to come directly out of the pitcher's hand. The pitching machine itself could adjust its delivery, spin, velocity, and "arm slot" to simulate a number of pitches by the best pitchers in the game. Rob asked then why every team wasn't jumping on such technology, since it was priced at around $150-200,000.
I also couldn't understand then, and can't imagine now, why every team wouldn't have their hitters training against just such a machine that could simulate the delivery and pitch of any pitcher in the league. If sliders are your kryptonite as a hitter, then what about facing 200 of them in a row? Then some other day, you mix in sliders and fastballs and you have to learn to distinguish between them in the split second you have. The hitting coach could make workout routines around his hitters finding their weak spots- either in pitch selection or batting eye- and improving them.
This pitching robot, if you give it 5 fingers and a realistic delivery, could be programmed- with the help of high-speed HD footage- to "pitch" just like any pitcher in the game, including the arm speed and length, grip, and finger motions. Imagine the advantage a thoughtful team would have if their hitters took batting practice not from a geriatric baseball lifer but from a robot that could emulate not only the pitches, but even potentially the pitch habits (using good ol' MLB pitch-by-pitch game data and some good Bayesian analysis) of that night's opposing starter.
posted by hincandenza at 02:40 AM on August 01
Sorry, I may have been mixing some of your posts with others stating authoritatively about what a bad person Bonds was (to which I'd note that guys like Milton Bradley stay employed, among many others). :)
You're right about Griffey- it was a special case for PR only, during what was seen as a likely pure rebuilding year devoid of any excitement, and not a team that was improbably in the hunt at the AS break and still not technically out of it (on paper). But if it weren't Griffey, if it was just Sweeney as the DH and the M's had a chance to pick up a bat like Bonds before the AS break to replace their current DH that's stealing runs from the team... don't they make that move in a heartbeat? Don't the M's wish that their DH had Bondsian numbers?
And can we really say that all 30 teams had special case Griffey-in-his-retirement-year final lap positions for both 2008 and 2009?
We can't of course, which is why collusion- despite what BoKnows says about it being okay even if true- is very likely and illegal. Sure, by 2010 the "not picking up Bonds for a swan song dirt cheap bat" will make sense with him 2 years out of the game. But the man was robbed of the last couple of years of his career by collusion as surely as Curt Flood. And I would have liked to see Bonds get his 3,000 hit, to see him get his 2,000 RBI, maybe even an 800th HR. Because I love the sport of baseball, and not the hand-wringy morality play writers seem to think it is.
posted by hincandenza at 04:03 AM on July 31
Prior to the season it might have made sense, but then they went and got Griffey for the sentimental value. One year of Bonds instead of the mediocre Sweeney-Griffey platoon (seriously, who platoons the DH position?!?) and they might be 2-3 wins better and thus just one good Angels-Mariners series from leading their division.
The point is that teams all have a need for a potent bat, and Bonds is that in spades- even with the time off. It's inconceivable that not one of the 30 major league franchises who could use a good, super-cheap bat would all avoid Bonds in both 2008 and 2009. These same teams trade for mediocre hitters at the trade deadline just because they're the only option to improve over below-replacement level performance. And all the while, a fantastic- legendary, HoF quality- hitter is sitting on his couch.
As for Bonds employability: the federal case is on hold until next year, so the whole of 2009 he would have been free and clear from any possibility of being hauled off on anything related to the (trumped up, overblown, let's make our careers on this bullshit) federal case. And it's stupid, stupid, STUPID bullshit on your part to claim that "media" problems should prevent a team from hiring Bonds. If he hit 30HR, the fans won't care no matter how much the media bleats.
I think, deflated, you have let the parrots in the media do your thinking for you. Just like my own otherwise sensible father began parroting "Oh, that Al Gore talks like he's the smartest kid in class" just as he heard it on the radio and by the teevee pundits back in 2000- even though he'd be the first to suggest any President should be the smartest kid in class- and let that color his opinion of a man he'd never met. The same way, you've been told over and over that Barry Bonds is a bad man, an angry negro, not a team player (but probably more of a team player than surly Jeff Kent when he was on the Giants), etc, etc, etc.
Of course, you've never met Barry Bonds, but even if you had and everything you seem to believe is true... he's still the best hitter the game's ever seen, and his last season was statistical as good as anyone else in the majors had had. And winning has a way of making teammates get along, so a team that was in the thick of a playoff chase due in no small part to a DH with a 1.000+ OPS wouldn't be telling you what an asshole he is, they'd be telling you how great it is that he's on the team while they dream of how they'll spend their World Series bonus check.
Ted Williams was no prize, but they kept fucking employing him until he decided to retire because he was the best goddamn hitter anyone had ever seen. Lots of successful major leaguers are prima donnas or jerks or surly or even criminal. The worst you can say about Bonds is "The writers don't like him", which given the nature of sportswriters actually speaks volumes on behalf the quality of Bonds' character. :)
posted by hincandenza at 12:05 AM on July 31
Everything pre-1947 is cheapened when racist or racism-benefiting ballplayers like Ruth, Cobb, and Hornsby never faced for example a Dominican pitcher in his prime like Pedro Martinez. Not to mention how they were all hopped up on amphetamines, playing only leisurely day games against illiterate farmboy pitchers with 80mph fastballs and no concept of a "bullpen". I'd hit .344 lifetime too if 1-2 at bats a game came against a tired starter and not a 100mph fireballing relief specialist fresh from the pen. I'd win an ERA crown too if I never had to face the 9% of dark-skinner major leaguers who hail from the tiny nation of the Dominican Republic, when I never had Ichiro slapping bloop singles all over the fucking field.
Hey, that's fun! I can rewrite history however I feel! I personally don't think anything's cheapened, since it's the era that was played and from what I can tell the playing field was as level as at any time. Barry Bonds had to face pitchers like Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte among others, so... hey, it's still the same game.
Part of the reason for the 2003 "anonymous" testing was supposed to be a safe harbor for players is that it would help evaluate the state of the game without penalty. If we're going to leak the names and tar-and-feather the tested players, then really it wasn't without penalty. It's not unlike creating a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and then lynching those who come forward.
THX-1138: To continue the thought, do you think that if offered, Bonds would sign with an independent league team to try and get back in? Or maybe play in Japan? Or would he rather not play at all if he isn't offered a spot in the bigs? Rickey did everything he could to keep playing and he is in the Hall. Maybe Bonds is above lowering himself to play at a so-called lower level of baseball. Maybe his induction in Cooperstown is guaranteed. But I reiterate that MLB is under no obligation to give him a roster spot.First, let me response to a sentence: "Maybe his induction in Cooperstown is guaranteed". The very fact you typed that sickens me. There should be no "maybe" about it, even though some dickless writers will no doubt vote to keep him out, possibly for some time. Barry Bonds should be in a room with maybe 5-10 other players like Ruth, Aaron, Mays, and Williams, because those guys are part of the inner sanctum of HoF players.
As for playing in Japan- why should he? He's not a dead-from-the-neck-down player trying to "prove" himself after he'd lost a step. Again, Bonds' last year was in 2007, when his OPS was 1.045. He was only 25 plate-appearances from being the official OPS leader in the NL over Chipper Jones. His OBP was .480, which led the majors even though he didn't have enough PA: they simply added the number of hitless appearances to make him qualify, and he *still* led the majors.
He goes unsigned in 2008, and offered his services at league minimum, with the salary donated to charity- which effectively means his pittance of a salary would be a tax write-off for the team that signed him.
So yes, when I read a post like this at the inestimable Mariners' fan site USSMariner.com, bemoaning how the +34 runs created by their top 3 bats being erased by their bottom 5 hitters including DH, when I look at how the Mariners were still in contention going into the All-Star break, and you read comments the Mariners fans wishing they had one more bat in the lineup... yeah, I do think the only explanation for Barry Bonds not being in a major league uniform is collusion. Hell, a recent poll on ESPN had a majority of fans saying they would like their team to consider pursuing Michael Vick, and that guy did something genuinely rotten and harmful.
Barry Bonds is not the devil, and in 2009 we can't even pretend he was a rarity of an offender, in so much as he actually "offended" by briefly taking legal (with a prescription) chemicals that weren't even banned by baseball at the time. Ortiz, Ramirez, and A-Rod are all cheered heartily by their fans, but we're supposed to believe not one team in the majors is willing to take a leap on Barry Bonds and the 100+ runs he'd create in their lineup? We're supposed to believe that those teams finishing just 2-3 wins out of the playoffs last year absolutely positively had zero interest in Barry Bonds, and weren't say instructed or agreed as a group- "colluded", so to speak- to refuse to pursue his services?
Bullshit. That is complete and utter bullshit.
posted by hincandenza at 08:21 PM on July 30
You know who I feel the worst for? Barry Bonds, who apparently did nothing that everyone else wasn't also doing (and from what I've understood, he only started using whatever PEDs he did after he saw the success and adulation of McGwire and Sosa), who stopped when the sport put them on the "do not use" list, has been blackballed from the game for two years, and for what? So that guys like Ramirez, A-Rod, and others could stay in because they weren't scapegoats?
Bonds could have had 800HR by now, had his 3,000th hit, and given that Ruth injected himself with sheep testosterone, and Aaron took greenies, you can't really dismiss Bonds as a product of PEDs. From wikipedia:
If he ever returns to Major League Baseball, Bonds would be within close range of several significant hitting milestones: he needs just 65 hits to reach 3,000, 4 runs batted in to reach 2,000, and 38 home runs to reach 800. He needs 69 more runs scored to move past Rickey Henderson as the all-time runs champion, and 37 extra base hits to move past Hank Aaron as the all-time extra base hits champion.And when in-contention teams are out scouring for that needed bat for a playoff push, there is the greatest hitter who ever lived, effectively kicked out of the game for no reason.
posted by hincandenza at 03:23 PM on July 30
I'm kinda curious if JJ was in Chicago on business today, and thinking of catching a game... :)
My own comment from MeFi, which basically boils down to "Can you believe some dipshit in the stands was leaning out to snag that ball in the top of the 9th that was going over the fence? You think Bartman was hated on in Chicago..."
posted by hincandenza at 08:03 PM on July 23
Yeah, good point dviking- let's speculate, that's half the fun of baseball! I mostly meant that there's usually someone in the thick of "next Triple Crown winner?" discussion nearly every year, but it almost always fades- much like the "Will ____ hit .400?" discussions when someone's at .380 or so around the All-Star Break.
I'm with dfleming: the closer he gets, the harder it'll be for him to see decent pitches, especially with the Cardinals very much in the thick of things. His average may be helped by that: he'll probably have more BB/IBB in the last couple of months, and it'll be easier to keep a high average (or alternately, harder to raise a low one) with fewer at-bats. But his counting stats may suffer, and as I mentioned his HR lead, and especially his RBI lead, may disappear if others are seeing a lot more at-bats.
But yeah- the guy's probably the best hitter in the game right now (ever since a certain someone was blackballed into an unfair retirement as a scapegoat for the league), and has as good a chance as anyone who's been this close, this late in the season. I think he's close to being the Triple Crown winner for the entire decade, having debuted in 2001- he leads in active batting average depending on how Ichiro finishes this year, is second only to A-Rod in HRs I think, and might be the leader in RBI (I'm not sure because I don't know how to do such a filter at baseball-reference).
posted by hincandenza at 12:22 PM on July 21
He has a chance, in fact a pretty good chance. However, that's not newsworthy until September, which Kurkjian should know.
First, it's highly unlikely he'll lose the HR title this year- although there's a cluster of guys about 9HR behind, which isn't impossible for just one to go on a tear and make up a lot of that ground. They'd have to out-HR Pujols by 4HR a month, which is hardly easy but not impossible. Still, a 9HR lead over the field in late July is pretty hard to lose.
His RBI lead is much slimmer: 6 RBI is nothing. However, he's helped immensely by the fact that outside of Prince Fielder, there's no one else within shouting distance- so if he can edge Fielder, he probably takes this title.
So he'll probably take two of the legs easily. The thing is, the batting average crown is the hardest one to hold on to: unlike counting stats, a huge lead can be erased by you going out and playing badly as much as others doing well. Sure, a 12 point deficit behind can be erased quickly with a couple of multi-hit games while Hanley Ramirez has an 0-fer or 1-fer. The problem is that unlike counting stats, he can just as easily have an 0-fer himself; a few bad games and he's 20, 25 points back in the batting average category. It helps that Pujols is historically a high average hitter, so if anyone can maintain an average of .350+ for the season, he could.
So yeah... the guy's an amazing, freakish hitter, he's a first-ballot HoFer, he's almost undoubtedly going to win another MVP, and he has a better chance than most to win the Triple Crown. But let's talk about this in September, when we can say then that no one else has gone nuts and is hitting .370 or is approaching 50HR at that point.
posted by hincandenza at 11:43 PM on July 20
Yup, a local man paid off the debt for him, apparently because his wife had had an aneurysm and he wanted to help the guy out and help an ex-con turn his life around.
http://www.nowpublic.com/sports/dennis-paivas-4-000-debt-tom-brady-paid-dan-greenwald
posted by hincandenza at 12:05 PM on July 14
That's a great story, rcade, thanks for posting.
posted by hincandenza at 12:02 PM on July 14
Perhaps- I think the idea is that great hitters do have better baseball minds than average hitters: they are better at guessing right on that Santana change and parking it. Forget the steroids, Barry Bonds got better because he got better at working counts in his favor, then destroying something on the inner half of the plate.
Yeah, when any hitter is wrong, they swing badly and miss- but then that would happen without any fancy software, which is why Santana is a two-time Cy Young winner who's only had two seasons as a starter where he finished with an ERA over 3.00.
But it's not those pitchers you beat up on: the great pitchers make everyone look bad, including great hitters. The great hitters make up for it in spades by demolishing the guys with a 5.20 ERA. I'm just suggesting that it's not about the edge cases: it's about the law of large numbers playing out, of having every hitter on your team "guess" the next pitch, and it's location, correctly for say 80% of the time. Yeah, you fail miserably 20% of the time- but if the guy in the dugout is signaling pitch and a suggestion (lay off the next pitch, likely slider, you have a strike to spare)- you could have a very high BABIP for your team's lineup. And it doesn't have to be much difference: just enough that your hitters on the whole are a little less fooled.
Yeah, the pitchers will start adjusting their games, but that would facilitate their team having their own algorithms and systems to analyze the pitchers tendencies to try to create "perfect" randomness. The trick to me is that a pitcher/catcher battery will lean on certain pitches more often than others, in certain situations (high leverage situation and counts, maybe the middle relief guy is scared to go to his curve because he's not as good with it). The thinking is that the "system" would compute the accuracy and strike % of pitches, and do so in real time, so that the hitter would have a pretty good chance of knowing "He's going to his curve on the next pitch, but he only throws it for a strike 40% of the time when the temperature is below 75 degrees", etc.
I don't know that this would work, that such a system could or would find trends. I'm just surprised that I've never heard of anyone trying. Although I guess to your point #1 above, if you did have such a system... would you tell anyone?! :)
posted by hincandenza at 12:27 AM on July 13
Yeah, I didn't mean it would make every hitter into Tony Gwynn- rather, that if every mediocre hitter had a Tony Gwynn in his ear during the at-bat, would he be more effective? Watching young players play, say an Ellsbury in Boston, and seeing how they don't have patience or good sense about working pitch counts, etc, would they be a little bit more effective if they were getting cues from the dugout of "Sit on the next pitch, it's likely a slider- you don't hit those well, and he likes to follow his slider with a fastball outside which you can hammer into rightfield". No, not HoF effective, but say a .260 hitter instead of a .250 hitter? Hell, as "Bull Durham" notes, the difference between .250 and .300 is one extra hit a week if you're a regular player.
I grant you that many times any decent professional can "guess" with some accuracy, but how accurate? The homerun derby shows us that even with slower pitches thrown for the intention of being hammered, the best sluggers still only "hit" .333-.400 (say, 5-7 homeruns by the time they make 10 outs), with most of the outs being weak grounders or warning-track popups. So it's not like a PitchMaster3000 that was say 90% accurate at guessing the location and type of the next pitch would lead to a lineup of Williams and Ruths. But if it made every hitter one extra base hit every other week better... that'd be a playoff bound team.
I'm not saying it'd pan out, or make a huge difference- but I can't imagine it wouldn't have *some* benefit if the guessing algorithm was sufficiently accurate. And every little bit counts over the long haul.
posted by hincandenza at 06:11 PM on July 12
I didn't say Rolen wasn't a good fielder- my two points were accidentally conflated by how I wrote that. One, that I praise these innovations because they'll show what happens before the camera reaches the guy making the play- the kind of information that won't pull McCarver's lips off Jeter's Little Intangible, but will otherwise help the baseball community increase its accuracy in evaluating defensive talent and accomplishments.
Along with that, I made the point that Rolen might be worried about these new metrics making the game complicated or possibly showing him in a less favorable light- but I'm not saying he's like Jeter, in that Jeter is wildly overrated whereas Rolen is not.
It's not different than Curt Schilling's bizarre hatred of Questec (given that he is a nerdy tech-oriented guy overall); I can only assume Schilling worried that learning the umps and their own flaws/quirks was a part of the game, and a part that gave him an edge with his veteran experience.
Semi-related: with all the data that things like PitchFx has given us, and with innovations like this on the horizon, wouldn't it behoove teams to be throwing machine learning analysis at the data to see if there are trends available? After all, pitchers and catchers are not random actors: whether they like it or not, they have patterns and trends inherent in their behavior, even below the levels of the ones they are aware of. If we have data representing every pitch, type, location, and circumstance thrown in the last few years, surely we have a dataset enough to start to "guess" what pitch a pitcher will throw next, given the count, the hitter, the situation, etc. If that accuracy was anything better than 50%- and wouldn't it be?- a set of computers in a lab could be getting real-time data of each pitch, guessing the next pitch, then being fed the real pitch and adjusting accordingly.
Maybe the culture of baseball would look down on this, but I don't think it'd be against any rules. Imagine even mediocre hitters being able to glance to the dugout and have the hitting coach signal "Slider", and know that there's a ~70%+ chance the next pitch is a slider. It would turn every hitter into Tony Gwynn. Or maybe there are teams doing this now, and they are being very mum about it; I've read I think Schilling comment that being a pitcher in Boston was unique because of the technical tools they have- some he "couldn't even talk about".
It just seems that for the cost of a cheap utility infielder, you could have an assortment of video and 3d analysis, kinesiological analysis, predictive capabilities, and even that one pitching machine that has a human-size screen capable of simulating just about any pitch along with video of said pitcher throwing it (so that hitters could warm up facing a vintage Randy Johnson slider, etc, before facing the real thing). Having those utilities should allow a club to make all their players a little bit better. And a little bit goes a long way- 1% difference in OPS on a team would yield about 3 wins more in the standings over the course of a year.
posted by hincandenza at 11:53 PM on July 11
I'm sure it is amazing in the flesh- the closest I've come was watching Mike Mussina take a perfect game through 26 batters, a pinch-hitting Carl Everett who broke it up with a clean single with two outs in the 9th (Sox vs Yankees at Fenway). It was the ESPN game of the night on a Sunday I believe, and I happened to be watching it in a public place, a sports bar & grill with big screen TVs. The few people who were paying attention were fixated (Seattle's not a huge sports town), because... well, it was a hell of a game to watch. The tension grows immeasurably with every inning, every out, every pitch.
But man, to have seen something like that live, surrounded by hometown fans? The atmosphere must have been incredible- I guess the analogy for a guy like you would be standing right at the ropes watching some history golf performance, say Tiger beating the field by 12, or some multiple-hole sudden death in a Major. Wow, that must have been amazing to the people there. It's a damn shame you didn't choose to go in, JJ. You'd be able to tell that story to your grandkids.
posted by hincandenza at 11:25 PM on July 11
Yeah, Uribe better be feeling pretty shitty today. That was a routine play, and while I'm sure Sanchez is absolutely thrilled to get a no-hitter and gain some small measure of immortality, pitching a perfect game is literally more than an order of magnitude more impressive- there've been about 262 no-hitters, so about 2-3 a year, while there have been only 15 perfect games post-1900.
And to lose the perfect game so late, not on a walk or a tough play ruled an error but on something A-ball players should make in his sleep... ugh. Nice job, Uribe.
posted by hincandenza at 04:28 PM on July 11
Not that all players welcome the new numbers. A few lockers down, Wells's teammate Scott Rolen whose excellent defense and base running would presumably be evidenced by the tracking system said: "I don't believe that baseball is a game that can be encapsulated that way. That's the beauty of the whole game."Fantastic! This software will usher in a new era of refined defensive analysis, allowing us to finally discern between A) players whose slowness or poor positioning force them to make Jeterian dives and tumbles and get an undeserved reputation for being "great" fielders, and B) those whose smart play and quick feet make everything look so easy that most observers don't fully appreciate their gifts.
And I suspect that Scott Rolen fears he might very well be in that first group. :)
posted by hincandenza at 04:19 PM on July 11
That's fucking awesome. This is why I love baseball!
Reasons not to like baseball: the recent trend of crappy pitchers on 3rd-rate teams nearly no-hitting the Red Sox lineup, night after night. WTF?!
posted by hincandenza at 09:05 PM on July 10
Wow, that was seriously awkward.
But honestly? She really should have been more forceful- giggling, even nervously, is not how you stop that behavior. I hate to sound like some retrograde male, but guys like that know they can get away with those things because a) they have no conscience, and b) the women don't put up a fuss. I mean, when the guy comes in from off camera to gently suggest "Uh, dude... "- that's waaaay to far.
posted by hincandenza at 03:36 PM on July 10
Heh. You said blunt.
posted by hincandenza at 03:33 PM on July 10
Bachar left his mark across the Yosemite ValleyWow, nott really the best choice of words there, NYT....
My (fitness freak) boss was a huge fan of this guy; I'll have to forward this, I don't know if he's heard it. We've respectfully disagreed in the past as to whether he's awesome or "batshit insane" to have climbed as he did. I guess I can kind of understand the point that when you're so good at climbing, the only "thrill" comes when you do it 'without a net', but still- it's thrill seeking of the worst kind, where a mistake is basically a guarantee of death.
I think those people in an HD documentary I saw that hopped out of the cage to swim with Great White Sharks were also "batshit insane", but there's relatively decent chance that even if attacked, they will survive- not so much with a fall from a sheer rock face. :) And if I recall correctly, the husband documentarian steadfastly refused to let his wife in the water, because they had a kid at home.
posted by hincandenza at 11:54 PM on July 09
Whoops- well, sometimes my sarcasmeter is a little out of whack. I keep shaking myself in a figure 8, but it doesn't always re-calibrate correctly. :)
posted by hincandenza at 11:47 PM on July 09
Atheist: Is it possible that he is becoming an egocentric, spoiled baby?Becoming? Given his behavior in relation to Stephon Marbury and his Starbury shoe line, I'd say it's pretty clear the dude is basically a (prodigiously talented) man-child, raised from pubescence in the media spotlight to worship the only god he knows: his own id.
Take away his athletic gifts and he's hanging out with George, his only dream to live of the fatta 'lan, tending to his rabbits.
posted by hincandenza at 01:01 PM on July 09
Um, we're not at all talking about a "burning bed" situtation here, are we? He was a philanderer, not an abuser right? If he was abusive, then getting shot by his wife would make some kind of "playing with fire" sense.
But he was stepping out- that's not playing with fire, that's just being a dick*. Your comment works better if you said "When you play with silly putty, you usually get burned". Because that makes no sense, just as it makes no sense that having an affair would get you shot multiple times by your mistress.
In any case, it's a shame.
* It's also being a pretty typical sports athlete; don't the wives understand that with the money and support and fame of being an athlete wife, you have to expect or at least tolerate a little playing the field during their heyday?
posted by hincandenza at 03:46 PM on July 05
I don't get your point, Joey Michaels. Not *all* athletes lose all their money, and lots of non-athletes who get rich quick (such as musicians) might blow it all on coke and strippers and fast cars. It's better that he get as dviking says at least a few million, and have that chance, than to play some silly "I got's to get my edumacation!" game that's solely some bone we toss to the idea of "the right thing to do". As if some 18-year-old wunderkind on the court should sit in a classroom for 4 years, rather than go make tens of millions of dollars *now*. There's no law that says you can't go back to school later in life- lots of non-millionaires do it, and they don't have a huge nest egg to fall back on.
Saying he'll blow it all so he shouldn't even try reminds me of a scene in the old show "Night Court" where, when Boll Shannon wins a million dollar lottery, he tears up the check because "I could never afford to pay the taxes!". Maybe he will... but you know, probably not if he's got a half-decent head on his shoulders and/or half-decent parents.
Christ, the dribblings of a pro athlete's income would be enough to set the rest of us up for life. If he makes millions, his parents (if they aren't sleazy) could set up a little trust that matures at age 25 using some of his earnings. Even if he loses it all, or gets injured etc, he could then find himself at age 25 with the cash influx- having learned from the school of hard knocks- to buy a nice but unmansion-y home and still have enough left over to live off the interest for the rest of his life.
posted by hincandenza at 06:28 PM on July 01
I know, sgtcookzane- I was trying to be funny by referencing that Steve Kansas bit. :)
Hadn't even heard of Robert Stock, but again- like Lebron and others, I actually like when athletes basically try to skip the whole "school" thing (more so in basketball, because the NCAA is a hideous exploitative racket) and avoid the silly pretense of "Education is the most important thing!" Eh, not when you can make 7 or 8 figures before you're 22 because of how you manipulate a spherical object.
posted by hincandenza at 02:14 PM on July 01
Er- Nebraska.
:) But seriously, this is awesome- I always get excited about phenoms, even though they usually don't pan out (while some guy drafted in the 20th round puts together a hall of fame career). If the kid's as preternaturally good as they say, and smart enough to pass his GED, who are we kidding? He should spend two years in a high school classroom for... no, that's stupid bullshit. He was born to play baseball, and any pretense of "normal life" is a joke.
I hope he gets into a school, tears it up, and is promptly drafted next June and is on a major league roster ASAP. Fuck, why not? If he's as good as they say, then no reason he can't be like Griffey, A-Rod, et al, and be getting playing time almost immediately. If he's worth drafting #1, he's worth playing right away, and let him learn as he goes at the big league level.
The only reason to put players in the minors is because you can teach and season them at no cost to your major league clubs record (and hopefully if they need time to work up to the majors you aren't throwing them into the lion's den where they develop bad habits or lose confidence). But whoever drafts this guy (at #1) is probably going to be a bottom-ranked team, and better he get those at-bats at the MLB level.
posted by hincandenza at 11:53 PM on June 30
After the build-up I was expecting to see that his name was Steve Kansas.
posted by hincandenza at 11:47 PM on June 30
Jesus. That's a hell of a story. Thanks for the link, gfinsf.
I am curious: by the rules of transplants, do you think the Nicholas' can find out who the family was that lost a child, or vice versa? I don't know if they intentionally keep that secret, or if it would be helpful for them to know that their child's death led to another being able to live- but maybe not tell them who.
posted by hincandenza at 04:32 PM on June 21
Utley ties Reggie's World Series Record
The wickedly premature question I have: if this goes 7 and the Phillies win... is your MVP Cliff Lee or Chase Utley?