4.27.2005
Not a Game Report
Saturday's 6-2 victory by the Giants over the Brewers was a great example of why you should never go to a baseball game on a first date. That's not to say that a baseball game isn't a good place to take a female in general, or even on a subsequent date. But on a first date you run the risk of bringing along someone who doesn't really care about baseball as much as you do. This can present each of you in an unflattering light to the other.
Reason 1: If it's a good game - and this one was decent - then you can find yourself paying too much attention to the proceedings and not enough to her. The game's most interesting event, as you can tell from the recap, was Brett Tomko's two-run single, immediately after which he was picked off first base by Chris Capuano. I was watching intently, and when Capuano began his pickoff move just as Tomko started to lean the wrong way I knew, and I said out loud "Oh he's out," and that got the attention of some fans sitting near me who looked up from their mini pizzas just in time to see 1B umpire Mike Everitt calling Tomko out. The problem is, my date may have been in the middle of a sentence during this episode. I'm not sure.
Reason 2: Beer costs $7.50 at SBC Park, and it's neither a copious quantity nor the Good Stuff. (The Giants brain trust has elected to use the Coors on their guests whilst secretly hoarding the Good Stuff for themselves. A sneaky but effective trick for hosting parties or get-togethers of any kind.) I don't mean to oversimplify, but this further sharpens the contrast between having an enjoyable date and a financially responsible one.
Reason 3: If it's a bad game, you have to sit there and endure the groans and questions like "what's taking so long?" and "it's only the fourth inning?!", and there is nothing for you to do but sit there and silently nod your head as if in agreement, when in fact you're nodding your head to confirm to yourself your hatred of the human race.
Reason 4: An unresolved question because Brooks Kieschnick is no longer on Milwaukee's roster, but if he had been, and if he'd come in the game to pitch, would I have been able to resist the temptation to inform my date that Kieschnick is the only major leaguer who is equally capable at the bat and on the mound, and that the Brewers may well have brought him in with the pitcher's spot due up next inning because they intended to let him hit? I don't think so.
Reason 5: While there is no denying that the game could be thrilling, the beer could be cold and the date could be your future soulmate, it's simply not worth running the risk of attending a major league baseball game with someone whose favorite moments are not the big plays, but rather the 20-second blasts of techno music that invariably follow them.
Reason 1: If it's a good game - and this one was decent - then you can find yourself paying too much attention to the proceedings and not enough to her. The game's most interesting event, as you can tell from the recap, was Brett Tomko's two-run single, immediately after which he was picked off first base by Chris Capuano. I was watching intently, and when Capuano began his pickoff move just as Tomko started to lean the wrong way I knew, and I said out loud "Oh he's out," and that got the attention of some fans sitting near me who looked up from their mini pizzas just in time to see 1B umpire Mike Everitt calling Tomko out. The problem is, my date may have been in the middle of a sentence during this episode. I'm not sure.
Reason 2: Beer costs $7.50 at SBC Park, and it's neither a copious quantity nor the Good Stuff. (The Giants brain trust has elected to use the Coors on their guests whilst secretly hoarding the Good Stuff for themselves. A sneaky but effective trick for hosting parties or get-togethers of any kind.) I don't mean to oversimplify, but this further sharpens the contrast between having an enjoyable date and a financially responsible one.
Reason 3: If it's a bad game, you have to sit there and endure the groans and questions like "what's taking so long?" and "it's only the fourth inning?!", and there is nothing for you to do but sit there and silently nod your head as if in agreement, when in fact you're nodding your head to confirm to yourself your hatred of the human race.
Reason 4: An unresolved question because Brooks Kieschnick is no longer on Milwaukee's roster, but if he had been, and if he'd come in the game to pitch, would I have been able to resist the temptation to inform my date that Kieschnick is the only major leaguer who is equally capable at the bat and on the mound, and that the Brewers may well have brought him in with the pitcher's spot due up next inning because they intended to let him hit? I don't think so.
Reason 5: While there is no denying that the game could be thrilling, the beer could be cold and the date could be your future soulmate, it's simply not worth running the risk of attending a major league baseball game with someone whose favorite moments are not the big plays, but rather the 20-second blasts of techno music that invariably follow them.
All-Important Fantasy Update
The Mission Magicians, the flawlessly commanded fantasy team you see linked at the right of the page - and also the barometer of the Editor's daily mood swings - have opened their first season with a surge to the top of the standings. For anyone else it would be a cause for celebration, but I instead view it as cause for undue fretting.
The decision to be made at this juncture is simple: whose hot start is a fluke, and whose is real? Our candidates are Pat Burrell (.304, 5 HR), Brad Wilkerson (.360, 3 HR, 2 SB), Jason Lane (.320, 4 HR, 5 SB), and Brady Clark (.321, 3 HR, 3 SB). If I sit on all of them all summer long, there's no way I finish up at the top of the standings; my margin of error is pretty tight as things are, and that's with Lane and Clark each on pace for at least 30-30 seasons.
The flip question, of course: whom to trade for? Andruw Jones (currently batting .197) is a prime target, but his owner has already fallen asleep and we haven't even reached May. A major obstacle to everyone's fantasy season, the dead owner is dreaded but unavoidable, even in the strongest of leagues. In six seasons of fantasy baseball I have encountered no known cure.
On the pitching side, there are no surprises. Tim Hudson has been an ace, Curt Schilling has been an ace trying to get healthy, and the Haren/Weaver/Eaton three-headed monster has been acceptable. Joe Nathan and Octavio Dotel have been solid as closers, but Dan Kolb has hiccupped one too many times for the Braves, to the point that Cox and Mazzone have sent clubhouse boys scurrying to the nearest Walgreens for a glass of water and a jar of peanut butter. The result was my first major Snag of the year, picking up Matt Herges off waivers less than an hour after Armando Benitez limped off the field with a pulled hammy. Departing the roster in disgrace was Kevin Brown, who hasn't had a solid eight-inning start in what feels like years.
The pitching will come together eventually, moving me up in wins and strikeouts. The trick is to move the smoke and mirrors fast enough to keep me afloat on offense. It's a deep league, but not deep enough for me to be relying on Brady Clark. The easy thing to do would be to coast on the April success, but roto leagues aren't won that way. They are won with relentless pressure administered to specific "vulnerable" areas of the body, usually polished off with a corkscrew-style pile driver that leaves foes gently twitching on the ground.
The decision to be made at this juncture is simple: whose hot start is a fluke, and whose is real? Our candidates are Pat Burrell (.304, 5 HR), Brad Wilkerson (.360, 3 HR, 2 SB), Jason Lane (.320, 4 HR, 5 SB), and Brady Clark (.321, 3 HR, 3 SB). If I sit on all of them all summer long, there's no way I finish up at the top of the standings; my margin of error is pretty tight as things are, and that's with Lane and Clark each on pace for at least 30-30 seasons.
The flip question, of course: whom to trade for? Andruw Jones (currently batting .197) is a prime target, but his owner has already fallen asleep and we haven't even reached May. A major obstacle to everyone's fantasy season, the dead owner is dreaded but unavoidable, even in the strongest of leagues. In six seasons of fantasy baseball I have encountered no known cure.
On the pitching side, there are no surprises. Tim Hudson has been an ace, Curt Schilling has been an ace trying to get healthy, and the Haren/Weaver/Eaton three-headed monster has been acceptable. Joe Nathan and Octavio Dotel have been solid as closers, but Dan Kolb has hiccupped one too many times for the Braves, to the point that Cox and Mazzone have sent clubhouse boys scurrying to the nearest Walgreens for a glass of water and a jar of peanut butter. The result was my first major Snag of the year, picking up Matt Herges off waivers less than an hour after Armando Benitez limped off the field with a pulled hammy. Departing the roster in disgrace was Kevin Brown, who hasn't had a solid eight-inning start in what feels like years.
The pitching will come together eventually, moving me up in wins and strikeouts. The trick is to move the smoke and mirrors fast enough to keep me afloat on offense. It's a deep league, but not deep enough for me to be relying on Brady Clark. The easy thing to do would be to coast on the April success, but roto leagues aren't won that way. They are won with relentless pressure administered to specific "vulnerable" areas of the body, usually polished off with a corkscrew-style pile driver that leaves foes gently twitching on the ground.
4.13.2005
Pedro and Beckett, Tied at 87
ESPN.com has begun to include Game Scores at the bottom of its daily box scores. They also have begun to list the top performances of the year, using Game Scores as the metric. Game Scores have long been considered little more than a "toy statistic" by the likes of Rob Neyer, the man who did the most to popularize their use. But the truth is, most of the major baseball statistics are little more than toys themselves, although they do get taken seriously. Batting average? What wag decided batting average was the most important indicator of a good player? Pretty narrow-minded, when you think about it.
Now don't get me wrong, Game Scores aren't exactly rigorous. In fact, they're a bit silly when you look at the fine print:
So let's go ahead and admit that Game Scores have every right to be included with the big boys. We've seen OBP and SLG get their due over the past five years or so, especially after the release of Moneyball, when even the most grudging old-schooler of a sports editor had to admit that no, there's no point in denying that high OBPs correlate with winning much more closely than do all the traditional offensive stats. Now ESPN puts it right up there on TV, a comforting little ".308" under Cesar Izturis' name, letting you know that he's a little bit better at ending up on base than his .272 batting average might suggest...but not much.
(Given that ending up on base is what you most want to see your hitter do in general, and having watched Rafael Furcal's rookie season with the Braves when he had truly terrifying speed, I think a move should be made to account for Reached Base on Error a little more sufficiently than a simple 0-1. Also, think about how wacked-out some official scorers can be. Perhaps this should have been a separate post altogether.)
I imagine Game Scores will start to get a little more recognition as part of baseball's burgeoning Information Age. They produce a simple number, on a roughly 0-100 scale, which must feel nice and relaxing to all those baseball fans who don't like to get headaches trying to comprehend numbers on a brand new scale. And you have to be pretty tough to hump it up to 100: only two pitchers have done it since 2002, one of which was Randy Johnson's perfect game against Atlanta last year.
Go back and look at that top Game Scores page again. It's a tabbed page with the tab set on "Best Games," alongside other Neyer/James brainchildren as the "Beane Count," and the "Cy Young Predictor," the latter of which is a complex formula that boils down to a simple top ten list of the pitchers who are in the race for their league's top pitching award. In other words, the performance-metricians, the stat-heads if you will, have gotten so fed up with the inane, PR-influenced nature of the annual Baseball Writers' voting for major awards, that now they are presuming to do their thinking for them.
And it's going to work. You mark my words. Local hacks, the sports aficionados who have lucked into BBWAA votes, will find this page and grow addicted to it, stopping by every time they've forgotten whom to be considering for the Cy Young. It won't dictate their thinking, but it will certainly shape it. And another small victory for the statistics crowd will have taken hold.
Now don't get me wrong, Game Scores aren't exactly rigorous. In fact, they're a bit silly when you look at the fine print:
Game Score: Start with 50 points. Add 1 point for each out recorded, (3 points per inning). Add 2 points for each inning completed after the 4th. Add 1 point for each strikeout. Subtract 2 points for each hit allowed. Subtract 4 points for each earned run allowed. Subtract 2 points for each unearned run allowed. Subtract 1 point for each walk.That's pretty arbitrary, no doubt. But Game Scores have merit when you consider that the arbiter was doing some pretty good thinking. Pitchers are punished for unearned runs (an improvement on the ERA statistic), walks (an improvement on Opponent's BA), and not lasting deep into games (which no current major stat really acknowledges).
So let's go ahead and admit that Game Scores have every right to be included with the big boys. We've seen OBP and SLG get their due over the past five years or so, especially after the release of Moneyball, when even the most grudging old-schooler of a sports editor had to admit that no, there's no point in denying that high OBPs correlate with winning much more closely than do all the traditional offensive stats. Now ESPN puts it right up there on TV, a comforting little ".308" under Cesar Izturis' name, letting you know that he's a little bit better at ending up on base than his .272 batting average might suggest...but not much.
(Given that ending up on base is what you most want to see your hitter do in general, and having watched Rafael Furcal's rookie season with the Braves when he had truly terrifying speed, I think a move should be made to account for Reached Base on Error a little more sufficiently than a simple 0-1. Also, think about how wacked-out some official scorers can be. Perhaps this should have been a separate post altogether.)
I imagine Game Scores will start to get a little more recognition as part of baseball's burgeoning Information Age. They produce a simple number, on a roughly 0-100 scale, which must feel nice and relaxing to all those baseball fans who don't like to get headaches trying to comprehend numbers on a brand new scale. And you have to be pretty tough to hump it up to 100: only two pitchers have done it since 2002, one of which was Randy Johnson's perfect game against Atlanta last year.
Go back and look at that top Game Scores page again. It's a tabbed page with the tab set on "Best Games," alongside other Neyer/James brainchildren as the "Beane Count," and the "Cy Young Predictor," the latter of which is a complex formula that boils down to a simple top ten list of the pitchers who are in the race for their league's top pitching award. In other words, the performance-metricians, the stat-heads if you will, have gotten so fed up with the inane, PR-influenced nature of the annual Baseball Writers' voting for major awards, that now they are presuming to do their thinking for them.
And it's going to work. You mark my words. Local hacks, the sports aficionados who have lucked into BBWAA votes, will find this page and grow addicted to it, stopping by every time they've forgotten whom to be considering for the Cy Young. It won't dictate their thinking, but it will certainly shape it. And another small victory for the statistics crowd will have taken hold.
4.10.2005
Week One
It's no exaggeration to say Week One has made life worthwhile again, if you define "life" as "life within a five-foot radius of a TV and/or laptop at all times." Good to be alive again.
You the readership must wait a little longer for an in-person MLBeat game report, but already I can let you in on a great non-secret: SBC Park gives out free standing-room opportunities, three innings at a time, for folks who wander behind the rightfield wall and wait patiently for admittance. Using a tip from a benevolent (not to mention smashing, tee hee) regular customer at the day job, I was sufficiently educated to wander over to the Phone Booth in time to see Giants ace Jason Schmidt give up a dinger to the first batter of the 2005 season, Cesar Izturis (career 9 HR in 1824 AB). And then I turned around and saw drunk people kayaking around each other, superfans reduced to mere carousers in a non-Bonds world.
Looking back on the season's Act I, Scene i, a few things jump out at me.
How bent out of shape people can get after a week. Already Mariano Rivera is cooked as a closer, Joe Randa is an All-Star, and Brad Wilkerson is the new Larry Walker. Take a deep breath, guys.
Josh Beckett. We'll know in a couple of months if this truly was a breakout year that jumped right out of the gate -- first Beckett has to survive a stretch without blister problems -- but so far we're at April 10, and Beckett is 2-0 with a clean 0.00 ERA and 17 strikeouts in his 15 innings so far. Today he caused fantasy owners across the nation to sully their britches in delight with a coveted CG-SHO, uncommon this early in the season since most managers are cautious with their young arms in April. Said his catcher Matt Treanor, "He was throwing all three of his pitches and locating with all of them. You couldn't play Nintendo any better." Sounds like a wager to me....
No major first-week injuries. Seems like one team has had a death blow to their contention hopes by this point most years. It was nearly Marcus Giles, who apparently slid into second base for the first time in his life on Tuesday. And isn't Ken Griffey usually in a cast by now?
Those silly Mets. If we let X equal the number of things that have to go wrong for the Willie Randolph Watch to begin in earnest, then right now were are at about (X - 4). At least one of those is an injury, and one is a sweep at the hands of the Yankees. I'm guessing one more will be a drug bust (steroids?), and maybe one more embarassing losing streak will seal the deal.
You the readership must wait a little longer for an in-person MLBeat game report, but already I can let you in on a great non-secret: SBC Park gives out free standing-room opportunities, three innings at a time, for folks who wander behind the rightfield wall and wait patiently for admittance. Using a tip from a benevolent (not to mention smashing, tee hee) regular customer at the day job, I was sufficiently educated to wander over to the Phone Booth in time to see Giants ace Jason Schmidt give up a dinger to the first batter of the 2005 season, Cesar Izturis (career 9 HR in 1824 AB). And then I turned around and saw drunk people kayaking around each other, superfans reduced to mere carousers in a non-Bonds world.
Looking back on the season's Act I, Scene i, a few things jump out at me.
How bent out of shape people can get after a week. Already Mariano Rivera is cooked as a closer, Joe Randa is an All-Star, and Brad Wilkerson is the new Larry Walker. Take a deep breath, guys.
Josh Beckett. We'll know in a couple of months if this truly was a breakout year that jumped right out of the gate -- first Beckett has to survive a stretch without blister problems -- but so far we're at April 10, and Beckett is 2-0 with a clean 0.00 ERA and 17 strikeouts in his 15 innings so far. Today he caused fantasy owners across the nation to sully their britches in delight with a coveted CG-SHO, uncommon this early in the season since most managers are cautious with their young arms in April. Said his catcher Matt Treanor, "He was throwing all three of his pitches and locating with all of them. You couldn't play Nintendo any better." Sounds like a wager to me....
No major first-week injuries. Seems like one team has had a death blow to their contention hopes by this point most years. It was nearly Marcus Giles, who apparently slid into second base for the first time in his life on Tuesday. And isn't Ken Griffey usually in a cast by now?
Those silly Mets. If we let X equal the number of things that have to go wrong for the Willie Randolph Watch to begin in earnest, then right now were are at about (X - 4). At least one of those is an injury, and one is a sweep at the hands of the Yankees. I'm guessing one more will be a drug bust (steroids?), and maybe one more embarassing losing streak will seal the deal.
4.02.2005
Ten Reasons the Braves Will Win the NL East
Here's a detailed version of the annual "Atlanta's sky is falling" prediction.
What Jerry Crasnick does not know is that I am one defensive mofo. Here are ten reasons why Atlanta's division-winning streak, the longest of its kind in professional sports history, will carry on in 2005:
1. Because Baseball Prospectus thinks it won't. Even though BP is accumulating a track record of being better at predictions than other organizations that are paid to do such work, they continue to miss on this one. In each of the past 15 years some reputable publication has picked the Braves to lose the division to the Phillies, Marlins, or (God forbid) the Mets. At this point BP has become the most reputable of all the predictive publications out there. It will be fun to see them humbled again.
2. Because that outfield situation isn't as bad as you think. Yes, Brian Jordan and Raul Mondesi are as crappy as everyone thinks they are, and certainly won't be able to carry a team to the playoffs. On the other hand, with Ryan Langerhans, Andy Marte, Jeff Francoeur, Wilson Betemit, and an ever-ready Trader John Schuerholz waiting in the wings, incompetence will not be tolerated for too long. A good example of this surfaced last spring, when Braves fans were suffering the "performances" of Dewayne Wise in the outfield and Mark DeRosa in the infield on a regular basis and all looked lost. Solution: move Chipper Jones back to third base, send Eli Marrerro out to leftfield, and convince J.D. Drew's sorry ass to stay in the lineup long enough to earn that one good contract that would set his family for life. We'll see tinkering of this sort by May, or as soon as Mondesi decides to return to his people on Planet Crazy.
3. That bullpen. No, it doesn't look good on paper: Dan Kolb, Roman Colon, Chris Reitsma, Kevin Gryboski, Tom Martin, Jorge Sosa. But it never looks good on paper in the spring, and by August you will run through these names again and think, "Wow, that's a shut-down bullpen." I don't know how they do it either, but look at these names: Darren Holmes, Mike Bielecki, Chris Hammond, Greg McMichael, Kevin McGlinchy, Tim Spooneybarger, Kerry Ligtenberg, and Jose Cabrera. Not too impressive either, but all (and many others) were very effective relievers at one point for the Braves in recent years. This will not stop happening just because of the name-recognition factor, if history is any guide. And frankly, history is the only guide we've got.
4. Andruw Jones still has his Beltre year coming. In six months everyone will be calling a career year that coincides with a contract year a Beltre. Just you watch.
5. Because there is one name lurking just underneath all the murmurs of "potential MVP breakout seasons," and that name is The Marcus. Avid Braves fans drool over this guy in the way that you only see when avid fans have been tracking a player's progress through the minors, highlighting him as a potential star as far back as 1998, lamenting the roadblocks to his development as a player (lack of size and defense), and exulting when he finally makes it to the show despite all the detractors. In the modern era of rapid player movement and rampant free agency, this is how you show loyalty to a player: identify him and follow him well before his arbitration years. I will be a Marcus Giles fan long after he is no longer a Brave. Seeing him succeed with a tomahawk on his jersey is the single most fulfilling part of being a Braves fan for me since the championship season of 1995.
6. Because of Julio Franco. I mean, c'mon!
7. The secret to the Braves' success is not really a secret: the establishment in place of Bobby Cox, Leo Mazzone, and John Schuerholz. How they are able to do it is of course beyond me, just as it is beyond the comprehension of every baseball fan and analyst I've ever known. And because nobody knows how they do it, nobody knows how to overanalyze or imitate it. Since 1991 they've won divisions in various years with pitching, offense, bullpen, and killer deadline trades. The only consistencies I can find are their reliance on local Georgia boys as draft picks, a generally calm and professional clubhouse atmosphere, and Mazzone's program of having pitchers throw on the side between starts. That can't be all to the story, can it?
8. John Smoltz. How could I even get to the eighth reason without mentioning this guy? That right there could be another reason altogether. There are many doomsday predictions of him not even making it to 120 IP as a starter, but even if he does begin to break down he'll adhere to his past record of gutting it out and will probably regress to league-average as he does so.
9. Because the Mets are clearly doomed to repeat all their injury-prone, expensive-acquisition mistakes; because the Marlins can't survive losing even one starting pitcher or position player without taking a huge hit; because the Phillies still can't pitch or play centerfield; and because the Nationals don't even merit to be mentioned in a compound sentence with these other teams.
10. Because ten is a nicer, more round number than 9.
