Tag: "baseball"

Fenway

So today I am attending a game at Fenway for the first time, as I will again watch my Mariners lose on the road. Whenever I see Seattle play on the road, terrible things happen. They get swept in a double header. They get shut out. Felix Hernandez has atypically bad starts. In 2010, when Felix won the Cy Young, I saw him twice. He got absolutely bombed in Texas, the worst start of the season. Then in Cleveland, he pitched great for 6 innings, but in the 7th, a 2 out error was followed by 6 unearned runs. I almost countered this bad luck by remembering that I was at the game in New York when Felix hit the grand slam off Johan Santana, but I also remember that he hurt his ankle covering home 2 innings later and ended up on the DL. Even in the minors, I saw Felix pitch in Albuquerque until the 2nd inning when he caught a liner off his foot and left the game.

Last year, I tried to see the Mariners play on the road twice. DJW and I went to 2 games in Cleveland. In the first, Brandon League gave up a 3-run HR in the bottom of the 9th, which was just awful to witness. Maybe the worst Mariners game I’ve ever sat through. The second game was rained out after we sat through it for 2 hours. The rain out was far less painful.

Today, the legendary Blake Beavan faces Josh Beckett. I am interested to see if Sox fans boo Beckett in his first home start (I think) since he was busted for golfing the day after he missed a start. But I’m sure Seattle will lose in some heartbreaking fashion. Or this game will be rained out too, which is a possibility.

Anyway, since it’s my first trip to Fenway, any advice on where to park, what to eat inside the park (if anything is actually worth it), where to dine or have a drink after the game, or other tips are greatly appreciated.

19th Century Defense

I spent a bit of time last night looking up statistics on late 19th century baseball players. I was struck by the sheer number of unearned runs allowed. Here’s Old Hoss Radbourn’s career stat-line on runs and earned runs.

Year R ER

1881 162 88
1882 213 109
1883 275 144
1884 216 104
1885 209 109
1886 300 170
1887 305 215
1888 110 66
1889 151 113
1890 183 126
1891 149 103

Now, I’m sure there are a few of you out there who know more about 19th century baseball than I do. But my take from these numbers is that nobody had any idea how to play defense in the 19th century. It certainly seems to help explain some batting milestones that haven’t been reached in more than a half-century. Given the shocking number of errors that must have led to 40% of a pitcher’s runs being unearned over a decade-long career, how many other runs were given up because no one knew where to stand on a baseball diamond? And much more impressive is Ichiro’s 262 hits in 2004?

Prioritizing the Dumb

Eric Wedge is a bad manager. The manager of the Seattle Mariners, he continues to do things that make no sense, like play Chone Figgins and Miguel Olivo. Fans criticize this because, you know, Figgins and Olivo are horrible major league baseball players. Also many of these fans have some understanding of statistics and evidence. Mariners beatwriter Geoff Baker thinks we mere fans should lay off:

There is no time to be delving through stat pages in your brain when this stuff is happening. Jim Riggleman once told me that he would get a thick, book-sized stats package before every game and that he’d throw out about 95 percent of it. He was kidding about actually throwing it in the garbage, but what he meant was, in terms of preparation, there wasn’t time to go over every itty-bitty stat. No time for coaches to do that and even if there was, his players would have it go in one ear and out the other because human beings typically can’t process that much info in such a short time.

….

And those human managers all know about baseball. More importantly, they know about managing in baseball and the human subtleties that come with the job. The human politics that must be played. The pressures that younger players fall under versus the more experienced ones. How those pressures might impact daily play on an individual and overall lineup basis.

That is more important in discussing a manager and his employment future than whether or not he uses words like “RBI” and “home run” in discussing a hitter. Wedge knows what types of hitters he needs and where. But he simply doesn’t have enough of them. So, if Olivo is his best shot at a .450-slugger who doesn’t rely merely on doubles, then that’s what he knows. And Olivo has been that guy before. Just not last season. And Wedge, trust me, knows he needs to get more out of Olivo’s bat. He needs a daily catcher as well and Olivo is his best bet, but that’s a discussion for another day.

I’ll leave you with this one thought, which occured when I read this comment over the internet yesterday:

“Today is Eric Wedge’s 1316th game as a manager of an MLB team. If you take him at his word, he apparently still believes that it is a worthwhile effort to (1) place a fair amount of importance on Olivo’s veteran status, and (2) reference RBI numbers as a measure of how effective a player is.

He’s had 1316 chances for the light bulb to come on and realize why that’s wrong. If I did my job wrong for 1316 days, I would be wondering why I was still employed. I don’t think it’s a stretch to wonder if Wedge is really cut out for this sort of thing.”

My thought after reading that comment is, is this really the level of arrogance our increased knowledge of stats has brought us to? For me, out of simple humility, the thought process should be: “Wedge has had 1,316 chances for the light bulb to come on and realize he’s wrong. Maybe, the fact that Wedge hasn’t realized he’s wrong is an indication that my thought process might not be as bang-on correct as I think it is. Maybe it’s me who has to re-evaluate. Maybe there is more to the job than I realize and that’s why Wedge has been employed at it for 1,316 games.”

But that’s just me. Something to think about.

No, Wedge has been employed for 1316 games because many people in baseball resist something called intelligence. Not all, of course. And those organizations tend to maximize their resources pretty effectively. Take Tampa Bay. But a lot do. Dumbness is prioritized in the clubhouse and throughout baseball culture. If a baseball player sees a movie in a foreign language or reads a serious book, he’s seen as a freak. God knows what the other members of the As think about Brandon McCarthy, who is not only not dumb, but actually takes stands against the homophobia so deeply ingrained in the game and its traditions. Though if there is any organization that would really appreciate a guy like McCarthy, it’s the As, and not only because he’s a pretty good pitcher during his rare periods of health. As Dave Cameron noted in his preview of the Seattle-Tampa game the other day:

Oh, also, Chone Figgins is playing because he’s 7 for 14 lifetime against Niemann. Joe Maddon is shifting his defense on every play because of the work the Rays front office has done to figure out the spray tendencies of every hitter in the Majors, and Eric Wedge is starting Chone Figgins because of the results of 14 at-bats against a particular pitcher. But, yeah, us stat nerds are the ones that are out of touch with today’s reality…

Indeed.

Rivera

Wow. This might limit him to 25 saves this year…

UPDATE (By Rob): When they came for Joakim Soria, whom I had unwisely spent $23 on the evening of his injury, I said nothing because I had Andrew Bailey. When they came for Andrew Bailey, whom I spent $18 on because I’m stupid, I said nothing because I had just traded Dan Haren for Mariano Rivera. Then they came for Mariano Rivera, and I came to appreciate that I’d spent upwards of 25% of my money on a category that I’ll likely get one point in.

Nevertheless, I’ll acknowledge that the tragedy here goes beyond the failure of my fantasy baseball team. Terrible way to end a great career, if indeed it’s over.

Ty Cobb, Class Act

Great stuff.

Except for the part about Cobb entering the stands to beat a man who had lost his fingers in a printing press.