I’m serious; this guy’s been writing for twenty years and nobody pointed him out to me until today? Like everything he writes is gold. Here’s a piece from yesterday in which he joins in the two-minute hate against A-Rod in the silliest possible fashion.
Giambi Rises as Rodriguez Falls
That’s right, not-making-sense fans: John Pudner is hitching his wagon to the Jason Giambi train. You remember Jason Giambi. He was the most notorious juicer in baseball not called Barry Bonds for years and years. Now, of course, he’s old and broken-down but still clinging to baseball life as a dedicated pinch-hitter, which is cool and all, but "rising?" The man’s OPS+ is 101. He hasn’t had more than 152 PA since 2010. Hasn’t been above replacement level since 2011. "Rising" is: the exact opposite of anything Jason Giambi is doing.
In 2007, Jason Giambi apologized for all of baseball, while Alex Rodriguez was unapologetic while winning his third MVP.
In 2007, Jason Giambi consulted with his lawyers, and they carefully crafted a damage control statement in which he apologised for "stuff" without actually specifying what "stuff" he was apologising for so the Yankees couldn’t void his contract. In 2009, A-Rod went on TV with Peter Gammons and got all weepy and apologised for using steroids, but stressed that that was only before he was on the Yankees so the Yankees couldn’t void his contract. So far, so identical.
Five years later Bud Selig appears set on ensuring Rodriguez never puts on a major league uniform again while Giambi replaced Hank Aaron in the record books Monday.
Just so you know: the record Giambi replaced Hank Aaron for is the completely weird and irrelevant record of "oldest player to hit a walk-off home run." I mean, don’t get me wrong; it’s cool and all, and I love that baseball has all these weirdo cherry-pick records, but you should probably avoid being misled by this guy into believing that Giambi just broke an important record.
Major League Baseball reportedly has more evidence against Rodriguez than they had against Ryan Braun.
I should hope so, since Ryan Braun won his appeal. I know, I know: he’s been suspended now, and hack journos like you have decided that this is proof of anything. And yet, what this actually is is: Braun wins his appeal, then gets harassed non-stop by MLB until he finally agrees to sit out the rest of a lost season in exchange for them getting off his back. It has nothing to do with "evidence" or "guilt" and everything to do with playing politics.
Further, a report Monday indicated that if Rodriguez appeals a ban, Commissioner Bud Selig will play a trump card by banning him from the game.
I am having difficulty forseeing a reality in which this doesn’t lead to massive trouble with the MLBPA. Not that it would surprise me if spitfire Bud — who’s on his way out anyhow — does it.
His name appears set to go down the Barry Bonds, as one of the greatest players of all time who will never be put into the Hall of Fame due to evidence of guilt.
You’d think that, after twenty years as a professional writer, you’d learn to proofread. Or maybe somebody at Breitbart would assign you an editor. Or somebody somewhere would do something to prevent that sentence from seeing print, because: yikes. Look out, A-Rod! Your name is set to go down the Barry Bonds! I’m picturing the Barry Bonds as a completely boss water slide, and there’s a 44.4% chance you get on base once you get to the bottom.
Also: the reason Barry Bonds isn’t in the Hall of Fame is because sportswriters are idiot assholes. By which I mean you, John Pudner, are an idiot asshole.
Meanwhile, with one swing of the bat Monday, Giambi put his name next to Hank Aaron – who most will always accept as the true home run champion after discounting Bonds for cheating.
Actually, most people — including Hank Aaron, dummy — understand that "player who hit the most home runs" is pretty much not a matter to be decided by your feelings. You can go ahead and create a new title called like "player who made me feel really good about myself while also hitting home runs and being nice to reporters like me" if you want, and give it to anybody for all I care. But the "true home run champion?" Bonds. Sorry.
Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but: didn’t Giambi also do steroids? Giambi did steroids, admitted it. Bonds did steroids, admitted it. Bonds can’t break Aaron’s record, because he did steroids. Giambi can break Aaron’s record, even though he did steroids. Your logic has one or two flaws.
Giambi will never approach Aaron’s home run record, or overall status as one of the top few players in the history of the game.
Bold prediction. Giambi’s 42 years old, and only 319 homers behind Aaron! Also only 326 homers behind the real record, which is held by Barry Bonds.
However, it was fitting that a player who admitted his mistakes and apologized for those of so many others would top Aaron for a moment Monday.
If only Bonds had held a press conference in which he said he was sorry for "stuff," then just imagine how legitimate his actual real accomplishments would be in the eyes of idiots!
Of course, he’d still be a guy who was a huge penis to the media. Which is what this sad little grudge is really about.
Giambi’s walk-off home run let him replace Aaron on one small mark – as the oldest player to ever hit a walk-off home run. Giambi came into the game hitting only .187, but his blast was his 7th homer in just 124 at bats this season – one of the top few ratios in the league.
Sample size. Sample size, sample size, sample size. Also: 124 at-bats is not a qualifying number. Because of sample size.
Chris Davis: 38 HR in 384 AB. Is that a topper ratio? I have no idea, so I rammed some alpha wolves, and they made no sense at all, but I’m pretty sure that chart says Chris Davis is better.
He has found a way to contribute and provide leadership and example to a surprisingly strong, but young, Cleveland Indians team. Most important, he is winding down his career as a player who is admired by those to follow despite playing in an era that will not be fondly remembered in baseball history.
And that’s what I did on my summer vacation, by John, age 8.
You know what’s awesome? John is such a screwloose that he spent more time bitching about Barry Bonds than he did about A-Rod in his explicitly-titled A-Rod smear article. Hey John, next time you set out to assassinate somebody’s character, you might try mentioning him once or twice.
July 31st, 2013
Posted by
Darien |
Baseball |
4 comments
Ah, the All-Star Break. The three worst days of the year. The only good thing about it is reading people’s crazy half-season awards, which usually amount to "who has the most SportsCenter highlights this week?" Here’s Jeff Passan to get the crazy rolling:
AL MVP of the Half: Miguel Cabrera, 3B, Detroit Tigers
The correct choice. Any bets that it’s for all the wrong reasons?
Chris Davis is having an all-time first half. He may well hit 60 home runs. The last person not on steroids to finish the season with a slugging percentage over .700 was Larry Walker in 1999, and Davis’ is .712. It is not easy to put into words how good Davis has been.
Good. Good arguments in favour of Miguel Cabrera. Look at all those team-killing home runs! Some of them were probably three-run homers, which anybody who’s ever seen, read, or heard a piece of sports journalism knows is the worst possible outcome for a hitter. Also: nice baseless assumption that 1999 Larry Walker was not on steroids. Also 2013 Chris Davis, for that matter. I guess it’s awesome for the rest of us that you’ve spoken with God on this subject and have The Truth.
Which is why this is so shocking to say: Cabrera has been better. He more than makes up for whatever slugging deficiency he has with an on-base percentage of .457 to Davis’ .395.
Well… here’s the thing. As of today (Jeff wrote this a few days ago; I’ve just been lazy) Miggy’s OBP is .456 and his SLG is .676. Those are awesome. Awesome numbers. Crash Gordon’s? .389 and .690. So, uh, yeah; Miguel Cabrera’s extra 70 points of OBP do in fact overpower Davis’ 14-point SLG lead. This is why we have analysts: to tell us these unpopular truths.
He plays a far more difficult position – and even if he’s not very good at third, there’s more value in playing there than first base.
Whoa, whoa, whoa there, hoss. This is not true. A good defensive first baseman is vastly more valuable than a butcher at third. You don’t think this might be the case? Otherwise, why not just stack all of our fielders at short and let the other positions lay empty? Just think how much more value we’d get from having all those shortstops!
No, the real reason Miggy’s shit 3B play is more valuable is because Davis is a horrible butcher at 1B, too! He’s showing -7 DRS, which is awful. Granted, Miggy’s at -12, but the positional adjustment just cancels that out, leaving Davis at -1.2 DWAR and Miggy at -1.0. So, actually, it turns out that your 1B has to be as awful as Chris Davis before he’s worth less defensively than Miggy at third!
NL MVP of the Half: Carlos Gonzalez, LF, Colorado Rockies – Were one to rely on Wins Above Replacement, the choice is Carlos Gomez, the dynamic center fielder from Milwaukee. Problem is, WAR weighs so heavily on defensive metrics that aren’t altogether reliable.
So, what, then? We just let sportswriters decide for us based on what their entrails tell them? I mean, don’t we have more than one metric we can consult? Seems to me that if Carlos Gomez looks great according to multiple metrics — just to take a random example, if he’s at 24 DRS, 11 TZ, and 14 UZR — it’s probably safe to conclude that he’s pretty good in the field. What’s so scary about that?
Also: weren’t you just — in your very last entry — comparing the value of Miguel Cabrera’s defense to Chris Davis’? So if you weren’t using defensive metrics, what, you consulted with your shaman and he asked Great Spirit?
Scouts, on the other hand, love Yadier Molina. Love. Him. They love how he handles a pitching staff, how he has made himself into an elite hitter, how he barely strikes out. There is indeed a lot to like about him, too.
Fucking everybody loves Yadier Molina, Jeff. This is no longer 2006, where scouts kept gushing about his "potential" while he busied himself hitting .216 / .274 / .321. Yadier Molina, 2013: .343 / .388 / .485. That is awesome hitting for a catcher. I don’t give two shits about his strikeouts — he’s still striking out half again as often as he walks, which is bad — but he’s a good hitter who catches 45% of baserunners this year, and by all accounts (and framing science is super young) is a terrific pitch framer. So, yeah: Yadier is awesome, and we don’t need crusty old scouts spinning us anecdotes about the fire in his eye to know that.
Each is a worthwhile candidate, which is why the support here thrown behind Gonzalez isn’t as much half-hearted as it is fleeting. His first half for the Rockies has been spectacular. He leads the NL in slugging percentage by 36 points, and his 24 home runs top the league as well.
So that was, what, three paragraphs of disclaimers (one of which I didn’t quote because it was boring) before your utterly conventional pick? There are no guarantees! I could be wrong! Things could change! Don’t listen to this! Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!
He plays a reasonably good left field and is a superb baserunner, with 15 steals in 16 attempts.
So. Fielding metrics should not be used to evaluate Carlos Gomez and only Carlos Gomez. They are suspect when it comes to Carlos Gomez, but rock-solid for every other player. Got it.
All of this could change this week, of course.
Confident predicting, Jeff.
AL Cy Young of the Half: Max Scherzer, SP, Detroit Tigers – The perfect candidate: He appeals to traditional fans with his 13-0 record and statheads with an absurd strikeout rate.
Is it only statheads who care about strikeouts? I thought that was a fairly mainstream pitching statistic, personally. But what do I know? My entire head is a stat, so I can take my statty head and my made-up "strikeouts" and "walks" and "home runs" and fuck entirely off.
He could induce more groundballs, and he could give up fewer home runs, and there are others – Chris Sale, Felix Hernandez, Yu Darvish – who could thieve the award were the luster of that zero to turn into a one before the break.
Backpedal, backpedal, don’t commit
For now, it’s Scherzer’s alone, and on a staff with a Cy Young-winning MVP and an $80 million man, that’s even more impressive.
Verlander didn’t win the Cy Young or the MVP this year, man. Greg Maddux won four Cy Youngs, and he’s currently working for the Rangers; so, hey, Yu Darvish can fuck right off, yeah? Come back when you’ve won four Cy Youngs and maybe we’ll consider you, Darvish. You shit.
Also: who cares how much Anibal Sanchez gets paid? Or is this the real reason you picked Carlos Gonzalez as your NL MVP: because Todd Helton makes a lot of money?
NL Cy Young of the Half: Matt Harvey, SP, New York Mets – No disrespect intended to Clayton Kershaw (who’s got a better ERA than Harvey), Adam Wainwright (who’s got a better strikeout-to-walk ratio), Cliff Lee (who’s got more victories) and all of them (who have got more innings). Harvey simply has been better.
NL Pitching WAR leaderboard:
Kershaw, LAD (5.3)
Wainwright, STL (4.9)
Lee, PHI (4.4)
Harvey, NYM (4.3)
Huh. Maybe he meant, like, ERA?
Kershaw, LAD (1.89)
Locke, PIT (2.15)
Wainwright, STL (2.30)
Harvey, NYM (2.35)
Oh. Wait, park factor! Dodger Stadium is a huge pitchers’ park. Harvey must be dynamite in ERA+.
Kershaw, LAD (194)
Locke, PIT (169)
Corbin, ARI (162)
Wainwright, STL (160)
Strasburg, WAS (155)
Harvey, NYM (154)
For fuck’s sake. To save us a little time: the only thing Harvey’s leading the league in is strikeouts. So I guess Jeff is just too much of a stathead for me!
More dominant with a 10.3-strikeouts-per-nine rate that leads the NL. Stingy with home runs, his rate fifth lowest in the NL. He is Justin Verlander: a complete monster.
He is about 3/5 as good as Clayton Kershaw. Much like 2013 Justin Verlander!
NL Rookie of the Half:
(get this)
Shelby Miller, SP, St. Louis Cardinals
Hahahahahahaha what?
Much like last year, when Wade Miley won the award with full knowledge he’d cede the actual one to Bryce Harper, Miller is but a placeholder for Puig.
Seriously, what is wrong with this man’s brain? If Miller is just a "placeholder for Puig," then give the damn award to Puig. Is that a challenge to comprehend? It’s not like Puig is still in AAA — he’s been in the majors long enough to accumulate more WAR than Miller, in fact. Especially since you gave your AL Rookie of the Half to Jose Iglesias (in an entry so dull I didn’t make fun of it) who has exactly as much time in the bigs this year as Puig.
AL Manager of the Half: Joe Girardi, New York Yankees
Fuck the heck? Now I get that the manager of the year (or half, or whatever) is a stupid award. But how could you conceivably not give this award to John Farrell? The Red Sox were supposed to finish, like, fifth. They were supposed to be in a massive rebuild. And here they are, leading the division wire-to-wire. Maybe that should be worth more than Joe Girardi’s amazing achievement of "managing in New York."
Seriously, have you seen some of the lineups the New York Yankees have used lately? This is one from 10 days ago: Gardner-Nix-Cano-Wells-Ichiro-Almonte-Stewart-Adams-Gonzalez. Where do you even begin with that? Jayson Nix hitting second? Vernon Wells in the cleanup spot? And at DH? David Adams, career utilityman, playing first base? And Alberto Gonzalez? Who is Alberto Gonzalez?
I agree: those lineups have been awful. Horrible. Horribawful. But remember for me, Jeff, who is it who made those lineups. Why, none other than all-time best manager of the forever, Joe Girardi! It was Joe Girardi who constructed those idiotic lineups. Perhaps you should not mention them in your weirdo Joe Girardi hagiography.
With this team, this lineup, Joe Girardi has the Yankees eight games over .500 and a half-game out of the final wild-card spot. This fauxward was made for managing jobs like that.
Your 2013 New York Yankees:
3.77 team ERA (4th in the AL)
1.255 team WHIP (4th in the AL)
3.12 team K/BB (2nd in the AL)
357 runs allowed (2nd in the AL)
.242 team BA (13th in the AL)
.304 team OBP (13th in the AL)
.378 (!) team SLG (14th in the AL)
87 team OPS+ (13th in the AL)
358 runs scored (11th in the AL)
Probably you could have mentioned pitching somewhere in your screed about how great the Yankees are, Jeff. Also, before you refer to this as a "fauxward," you might consider how much that looks like "fuckwad." Or maybe don’t, because it’s really funny that you went to print with that.
NL Manager of the Half: Clint Hurdle, Pittsburgh Pirates – Enjoy the midseason award. The full-season one won’t be his. Why? Well …
Ooh! Ooh! I know! It’s because Pittsburgh is a tiny city that sportswriters don’t pay any attention to, and they’ll hand this award to Mike Matheny because oh wow the Cardinals are so dreamy did you see Yadier’s eyes I think he’s just the bestest.
The Pirates’ pitching is significantly outperforming its peripherals. It’s got the highest strand rate and the lowest batting average on balls in play. And even if the Pirates’ defensive shifts can account for some of that, their groundball rate is by far the highest in the game, and groundball rate and BABIP are supposed to be inverse. The plain fact: This is not sustainable. Not even close.
Okay, but isn’t that an exact description of the 2012 Baltimore Orioles’ pitching? And didn’t they make the playoffs?
The Pirates’ hitting isn’t very good. Their .310 on-base percentage is in the bottom 10 in baseball. Their slugging percentage is just outside of the bottom 10. Only the Astros and Braves strike out more. They steal a lot of bases, but they also get caught more than a quarter of the time. There are holes, and they’re rather significant.
And we all know the old saying: pitching wins headlines, but hitting wins championships. Isn’t that how it goes?
In all seriousness: why is it that, when the Yankees suck at hitting but are really good at pitching, it’s an amazing management job by Joe Girardi and the Yankees are just the bestest, but when the Pirates do the same thing, they’re a fading mirage? For fuck’s sake, the Pirates are hitting better than the Yankees! Why won’t you give Clint Hurdle the award you jizzed all over Girardi?
The Pirates’ fielding has been excellent. That includes notoriously stone-handed Pedro Alvarez. Dubiousness is warranted.
How would you know? Oh, right — Carlos Gomez plays for the Brewers. It’s safe to evaluate the Pirates’ defense.
Fight of the Half: Dodgers vs. the World – First it was the Padres. Then the Diamondbacks. They’ve got to brawl with the Giants at some point on sheer principle. And if ever they need a reason to rumble with the Rockies, we’ve got three words: Troy Tulowitzki’s mullet.
This part’s boring. I only quoted it so I can let everybody know that mullet jokes are officially way past their expiration date. If you ever find yourself writing a joke, and the only punchline you can come up with is "mullet," you should stop writing that joke.
Defensive Play of the Half: Peter Bourjos, CF, Los Angeles Angels – Before everyone goes crowning Manny Machado’s insane throw Sunday the play of the first half, please remember: It would’ve been merely a great play if he had fielded the ball cleanly in the first place.
Sure. And Bourjos’ play would have been entirely rudimentary if he were thirty feet tall. But since neither of those things happened, maybe we should evaluate the plays based on what actually did happen. Is that novel? Did I blow your mind?
Anyway, Manny Machado did this:
which is impossible. Peter Bourjos did this:
which is really cool, but we see it like eight times a year. Bourjos’ version wasn’t even particularly interesting.
There are no such do-overs on home run-robbing catches. We tend to romanticize them in the annals of great defensive plays, and with good reason: They are the diamonds, the platinum and the gold. They are almost always the domain of the fielding freaks, whereas even the biggest infield butcher can stumble his way into a diving stop and throw a guy out.
You hear that, Manny Machado? Absolutely literally anybody could have barehanded that ball and thrown an absolute laser all the way across the infield, exactly on target, without looking. Booooo-ring.
And while Bourjos’ won’t go down in the all-time annals, it had all the elements of what makes a great fielding play.
It sure won’t, huh. Which is too bad for him, since the Angels — his team — have a habit of monstrously overpaying for center fielders who make that exact play, like, once.
He ran an absurdly long way, nearly 20 steps to the fence.
So it’s okay to penalise Machado for missing his first stab at the ball, but Bourjos gets a pass for playing way way too shallow?
He single-handedly disproved the title of a wonderful ’90s movie.
Go back to mullet jokes, Jeff. This one is worse.
He banged into the fence before the ball arrived, which meant his equilibrium was shaken and his outstretched left arm simply along for the ride.
I’ve watched the video a few times looking for evidence of this, and guess what? It’s not there. He is, in fact, so entirely non-destroyed by that fence that, as soon as he lands, he throws the ball back in.
And he caught the thing. Brought it right back over the fence, almost a year to the day his teammate Mike Trout had done so against the very same batter, Orioles shortstop J.J. Hardy.
I’ll grant that that’s fun. In fact, it’s probably what you should have opened with, since the synchronicity is the only thing that makes this catch particularly interesting. Without that, it’s Machado all the way, goofball.
Bourjos’ catch barely beats Aaron Hicks’ pair of outfield robberies, the latter of which included a tip of the cap from the hitter, Carlos Gomez, who himself is one of the game’s best center fielders.
No way. His fielding is suspect. I’ve heard there’s a conspiracy of evil number-creating computers to rob Carlos Gonzalez of imaginary awards by tricking people into thinking Gomez is good. As soon as I find it, I’ll link you the article.
Other runners-up: Victor Martinez with a crazy no-look flip, Adrian Gonzalez playing extra smooth on a play at home and Yasiel Puig going all Vlad Guerrero/Dave Parker/Bo Jackson from right field.
"Going all X" is a really lousy construction for your joke. But you know what’s worse? "Going all X or maybe Y or possibly Z." There’s a reason you don’t see many jokes with like choose-your-own-adventure punchlines, Jeff.
Pitching Performance of the Half: Homer Bailey, SP, Cincinnati Reds – As difficult as it was to look past Shelby Miller’s one-hit, 13-strikeout, 27-straight-outs gem, Bailey wins because he actually threw a no-hitter.
No, Miller wins because he pitched better. As, perversely, you’re about to illustrate.
Their games were equally rare. There have been eight other one-hitters with no walks and at least 13 strikeouts and nine other no-hitters with one walk and at least nine strikeouts – including Bailey’s first.
I’m just not sure that’s what "equally" means. Eight times, nine times, fuck — that’s the same number of times! I can’t actually tell, and the internet was no help at all.
Miller did beat Bailey on Game Score, but the knowledge around the fifth inning or so that Bailey was pitching a perfect game and after the seventh that he still held a no-hitter exacerbated the physical strain of every pitch with mental anxiety.
So, to recap: if Manny Machado makes a play more difficult by not catching a ball cleanly, it’s not considered a good play when he gets the out anyhow. If Homer Bailey makes a whole game more difficult by getting super super stressed out about it — all of which is conjecture, by the way — then it’s considered a better game than it actually was. Makes sense to me!
Here’s another one: if Jeff Passan writes the phrase "exacerbated the physical strain of every pitch with mental anxiety," he still gets paid. Amazing!
The Victor Conte Award: Tony Bosch, Biogenesis founder – Want the greatest proof performance-enhancing drugs aren’t going anywhere? Players worth upward of a billion dollars thought it was OK to use a fake doctor who operated out of a strip mall and kept notes on a criminal conspiracy. Players could walk into any college chemistry lab, find the most brilliant student and offer him a million dollars a year to play Walter White with PEDs, but nooooooo. They’d rather lose their reputations and, in some cases, careers on account of this guy. Shameful in a dozen different ways.
Anybody have any clue what Jeff’s on about here? It sounds like he’s outraged about two different things, and he’s getting them mixed up. He ends up sounding like he’s mostly just outraged that players weren’t cheating the optimal way; like, hey, back in my day those guys played the game the wrong way the right way! By gum.
Good Lord You Strike Out A Lot Award: Chris Carter, DH, Houston Astros – Carter pinch hit Sunday and struck out. One could get nearly 2-to-1 odds that a Carter at-bat would end that way. He has struck out 120 times in 281 at-bats this year. In overall plate appearances, he is at a staggering 36.8 percent, almost 1.5 percent higher than Mark Reynolds in his legendary 223-strikeout season of 2010. It’s not like Carter is a dud; he averages a home run every 9.5 at-bats he doesn’t strike out, and his .784 OPS is second among Astros regulars. He’s just a microcosm of baseball today, where you can strike out an absurd amount of the time and be an All-Star. (Hello, Pedro Alvarez and a 33.9 percent K rate.)
I guess Jeff Passan has only just heard: strikeouts are just another type of out. Chris Carter has struck out a lot, yes, but his OBP is an Andre Dawson-esque .327, which isn’t good, but isn’t unspeakably bad. And he hits the ball pretty hard.
Now, Carter isn’t the best example here, because he’s actually kind of lousy. But the fact is that striking out isn’t materially worse than getting out any other way, and it really really doesn’t matter how you’re making your outs as long as you aren’t making too many of them. Strikeout rate also correlates pretty well with power, which is why players are striking out more. Turns out that striking out more but hitting moon shots is better for your team than striking out less but grounding weakly to short. Who would have guessed?
The Yasiel Puig Award For Complete Awesomeness: Yasiel Puig, OF, Los Angeles Dodgers
Completely awesome? Maybe. But definitely not awesome enough to be rookie of the half!
He can do this and look like a model while someone more than 600 home runs ahead of him takes on the creepy air of a mortician.
I kept the links in because they’re funny. Also: way to pick on Sammy for being old, Jeff. Oh, you hit 609 home runs? Good job, grandpa. And I can’t be the only one who expected that second link to be to this.
He can get thrown out trying to stretch a single into a double time after time, and it’s cool because he is cool.
It is decidedly uncool. Puig is way past aggressive on the bases, and all the way to careless and stupid.
Puig is going to make the All-Star Game despite fewer plate appearances than Omar Infante in 2010
He did not. There’s still a chance he’ll get picked by the manager to fill in for an injured player, but other than that: no. And thanks for reminding me that Omar Infante made the All-Star team in 2010, which was: batshit insane. At least Puig is actually good!
July 11th, 2013
Posted by
Darien |
Baseball |
no comments
If there’s one thing you should have learned from reading this blog, it’s that a morally outraged sportswriter is the stupidest creature alive. I think this guy might have a shot at the title even when he’s sober. He’s written a column about steroids that he begins with the lines
The Agony Of Filling Out A Hall Of Fame Ballot
While leaving an empty box next to Jeff Bagwell’s name …
Yeah, it’s going to be one of those articles. Hold on to your hat. Oh, and you better read this quick; I’m going to quote whole huge swaths of it in utter defiance of SOPA, so the government may lock me and my website up in an overseas torture chamber per the provision in the other law they passed today but which fair-weather leftie "civil libertarians" don’t seem to care much about.
Lots of folks have a bucket list, or at least that’s the term they assign to it after the 2007 movie with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. And while it is probably best to keep most of the Before-I-Croak inventory private, I will share one checked off mine:
Cast a vote for the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Really, BBWAA, why do you give people like this Hall of Fame votes? If they write shit like that, you just know they’re going cast stupid ballots.
The first hint reality wouldn’t be nearly as romantic as the dream arrived in the form of Michael Felger, Boston television and radio provocateur, in the Patriots locker room in 2008.
I can parse that, but it took me like four tries. And it totally wasn’t worth it. Also, I’m guessing you mean "raconteur," since that word you used… isn’t complimentary.
He pointed out I was the only new voter from the Boston chapter of the BBWAA that year and the Jim Rice ballot could come down to one vote either way. He offered two words of advice, "Be ready."
Better advice would have been "be quiet."
The two words scared me so much sabermetric decimal points started running down my leg.
Congratulations — you have written the very worst hacky stat-nerd joke of all time. Not only is it weirdly scatological, but it doesn’t even make sense; what makes a decimal point "sabermetric?" The decimal point in WPA is somehow materially different from the ones in like batting average and ERA?
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go to the restroom and take a giant Jeff Jacobs column.
Rice got in by seven, with 412 votes among 539 ballots. Phew, dodged one bullet … only to be dragged into bottomless mire of performance-enhancing drugs. And, man, I have come to hate it.
It’s only bottomless for stupid people. Here’s a simple test: do the following people belong in the Hall of Fame?
• Ty Cobb
• Gaylord Perry
• Joe Morgan
• Willie Mays
• Rickey Henderson
If you said yes to any of them, then you have the answer: you do not care about allegations of cheating. All of those men were accused (some proven) of breaking the rules of baseball to get an advantage. To say nothing of the fact that the official rules of baseball contain the line "the pitcher shall not Intentionally Pitch at the Batter," which seriously disqualifies every pitcher ever, especially Bob Gibson.
On the other hand, if you said no, they’re all possible rule-breakers and they should all be out, then you’re completely mad. Easy!
Few things open you up more quickly to Internet ridicule than releasing your Hall of Fame ballot.
Among those things: supplementing it with lots of pointless, defensive hand-wringing.
You’ve got your, "Hey, moron, it’s not the Hall of Very Good. If you need to ask if a guy is a Hall of Famer, he’s not."
That’s Colin Cowherd you’re quoting there. He’s an idiot. Who cares what he thinks?
You’ve got your, "The guy hasn’t had one at-bat in five years, you’re a hypocrite for changing your mind." Guilty on that count, I’m voting for Barry Larkin this year after not voting for him the previous two.
Those people are the worst of all people. Like Colin Cowherd. And good on you for being at least slightly vulnerable to reason!
There’s the, "You’re an imbecile for voting for a compiler [Bert Blyleven]."
Okay, are any of these people not Colin Cowherd? Because I really think you’re just quoting something he said on his show yesterday. Look out! The SOPA will get you!
There’s the, “You’re an imbecile for voting for a guy who only came up big in big games [Jack Morris].” Guilty on both counts.
Oh, that one’s not Cowherd. Jack Morris is his favourite. Which is really, really funny, since Jack Morris kind of stank.
Yet it wasn’t until Joe Posnanski of Sports Illustrated wrote something last December that I began to wonder if voting for the Hall of Fame is worth the hassle. There are places on the Internet where you are called a man playing God if you don’t vote immediately for Jeff Bagwell. You are called Joe McCarthy. Posnanski didn’t use either term, but he came close.
Yeah, because Bagwell was great. All-time great. I wouldn’t call you a man playing God, though; I’d stick with "moron."
Bagwell never tested positive for steroids. He was not named in the Mitchell Report. Yet because Bagwell has become, in some voters’ minds, a player who used PEDs, Posnanski wrote, "I can’t even begin to describe my disgust … it makes me absolutely sick to my stomach.
"I hate the character clause in the Hall of Fame voting. I think it encourages people to believe their own nonsense, to stand up on high and be judge and jury …I’d rather a hundred steroid users were mistakenly voted into the Hall of Fame over keeping one non-user out."
Posnanski is often correct. This is one of those times.
Joe Posnanski is the best sports writer in 2011 America, but it doesn’t mean he’s 100 percent correct on this issue.
As in it’s not a causal relationship, sure. But… he is 100 percent correct on this issue. I get the feeling you’re about to say something really stupid.
Based on numbers alone, Bagwell deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. That part is easy. He hit .297 with 449 homers, eight 100-RBI seasons and had a .948 OPS as well as a Gold Glove and an MVP Award.
His grown-up numbers were good, too, by the way.
Yet because of the sins of his baseball generation, fair or not, Bagwell finds himself in an uncomfortable position.
Yeah. Which is: left out of the Hall because of idiots like you.
Yet we also have heard tens of players like Bagwell deny steroid use over the years only for it to turn out otherwise.
So add this to the list of reasons to bar people from the Hall of Fame: he says he didn’t cheat at baseball. This is a Life of Brian thing, isn’t it.
We have seen tens of players like Bagwell blow up from a skinny 20 to a cartoon 35.
I… what? That is fifteen years, you ignoramus. You don’t need to be on the juice to put on a bunch of muscle over fifteen years!
We have seen tens of players like Bagwell break down physically in their late 30s.
Players like Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Rafael Palmeiro, right? That’s what they were notorious for doing? Breaking down in their late 30s?
Come on, stupid. The notorious juicers had unnatural longevity. And now you’re using a late-30s breakdown — which we’ve seen not tens but thousands of players go through — as evidence that he was juicing?
Oh shit, you guys! Nap Lajoie was on the juice!
I will never vote for Rafael Palmeiro or Mark McGwire, not in 15 lifetimes, but I also don’t want to be part of any witch hunt.
I will never eat meat, not in 15 lifetimes, but I also don’t want to be a vegetarian.
I only want to play the percentages. I want Bagwell’s insistence he was clean to be true. I don’t want his induction to backfire in an ugly way.
So, wait. Your Hall of Fame standard is that you will never vote for anybody unless he can absolutely prove that he never cheated at baseball? No permissible ambiguity? And the reason for this is: you’re afraid of being wrong.
Great. Great people you’re letting in, BBWAA.
My view certainly is not foolproof, but it’s one I’m comfortable with given the uncomfortable parameters. Forget 100 juicers. I don’t knowingly want to vote for one.
Your view is bullshit. If I had a Firing Squad vote, I’d vote for you.
I have wanted to wait a few years to see if anything surfaced. To watch ESPN, Yahoo!, New York Daily News, the Texas media — someone with the resources and vigor — put Bagwell in its headlights and see if he emerges clean.
BBWAA: Mr. Jacobs, we’re thinking about giving you a Hall of Fame vote. But we’re concerned; will you ever make a decision for yourself?
Jacobs: I’ll have to check with my lawyer and get back to you.
BBWAA: You’re hired.
I have no intentions of making him wait forever. I will wait another year or two. If the worst thing I do is to make him enter the Hall of Fame with his teammate Craig Biggio, well, that’s damning Bagwell with a great blessing.
Yeah, the "great blessing" of spending another two years wondering why being one of the best first basemen of all time isn’t sufficient for getting into the Hall. Blessing of Caprice! Paladins get that at 40, I think, but only if they spec Dipshit.
I believe in using the 15-year voting period. The years give perspective. They help us look at circumstances differently. There’s strength in the process, not weakness.
You’re not gaining perspective, dummy. You’re waiting for a bunch of other people to change their minds so you don’t look like a dangerous maniac who disagrees with popular wisdom.
As much as it infuriates me, I have to agree with BBWAA secretary-treasurer Jack O’Connell’s assessment that the National League MVP vote on Ryan Braun stands even if his positive test holds up. Ken Caminiti and A-Rod kept their MVP trophies after it became known they did steroids in 1996 and 2003. And, yes, the 2011 voters voted on the information they had at the time with Braun. But that’s not why Braun should keep his MVP.
No, the reason Braun should keep his MVP is because the rules don’t contain any provision for revoking it. Like how president Obama gets to keep the Nobel Peace Prize even though he’s started three wars.
It is because the test he flunked was taken during the postseason. The MVP is a regular season award and unless it was scientifically proved he was using during the 162 games — even though the award announcement wasn’t made until November — I’d argue Braun should keep the 2011 award on a technicality.
What the fuck is wrong with you? With your brain, I mean. I thought the idea was to wait until there was absolute positive scientific proof that people didn’t take steroids. You said so yourself! I mean, for fuck’s sake.
There’s no evidence that Jeff Bagwell took steroids in the post-career either. The Hall of Fame is a regular-career honour. So oh my god you are making my brain evaporate did you even read what you fucking wrote?
Now make new precedent. Immediately. In this case, the BBWAA should make a rule that if a player tests positive for PEDs at any time during the calendar year he wins an award, he loses that award. Set the rules in advance and live with them.
What the fucking fuck is the point of that? Don’t hamstring everybody else because of your peccadilloes, asshole. What if I think 2004 Barry Bonds was so obscenely good that he deserves the MVP, steroids or no? Because I do. I’m now not allowed to vote for him, because it would offend your crazy head?
PEDs have made for a complicated, agonizing world for BBWAA voters.
Especially the stupid, spineless ones.
And until someone steps forward with a firm set of Hall of Fame guidelines, it’s not going to get any less agonizing. Brace yourself. Next year’s incoming Hall of Fame class with Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa will bring arguments and name-calling like we’ve never seen.
Can’t wait. Any luck you’ll be dead by then and we’ll have smart people casting ballots instead.
In the meantime, peek over my shoulder at my 2012 ballot: Barry Larkin and Jack Morris. That’s it. I only hope this doesn’t make Joe Posnanski barf or for someone to call me Joe McCarthy.
Jack Morris was not very good, and there’s no excuse for voting for Barry Larkin and not Alan Trammell. Oh, and you left off Jeff Bagwell. Other than that, you did a great job oh my god I just realised that nobody can fucking prove that Barry Larkin and Jack Morris were not juicing. Larkin retired in 2004. Morris in 1994. These are not ancient players! Either one of them could have been on the juice, stupid. You have just randomly declared them not juicers with no better evidence than we have for Bagwell. You sir are unbelievably stupid.
Hey, Grant Brisbee’s written a better version of your article. Maybe you should just retract this mess.
December 15th, 2011
Posted by
Darien |
Baseball |
no comments
So I guess you’ve heard — reigning National League MVP Ryan Braun? He juicin’. So I’m sure you’ve all been wondering what I have to say on the subject, as the world’s leading authority on telling people to shut the dick up about drug use.
Well, the first thing I have to say is: shut the dick up about drug use. The irrational terror about PEDs isn’t getting any more less irrational just because now it’s aimed at skinny Jewish kids instead of surly black man-mountains with heads the size of watermelons. You’ve all heard it (from me) before, but, seriously: get over it. Yes, steroid use is bad for baseball. No, it is not materially worse than corking your bat or throwing the spitter, neither of which gets you a mandatory 50-day suspension for a first offense, neither of which will get you barred from the Hall of Fame just on suspicion, and neither of which causes dummies to call for your retroactive erasure from all records. The only reason people think it is is because assholes like the World Anti-Doping Agency make shitloads of money telling us over and over again that steroids are the End Times injected directly into your asscheeks.
The second thing I have to say about the subject is: Ryan Braun failed one test. One. Oh, but, wait! "Experts" say that a false positive is really unlikely, so I guess we should all shit ourselves in our attempts to be the first one to believe it. Lord knows the PED sophists can’t possibly be wrong!
Comedying matters further, Ryan Braun insisted on being retested after his positive — and the second test came back clean. But disregard that, we’re told, because it’s not conclusive proof of his innocence. Is that the way it works? We hang people on suspicion so the WADA gets paid? Seriously, I’m no Brewers fan (lord knows), and I’m enjoying the schadenfreude of watching the Cardinals and the Brewers both twist in the wind this offseason, but I’d take the Brewers over the goddamn drug politicians any day of the week. So I’m officially on Braun’s side of this one. But here’s Jeff Passan, who is mostly reasonable on the issue, but seems utterly scandalised by the thought of people not trusting the system:
Braun took the standard defense, releasing a statement through his agent before telling USA Today: “It’s BS.†And as much as I want to believe him – that Braun, who came up through the minor leagues when steroid testing was mandatory, who eschewed the possibility of free agency to sign with Milwaukee through 2020, who, according to ESPN’s story, volunteered to give a second test that came back negative – I know better by now.
Almost all of them say they’re innocent.
Not one positive test has been overturned.
So, if you’re following along at home, here’s the score: Braun has been tested regularly for all sorts of bogeyman substances since his minor league days. He never failed a test before. He has been tested since, and passed that one too. But the one positive is the one we should believe. Why? Because the System works, bitches!
Oh, by the way? We know the System is 100% flawless because no appeals have ever been upheld. Which doesn’t suffer from selection bias or sample size issues at all.
Oh, and never mind who judges the appeals. Not important.
Were a positive test, for example, grounds to allow a team to void a player’s contract, the only testosterone in Braun’s body would’ve been his own.
Uh, Jeff? It is. Remejmber Jason Giambi’s werd, cryptic apology for nothing in particular? Why do you think it was that he didn’t say what he was apologising for? Did he just forget, you think? No, Jeff: it’s because if he admitted to steroid use, the Yankees could have voided his contract. Similarly, if Braun is shown to have used steroids, the Brewers can void his contract. Now, the trick is this: the union will fight it. And if the team has an actual confession by the player, the union will probably lose. But if all the team has is one failed test — especially one bracketed by passed tests — then the union will probably win, because one test can be wrong.
Instead, we’re back to where we always are: Debating about how baseball can conquer this when the truth is it can’t. PEDs are going to be around forever.
Yes. Just like doctored game equipment. Which you didn’t seem to give a shit about when you covered Kenny Rogers cheating in the 2006 World Series. Or did it not matter because the Cardinals didn’t officially complain (aside: ever wonder why that was? Give you two guesses), and that’s The System?
The players’ union’s agreement to allow blood testing for HGH shows it’s malleable and concerned for the game’s well-being enough to entertain stricter penalties.
Yeah, okay. Or it shows that they got offered enough kickbacks to sign on the dotted line.
While voiding contracts seems harsh and rife for abuse from owners, baseball is entering its 10th season of steroid testing without one false positive.
Without admitting to one false positive, Jeff. That ain’t quite the same thing. Or is it also true that the United States has completed ten seasons of war with Afghanistan without torturing one single person?
If Ryan Braun becomes the first – if he clears his name – the mea culpas will fly fast and furious and he’ll emerge with his reputation intact, maybe even strengthened.
To Jeff’s credit, he’s quite likely to be one of the culpa-ing meas. Man is not shy about admitting when he fucks up. But really, maybe a bit less knee-jerk outrage would leave him with fewer occasions on which he needs to, don’t you think?
Now get this:
The NL MVP allegedly used PEDs, and we know this only because he got caught. Matt Kemp and Prince Fielder and Justin Upton and Albert Pujols and everyone else who finished behind him might’ve, too. Unless we know for certain they didn’t – and nobody ever will – the MVP needs to stay in Ryan Braun’s hands.
No matter how much blood is on them.
Fuck the heck, Jeff Passan? Ryan Braun did not murder some guy. You really need to relax.
December 11th, 2011
Posted by
Darien |
Baseball |
no comments
I’ve been away for a long time. I know it. I’ve done you wrong; running around with all those other web sites. I won’t deny it; I even toyed with the idea of doing things not on the internet at all. But it was just a phase. I know I was wrong, and, to make it up to you, I’ve brought you a gift. It’s by Jason Whitlock, and it is the very very worst piece of sportswriting I have ever read in my life. The title is
Stat geeks are ruining sports
and you know I wouldn’t make something like this up. It’s like you’ve been chasing after that goddamn leprechaun for forty years and suddenly you catch him and you get your three wishes and pot of marshmallows or whatever, only you wish for nothing but numbers and comedy.
I won’t be going to see "Moneyball." The movie celebrates the plague ruining sports: sabermetrics.
Yeah, seems kind of shitty to make an entire movie that’s just one big gooey handjob to steroids. You’d think there’d be a period of decency, you know? The Bonds and Clemens trials are just entering round two, we still have 100% deserving Hall of Fame candidates who are getting blackballed because of steroid use or even suspicion of steroid use, and you’re going to roll out this movie talking about how great steroids–
What? Not steroids? You’re kidding — he said sabermetrics? Holy shit, you’re right. Jason Whitlock, you marvellous meatwit. The biggest problem facing sports today is some guys thinking about them?
That is not intended as a shot at Bill James, Billy Beane or Michael Lewis.
You sure, Jason? I think when you declare a man’s entire career "the plague ruining sports," that could in some circles be construed as a "shot" against him.
Wait. Hell, maybe it is a dis — an unintended one — of James, Beane and Lewis.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Jason, here’s you:
And here is Bill James:
Sack up, Jason. You can take him. He’s sixty years old and has a head smaller than a baseball. You could probably eat him in one gulp.
They unwittingly conspired to remove much of the magic and mystery from baseball. They reduced the game to a statistical bore.
Somebody should tell Jason Whitlock that there are people other than him out here. Some of us like knowledge. Some of us like understanding things. Everybody else? What’s stopping you from going to the ballpark and rooting for Juan Uribe because in your heart you know he’s clutch? I mean, other than how he’s out having surgery to correct the effects of being really, really fat and shit at getting on base.
It’s no longer enough to be down with OBP (on-base percentage). To talk the game, you now must understand OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging)
Fucking nerds! OBP isn’t enough for them — now they want me to know OPS, too? Wait — OPS is half OBP anyhow? How would I know that? Do I look like a nerd?
VORP (value over replacement player)
Oh, yeah, VORP. I remember him; he’s from that nerdy Star Track or whatever. Set your phasers to lame, mister VORP!
BABIP (batting average on balls in play) and on and on.
Now that’s much too hard for my amphibian brain to handle. Batting average… on balls? In play? What the hell do these words mean? Here, I’ll tell you the kind of stat I want to see: A COORS FUCKING LIGHT.
There’s a stat for nearly every action in baseball.
What? No, that’s way, way wrong. The number of actions in baseball is a pretty small set. There are something on the order of eleventeen shitstacks of stats for every single one. I do appreciate, though, that Jason is so bad at writing that his attempt to make it sound like there are way too many stats meaningfully understates how many there are.
Little is left to the imagination.
Hog fucking wash. Here, I’ll give you a number: .482. What is that number? It’s Ted Williams’ career OBP. .482! That is mind-warpingly high. For me, that spurs the imagination. It gets me thinking about what an amazing ballplayer Teddy Ballgame must have been to get on base 48.2% of the time. The statistics give us the framework, Jason; the man we have to imagine. But thank god we have the statistics, or our only connection to this amazing piece of baseball history would be your grandfather Hershell Whitlock’s columns about how T. Williams was crap because he never won his team a World Series.
Sports were never intended to be a computer program, stripped to cold, hard, indisputable, statistical facts.
Well, okay, but there’s a little problem here. What’s the most significant thing about a sporting event? Is is Tom Brady’s smile? Derek Jeter’s eyes? The completely heterosexual antics of the WWE? No — the most significant thing is who won the game. This is determined, Jason, by the team with the best score ("runs," we call it in baseball). And those, Jason, are statistical facts of the most coldest hardness.
So, actually, it looks like sports always were intended to be a bunch of goddamn computer numbers, and the goofballs who want to write stories about them are the ones getting weird. Oops!
Sports — particularly for fans — are not science. Sports, like art, are supposed to be interpreted.
I agree with this 100%, and that makes me laugh, because it’s absolutely devastating to Jason’s argument. What is it, Jason, that we interpret? Ooh yeah: data, innit.
Also, thank you for speaking on behalf of all fans everywhere. That saves the rest of us — who all are exactly like you — a bunch of time.
It’s difficult to interpret baseball these days.
Note that interpreting baseball is Jason’s job. I’m beginning to think this article is his passive-aggressive way of asking for a raise.
The stat geeks won’t let you argue. They quote sabermetrics and end all discussion. Is so-and-so a Hall of Famer? The sabermeticians will punch in the numbers and give you, in their mind, a definitive answer.
The stat geeks, Jason, argue about this shit all the time. Seriously. Let’s take the AL MVP — there is no consensus among "stat geeks" at all. Bellsbury? Bautista? Verlander? I’ve even heard some goofballs making a case for C. Granderson. Any given stat geek may very well be convinced that his answer is right, but so are you, as you’ll point out very clearly in just a few paragraphs. So can it, meatball.
It’s boring. It’s ruining sports.
Right now, baseball is experiencing a pretty huge renaissance. The rise of interest in baseball coincided rather neatly with the rise of the internet, and the ability of ordinary people to find, analyse, share, and discuss information about baseball.
This also, of course, is the period of declining importance of professional sportswriters. Of which number Jason Whitlock is one.
Sabermetrics or analytics are overrunning football, too. ESPN is pushing a new statistical way of analyzing NFL quarterbacks, Total Quarterback Rating.
I’m not sold on TQR, but it’s hardly an entirely new paradigm; ordinary quarterback rating goes all the way back to 1971. TQR is an attempt to make the stat more sensible; I mean, QR is calculated out of a maximum of 158.3. What?
The nerds are winning. They’re stealing the game from those of us who enjoy examining the gray areas of sports.
Really, Jason, you don’t speak for the average fan. You just don’t. The average fan doesn’t need to give a hang about sabermetrics. It is completely possible to go to the ballpark, have a beer and a dog, and not even be able to name any of the players on the field. Believe it or not, Jason, the nerd army will permit that!
No. What you are complaining about is that Jason Whitlock, a sportswriter, is expected to understand the sports he writes about, and that’s too much work. Well boo fucking hoo.
We’re about 10 years away from a computer program that will write stats-based opinion pieces on sports.
You’re being sarcastic, but I gotta tell you, Jason: we’re a lot closer than that. I know at least one horrible nerdbot who was inspired by your article to write a script that combines retrosheet data and weighted phrases to write its own game summaries.
Last season, the basketball analytics crowd was convinced that LeBron James and Dwight Howard deserved the MVP over Derrick Rose.
LeBron was pretty much the best player in basketball. You know, again. Rose winning wasn’t a huge injustice — he was also great — but, really, LeBron was probably a better choice.
The fact that Howard’s whiny, immature crybaby-ass was even in the discussion tells you all you need to know about analyzing the game solely on statistics.
Yes. It does. And that thing is: analysing the game statistically will lead you to give the award for "most valuable player" to the player who was the most valuable, totally independent of how much sportswriters liked him as a dude. That’s probably a good thing, Jason.
The Orlando Magic were a joke last season in part because of the immature environment fostered by Howard.
The Orlando Magic were 52-30. That’s pretty good. Fourth seed overall in the playoffs. That’s a "joke?"
As for James vs. Rose? Well, James devoured Rose in the Eastern Conference Finals.
Oh. Uh… backpedal, backpedal…
It doesn’t really matter who deserved the NBA’s MVP award.
Then why bother awarding it? That claim is so stupid I can barely breathe.
What matters is that there was a fun, yearlong debate. As much as we enjoy watching the competition on the field or court, we take equal pleasure in interpreting and debating what we just saw.
Sure. So thank god we had all that data, right? So we could interpret it, right?
Sabermetrics/analytics undermines the debate. They try to interject absolutes.
Jason. Listen to me slowly. There were always absolutes. The Orlando Magic absolutely went 52-30. Each of those 52 wins and 30 losses was absolutely the result of an absolute number of points scored and points allowed. This is not a fairy story invented by Bill James to pass the time in between bites of kitten sandwich. What sabermetrics (can we use that term for basketball? May as well, I suppose) has done is not "inject absolutes." Every basket that was scored is an absolute that occurred all on its own. Sabermetrics tries to help us fit those individual events into the narrative of the game. It is a storytelling aid, Jason.
No one will ever convince me that John Elway isn’t the greatest quarterback/football player in NFL history.
Sure. Great. Real quick here, though, I’d like you to read a thing a friend of mine wrote:
The stat geeks won’t let you argue. They quote sabermetrics and end all discussion. Is so-and-so a Hall of Famer? The sabermeticians will punch in the numbers and give you, in their mind, a definitive answer.
I guess what you’re telling me here, then, is that that guy can go fuck himself, right, Jason? I mean, the punchline to this joke is so obvious I’m not even going to write it, but really. Why is it okay for you to declare an end to all discussion, but those nerds aren’t allowed?
I can and have argued credibly and passionately that Elway is the best QB and player in the history of the league. You are free to disagree. I invite you to disagree. I’d love to refute your erroneous position. Just bring more than stats to the table.
So… swearing, then? I mean, really. When we’re talking about quality of play, what on earth could that possibly mean other than things that impact points scored (and points allowed in most situations, but not QB arguments in football)? I do not know enough about football to have an opinion about the greatest quarterback of all time, but I do know that the fans of one Mr. Unitas — a man you never saw play, and therefore have no subjective data of — would have beef with you, to say nothing of the fans of Messrs. Marino, Montana, Favre, P. Manning, Aikman, and even Brady. You really don’t want any grounds for the discussion other than like guts and intestines and things? You’re that insecure? Okay, man. Your call.
The games are about more than stats.
Then why are you trying so hard to make them about less than stats?
That’s what bothers me about this whole era of sports. In my lifetime, there have been two innovations that have significantly influenced sports fans: 1. fantasy leagues; 2. sabermetrics/analytics.
Internet internet internet internet internet internet internet. I cannot stress this enough. Fantasy baseball is at least as old as baseball cards, and probably older. As for "analytics," well, you tell me what "batting average" is if it ain’t a way of analysing the game. It was created in the nineteenth century, along with our other friends RBI, ERA, errors, the cotton gin, and pitcher wins and losses. This is not a new development!
Again, the stat geeks are winning. Our perception of athletes and their value are primarily being dictated by statistics.
Value, sure. But isn’t that a good thing? Our opinion of this stock’s value is primarily being dictated by numbers! But I believe this company really has a lot of fourth-quarter hustle that its ticker price just doesn’t show.
Peyton Manning is the king of fantasy football; therefore, he is the king of real football. LeBron James is the king of fantasy basketball; therefore, he is the king of real basketball.
This… is evidence that something’s wrong? Holy shit, Jason. Peyton Manning and LeBron James are among the very very best players in their respective sports. Who denies this? Where are all these people?
Is it a coincidence that James and Manning have both struggled in postseason play?
Three ideas for you to consider, Jason:
1) Basketball and football are team sports.
2) Sample size, sample size, sample size.
3) Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Barry Bonds, Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle, Roger Clemens, and Ken Griffey Jr. all can be alleged to have "struggled" in postseason play.
I don’t know the answer. But I want to discuss and debate it.
I do know the answer, and part of the reason for that is because I don’t refuse to think about it. I would — and this is true — be happy to discuss it with you, Jason.
And I don’t want to do it with people who simply want to quote stats.
Sure. People who do nothing but quote stats aren’t being very helpful. But that doesn’t jive with what you said earlier, which was that statistical analysis is "the plague ruining sports." Stats are important, Jason. You can’t get around that by acting macho. To claim that stats are trivial is identical to claiming that how many runs a team scores is trivial. That, Jason, is a stat.
The answers and the questions that make sports special, unique, our collective national pastime, can’t be found on a stat sheet. They’re in our imaginations and our individual interpretation of what we witness.
I completely agree. The stats don’t contain the magic of sports; no amount of WPA is itself the emotional appeal of watching Mark McGwire’s 62nd home run. The excitement of watching the Cubs rally in the bottom of the ninth in game one of the 2003 NLCS — and the heartbreak of the game six collapse — that isn’t included in Baseball Reference’s copious spreadsheets. They do contain a shitload of data, though. And that data? That is the fabric the game is woven from. It’s not an alien presence, Jason; it’s all organic. It was there all along.
When the "Moneyball" movie hysteria subsides, I hope the sabermeticians STFU.
Great. Thanks for harshing my mellow, asshole. You suck at your job and I hope you get replaced by a very small shell script.
Bonus comedy!
From Jason Whitlock’s Twitter feed:
Should’ve kept it 100 in my column: Sabermetrics are a tool for people who never played the game to pretend like they know something. STFU
Random "100" aside, here’s a comedy search result. What a complete nincompoop.
September 22nd, 2011
Posted by
Darien |
Baseball |
no comments
Perhaps it’s the government’s misfortune to have this case tried in a city that doesn’t care much about baseball. If Clemens was in federal court in Manhattan, Pettitte would be the easy bridge to conviction – a longtime New York Yankee considered trustworthy compared to the explosive and elusive Clemens.
You see, Les, this is exactly why the case isn’t being tried in New York. It would be near as dammit to impossible to find impartial jurors there. Same reason why, when I get sent to compulsory government servitude on some punishment board, they make me drive out to the next county over. That’s never happened to you?
No one truly knows why prosecutors allowed the jury to hear a tape of Congressman Elijah Cummings reading an affidavit from Pettitte’s wife, Laura, saying her husband told her Clemens told him he used steroids. They were ordered by Judge Reggie Walton to keep Pettitte’s wife out of the trial, that anything she said was circumstantial.
It wasn’t circumstantial, dummy; it was hearsay. "Circumstantial" isn’t just a long, legal-ish word meaning "bad."
Whatever a new trial costs, it won’t be cheap. And while the money isn’t coming from some government slush fund, the image of all those millions going into proving Roger Clemens lied in a building where congressmen bend the truth every day will further irritate a public that believes this a fruitless pursuit.
So where, then, is this money coming from? I think you’ll find it’s coming from a government slush fund, Les.
You guys, I’m starting to think Les Carpenter doesn’t know anything about anything.
September 3rd, 2011
Posted by
Darien |
Baseball, Bullshit |
2 comments
Alex Remington is a pretty smart guy. Knows a lot about baseball numbers. Unfortunately for the world, he would rather write endless cloying articles about how unjust baseball is — and that’s socially unjust, which, as most people who don’t know anything about anything will tell you, is the worst kind. Here’s the new polemic, in which Alex utterly fails to see the forest for one big fucking tree. Let’s take a closer look!
Milton Bradley and the "Race Card"
Do you see what I put myself through for you people? You better appreciate this.
"In 1987, on deck in Boston, and I was called an Alabama porch monkey… I’d like to be able to say yes [to the question of whether racism has declined], but my mail and my telephone calls suggest otherwise."
– White Sox GM and former White Sox center fielder Kenny Williams, September 22, 2009
Kenny Williams is an idiot and I don’t care what he thinks, but it’s worth noting that this quote adds nothing to the article no matter how many doubts you give him the benefit of. Fans of the opposing team trying to get under a hitter’s skin and distract him? Say not so, Kenneth! Oh, and it was in 1987. Topical. Current.
"I was a prisoner in my own home."
– Milton Bradley, March 9, 2010
Somehow I don’t think there were gangs of white supremacists hanging out in Milton’s neighborhood and forcing him to stay indoors. I mean, I guess maybe there were.
Milton Bradley was a complicated man. The usual word was "controversial"; it accompanied stories about him as often as the phrase "race card."
The usual word, actually, was "asshole." It’s just something that gets edited out of print articles is all, Alex.
Bradley was rarely happy and always seemed to mention race, appearing time and again in stories in which he criticized people for making racially inappropriate remarks.
Let’s see if we can unpack an important truth from this statement. So Bradley always mentions race. Bradley is frequently cited accusing other people of racism. Hmm. Nope, nothing yet. Let’s hold on to this for later.
I think that the frequency of these stories tended to dilute their impact.
Frankly, I wouldn’t be particularly impacted by any alleged adult whining about other dudes being mean to him.
Many people found it hard to take Bradley seriously — he was frequently awful, and it was easy to believe that he was just blaming other people for his problems.
But how could that be? If there’s one thing I learned from The Curious Case of Luis Castillo, it’s that black people never suck at baseball. The only reason our stupid white data thinks they do is because it’s fucking racist.
But with Bradley, it was never just about baseball. "Me being an African-American is the most important thing to me — more important than baseball," he told USA Today in 2005, during an interview in which he said his teammate Jeff Kent "doesn’t know how to deal with African-American people." Most people viewed this episode as yet another example of Bradley sounding off.
Another bit of info for our file: Milton Bradley considered being black more important than playing baseball. Milton Bradley also said that his problems with Jeff Kent weren’t caused by Jeff Kent not liking him, but by Jeff Kent having a problem with all black people.
But that may have been unfair to Bradley. Kent was disliked by many of his teammates, and in 2001, Salon’s Joan Walsh asked why Jeff Kent received more favorable media coverage than teammate Barry Bonds, despite the fact that both were rather famous for being jerks.
Hmm. Why steroids would the media be less favourable to Barry steroids Bonds than Jeff porn mustache Kent? I have no steroids idea. Must be steroids racism, then.
"The two crucial differences between Bonds and Kent: One is that while Kent may not chat up fans and kids or make nice with his teammates, he always talks to the media," wrote Walsh. "The other key difference is that Kent is white and Bonds is black."
Hmm. Hmmmmmm. Now, I realise I’m white, and therefore automatically racist, but doesn’t it seem like one of these differences is perhaps more key than the other?
There are two crucial differences between the Core i7 and the 80088. One is that the Core i7 is much, much better at everything that’s actually germane to this discussion. The other is that the 80088 has more 8s in its name. So clearly tech writers are all 8ists. QED
Later in the interview about Kent, Bradley expressed the belief that many people refuse to see racial tension before their eyes: "White people never want to see race — with anything."
Don’t capitalise after a colon, Alex.
Sorry, sorry. I know. More to the point: Alex Remington is white, and he wants to see race with everything. And he ain’t the only one. But we’re men of science, here — what about data? What does the data we’ve been collecting throughout this article tell us? It tells me that Milton Bradley is fucking obsessed with race. You really think racism is the only possible explanation for not getting along with legendary clubhouse dickhead Jeff Kent, Milton? Wow.
Also, not to stir the pot, but when Milton Bradley makes these blanket statements about how "white people" do this and this and that… that’s not racism? Did words start meaning different things sometime in the middle of this article?
While he was in Chicago, Milton Bradley spoke of being taunted with racial epithets from the stands and on the street, and of receiving racist hate mail — and, because former Cubs Jacque Jones and Latroy Hawkins made similar claims, as has White Sox GM Kenny Williams, in the quote I gave at the beginning of this article.
VERB WANTED. Apply within.
Bradley’s mother, Charlena Rector, said that Bradley’s three-year old son had also faced vicious abuse: "Parents, teachers and their kids called him the n-word."
Not saying she’s lying or nuthin’, but I think the definition of "vicious" might be suffering from mission creep here.
Yet Bradley’s claims of facing racism have often been taken with a grain of salt.
So have Bradley’s claims of nearly everything else. He’s a bullshit artist, and people are sick of his act.
When Bradley made his comments to the Chicago Sun-Times about the racism he had faced, team officials told ESPN’s Bruce Levine that they were "incensed" by the story
Because — which you omit from your pithy summary, which is: naughty naughty — Milton Bradley accused an unnamed person in the Cubs organisation of writing him race-baiting letters. As in: he smeared the team. Baselessly. No copies of these letters were produced. So, yeah, they were pretty pissed about that.
columnist David Haugh of the Chicago Tribune belittled him for his claims: "Poor Milton Bradley whined again to ESPN about how hard Wrigley Field can be for black players," and compared Bradley unfavorably to Derrek Lee, whom he called "one of the most popular modern Cubs of any race."
Yeah, that article was sort of shitheaded. That’s what sports opinion writers are paid to do, though: fan the flames.
Perhaps Haugh didn’t intend it to sound this way, but that sentence implies that African-American players aren’t normally popular, and that it’s therefore out of the ordinary that a player like Derrek Lee could be beloved in the city.
What? No it fucking doesn’t, Alex. That’s insane. Did anybody — anybody at all! — reading this article honestly read that sentence and think that the deeper meaning is clearly that Cubs fans hate black people?
Another columnist, Joey Baskerville of the Freeport, Illinois Journal-Standard, suggested that few people took Bradley seriously, writing:
I may be in the minority, but I actually believe Bradley’s accusations that some Cubs fans crossed the line of heckling and shouted racial slurs at him while he played in Chicago.
What "line" of heckling? There is no such fucking "line." What planet do you people come from? Here on planet Internets, trolling does not follow your Victorian-nouveau ideas of taste and appropriateness. The whole point of trolling is to piss people off. If a dude has clearly indicated that he’s easily pissed off by a certain line of attack, people will use it.
That said: I’m sure some people did race-bait Bradley. Is that a sign that baseball is hopelessly racist? I’m thinking it’s more a sign that Bradley is super fucking touchy about race, so people harp on it when they want to wind him up. The very fact that people did not race-bait Derrek Lee seems, to my mind, to prove that they are not anti-black, but rather anti-Milton Bradley.
Now remember what an asshole Milton Bradley was the whole time he was with the team.
In 2004, with the Dodgers, he got fed up with answering questions by L.A. Times reporter Jason Reid, and called Reid an "Uncle Tom."
But not in a racist way, you understand.
Adande noted that Bradley hypocritically appeared to expect that African-American journalists would give him more favorable coverage despite the fact that he could be prickly to them.
Also not racist.
This was one of the great tragedies of Milton Bradley’s career: he viewed the world through the lens of racism, and correctly perceived that a lot of people viewed him negatively — and then he contributed to that self-fulfilling prophecy.
Aha! So now you’re going to rewrite this article and take out all the bullshit hand-wringing, right?
There is no question that Milton Bradley received racial abuse.
There is also no question that Milton Bradley has given racial abuse. So your point is… ?
He reacted badly to the abuse, but it is hard to react well to hate mail, and much of the disapprobation heaped on Bradley — chiding him for admitting that he has been the target of racism — amounts to blaming the victim.
What? Fuck right off. Bradley is the victim of his own self-destructive assholery and nothing else. In the real world — where apparently millionaire athletes and professional sportswriters don’t live — people will say mean things to you. How you deal with that shows what kind of person you are. If you prate about what a big damn victim you are, even while going on record dishing out exactly the same type of abuse, people will think you’re a shithead. Get your head right out of the gutter of collectivism and start thinking about Bradley not as a statistic on your "black baseball players" roster and as an individual man with individual actions and responses, and all your fake-o anguish melts right away.
"Some people" did not like Milton Bradley. "Some people" maybe even didn’t like him because he’s black, though they were oddly silent on the subjects of Derrek Lee, Andre Dawson, and Fergie Jenkins. Does this mean that "Cubs fans" are racist? Or that "Baseball" is racist? No it goddamn doesn’t. Cubs fans are not a homogeneous collective that can be sensibly smeared en masse. "Chicago" is not an incarnate being with motives and desires and thoughts and actions. You are a goddamn moron if you can’t wrap your head around this simple concept.
Milton Bradley is quite right when he says that many people simply don’t want to see racism. That desire not to see is exactly what has fueled the skepticism over Bradley’s claims over the years. W.E.B. Du Bois correctly predicted that the color line would be the problem of the twentieth century. Though Jim Crow is gone, our discomfort with race remains. Flawed as he was, Milton Bradley deserved better than he got.
Oh please. Spare me your simpering. Milton Bradley got what he deserved, and he tried very hard to get it. "Our" discomfort with race does not remain, on account of you have not been approved to speak on behalf of this nonexistent collective "us." I don’t give two shits if Milton Bradley is black or white or Mexican, or even a slant like that Fukudome kid.
Insisting on sorting people into categories based on their skin colour is probably the most pervasive form of racism that ever was, Alex. Think about that.
May 12th, 2011
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Darien |
Baseball |
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