Leaving out the truism "no one cares about your blog", let's start with the obvious.
1. Real baseball is over and only losers and mouth-breathers care about the round-robin silliness currently being played.
2. Any devoted baseball fan would be knee deep in what-if analysis for winter roster building.
To sum up, we have six starting pitchers, no established closer, no first baseman, question marks at 2B and the OF corners, and Chipper looks really old all of a sudden. What to do? What to do?
Matt Diaz? Real deal starting OF at the ML level or do we need to keep Church around as a LH caddy?
Jordan Schafer or Jason Heyward out of spring?
Re-sign LaRoche for 3/25?
Make a run at Holliday or Bay (dropping Hudson's option, obviously)?
If Wren manages to trade Lowe's last three years is he the best manager in all of baseball?
Inquring minds...
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Approaching the speed of ground
I am currently in the early stages of a full blown existential crisis. This is not a new experience for me. I am a philosopher, by training and inclination. I sail these semi-roiling seas with some regularity. With that said, this particular incarnation of the troubles has some unique characteristics.
In the standard operational existential crisis Sam will retrieve a work from his philosophy bookshelf (segregated and kept distinct from the fiction shelves from which he and Lisa will visit more frequently), read or re-read some text or another, have a spin on the "what the hell am I doing with my life" carousel before falling placidly back into the numb stupidity of modern American consumerism.
While I have been re-reading Marcuse (and more recently - as in just today - Tom Frank and Guy Debord) this particular manifestation is less centered on a given text and more focused on the bookshelf itself.
More specifically I am currently sitting in my office chair, staring *at* my philosophy bookshelf and waiting quietly for *the shelf itself* to decry some meaning. I am attempting to read the shelf itself as a text.
Many folks will find this act to be somewhat odd and bordering on the irrational. Others will note the sign-signature-meaning relationship inherit in the consideration. I'll give equal weight to both parties in this instance.
In the standard operational existential crisis Sam will retrieve a work from his philosophy bookshelf (segregated and kept distinct from the fiction shelves from which he and Lisa will visit more frequently), read or re-read some text or another, have a spin on the "what the hell am I doing with my life" carousel before falling placidly back into the numb stupidity of modern American consumerism.
While I have been re-reading Marcuse (and more recently - as in just today - Tom Frank and Guy Debord) this particular manifestation is less centered on a given text and more focused on the bookshelf itself.
More specifically I am currently sitting in my office chair, staring *at* my philosophy bookshelf and waiting quietly for *the shelf itself* to decry some meaning. I am attempting to read the shelf itself as a text.
Many folks will find this act to be somewhat odd and bordering on the irrational. Others will note the sign-signature-meaning relationship inherit in the consideration. I'll give equal weight to both parties in this instance.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Desparetely seeking David (Norman)
We need David Norman back for eyes-own assessments of minor leaguers. Very few of my business trips take me to Danville or Myrtle Beach. Nonetheless, some notes of interest from the farm.
The Myrtle Beach Sun News confirms that three Pelicans have been promoted to AA-Mississippi. Top of the class is the Braves offensive version of Tommy Hanson. Jason Heyward is only 19 but was tearing up Carolina League pitching to the tune of 296/369/519. That .519 SLG% stands out considering his home park is notoriously pitcher friendly. Heyward projects to relieve Atlanta of our long Frenchified nightmare in RF come 2011. If he fares well in MS this year he could skip AAA-Gwinnett altogether. He's that good.
Heyward is to Tommy Hanson as Freddie Freeman is to Kris Medlen. Overshadowed and rightly so, Freeman still projects to take over 1B in Atlanta about the same time Casey Kotchman goes free agent (2011.) Freeman posted a better than respectable 302/394/447, again in MB's power-killing Coastal Field.
Pelican closer Thomas Palica gets the call to MS as well. The 21 year old was striking out a man an inning with decent K/BB rates, continuing his solid relief work from last year (in A-Rome.) With that said, he's a minor league closer. Nothing projects until he's striking out a man an inning in AAA, at the least.
Looking down the line at Rome's roster, no one seems to be demanding a shot at replacing Heyward or Freeman at the next level. No announcements have been made aside from the flip-flopping of Matthew Kennelly and Jesus Sucre at catcher. Kennelly tore the cover off the ball in Rome, was promoted to MB where he was completely overmatched. He's on his way back to Rome and Sucre takes his spot on the Pelicans roster. You might see Gerardo Rodriguez promoted to fill Freeman's slot at 1B but there's no "prospect projection" concerning a 21-year old 1B hitting 258/301/475 in A-ball.
The franchise may get creative and have some of this year's draft class skip the Sally altogether. This year marked a notable (and noted) change in draft strategy for the Braves, where they ditched their tradition high-school heavy draft in favor of college and junior college players. In early action, that strategy has succeeded as they have quite a few players killing the ball at Danville.
Most notable is a big ju-co first baseman taken out of Nova Southeastern University (Ft Lauderdale, FL) in the 16th round. Aside from hitting a monstrous 543/575/857 (yeah, that's BA/OBP/SLG) in his first 40 professional plate appearances, the 21 year old South African also replaces Jarrod Saltalamacchia as the jersey-tailor's worst nightmare. Riaan Spanjer-Furstenburg. The Braves have a history of promoting across levels with superb talent out of their foriegn rookies league. Yunel Escobar jumped a level after posting a 1200+ OPS there, for example. It wouldn't be shocking if Spanjer-Furstenburg replaced Freeman for the Pelicans. Similarly, 21 year old Adam Milligan (439/500/756 in 41 at bats) is a reasonable replacement for Heyward in the OF.
On a side note, we'd love to see Boog Sciambi and Joe Simpson have to stumble through an inning of Spanjer-Furstenburg at first and Daniel Elorriaga-Matra catching. Make it a DH league so we can fit backup 1B Ryohei Shimabukuro in as well.
Last note: there are whispers that Brooks Conrad, 2B from Gwinnett, is on the verge of a call-up. Not sure who he would replace on the big league roster. He might outhit Diory Hernandez but he doesn't list as a SS. Kelly Johnson is out of options, but a "stress related" DL stint might send him to AAA to straighten out his swing
The Myrtle Beach Sun News confirms that three Pelicans have been promoted to AA-Mississippi. Top of the class is the Braves offensive version of Tommy Hanson. Jason Heyward is only 19 but was tearing up Carolina League pitching to the tune of 296/369/519. That .519 SLG% stands out considering his home park is notoriously pitcher friendly. Heyward projects to relieve Atlanta of our long Frenchified nightmare in RF come 2011. If he fares well in MS this year he could skip AAA-Gwinnett altogether. He's that good.
Heyward is to Tommy Hanson as Freddie Freeman is to Kris Medlen. Overshadowed and rightly so, Freeman still projects to take over 1B in Atlanta about the same time Casey Kotchman goes free agent (2011.) Freeman posted a better than respectable 302/394/447, again in MB's power-killing Coastal Field.
Pelican closer Thomas Palica gets the call to MS as well. The 21 year old was striking out a man an inning with decent K/BB rates, continuing his solid relief work from last year (in A-Rome.) With that said, he's a minor league closer. Nothing projects until he's striking out a man an inning in AAA, at the least.
Looking down the line at Rome's roster, no one seems to be demanding a shot at replacing Heyward or Freeman at the next level. No announcements have been made aside from the flip-flopping of Matthew Kennelly and Jesus Sucre at catcher. Kennelly tore the cover off the ball in Rome, was promoted to MB where he was completely overmatched. He's on his way back to Rome and Sucre takes his spot on the Pelicans roster. You might see Gerardo Rodriguez promoted to fill Freeman's slot at 1B but there's no "prospect projection" concerning a 21-year old 1B hitting 258/301/475 in A-ball.
The franchise may get creative and have some of this year's draft class skip the Sally altogether. This year marked a notable (and noted) change in draft strategy for the Braves, where they ditched their tradition high-school heavy draft in favor of college and junior college players. In early action, that strategy has succeeded as they have quite a few players killing the ball at Danville.
Most notable is a big ju-co first baseman taken out of Nova Southeastern University (Ft Lauderdale, FL) in the 16th round. Aside from hitting a monstrous 543/575/857 (yeah, that's BA/OBP/SLG) in his first 40 professional plate appearances, the 21 year old South African also replaces Jarrod Saltalamacchia as the jersey-tailor's worst nightmare. Riaan Spanjer-Furstenburg. The Braves have a history of promoting across levels with superb talent out of their foriegn rookies league. Yunel Escobar jumped a level after posting a 1200+ OPS there, for example. It wouldn't be shocking if Spanjer-Furstenburg replaced Freeman for the Pelicans. Similarly, 21 year old Adam Milligan (439/500/756 in 41 at bats) is a reasonable replacement for Heyward in the OF.
On a side note, we'd love to see Boog Sciambi and Joe Simpson have to stumble through an inning of Spanjer-Furstenburg at first and Daniel Elorriaga-Matra catching. Make it a DH league so we can fit backup 1B Ryohei Shimabukuro in as well.
Last note: there are whispers that Brooks Conrad, 2B from Gwinnett, is on the verge of a call-up. Not sure who he would replace on the big league roster. He might outhit Diory Hernandez but he doesn't list as a SS. Kelly Johnson is out of options, but a "stress related" DL stint might send him to AAA to straighten out his swing
Monday, June 29, 2009
Lyricism is just another four letter word
Last Thursday night John Smoltz stepped onto the field wearing his new team's colors, toed the rubber of Nationals Park and threw a pitch in anger. It was his first start without a tomahawk on his chest in twenty-plus years. He was amped up, wild and very hittable in his first inning of work, but then settled down and turned in a useful performance. In all honesty it looked quite a bit like his first start upon returning to the rotation in Atlanta, after his closer years. No matter how hard I grimaced and whispered vile curses under my breath, his shoulder did not fall off. Sometimes Little Baby Jesus is just plain worthless.
Prior to the start the Washington Times ran a piece by Thom Leverro headlined "Smoltz is the last of a dying breed." Ignoring for the moment that Smoltz is not in any way shape or form the last of a dying breed; hurlers across baseball, from Smoltz' new teammate Josh Beckett to his old team's newest phenom Tommy Hanson are proof positive that smoke-throwing righties with wicked breaking balls are far from joining the dodo and long relief specialist on the extinction rolls; I must protest.
Generally I avoid the "a sportswriter wrote something wrong" meme. There just doesn't seem to be much sport in shooting those poor barrelled up fish. Rather than venting about something less than insightful someone else said, I'd rather spend my time saying something insightful. Or in the absence of that, blindly yelling rage into the void until some god of some heathen realm brings me a second bloody World Series banner. But in this case, I must protest.
Loverro's lede reads easily enough.
You want to give him points for trying. It's never a bad thing for a writer to make a note greatness. It's just that, well, it's wrong. Doubly wrong.
First, it is wrong on the baseball facts. Atlanta never fielded a rotation of Smoltz, Glavine and Maddux. Yes, of course they fielded rotations that included those three pitchers - many of them in fact. The entire concept "the Braves of the 90s" hinges on those three taking the hill, one after another, year after year. Any baseball fan worth her pink hat should know as much. But the Braves never fielded a rotation of Smoltz, Glavine and Maddux. No. Rather, year after year after year, the Atlanta Braves ran out a rotation of Maddux, Glavine and Smoltz.
Am I picking nits? Probably. But it's a nit worth the time.
From his arrival in 1993 through is departure in 2003 Greg Maddux was less than the best pitcher on the Atlanta Braves exactly once; during Kevin Millwood's monstrous 1999 campaign. (We can haggle over 2003 if you really want to go to the wall for Mike Hampton. I won't stop you, but I won't join you there either.) He wasn't always the Opening Day starter. He wasn't always the fan favorite. But every year, like clockwork, he was the best pitcher on the team. More often than not he was the best pitcher in the game.
After Maddux came Glavine. Granted, in any other rotation Glav would have been the ace, but the Braves of the 90s were far from any other rotation. That's kind of the point. Glavine wasn't merely a "second ace", though he was. He was a second ace who was clearly second tier to Maddux' mastery. That's not to demean Tom Glavine's skill and talent. It's no shame to finish second to the third greatest pitcher of all time.
Smoltz was the third starter. Always. Again, this isn't meant to hack at Smoltzie's shins - explode shoulder, explode! This is merely an attempt to set the record straight. Much like Glavine, Smoltz would have been a #1 starter on virtually any other team. Just not in Atlanta. Not with Maddux and Glavine ahead of him. A current day comp for Smoltz in the team's heyday might be Carlos Zambrano. Wicked, overpowering stuff; a bit of a head case (Smoltz had his own personal "sports psychologist" on staff); capable of dominant performances on any given day but prone early on to bouts of erratic wildness.
All of which is, once again, picking nits. Outside of pedantic disgruntled fans I'm sure Loverro's poetic license won't stick in craws. But for the record, as a pedantic disgruntled fan, he's wrong on the facts. Top to bottom, it was always Maddux, then Glavine, then Smoltz. And that brings us in turn to Loverro's second mistake.
Again, this is not a gaffe I'd normally jump on, as I don't personally hold the sports beat to high standards of composition and style. But the writer himself brings it up, and then proceeds to butcher it completely, and that bears mentioning. In addition to being wrong on the baseball facts, Loverro is wrong on the poetics.
The "lyrical and historic" trio is "Maddux, Glavine, Smoltz." Say it aloud. Let the syllables roll off of your tongue. Feel the words alive in your mouth. Taste their sound. Maddux, Glavine, Smoltz. Notice how the hard consonants hit precisely as the next man strides to the hill.
MAD-duhks. GLAV-en. sMOltz.
Can you hear the metered feet, the accented syllables matching each name's introduction; the way that trailing "tz" elongates into the chasm between the three and poor John Burkett trying to keep up? That's lyricism, Thom. Switch that up and what do you have? The single-syllabic "Smoltz" crashing wildly into Glavine's entrance? The interrupting "and" dropped in for no reason, doubling the beat between Glavine and Maddux? No, Thom. Just, no.
We appreciate the effort. But, you know, get it right next time. Maddux, Glavine, Smoltz. From our mouths to God's ear. Any god, really. Just so long as they can deliver another banner before we lose Chipper too.
Prior to the start the Washington Times ran a piece by Thom Leverro headlined "Smoltz is the last of a dying breed." Ignoring for the moment that Smoltz is not in any way shape or form the last of a dying breed; hurlers across baseball, from Smoltz' new teammate Josh Beckett to his old team's newest phenom Tommy Hanson are proof positive that smoke-throwing righties with wicked breaking balls are far from joining the dodo and long relief specialist on the extinction rolls; I must protest.
Generally I avoid the "a sportswriter wrote something wrong" meme. There just doesn't seem to be much sport in shooting those poor barrelled up fish. Rather than venting about something less than insightful someone else said, I'd rather spend my time saying something insightful. Or in the absence of that, blindly yelling rage into the void until some god of some heathen realm brings me a second bloody World Series banner. But in this case, I must protest.
Loverro's lede reads easily enough.
Washington fans, watch John Smoltz closely Thursday night when he makes his first start in a Boston Red Sox uniform. He is the last dinosaur, the one surviving member of a species that dominated the pitching mounds of major league fields for more than 20 years.
Smoltz, Glavine and Maddux - as lyrical and historic a trio as Tinkers, Evers and Chance - should go down in baseball lore as well because when Smoltz, Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux were the identity of the Atlanta Braves from 1993 to 2003, they were the class of the game.
You want to give him points for trying. It's never a bad thing for a writer to make a note greatness. It's just that, well, it's wrong. Doubly wrong.
First, it is wrong on the baseball facts. Atlanta never fielded a rotation of Smoltz, Glavine and Maddux. Yes, of course they fielded rotations that included those three pitchers - many of them in fact. The entire concept "the Braves of the 90s" hinges on those three taking the hill, one after another, year after year. Any baseball fan worth her pink hat should know as much. But the Braves never fielded a rotation of Smoltz, Glavine and Maddux. No. Rather, year after year after year, the Atlanta Braves ran out a rotation of Maddux, Glavine and Smoltz.
Am I picking nits? Probably. But it's a nit worth the time.
From his arrival in 1993 through is departure in 2003 Greg Maddux was less than the best pitcher on the Atlanta Braves exactly once; during Kevin Millwood's monstrous 1999 campaign. (We can haggle over 2003 if you really want to go to the wall for Mike Hampton. I won't stop you, but I won't join you there either.) He wasn't always the Opening Day starter. He wasn't always the fan favorite. But every year, like clockwork, he was the best pitcher on the team. More often than not he was the best pitcher in the game.
After Maddux came Glavine. Granted, in any other rotation Glav would have been the ace, but the Braves of the 90s were far from any other rotation. That's kind of the point. Glavine wasn't merely a "second ace", though he was. He was a second ace who was clearly second tier to Maddux' mastery. That's not to demean Tom Glavine's skill and talent. It's no shame to finish second to the third greatest pitcher of all time.
Smoltz was the third starter. Always. Again, this isn't meant to hack at Smoltzie's shins - explode shoulder, explode! This is merely an attempt to set the record straight. Much like Glavine, Smoltz would have been a #1 starter on virtually any other team. Just not in Atlanta. Not with Maddux and Glavine ahead of him. A current day comp for Smoltz in the team's heyday might be Carlos Zambrano. Wicked, overpowering stuff; a bit of a head case (Smoltz had his own personal "sports psychologist" on staff); capable of dominant performances on any given day but prone early on to bouts of erratic wildness.
All of which is, once again, picking nits. Outside of pedantic disgruntled fans I'm sure Loverro's poetic license won't stick in craws. But for the record, as a pedantic disgruntled fan, he's wrong on the facts. Top to bottom, it was always Maddux, then Glavine, then Smoltz. And that brings us in turn to Loverro's second mistake.
Again, this is not a gaffe I'd normally jump on, as I don't personally hold the sports beat to high standards of composition and style. But the writer himself brings it up, and then proceeds to butcher it completely, and that bears mentioning. In addition to being wrong on the baseball facts, Loverro is wrong on the poetics.
The "lyrical and historic" trio is "Maddux, Glavine, Smoltz." Say it aloud. Let the syllables roll off of your tongue. Feel the words alive in your mouth. Taste their sound. Maddux, Glavine, Smoltz. Notice how the hard consonants hit precisely as the next man strides to the hill.
MAD-duhks. GLAV-en. sMOltz.
Can you hear the metered feet, the accented syllables matching each name's introduction; the way that trailing "tz" elongates into the chasm between the three and poor John Burkett trying to keep up? That's lyricism, Thom. Switch that up and what do you have? The single-syllabic "Smoltz" crashing wildly into Glavine's entrance? The interrupting "and" dropped in for no reason, doubling the beat between Glavine and Maddux? No, Thom. Just, no.
We appreciate the effort. But, you know, get it right next time. Maddux, Glavine, Smoltz. From our mouths to God's ear. Any god, really. Just so long as they can deliver another banner before we lose Chipper too.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
You know what would be weird?
Let's say, simple theoretical thought experiment type dealy here, just for the sake of argument and such, let's say you're a fan of the Atlanta Braves. Rare breed, difficult to find in crowds, doesn't make a lot of noise even at Atlanta Braves baseball games. I know. I get it. Just work with me here. Imagine if you can that you are such a thing.
Imagine further, perhaps, that you are a fan with some history. No, you're not one of these goofy little whippersnappers born after Greg Maddux started wearing a tomahawk, not one of these spoiled punk brats that honestly think three years of mediocrity and a reasonably sane rebuilding plan is hell on earth. Oh God no, you’re not one of those guys. No, you're deeper than that. You started following this sad sack of a franchise in 1986 or something. Your first favorite player was Claudelle Washington. Or something. Something like Claudelle Washington. If you can't bring yourself to grasp the stupefied awesomeness that was Claudelle, Bob Horner will do as a stand-in. Yeah, you're that kind of Braves fan. You remember when they *really* sucked.
Let's say you're that guy, or some guy close to that, right? You survived the '80s. You danced through the '90s like a drunken puppet. In the earlier parts of that decade, you were, in fact, very much like a drunken puppet, but she was worth it. You remember with the clarity of God hisownself Sid's slide. You remember even more how the foldout couch in the common room of Dunn's dorm broken literally in half and dumped everyone onto the floor in a sweaty, catatonic heap. You remember with unpleasant specificity requesting that Bo Pamplin kindly remove his foot from your groin, if he would be so kind. Yeah, these are the days that broke the boy and made the man, along and along, as they were.
Lonnie Smith getting deked. (Run you stupid son of a bitch, run!) Kent Hrbek and that damned wrestling move on Ron Gant. Halle's boy toy backing up Tommy's grandest hour in '95. All of it. You'd remember all of that. Even, like, silly little Walt Weiss, two years past his prime, just flailing out there, like some sort of deep sea fish monster teleported from the inky depths right into the hole at short in the Astrodome. Hell, you'd remember when J*hn R*ck*r was just an eccentric LH reliever and not the biggest ass on the planet. Yeah, you remember all of this. It's the land of make believe!
Now, if you're that guy, you've probably got some pent up frustrations from the 90's as well. There's that Puckett thing, of course. There's the Dave Winfield thing. The Eric Gregg thing. And of course the J*m F*cking L*yr*tz thing. You could even track across the years until you get to the C*rl*s F*cking B*ltr*n thing, but that would be going too far.
That L*yr*tz thing would quite obviously open doors onto the whole of "Yankees of the mid-to-late '90s" thing, and that would be a sea of seething potential most anyone would be well advised not to swim. Visions blurred red, stabbings of necks, etc. Yeah, you don't want to go into the deep end of the Yankee thing at all. So you still with me? You thinking about maybe being that guy? Yeah. Okay. Now throw in for good measure that you're a total comic book dork from the old days and you literally grew up on The Transformers.
Now, if you're that guy, and you take a long lunch one afternoon to go see the new Transformers sequel, and you're a little late so you sit in the back row to avoid the walking through other folks in the dark, and you sit there all two and a half hours chuckling along with some vaguely familiar guy sitting two seats over, and it's clear he too is a total Transformers dork, and then the lights come up and you're grabbing your headgear for the ride back and you suddenly realize, dude, that's Mariano Rivera, and FUCK, now I TOTALLY CAN'T HATE THAT GUY ANYMORE!
Yeah. That would be totally weird. It would be like losing a part of your soul.
Imagine further, perhaps, that you are a fan with some history. No, you're not one of these goofy little whippersnappers born after Greg Maddux started wearing a tomahawk, not one of these spoiled punk brats that honestly think three years of mediocrity and a reasonably sane rebuilding plan is hell on earth. Oh God no, you’re not one of those guys. No, you're deeper than that. You started following this sad sack of a franchise in 1986 or something. Your first favorite player was Claudelle Washington. Or something. Something like Claudelle Washington. If you can't bring yourself to grasp the stupefied awesomeness that was Claudelle, Bob Horner will do as a stand-in. Yeah, you're that kind of Braves fan. You remember when they *really* sucked.
Let's say you're that guy, or some guy close to that, right? You survived the '80s. You danced through the '90s like a drunken puppet. In the earlier parts of that decade, you were, in fact, very much like a drunken puppet, but she was worth it. You remember with the clarity of God hisownself Sid's slide. You remember even more how the foldout couch in the common room of Dunn's dorm broken literally in half and dumped everyone onto the floor in a sweaty, catatonic heap. You remember with unpleasant specificity requesting that Bo Pamplin kindly remove his foot from your groin, if he would be so kind. Yeah, these are the days that broke the boy and made the man, along and along, as they were.
Lonnie Smith getting deked. (Run you stupid son of a bitch, run!) Kent Hrbek and that damned wrestling move on Ron Gant. Halle's boy toy backing up Tommy's grandest hour in '95. All of it. You'd remember all of that. Even, like, silly little Walt Weiss, two years past his prime, just flailing out there, like some sort of deep sea fish monster teleported from the inky depths right into the hole at short in the Astrodome. Hell, you'd remember when J*hn R*ck*r was just an eccentric LH reliever and not the biggest ass on the planet. Yeah, you remember all of this. It's the land of make believe!
Now, if you're that guy, you've probably got some pent up frustrations from the 90's as well. There's that Puckett thing, of course. There's the Dave Winfield thing. The Eric Gregg thing. And of course the J*m F*cking L*yr*tz thing. You could even track across the years until you get to the C*rl*s F*cking B*ltr*n thing, but that would be going too far.
That L*yr*tz thing would quite obviously open doors onto the whole of "Yankees of the mid-to-late '90s" thing, and that would be a sea of seething potential most anyone would be well advised not to swim. Visions blurred red, stabbings of necks, etc. Yeah, you don't want to go into the deep end of the Yankee thing at all. So you still with me? You thinking about maybe being that guy? Yeah. Okay. Now throw in for good measure that you're a total comic book dork from the old days and you literally grew up on The Transformers.
Now, if you're that guy, and you take a long lunch one afternoon to go see the new Transformers sequel, and you're a little late so you sit in the back row to avoid the walking through other folks in the dark, and you sit there all two and a half hours chuckling along with some vaguely familiar guy sitting two seats over, and it's clear he too is a total Transformers dork, and then the lights come up and you're grabbing your headgear for the ride back and you suddenly realize, dude, that's Mariano Rivera, and FUCK, now I TOTALLY CAN'T HATE THAT GUY ANYMORE!
Yeah. That would be totally weird. It would be like losing a part of your soul.
Monday, June 22, 2009
The worst days are here
Today kicks off the nadir of the baseball season in Atlanta. Coming off of a give-away rubber-game of the three game set in Fenway (someone tear down that rat trap and build those kids a proper stadium, will ya?) the Braves come home for ten games. The team continues to tread water at mediocrity having not addressed the gaping wounds on either corner outfield slot, to the point where the Francoeur disease has infected Kelly Johnson. Someone needs to cut out the rot, soon. All of which is more or less par for the course these days, none of which really makes the next two weeks any more unbearable than the previous twelve. No, what makes the next two weeks hell on earth is the incoming teams.
Today we get a one-game make up for a rain out with the Cubs. While it might be endurable given the odd-ball nature of the schedule here, best advice is to avoid the park regardless. If there's any slug of baseball fandom that will appear for a Monday rain-out replay and make the park a miserable hell of drunken buffoonery, rest assured, it is Cubs fans.
We follow that septic sludge with Bud Selig's most joyous fuck you to Atlanta fans, our yearly parade of soul-grindingly annoying fans from the NEC. Three games of transplanted Yankee fans soiling the seats of our fair grounds, followed immediately by an equal dose of their paternal twins from Boston. Oh, joyous day. How can we, the unworthy denizens of Atlanta ever thank you Mr. Selig? If not for your ever-brilliant notion of making the World Series essentially meaningless by playing the leagues against one another in the middle of the summer we'd never have the chance to see all of the loud, obnoxious sprawl-eating invaders gathered together in one place like this! You're the best.
I hate interleague play. I hate people who think a baseball stadium full of families is the proper place to get drunk and moan "Yoooouuuuuuk" like a water buffalo in heat. I hate anyone who thinks Derek Jeter deserves anything more than a good garroting. All of which pales as shadow compared to the burning summer sun that is my hatred for the man who unleashed this unholy calvacade upon us.
[sigh]
At least we get a "break" with Philly in town before the Mets faithful storm in from the upper 'burbs and add a layer of self-loathing and little brother syndrone on top of the class and gentility we'd otherwise expect this week.
Today we get a one-game make up for a rain out with the Cubs. While it might be endurable given the odd-ball nature of the schedule here, best advice is to avoid the park regardless. If there's any slug of baseball fandom that will appear for a Monday rain-out replay and make the park a miserable hell of drunken buffoonery, rest assured, it is Cubs fans.
We follow that septic sludge with Bud Selig's most joyous fuck you to Atlanta fans, our yearly parade of soul-grindingly annoying fans from the NEC. Three games of transplanted Yankee fans soiling the seats of our fair grounds, followed immediately by an equal dose of their paternal twins from Boston. Oh, joyous day. How can we, the unworthy denizens of Atlanta ever thank you Mr. Selig? If not for your ever-brilliant notion of making the World Series essentially meaningless by playing the leagues against one another in the middle of the summer we'd never have the chance to see all of the loud, obnoxious sprawl-eating invaders gathered together in one place like this! You're the best.
I hate interleague play. I hate people who think a baseball stadium full of families is the proper place to get drunk and moan "Yoooouuuuuuk" like a water buffalo in heat. I hate anyone who thinks Derek Jeter deserves anything more than a good garroting. All of which pales as shadow compared to the burning summer sun that is my hatred for the man who unleashed this unholy calvacade upon us.
[sigh]
At least we get a "break" with Philly in town before the Mets faithful storm in from the upper 'burbs and add a layer of self-loathing and little brother syndrone on top of the class and gentility we'd otherwise expect this week.
Monday, June 30, 2008
La vida SABR
This is the funniest thing I ever heard Chris Dial say. "I am not a stat geek."
This was back in the late nineties, sometime during the storied Braves-Mets clashes of that era. Maybe opening weekend. Maybe 1999. Sitting in the covered boxes of the Lexus Level at Turner Field, day game, long delay, waiting out the thunderstorms blowing through. Post-Piazza. Pre-Rocker. Right dab in the middle of Rey Ordonez.
What you have to understand about Dial is this. It's all about Rey Ordonez. Ordonez is the Rubicon. Ordonez is the great white whale. Ordonez is his raison d'etre, his existential meaning, the very soundtrack of his life. Without Rey Ordonez, Chris Dial would not exist.
Once, in the storied land of Usenet, there was a geek fight. Or maybe there were lots of different little geek fights, all of them blurring together at the edges until you couldn't tell where one ended and the other began. Who can say for certain? All we can know is this. There were geeks. There were fights. It was Usenet. This was the way of things.
On the one hand you had the SDCNs, the stat drunk computer nerds. A motley group of fools they were. Poorly adjusted and vaguely described. Ill tempered and squinty eyed. Prone to factions and vapours. Feudal lords of a thousand internecine squabbles entrenched along ley lines of baroque doctrinal detail. Kind of like the Catholics before Vatican II, only with spreadsheets.
Wars of flame ignited, blazed, extinguished. Grudges smoldered. Alliances formed and dissolved; reassembled; reconciled. It was a mad and petty land. A vicious and trying land. A terribly entertaining land. Chaos ruled, the barest of commonalities to so much as define the space as place.
1. Killfile Maynard.
2. BA is for commoners.
3. Clutch hitting is a myth.
4. Rey Ordonez sucks.
By these truths were we bound together.
You must understand, of course. These were darker times. Pre-blog. Web 1.0. Dial-up. The world was not privy to the great light of SABR-truthiness as it shines today. Rob and Rany ran a website. Baseball Prospectus did not. It must be era-adjusted.
There was still some debate over the true level of the Ordonez suck. No one was really sure how to best define such suck. We didn't have the tools for such things. The sheer scope of it... There existed even a contingent of sad souls who would whisper heresy aloud; "Rey Ordonez might not suck at all," they would tremble, all bated breath and darting eyes. "We just don't know. He can't hit, but...we just don't know." Some went further. "Rey Ordonez", they demanded, "does not suck at all. In fact, he is one of the most valuable players in basball. He saves a run a game with his glove."
Enter Chris Dial.
Dial loved him some Rey Ordonez. Don't let that faux-shocked "Who, me?!" fool you. Rey Ordonez was the dreamiest player that Busey ever dreamed to dream. Well. Kind of. See, back then, no one really believed defense was important. I mean, no one important. Just, like, scouts and general managers and shit. No one on Usenet. Except Dial. Chris believed. Oh, how Chris believed. He held his hands wide and clapped and clapped and clapped. Certainly it was true. Defense was important damnit, and Rey Ordonez was a defensive god damnit, so therefore everyone was wrong and Chris was right and SHUTUPSHUTPSHUTUPSHUTUP! It was like that in the land, sometimes. But no one would listen to Chris, how ever loudly he clapped. It was like that in the land sometimes, too.
So here's what Dial did. Short version. Dial grabbed everything he could find about defense in major league baseball and he shoved it through about twenty-three different spreadsheets. He rangled. He finagled. He conjoled. He did math. Complicated math. And in the end, he came up with a protean sludge that would eventually evolve into his vaunted defensive methodology.
Turns out Rey Ordonez actually didn't have much value. Turns out even after accounting for his defense he was basically worthless, a flashy showboat with a knack for highlight reel plays but otherwise unspectactular in any aspect of the game. The fact that he couldn't so much as lay down a sac bunt in the most important at bat of his career, effectively eliminating his team from the playoffs singlehandedly? Cake. Turns out Rey Ordonez really did suck.
But this was before all that. This was in process, en route, en flagrante. This was opening weekend of that year and Chris was still working out the details. So we're sitting up there, in the Lexus boxes, broiling in the late Georgian afternoon, waiting for a game that was scheduled for 1:05 but started at 7:05. We're sitting up there, nattering on about baseball and rivalries and how to account for the three unassisted in range studies for first basemen, crunching through an early iteration of Dial on Defense, and he actually says to me, "I am not a stat geek." Seriously. I shit you not. Boy is CREATING A NEW STATISTICAL MEASURE TO PROVE THE DEFENSIVE WORTH OF REY ORDONEZ and says to me, "No, serioulsy, I am not a stat geek. I'm not SABR at all." See, in the delusion de la Dial the fact that he was creating a stat to prove conventional SABR wisdom wrong - which turned out to be wrong itself in the specifics, but enormously right in the generality - proved that he wasn't himself a SABRmetrician. He wasn't a stat geek at all. This is the funniest thing I ever heard Chris Dial say.
Me? I'm not a stat geek at all. I have never, not even once, created a new statistic, for any purpose whatsoever. Yes, just this week I corrected a friend who had mistakenly accused my 2003-ish statement that Mark DeRosa would be "a RH Keith Lockhart" of being off base by noting that he, sad to say, had failed to adjust for age, had failed to remember that Lockhart was jerked around by the Royals until he was 29 and thus DeRosa was just now coming into the years of his career that matched Lockhart's long, tedious (unending, agonizing, Christ will someone please cut this freakin guy) decline phase. Yes, I did so by referencing RC/9 and OPS+. Yes, if pressed I could explain what the AIR column of Forman's masterwork means. But the math would be rough at best, and I'd avoid it at all costs if I could. And dude. I never, ever CREATED MY OWN STAT. Not even once, when I was college experimenting.
Which makes it kind of odd, as many noted during the event, that I attended SABR 38 last weekend. I mean, you'd think that a guy attending the annual convention of the Society for American Baseball Research would at least nominally do some baseball research, right? But then you wouldn't know me at all. Because really, I wasn't attending SABR 38 in the least, though I did attend a few presentations Saturday morning. No, I was just there for the booze. Or the social hours. Or both. Much like pitching and defense, it's hard to tell the one from the other.
I hung out with Dial. We chatted. We reminisced. We drank a lot of gin and vodka. I met Jimmy Furtado for the first time after 10 years of on-again, off-again contribution to his website. I finally got a chance to thank Sean Forman in person. I saw so many people that I "know" but had never met that the mind boggles. Darren and Anthony and Aaron and Joe and Jon and on and on and on. Which is good, because I still identify people by their birth names, I'm afraid. I had a fucking stupendous time.
But I want this on the record, okay? I am not a stat geek. Chris Dial is a stat geek. He's wrong about the whole Bonds thing in the specifics, but like Ordonez, he's right about it in the generality. And yeah, Red is probably smarter than me already, truth be told. But no, I really don't get the math unless you speak slowly and pat me on the head, so seriously. I'm not. But I still owe Vinay a round from the bowling-alley bar so I'm pretty much morally obliged to attend next year to pay that back, right? Because being that I am so not a stat geek, I can't really be thinking about attending SABR 39 this far in advance. Right?
This was back in the late nineties, sometime during the storied Braves-Mets clashes of that era. Maybe opening weekend. Maybe 1999. Sitting in the covered boxes of the Lexus Level at Turner Field, day game, long delay, waiting out the thunderstorms blowing through. Post-Piazza. Pre-Rocker. Right dab in the middle of Rey Ordonez.
What you have to understand about Dial is this. It's all about Rey Ordonez. Ordonez is the Rubicon. Ordonez is the great white whale. Ordonez is his raison d'etre, his existential meaning, the very soundtrack of his life. Without Rey Ordonez, Chris Dial would not exist.
Once, in the storied land of Usenet, there was a geek fight. Or maybe there were lots of different little geek fights, all of them blurring together at the edges until you couldn't tell where one ended and the other began. Who can say for certain? All we can know is this. There were geeks. There were fights. It was Usenet. This was the way of things.
On the one hand you had the SDCNs, the stat drunk computer nerds. A motley group of fools they were. Poorly adjusted and vaguely described. Ill tempered and squinty eyed. Prone to factions and vapours. Feudal lords of a thousand internecine squabbles entrenched along ley lines of baroque doctrinal detail. Kind of like the Catholics before Vatican II, only with spreadsheets.
Wars of flame ignited, blazed, extinguished. Grudges smoldered. Alliances formed and dissolved; reassembled; reconciled. It was a mad and petty land. A vicious and trying land. A terribly entertaining land. Chaos ruled, the barest of commonalities to so much as define the space as place.
1. Killfile Maynard.
2. BA is for commoners.
3. Clutch hitting is a myth.
4. Rey Ordonez sucks.
By these truths were we bound together.
You must understand, of course. These were darker times. Pre-blog. Web 1.0. Dial-up. The world was not privy to the great light of SABR-truthiness as it shines today. Rob and Rany ran a website. Baseball Prospectus did not. It must be era-adjusted.
There was still some debate over the true level of the Ordonez suck. No one was really sure how to best define such suck. We didn't have the tools for such things. The sheer scope of it... There existed even a contingent of sad souls who would whisper heresy aloud; "Rey Ordonez might not suck at all," they would tremble, all bated breath and darting eyes. "We just don't know. He can't hit, but...we just don't know." Some went further. "Rey Ordonez", they demanded, "does not suck at all. In fact, he is one of the most valuable players in basball. He saves a run a game with his glove."
Enter Chris Dial.
Dial loved him some Rey Ordonez. Don't let that faux-shocked "Who, me?!" fool you. Rey Ordonez was the dreamiest player that Busey ever dreamed to dream. Well. Kind of. See, back then, no one really believed defense was important. I mean, no one important. Just, like, scouts and general managers and shit. No one on Usenet. Except Dial. Chris believed. Oh, how Chris believed. He held his hands wide and clapped and clapped and clapped. Certainly it was true. Defense was important damnit, and Rey Ordonez was a defensive god damnit, so therefore everyone was wrong and Chris was right and SHUTUPSHUTPSHUTUPSHUTUP! It was like that in the land, sometimes. But no one would listen to Chris, how ever loudly he clapped. It was like that in the land sometimes, too.
So here's what Dial did. Short version. Dial grabbed everything he could find about defense in major league baseball and he shoved it through about twenty-three different spreadsheets. He rangled. He finagled. He conjoled. He did math. Complicated math. And in the end, he came up with a protean sludge that would eventually evolve into his vaunted defensive methodology.
Turns out Rey Ordonez actually didn't have much value. Turns out even after accounting for his defense he was basically worthless, a flashy showboat with a knack for highlight reel plays but otherwise unspectactular in any aspect of the game. The fact that he couldn't so much as lay down a sac bunt in the most important at bat of his career, effectively eliminating his team from the playoffs singlehandedly? Cake. Turns out Rey Ordonez really did suck.
But this was before all that. This was in process, en route, en flagrante. This was opening weekend of that year and Chris was still working out the details. So we're sitting up there, in the Lexus boxes, broiling in the late Georgian afternoon, waiting for a game that was scheduled for 1:05 but started at 7:05. We're sitting up there, nattering on about baseball and rivalries and how to account for the three unassisted in range studies for first basemen, crunching through an early iteration of Dial on Defense, and he actually says to me, "I am not a stat geek." Seriously. I shit you not. Boy is CREATING A NEW STATISTICAL MEASURE TO PROVE THE DEFENSIVE WORTH OF REY ORDONEZ and says to me, "No, serioulsy, I am not a stat geek. I'm not SABR at all." See, in the delusion de la Dial the fact that he was creating a stat to prove conventional SABR wisdom wrong - which turned out to be wrong itself in the specifics, but enormously right in the generality - proved that he wasn't himself a SABRmetrician. He wasn't a stat geek at all. This is the funniest thing I ever heard Chris Dial say.
Me? I'm not a stat geek at all. I have never, not even once, created a new statistic, for any purpose whatsoever. Yes, just this week I corrected a friend who had mistakenly accused my 2003-ish statement that Mark DeRosa would be "a RH Keith Lockhart" of being off base by noting that he, sad to say, had failed to adjust for age, had failed to remember that Lockhart was jerked around by the Royals until he was 29 and thus DeRosa was just now coming into the years of his career that matched Lockhart's long, tedious (unending, agonizing, Christ will someone please cut this freakin guy) decline phase. Yes, I did so by referencing RC/9 and OPS+. Yes, if pressed I could explain what the AIR column of Forman's masterwork means. But the math would be rough at best, and I'd avoid it at all costs if I could. And dude. I never, ever CREATED MY OWN STAT. Not even once, when I was college experimenting.
Which makes it kind of odd, as many noted during the event, that I attended SABR 38 last weekend. I mean, you'd think that a guy attending the annual convention of the Society for American Baseball Research would at least nominally do some baseball research, right? But then you wouldn't know me at all. Because really, I wasn't attending SABR 38 in the least, though I did attend a few presentations Saturday morning. No, I was just there for the booze. Or the social hours. Or both. Much like pitching and defense, it's hard to tell the one from the other.
I hung out with Dial. We chatted. We reminisced. We drank a lot of gin and vodka. I met Jimmy Furtado for the first time after 10 years of on-again, off-again contribution to his website. I finally got a chance to thank Sean Forman in person. I saw so many people that I "know" but had never met that the mind boggles. Darren and Anthony and Aaron and Joe and Jon and on and on and on. Which is good, because I still identify people by their birth names, I'm afraid. I had a fucking stupendous time.
But I want this on the record, okay? I am not a stat geek. Chris Dial is a stat geek. He's wrong about the whole Bonds thing in the specifics, but like Ordonez, he's right about it in the generality. And yeah, Red is probably smarter than me already, truth be told. But no, I really don't get the math unless you speak slowly and pat me on the head, so seriously. I'm not. But I still owe Vinay a round from the bowling-alley bar so I'm pretty much morally obliged to attend next year to pay that back, right? Because being that I am so not a stat geek, I can't really be thinking about attending SABR 39 this far in advance. Right?
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