General MLB 2011 thread for random game talk, juiced-baseball conspiracies, etc

ajcbraves David O'Brien
A bullpen catcher of a team (not #Braves) says baseballs are harder this year, believes they've been juiced to aid attendance in bad economy

I wonder what else bullpen catchers believe.

"Things Bullpen Catchers Believe", a new book by Murray Chase.

your ideas are intriguing to me, bullpen catcher, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

i was thinking that something was up on sunday when there were like 4 diff guys w/ multiple homers

Appendectomy epidemic -- Adam Dunn now

volquez & dice k are having a bird/magic duel right now

ok, someone explained this years ago - but i cannot find the thread.

right now Josh Wilingham's OBP is *lower* than his AVG. how does this happen?

more sacrifices (bunts, flies, grounders) than walks.

A sac fly counts as an "At-bat" for OBP but not for AVG. So if in 5 at-bats you hit one single and one sac fly your OBP would be .200 but your AVG would be .250. This is totally stupid, but yeah early on in a season it can result in some weird slash lines. Also, I think if you get thrown out trying for a double, it still counts as a single as far as AVG is concerned (but obviously not OBP), but I'm not sure about that one.

ah! v interesting.

theres a new 7-day DL? cool

its for concussions. which is dumb because it reinforces the idea that concussions are less of an injury than other injuries

also the jays managed to avoid it w/ yunel which is stupid as he's showing concussion symptoms

I think if you get thrown out trying for a double, it still counts as a single as far as AVG is concerned (but obviously not OBP)

No, a hit always counts in OBP. You were on base until you were thrown out.

it would make sense tho, in a way. more so than not excluding sacrifices.

xxxp I dunno minor concussions are really not a big deal in baseball. I don't know if those even go diagnosed or what, but I think it's a good idea. Like, most teams don't put all their injuries on the 15-day and I'm guessing most concussion victims don't end up there currently

btw I'm not really too sure about the rule about stretching out a double, I definitely remember being convinced that it worked that way at some point, but I could be wrong

AVG is a lot more complex than it often gets credit for!

OBP tells you how often the hitter avoids making an out at the plate. as soon as the hitter reaches first base safely they're now considered a baserunner and if they fail to stretch the hit into a double it's a baserunning error and not a failure to get on base.

TEX-BAL in a delay, so I guess I'll stick w/ Hudson v Lee and the end of this Giants-Cards tragedy.

if you strike out and reach 1B on a wild pitch, does that count toward your OBP?

i doubt it

that'd be a reached-on-error which aren't included in OBP

or the same status as reached-on-error at least, don't think passed balls/wild pitches are counted as errors in a box score

if the reds lose (they're down 3-1 in the 9th right now) and the cards win (they're up 5-3 in the 6th), there will be a 4-way tie for first between stl/chi/cin/mil. not sure why i'm so excited by this possibility 18 games into the season but hey

― ZERO TAXES (Z S), Wednesday, April 20, 2011 7:10 PM (3 hours ago)

TRUE PARITY ITT

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/baseball/mlb/04/21/expanded.playoffs.ap/index.html?eref=sihp

NEW YORK (AP) -- Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig expects the playoffs to expand from eight teams to 10 for the 2012 season.

MAKE IT STOP

http://imgs.sfgate.com/chronicle/pictures/2011/04/24/042411-424x499-sportscorner.jpg

LOL

expanding the # of teams eligible to the # of teams - and years - that ever existed BUT IS THAT ENOUGH?

It makes me ill, after all the mouth/tongue/throat cancer in the league, to see players still dipping and chewing. wtf

fuck this expanded playoffs nonsense

the fact that there are playoffs AT ALL is an abomination and contrary to the spirit of the founding fathers

i hope eventually it's like soccer and there are reg. season trophies and playoff trophies and we just kind of treat them as two separate things.

that would be worst of all!

everyone gets an award!

no it wouldn't! would suppress any notion that they playoffs determine anything other than who was lucky enough to put together some wins in the playoffs.

morbius aren't you aghast at this watering down of "postseason stats"

yes, I fear all the Jeter and Pettitte ALL-TIME records will be smashed

srsly why have a 162-game season if a third of the teams are making it? they're probably putting in a one-game wildcard playoff, no?

I'm basically okay with adding a second wild-card team. That's about my limit--unfortunately, the slippery-slope principle suggests more and more teams will be added down the line. Career postseason records no longer have much meaning, and probably haven't for quite a while. But last year's postseason was pretty entertaining; I don't think the quality of postseason play was harmed by the introduction of the wild-card, and I doubt that it'll be harmed by a second wild-card team.

xp exactly; expanded playoffs only diminish the importance of the regular season, which is huge as it is.

if anything, they should be making the divisional round best-of-seven and the WS best-of-nine. try to take out a little bit of the variance in the game.

...without baseball lasting until Christmas.

When I'm World Dictator: four seven-team divisions, 162-game season, best of nine CS, best of nine WS, traveling Jeff Loria and Bud Selig dunk tanks, free ice cream for everybody.

don't get the Big Joe McGinnity-era 9-game WS suggestions, wtf?

i think it'll backfire on them pretty quickly ratings-wise when, say, a 95-win red sox or yankees wild card team loses the one game playoff to a 87-win oakland team

You can have your seven-game series as long as the dunk tanks and ice cream stay.

xpost

is it really going to be a one-game playoff??

decided by a coin toss.

home run derby imo

guys, how can the owners make more money unless the playoffs are expanded.

THINK ABOUT THE OWNERS HERE

I'm basically okay with adding a second wild-card team.

Just one more, bringing the total number of WC teams to two, i.e. total number of teams in the playoff per league to five? Do you suggest a bye round/play-in game?

I haven't heard Shulman say too many stupid things, but Ike Davis is the Mets' prime "untouchable," not Wright? He's wacky in Shastaland.

a) he's canadian
b) he's served his time as dick vitale's play-by-play man

so he's ok in my book

I guess b) means he won't be challenging Orel on "productive outs", being grateful he's not working with a talking-dog analyst anymore.

Do ILB'ers think in-market/out-of-market distinctions and "local" blackouts will last, or are they going the way of the dodo eventually?

justin.tv imho

I know about justin.tv; that wasn't the question.

eventually we're all dead

everyone's in a helpful mood today!

I think local blackouts and such will exist until the current model sustaining them collapses. I speculate that it will collapse (and they will subsequently ceases to exist) before baseball itself disappears, and sooner than Western civilization ceases to be, and sooner than humanity will cease to be. If I had to prognosticate I'd guess that we'll be done with blackout local games sometime before 2025.

and that'll be the least of our problems

mordy otm

betancourt made a crazy glove flip double play tonight

Do ILB'ers think in-market/out-of-market distinctions and "local" blackouts will last, or are they going the way of the dodo eventually?

― Stomp! in the name of love (WmC), Sunday, May 8, 2011 10:26 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

if you follow the logic behind blackouts it's pretty comical:

i can't view a local game online because it's blacked out, i also can't get to a tv set right now. that blackout protection is in place to prop up the nielsen ratings and make sure that online and portable devices don't erode those numbers. media buyers use those nielsen numbers (established in the 1960's) to determine the size of audience, and commensurate value and dollar amount they are willing to pay to reach that audience.

so an outdated broken metric plus the fact that no one knows how to consolidate online and mobile audience numbers into the tv viewership numbers is why you can't watch your local team wherever and whenever you want to.

Maury Brown from the Biz of Baseball has covered this issue very well for the last few years (also a map to see who get what):

http://www.bizofbaseball.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5155:mlb-extra-innings-and-mlbtv-consumers-deserve-better-treatment-by-mlb&catid=26:editorials&Itemid=39

Since this is the beginning of the season, the annual rite of passage hits my in-box and Twitter feed. "Is MLB going to do anything about the blackout policy?" Here’s the short answer: No.

And, it’s not just, "No" this year, it’s likely to be years to come – maybe never – before the Lords of Baseball decide to do the right thing for its best customers. When asked if the topic of the blackout policy had been a serious topic for the owners to discuss as part of any recent agenda items, a high placed MLB source said, "It has certainly been a topic of conversation at owners meetings but it is a complicated issue with the regional TV networks that have contractual rights to specific territories."

To that I say, bollocks...

Was watching the Civil Rights Game ceremonies, and I think Jesse Jackson is losing it as far as cognitive abilities (shaddup Morbs). He did ok introducing Ernie Banks (though the intro was only one sentence), but kept trying to put a medal around Banks' neck while Banks was trying to get a hug and a handshake first.

Oakland general manager Billy Beane became the first MLB executive to issue a directive to a catcher on his team in the aftermath of the home-plate collision that ended the season of Giants catcher Buster Posey.

Beane told A's catcher Kurt Suzuki he wanted him to avoid putting himself in harm's way.

"I said to him, 'I don't want you planting yourself in front of the plate waiting to get creamed. You're an Athletic catcher -- be athletic,' " Beane told ESPN.

"I don't subscribe to the theory you should be a crash-test dummy," Beane said he told Suzuki. "I don't want to lose you for six months."

Beane said he joked with Suzuki that he can only think of a couple runs in major league history that would make it worth taking such a risk.

The directive, which Beane shared with A's manager Bob Geren, takes the onus off Suzuki, who will now not have to worry about criticism if he steps to the side and opts for a sweep tag.

There have been similar discussions in other organizations that have not yet been made public, according to major league sources.

As for any potential rules changes to protect catchers, which have been suggested by some after the Posey injury, an MLB source said there haven't been a lot of conversations in the league office, but that the Giants today reached out to discuss their ideas.

"you're an Athletic -- be athletic" would be a good season rolling thread title

mlb draft coming up in a couple days. kinda excited for it even tho my team is now controlled by mlb and unable to sign players over slot. that being said Ive read that the draft is crazy deep and I think we can still get value without "cheating".

http://www.plunkeveryone.com/

that's a great site.

i sometimes want to start a thread in the vein of "local announcers subtly phrasing things in awesome ways" thanks to my local guys.
just a few minutes ago they were talking about the Yankees game and how Tex had just got plunked and then went on to say that the yankees "did not cope with that well" in regards to the subsequent scuffle. made me laugh.

24/30 teams have btwn 28-36 wins

no wonder some ppl can't tell which teams are "awful"

Opinions on possible realignment?

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=6651634

15/15 doesn't make sense to me. I don't like the idea that some team will be doing interleague on the last three days of the season.

Two highly ranked executives believe the Houston Astros would be a possibility, because a switch to the AL for Houston would foster a rivalry between the Astros and the Texas Rangers.

Oh, boy. Can't wait.

why not send Milwaukee back?

Q: has the '...to foster a rivalry' method of alignment/scheduling ever worked?

A: No

i think that it has, actually, although it won't matter until the rivalry teams are both good, which i don't see the astros being for a while

*does not apply to professional sports teams in florida

to prev. question: why would there have to be an interleague game "every day"?

i honestly don't understand why that would be a thing

16 vs. 14 = even
15 vs. 15 = odd

odd = at least one team in each league that would need to play interleague game.

cause you'd have 15 teams in each league, ie 7 play 7 in each league then the 15th teams play each other.

neyer suggested pitting shitty teams (based on the previous season's record) against each other in the final week for the interleague teams. it'll bite you sooner or later, but whatever.

you wouldn't HAVE to have interleague every day but the alternative is staggering the schedule in a goofy way such that teams have weekend days off. right now every team plays every fri/sat/sun which is of course the optimal thing financially.

it wouldn't be literally every day -- probably skip some mondays/thursdays -- but yeah

just create two more franchises, duh

It would probably be better to get rid of two franchises.

Nah, they're too profitable. Even the Pirates are raking in the dough.

Are there any clubs in the red besides the Dodgers?

i think it would be more fun to guess what B-grade cities might qualify for a MLB franchise.

Las Vegas, Portland, Sacramento

Hartford, New Jersey

hamilton, winnipeg, fremont

haha, wrt Fremont... Oakland's AAA affiliate in Sacramento was outdrawing the A's for a while a season or two ago (?)... Sacramento is <60 miles from Oakland.

portland would be a decent choice for the AL, it might be nice for seattle to have a nearby regional rival as opposed to ones that happen to share a time zone. maybe for the NL, give chicago a team? : /

so apparently Colbert has some bet with mlb.com and if he wins he takes over their twitter feed?

ronnie belliard is retiring after tonight's lehigh valley ironpigs game

hbryant42 Howard Bryant
MLB sources tell me the most viable market for relocating a team is also the most contentious: NYC

hbryant42 Howard Bryant
San Antonio, Portland, Las Vegas are all "less attractive than they seem. The best city is San Jose, but it is for now, off limits."

Neyer

http://mlb.sbnation.com/2011/7/13/2274319/mlb-realignment-for-reals

And just like that, the Clemens trial is over.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/07/11/national/w020115D09.DTL&tsp=1

Nice

http://www.baseball-reference.com/friv/trade-partners.cgi

apparently the pirates beat the braves tonight (3-1) without their first baseman ever touching the ball

how is that even

you know, suzyn, you just can't predict baseball

Altanta didn't ground out a single time...how often does that happen?

This made me lol this morning. Grats, Berto!

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/blog/big_league_stew/post/What-the-heck-Roberto-Alomar-takes-fan-8217-s-?urn=mlb-wp13874

tim mccarver just called david freese a brown-eyed handsome man

the fox game i have is **rubs eyes** tampa at seattle ??

Not sure where to put this--I have learned that the starting-pitchers-doing-really-well thread has a very specific purview...AL Cy Young: shaping up as an historic three-way race between Verlander, Weaver, and Sabathia. (You could stretch things to include Haren and Beckett, but realistically, it'll probably come down to those three.) It'd be Verlander or Weaver today, but Sabathia sure is coming on strong.

can't see how it's anyone but Verlander. Sabathia is having probably his best full season but Verlander is just sick good right now.

The oldschool James Cy Predictor has Verlander with a narrow lead over CC and Weaver.

and in the NL, it's got to be Halladay right?

Verlander should just join the Phillies, wouldn't baseball fans just love that

The AL's so relatively close at this point, I think it's completely up for grabs. Each guy still has 10 or 11 starts left.

Honestly I don't think Weaver has a shot, as good as he's been

I feel like the voters REALLY want to give it to CC one of these years so yeah if he goes on a big run he'll probably get it

If Verlander completed his second no-hitter though they could have given it to him right then. Even the new school SABR voters (do they exist?) have to appreciate that.

No-hitters are usually great games, but dumb luck is all that generally separates them from 1- to 4-hitters. So, wrong.

By the Prospectus version of WAR, Weaver has a whisker of a lead over Verlander. And Kershaw leads Halladay! So I like that version.

Right now, for me, it's between Weaver and Verlander. Going on basic stats (but not W-L), I'd probably give the edge to Verlander -- more innings, lower WHIP, higher K rate.

Is this the page where you got the James rankings, Morbius?

http://espn.go.com/mlb/features/cyyoung

By that system, Verlander/Weaver/Sabathia are even closer than I would have guessed. One thing that doesn't really make sense to me is why Wilson is ranked so much higher than Rivera.

I'm not arguing that, but we live in an era where there are still voters who tout pitcher wins like it's a big deal. Obviously no hitters are mostly luck but this isn't Liriano we're talking about. Even if you took away Verlander's (theoretical) no-hitters, he's still a frontrunner for the Cy.

Yeah, Kershaw for the NL.

I feel like the voters REALLY want to give it to CC one of these years

He's already won one, though, so if that ever does factor into the voting, I can't see that it would here. I do agree that, rightly or wrongly, a second no-hitter would have helped him in the voting quite a bit (all else being more or less equal).

"Him" meaning Verlander.

Should the AL Cy race continue to be tight through the end of the year, you can bet some pro-Verlander voter will write an article about the recent Weaver-Verlander duel and cite Weaver's tantrum as the Real Moment the Victor Was Determined.

xxp I mean they want to give him one as a Yankee. I read a bunch of articles where people (dumb people, but voters nonetheless) made a big deal out of how pitching as a Yankee is so much more important, because blah blah blah pitcher wins blah blah blah history of the game blah blah blah Derek Jeter

in terms of who really deserves it though, it's Verlander's to lose

I've been mulling over the his-turn-to-win idea...It's definitely led to a number of Academy Awards, undoubtedly a lot of them pretty silly. I don't know about baseball. Something that has come into play with MVPs on occasion, though, is his-turn-not-to-win: Pendleton over Bonds in '91, Howard over Pujols in '06, and I'm sure there have been other instances of this.

Meant to add: if it's close between Halladay and Kershaw, I could see Kershaw benefiting from that.

I've never understood how MVP voting really works ever since the year Giambi and Kent won one despite A-Rod being the best hitter by a good margin (2000?) I was also susprised to find out that George Brett only won it once. Could be worse - the Golden Glove is probably the most confusing vote of all (AKA, "fuck it, just give it to Jeter")

Actually, Kent over Bonds in 2000 is a good example of his-turn-not-to-win (at a point when Bonds was still sitting on three MVPs). Not that Kent wasn't great that year, but Bonds had the better year.

well, yeah, that's why I'm saying I don't know how MVP voting works. maybe Bonds was such a frontrunner that people were looking for reasons not to vote for him? like I realize how boring it is to give Barry Bonds 7 MVP awards (is that right?) but it sort of devalues it when you're intentionally NOT voting for the best hitter. still, I was more confused about Giambi over ARod

No, I don't get that one either. (Somehow, Rodriguez finished third behind Thomas.) I don't even get it looking at some of the most traditional things voters used to give great weight to: Giambi and Rodriguez were almost even in HR and RBI, and Oakland just edged Seattle by half a game for the divisional title. Giambi's slash stats were better, but not inordinately so. When you put that on one side, and the huge difference between a shortstop and a 1B/DH-type on the other, I don't know what the voters were thinking either.

slugging first basemen have the most MVP bias benefit through history.

The 2000 AL MVP vote made sense at the time, Thomas had a big comeback year after lots of people had written him off and the White Sox won the most games in the league, Giambi led the league in OBP/SLG/OPS, and ARod was a douche who everyone hated (even though the Mariners made the playoffs). In August, I remember people saying that the MVP was between Delgado and Thomas, but Delgado cooled off a bit and Giambi finished strong (and his team made the playoffs).

Kershaw and Halladay are both deserving. Normally you'd think that with two closely matched candidates, the guy who won last year would be at a disadvantage in the voting, but Halladay was underrated/overlooked for a long time and I get the feeling that the writers still feel like they owe him, awards-wise, especially when he's pitching so well.

I'd forgotten that that was Carlos's run at the Triple Crown, also how incredible Giambi was down the stretch (.396/13/32 in Sept./Oct.). I still like to think I would've voted for A-Rod, but maybe I would have been swayed by Giambi's finish too. (Was A-Rod hated then? I thought all that started when he signed the Texas contract.)

It kicked into another gear when he signed with Texas (and was robbed of a couple of MVP awards, much worse than in '00) but the hate had kicked in once he made it clear that he'd be leaving Seattle to make big money elsewhere. This was after Griffey and Unit had left and was at the height of the whole big market/small market/contraction talk, so people jumped at the chance to paint him as a disloyal villain.

"ARod was a douche who everyone hated"

This was pre-Tom Hicks crazy ass contract so I'm not sure everyone hated him that much at this point. Giambi had a monster Sept/Oct and the A's won the Division which explains the vote. No doubt on stats alone though, the vote is indefensible.

Was interested in how Giambi's finish compared to a couple other famous Septembers, Yaz in '67 (too young at the time to know about that one except through what I've read) and Caminiti in '96:

Yaz -- 9 HR, 26 RBI, .417/.504/.760
Caminiti -- 9 HR, 23 RBI, .375/.465/.750
Giambi -- 13 HR, 32 RBI, .396/.536/.844

If you balance Fenway against how much less offense there was in the '60s, I'd probably give that one to Yaz. Caminiti also hit 14 HR in August...23 in the final two months--wow.

of course, ALL the games count equally, but try explaining that to sportswriters.

nyjer morgan tweetz:

I went and got my Bird Licence & I hope tha Nation got therez too! AAAAAHHHHH

Keep Throwin Up tha T! U tha MAN! Let's Go BREWERS!Let's Go BREWERS!Let's Go BREWERS!Let's Go BREWERS! Ahhhhhh

AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!! Layta Sk8taz!!! I'm still fired up

To all tha Bird Hunters out n tha Nation, get ur bird licence and get ready for 3 dayz of gaming! Aaaaahhhhh!!!

Letz keep this Sheet rolling Nation!!! GOTTA GO AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

booooooooooooooo!!!! Aaaaahhhh

PLUSH ALERT: I DECLEARED SWEEPAGE DAY 2 THA WHOLE NATION! AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!

And a PAUL BUNYAN chop 4 tha AX! Aaaaaahhhhhh

@AmandaMarieSFG aaaaaaahhhhhhh

The AL Central's lousiness might be overstated. The division's teams are 55-71 versus the AL East, 61-64 versus the AL West. Only the Twins have been clobbered by the AL East (8-19). No one has been clobbered by the AL West.

DET: 12-10 vs East, 15-15 vs West
CLE: 13-15 vs East, 9-11 vs West
CHI: 12-16 vs East, 12-11 vs West
MIN: 8-19 vs East, 11-13 vs West
KCR: 10-11 vs East, 14-14 vs West

Fascinating, I know.

The TPlush twitter is incredible. I loved "PLUSH ALERT: There was an untucking at Fenway"

Pass the popcorn.

http://espn.go.com/new-york/mlb/story/_/id/6830659/mlb-looking-alex-rodriguez-illegal-poker

lol @ a-rod. I got to admit, though, it's a fun game if you're bankrolled for it.

----

In another direction, have we ever done this before? --

What one thing do you love most about the sport of baseball?
What thing do you hate most about it?

Love: no clock. It's over when it's over.
Hate: at the pro level, tobacco use onfield.

I can't really narrow this down to one thing. But I do love how it's such a "casual" sport, in that it's perfect to listen to on the radio while driving or while at work, although I say that mostly because of Bob Uecker, but it translates better to radio or say, cell phone updates better than any other sport. You can take it in in so many ways. Also baseball games are really fun to go to.

Hate - the fact that ARod may actually be suspended for that. Maybe also the "no salary cap" thing but that's a whole different can of worms.

Love: stats.
Hate: when stats become the be-all and end-all.

Hate: any analyst who makes more than a passing reference to RBIs or pitcher wins. I remember some analyst saying that Milwaukee was in trouble because Braden Looper was a 13-win pitcher, and, you know, how are you going to replace those wins. Felix winning the AL Cy over CC was such a huge victory for the SABR crowd, and yet it seemed so hollow since it's so incredibly obvious how useless of a stat pitcher wins are.

http://www.etsy.com/listing/65893369/vintage-box-of-centaur-poker-chips

http://ny-image0.etsy.com/il_fullxfull.208107500.jpg

http://oi54.tinypic.com/1197c5z.jpg

how deep is Bud gonna hafta make the pockets of his jacket the night A-Rod breaks Bonds' record? I guess he might wanna suspend him for long enough that that doesn't happen.

Love: the game (mostly)
Hate: the fans (mostly)

hate the game not the fans

I should define "fans" as "people in the ballpark"

Love: The combination of nerdery and sportsfanitude
Hate: Derek Jeter (actually: the assumption that Jeter is a God who merits your Worship)

yeah, there's really nothing wrong with Jeter if you just avoid NY media completely

LOVE: Vin Scully, Outfield Assists, Alyssa Milano
HATE: Selig, Greedy Teams with Zero Finesse, The DH

Love: Over one hundred years, the benchmarks of excellence remain the same (hitting .300, ERA of 3.00 etc.)
Hate: The long pants that go down to the cleats- please bring back the stirrups

love: the science of hitting and pitching, infinite variation, randomness vs. skill, discrete events that add up to a magical whole
hate: umpiring, unwritten rules, the tradition of ignorance that still thrives in the game, stathead vs. old-school rhetorical battles.

love: more than anything, the pace of the game. and i'm with clemenza, love the stats
hate: salary discrepancy between teams, say, between yankees and tampa bay

LOVE: The daily ritual of listening to baseball on my radio.
HATE: Austin Kearns.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBfdl6hNZ9k

i haven't given it a ton of thought, but i was recently thinking that one of the things i love about baseball is how big it is. there are so many games and so many teams that tons of things are happening in mlb (players playing amazingly, narratives playing out) that you don't know about unless you're spending hours reading about it a day. so there's always unknown stuff to discover and teams that play yours and you get to see players play that you may have heard about in passing but have never seen. in the age of the internet that's a kind of mystery and discovery that happens very infrequently for me

love: that it is everyday, those highs and lows. being able to bitch daily because of the internet.
hate: that i love it as much as i do, as it take up way too much time in my life. the money aspect, which breaks off in so many different directions.

love: following a team for the whole season. it's kinda like an endurance challenge... for ppl that like to sit on the couch and watch tv. also having a team that you care about playing practically every day. also fantasy baseball.

hate: hmmmm. mostly that national baseball coverage is restricted to like the same four teams. i'm tired of watching the phillies & the mets every saturday. i would've liked to have been able to watch some of those giants-dbacks games this week. which i kinda did since mlb network, but not full games.

one of the things that is really fascinating to me about baseball that i love is when a team that you follow plays a team that it rarely plays (say interleague or a cross divisional opponent) & you get to see the middle relievers for other teams. it's weird to me that like i know the ins & outs & current stamina levels for all the marlins middle relievers but when we played, say, the dbacks or the mariners i was like "who the fuck are all these guys"

One thing I really love is HOF/MVP/Cy Young arguments--good, close ones, where there are legitimate pointsto be made on both sides. This ties into what I wrote above: "Love: stats/Hate: when stats become the be-all and end-all." I'm not crazy about pulling in stats like WAR that, to me, always feel like they're meant to end those arguments, not nudge them along. They always feel like the "a-ha!" moment in the argument, where the other person is saying, "Okay, that settles that--next question?"

Just to clarify: I have no problem bringing in WAR as another point on one side or the other. I like putting everything into the mix and wading through it all.

love: stats and the discreteness of the game; outlier performances; the logic vs instinct duality that frames 90% of baseball arguments

hate: mlb's failure to a) put the steroid era behind it and b) properly market up and coming players. these are arguably related too i think?

oh a big one i forgot:
love: ballpark idiosyncracies and just how all the parks are different in general

love: putting on some random game between 2 middling/bad teams and watching it intently

love: games that go past 15 innings and feature middle infielders pitch scoreless innings

i mean the idea of a team literally using up all their players and having to resort to really unorthodox strategies to survive the 18th inning is awesome. even better that theoretically the game could last until the next morning.

Love: How in almost any small town in america there's a minor league team or D-1 college team within three hours. The whole spring-summer-fall life metaphor. STATZ.

Hate: cosign the inability for MLB to deal w/ steroid era. The old guard of the BWAA.

cosign almost all these loves and hates

Baseball sent a warning to its major and minor league players last week that may sound odd, if not comical, but is a sign of these drug-testing times: stop ingesting deer antler spray.

this thread on the front of yahoo is killing me

http://l.yimg.com/a/p/sp/tools/med/2011/08/ipt/1312523643.jpg

er, photo

omg

mariners called up trayvon robinson

dodgers may have called up eovaldi from double-a

that a sugar free red bull?

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/blog/big_league_stew/post/Radio-host-Tony-Bruno-calls-Ramirez-an-8216-il?urn=mlb-wp15190

Bruno was talked about a bit in the Giants thread but yeah what he typed (it's not like he said it on an on air rant) is awful. he was fired by a Phillies station in June and on KNBR in San Francisco August 1 (a bit of bitterness maybe). he should get a lot of heat for this and rightful so.

looks like A-Rod is playing Newman's role in a remake of The Sting

Verlander pitches well and wins, Weaver's brilliant in a no-decision, Sabathia gets hammered. I think C.C. is probably out of it now--the chance of him overtaking both guys would seem to be minimal. Upper hand still to Verlander, but I noticed Weaver's run support is under four runs a game (3.77 vs. Verlander's 4.98). That may come into play if they're still close come October. (I can't do it right now, but I want to see what Sabathia's record is minus his starts against Boston.)

C.C. vs. Boston: 0-4, 7.20
C.C. vs. rest of league: 16-2, 2.11

Who do you guys think are the top 5 relievers this season? I'd go with:

Craig Kimbrel (insane strikeout rate, doesn't give up HR's)
Sergio Romo (1.21 FIP in 36.2 innings - incredible)
Joel Hanrahan (probably one of the best groundball pitchers I've ever seen)
Johnny Venters (has a 75% GB rate over 66 innings)
John Axford (homer pick, but he's been ridiculously good since blowing his first save of the season, plus is doing incredible despite a high BABIP)

I was gonna get MLB.TV for the last 2 months to fill the vacuum of being cable-free at last, but why bother? Of the few playoff slots left up for grabs, I don't give a damn.

Jim Thome has never been accused of using steroids or performance-enhancing drugs.

http://www.buydirectinc.net/media/03/a20791b130fd4b7d82c63c_m.JPG

People do get bulkier as they age, it's a fact.

Yes, I'm familiar with that, and I'm sure you're familiar with journalists/analysts/fans/etc. who use that transformation as the only evidence needed to condemn certain (less nice) players.

obv, "My guy is clean" is just fan sentiment w/ no basis in evidence

morbz, i haven't used my mlb.tv account since we moved back to philly. do u want my login info?

nah, that's OK. It would only keep me from getting other things done. Thanks tho.

http://espn.go.com/mlb/blog/_/name/stark_jayson/id/6851295/the-most-unlikely-30-game-hitting-streak

Craig Kimbrel (insane strikeout rate, doesn't give up HR's)
Sergio Romo (1.21 FIP in 36.2 innings - incredible)
Joel Hanrahan (probably one of the best groundball pitchers I've ever seen)
Johnny Venters (has a 75% GB rate over 66 innings)
John Axford (homer pick, but he's been ridiculously good since blowing his first save of the season, plus is doing incredible despite a high BABIP)

― frogbs, Monday, August 8, 2011 10:29 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark

romo is overrated (if that's possible) -- he's used really selectively, has faced the least amount of batters among qualified relievers -- he's good but his stats are a bit of a mirage

my picks:

kimbrel, rivera, (wide margin) venters, robertson, papelbon

romo is overrated (if that's possible) -- he's used really selectively

so much for high-leverage situational pitching... lol

well sure, but the fact of the matter is that his stats look much more impressive bcuz he's facing a really small amount of batters

i'm not shitting on romo or anything, he'd prob be like number 6 or 7 on my list

aroldis' stats have been absurd since he's been back up

21 IP 5 H 38 K 3 ER

btw, re lucky bullshit: hitting streaks > no-hitters

romo is overrated (if that's possible) -- he's used really selectively, has faced the least amount of batters among qualified relievers -- he's good but his stats are a bit of a mirage

yeah when I put him on here I had no idea they just straight up don't use him vs. lefties

i'd love to see chapman become great since he's so much fun to watch but i'm not convinced he isn't going to start just walking everybody again and possibly end someone's career

i suppose verlander is now the al cy frontrunner for sure

btw, re lucky bullshit: hitting streaks > no-hitters

This doesn't intuitively make sense to me. Ignoring Uggla for a second, the idea that a mediocre hitter would luck into a lengthy hitting streak seems mathematically improbable. There's a list of all the 30-game+ streaks on Baseball Almanac; by my count there have been 55, and 21 were by Hall of Fame players (if you count Pujols and Guerrero). Among the other 34, there are a lot of pretty good Vada Pinson/Eric Davis-type players. I know you need a little luck here and there, maybe that's what you mean, but guys hitting .200 don't put together long hit streaks.

Um, until this year.

I guess what I'm saying is that if you went through all the no-hitters ever pitched, I'd be very surprised if the percentage of HOF'ers exceeds 15 or 20%. A no-hitter seems much more a product of luck to me than a reasonably long hitting streak. I can't tell from your post which you think is luckier.

i think morbs was saying that hitting streaks are more impressive than no-hitters? who knows. i agree with you, in either case

he's up to 33 now

this is most definitely the weirdest story going on right now and honestly I hope he busts DiMaggio's streak as it would freak out everyone from the old-timey baseball analysts to the new-timey statisticians

^yesss

can i go on record saying this will never happen to set myself up for maximum clownage if it does happen?

No chance. As much as I'd like to see him get into the 40s, I'd bet money it's over within the next few days.

I guess what I was trying to say is I give even less of a shit about hitting streaks.

ie, a guy getting a single in 5 AB has a lousy day. At least a no-hitter is always (?) an effective outing.

Morbs, I think all the thoughts in your head are fighting for status as What You Least Give a Shit About -- they look like the Three Stooges when they go through doorways.

If the pressure to extend any streak causes a player to lose focus and play badly, I don't think it's as applicable in this case. I think the pressure to justify that contract when he was hitting .173 caused him more stress than the streak is causing. He seems on an even emotional keel (not too-tightly-wrapped like Kenny Rogers), leaving it pretty much up to luck.

Clemenza, I'll bet you $5 he makes it to 40.

I give a shit about things ballplayers do to win games, to which hitting streaks are only tangentially related.

sad that hits are so unimportant in baseball

*throws up hands*

uggla is hitting .377 with 15 homers (!) and 27 ks during the streak

and would be if he gotten zero hits in one game, and one more in a different one.

of course, he's only just tied logan morrison for the nl's second-longest on-base streak of the season, and look where that got lomo

omg morbz your shtick can be so tiresome xp

morbs is "right" but it's also pretty much impossible to have a 30-game hit streak and not play awesome during it so get over it iirc homie

I don't see anybody saying the streak has any statistical relevance. It's just a fun thing that's happening.

and if a pitcher who threw a no hitter had given up one less hit in his next game, and one more in the game where he threw a no hitter, it's the same thing......

WmC and kev otm

Joe Posnanski figured that the odds of Uggla having a 33-game hitting streak at any point in his career so far is 3500 to 1
Look, baseball is all about dumb stats that don't really mean that much (ERA, RBIs, Pitcher Wins), I'm as interested in this as I would be in a pitcher who was trying to keep an era under 1.00 for an entire season or something

I'm not watching ANY baseball except in person these days, so perhaps there's a reason I'm not fitting in here these days.

I just don't get whatever point you're trying to make other than "x is less important than y, so quit caring about x."

I'm saying that hitting streaks are overhyped, and if you find them "fun" great, but they crowd out more germane* topics that the baseball media could cover.

* TO ME, YEAH YEAH YEAH

I'm saying that hitting streaks are overhyped

no argument with this at all

Funny thing about hype, though -- I have almost no memory of Utley's 2006 streak, but Molitor's and Rose's streaks are fairly vivid in my memory.

I don't think anyone is really saying the hitting streak makes the hitter, just that it is a really cool statistical abberation that is really fun to follow

the brewers are wearing jerseys that say 'bierbrauer' while the bucs' say 'piraten'

would totally buy a bierbrauer jersey, even tho i'm not a fan.

Is it Amish Day?

ah well, streak's over, nothing to see here, move along citizens.

I was just going to check this second about Uggla. I feel stupid for writing him off--I would have much rather been wrong and had him get into the 40s. I remember Rose's streak well. I managed to find the game where it was broken on the radio, and remember Garber getting him out (to end the game? that I don't remember). Even though DiMaggio's record would not require the game itself to change for it to be broken--unlike, say, Cy Young's career-wins record--I think they're more or less equally impossible. The media pressure of a long hit streak in this day and age is unbearable. McGwire and Sosa went through it, but they had as much margin of error as they needed. Even in '41, I think DiMaggio developed ulcers. Today you could multiply that by a factor of a few hundred thousand.

Its such a weird thing because you can't really control how many AB's you get per game. Molitor's hitting streak was broken b/c Rick Manning hit a walkoff with Molitor on the on-deck circle - to this day he's still famous for that, which is ridiculous but it shows how much this can mean to some people. I figured it out that Uggla would have had game 57 of the streak vs. St. Louis - I almost wonder if TLR would get him out the first time then IBB him the rest of the game for some god awful reason

And Manning was booed by his home crowd! I'd forgotten all about that. There are just so many factors that conspire against a hit streak. All it takes to shut it down is running into a third or fourth starter pitching a great game--which happens, what, every day?

http://www.battingstanceguy.com/2011/08/16/slow-news-day

i am honestly in tears right now. baseball stance guy parodies a bunch of the baseball talking heads

kurkjian and olney in particular

pedro gomez & ken rosenthal were my favorites

The AL Cy Young has just completely turned around in the space of two weeks--from a potentially historic three-way to a possible unanimous win for Verlander.

http://www.battingstanceguy.com/2011/08/16/slow-news-day

i am honestly in tears right now. baseball stance guy parodies a bunch of the baseball talking heads

― tine nic (k3vin k.), Tuesday, August 16, 2011 11:47 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

omg this is the best thing ever

WAY better than the stances.

"Johnny Damon is a pleasant man"

OK, but where is BucCarver?

holy god in heaven @ that home run by andruw jones. off the face of the 3rd deck - had to be 440 feet

I know it's early, but I was looking at MVP candidates this morning, trying to figure out who the writers will go for (i.e., taking the standings into consideration, thereby eliminating people like Kemp and Tulowitzki and Bautista). As things stand now, I guess they'd give it to one of the Milwaukee guys, hopefully Braun rather than Fielder--but I could see them reverting to 1976 and giving it to Fielder if he ends up with a flashy RBI total. (To reiterate: I'm trying to guess how the writers will vote.) Gonzalez in the AL, but if enough of them ever decide to end their long-standing elimination of pitchers from serious consideration, I wouldn't mind seeing them do it this year and go with Verlander. Even in WAR, he's only behind Bautista.

Think Pedroia and Granderson also in the mix despite their teams' yawwwwwwningly overwhelming race to the playoffs.

and Ellsbury. Which means really, if 3 or 4 NYY/BOS split votes, Bautista may sneak in, standings be damned.

Pedroia and Ellsbury both; Granderson should benefit from Boston vote-splitting; and I'd throw in Michael Young, too. Think Verlander has a chance? Last pitcher to win was Eckersley in '92, last starter Clemens in '86. Not sure what the best finish for a pitcher is since then.

Pedro finished 2nd and 5th in MVP in '98-99, so it sure ain't likely to happen for Verlander.

My hope is that either Braun or Fielder wins it, it depends on how hot they are to end the season. But they both deserve it. RBI totals aside Fielder seems to just have those weeks where he's on base every single time. Right now Justin Upton is definitely in the mix.

AL - I would have to say Bautista right now, but Pedroia could also win this, I definitely wouldn't vote for Granderson though

Bautista's just having a monster year. I can't imagine him not getting it esp. since vote splitting'll hurt the Red Sox candidates.

NL's completely up in the air.

I generally don't follow MVP speculation -- are Kimbrel or Venters on the radar?

Bautista's slowed down considerably since April/May, though:

April/May: .363/.504/.786, 20 HR/38 RBI
June/July/August: .280/.421/.529, 15 HR/41 RBI

Maybe he clinched it in the first two months, or maybe he'll finish strong. If not, I don't think they'll let a guy on a fourth-place team back into the award.

yea i dont think bautistas gonna get it, failing having a really big last month

I shouldn't be so dismissive of my hometown team--we may yet finish third.

Yeah, the Bautista MVP talk has totally died down, but the BOS/NYY/TEX players are going to split votes with their teammates (and none of them are having a standout year that really sets them apart (like Mauer and Hamilton the past two years). This really might be the year when a guy like Verlander sneaks in and wins. IIRC Pedro lost in '99 by being left off some ballots? I have a feeling more voters will be predisposed to voting for a pitcher, considering how many great pitching years we've seen in '10-'11.

how valuable is a guy really when he has two teammates also in the running for mvp?

You mean Cabrera and...Avila or Peralta? Or did you mean all the Boston/NY/Texas candidates?

the al mvp race is much less interesting to me than the nl mvp race

to me the al mvp race = bautista is the very clear winner, but who will the voters pick to screw him over? who_gives_a_shit.jpg

i was thinking of Boston 9this year) - with AGonz, Pedroia and Ellsbury all dominating.

how valuable is a guy really when he has two teammates also in the running for mvp?

Most valuable, if he's the best player in the league, which is what the award should be for, period.

they should just rename it 'most kickass player' and be done with this argument

i'm the mkp, i'm stupid with this rap shit

Doesn't Sporting News still give out their player of the year award? I'd absolutely hate to see the MVP replaced by a Highest WAR award or some such thing.

The Sporting News doesn't really exist anymore!

It does, though...online and in print. I mean, I know it's archaic, but it is out there. (Speaking of which, I saw Baseball Digest on the stand last week and was amused to see they've gone to an oversized format. You would think the main thing they'd still have going for them at this point would be a clear line of continuity with the past.)

in 299 plate appearances this season, nyjer morgan/tony plush has been hit by nine pitches and has walked eight times

I don't see how most valuable = best player. best player in the league may not be the linchpin that put them over the top. if they want it to be 'best player' award, then rename it IMO.

at least the chasm between the two is a lot smaller in basketball, where a player like a LeBron is the best and the most valuable.

"clutchest player"

most david eckstein player

best player on the best team

oh wait

Most Valuable Guerrero

"best player in the league may not be the linchpin that put them over the top."

It's true. The best player might be the glue that drives them to excellence.

Ignoring the mixed metaphor how do you determine a player essential lynchpinnedness or overtopacity?

ask A-Rod how he enjoyed his time as a Texas Ranger.

So if A-Rod had been more Michael Young-ish they would have been better team?

Determining the MVP by a dry, objective measure of who's the "best player," completely removing the context of how well his team does, makes as much sense to me as eliminating the post-season because the "best team" on paper doesn't always (I bet even less than half the time) win the World Series. Sometimes the writers get it wrong, and now and again they get it really wrong, just like now and again a team wins the World Series that has no business winning it. But so what? That's what great about the game--overachieving postseason teams, and arguments about who should win MVP and who should get into the Hall of Fame.

The point of all post-seasons is randomness. If they were predetermined it wouldn't be at all fun to watch. I don't think the point of the MVP/HoF voting should be that inferior seasons/players are rewarded. Some subjectivity is expected, but it should really only useful as a tiebreaker between guys who are fairly close statistically.

But don't inferior teams often get rewarded in the postseason by that randomness and by the brevity of each series? Honestly, I don't see the difference. I agree with you, that's what makes the postseason fun; just like I'd say that the room for subjective disagreement on the MVP/HOF is what makes those annual rituals fun. Isn't there some hitter's award given out by the league each year that's based solely on a formula--maybe the Aaron award? Couldn't tell you wins that in any given year. I just don't pay attention like I do with the voting awards. I'd also guess that your example of some-subjectivity-in-close-calls does in fact cover a lot of MVPs that have been given out.

"I'd also guess that your example of some-subjectivity-in-close-calls does in fact cover a lot of MVPs that have been given out."

Sure. But there are some pretty grossly undeserving MVPs too.

"Honestly, I don't see the difference."

Then I don't know what to tell you.

Ditto--that's usually the impasse we reach.

clemenza, change yr award to Best Player with Good Teammates.

It's an INDIVIDUAL award, I don't see the point of including team-quality factors.

And as with the Oscars, I really don't give a fuck who wins this hardware.

It's the MVP award, not Best Statistical Season award, and value does not exist in a vacuum--it needs context, just like intelligence or anything else. If you need your car fixed, a brain surgeon's no good to you; if you need brain surgery, a mechanic won't help you. You're working from the belief that value on a fourth-place team is equivalent to value on a divisional winner. I'm not.

But I've added awards to the list of things you don't give a fuck about, along with Triple Crowns and hitting streaks and all those other silly things that get in the way of our pure enjoyment of the game.

You have been wrong about this before and you continue to be. News at 11.

That car/brain surgeon analogy is bizarre.

if you switched matt kemp & justin upton, the diamondbacks would be no worse, and in fact they might actually be better. it's not matt kemp's fault that he's on the dodgers, and so he should be in the conversation for mvp, and he arguably could be the frontrunner

The more pertinent thing, I think, is that if you switched Justin Upton with a player 80% as good, the Diamondbacks might not be in first place; if you switched Matt Kemp with me, the Dodgers would still be exactly where they are, last place. So I think it's fair to say that Justin Upton's value should not be measured in the same way as Matt Kemp's--not if you interpret the name of the award literally.

well, if the dodgers switched matt kemp with you -- or even an actual replacement player -- they might be one of the worst teams in mlb history. that may seemingly diminish the contributions of matt kemp, but it's that he's not valuable to his team because, in this instance, the front office made a bunch of horrible personnel moves, leaving a shell of a major league team on the field

when you play this game you get into "most valuable player on a team that is good, but not too good, because then they're probably playing with too many good players, so that team could weather potentially losing them", and that's a crazy thing to do imo

I'm not sure what you guys want--is it that you don't want writers voting on the MVP, don't want an MVP award period, or...I'm not sure what. There are all sorts of imperfections and subjective calls in the voting, but if you went over all the winners throughout history, I think you'd find that most of them were pretty good picks--at least within the margin of being arguable. Yes, there's a strong bias against players who don't play on contenders, which is no less unfair than the bias against guys who play in hitter's parks winning batting titles. Your circumstances are what they are.

That should read "pitcher's parks."

clemenza, i think you're misunderstanding the argument: it's not that we want mlb to run a WAR scoreboard throughout the season, and whoever is at the top at the end wins MVP, because that's fair. i'm fine with subjective voting, and for people to argue vigorously about who the best player in the league is, and to vote for whoever they deem that to be. what i DON'T want is for people to disqualify someone who is having an amazing season bcuz they play on a shit team.

i.e. if you don't think matt kemp had the best season in the NL then fine, you could certainly make the argument that two or three or four other players had better years. but if you think he did have the better year, then he should probably be your MVP.

tell me what hitter accounts for the highest percentage of his team's total bases

j0rdan otm

I wouldn't disqualify anyone, and if I've left that impression, I didn't mean to. (I want everyone eligible, even pitchers, which is why I'm advocating for Verlander in the AL right now.) But I'd only start dipping down to third and fourth-place teams if a) somebody was having a truly phenomenal season, and b) there were no good candidates near the top of the standings. I don't see that being the case this year. Bautista and Kemp are having very good years, though hardly historic, and I think there are lots of candidates from the teams vying for their divisions.

bautista is having a demonstratively better year than anyone in the NL

whoops, AL. but NL too

Better than Verlander? Not to me.

You'll love this (I think it can be accessed by non-subscribers):

http://www.billjamesonline.com/panda_for_mvp/

well, if panda had kept that pace over the course of, say, 115 games then he'd definitely have a case for MVP. being a 4 win player in 84 games is really impressive. but it's hard to vote someone for MVP that has missed that many games.

clemenza, i think you're misunderstanding the argument: it's not that we want mlb to run a WAR scoreboard throughout the season, and whoever is at the top at the end wins MVP, because that's fair. i'm fine with subjective voting, and for people to argue vigorously about who the best player in the league is, and to vote for whoever they deem that to be. what i DON'T want is for people to disqualify someone who is having an amazing season bcuz they play on a shit team.

― J0rdan S., Monday, August 22, 2011 1:35 AM (2 hours ago)

yeah this pretty much gets at it - the argument is that we'd like sportswriters to make more educated votes using a wider variety of metrics than your standard BA/HR/RBI, and that arbitrary variables like team record not be weighted so heavily.

Clemenza, what do you think of the NL Cy Young race? I know the award isn't called "most valuable pitcher", but the Phillies would make the playoffs with or without Halladay, and the Dodgers would be crap with or without Kershaw, so neither guy seems valuable to their teams according to your criteria.

And the Cy Young Award should obviously be won by the youngest pitcher, right? It's in the name of the award, after all. It's just wtf that an individual award is judged on what the individual's team mates do. "MVP" is a *phrase", no-one meant it to be taken literally.

No, it was always meant to be taken literally, but the problem is that there a number of subjective ways to define "valuable". There's never been an era in baseball when they were always giving the MVP to the best player, if they were then Mays and Williams (to name two) would have won seven or eight MVP's each.

Excuse the grammar and writing errors in my last post, ugh.

An unrelated question: why isn't hitting included in WAR for pitchers? It seems only fair that it should count toward a player's "total" value to the team. Bonus question: can the anti-DH crowd defend the need to cost a team a win every year -- per starter -- with the bat?

I think Mays and Williams should have won 7 or 8 each. No matter how I look at it, if they're going to give inferior players the de facto "best player" prize they may as well junk it as it's useless and misleading.

Yeah any argument against Williams winning MVPs strike me as a terrible one.

"MVP" is a *phrase", no-one meant it to be taken literally.

That's a pretty large assumption. They called the award what they did; they could just as easily have named it Year's Outstanding Player. They must have definitions for these awards somewhere in the league's charter--I'd be interested in seeing the exact wording. (People will often start quoting the HOF's criteria when they get into arguments about Rose and people like that.)

The Cy Young is a different thing--that goes to the year's outstanding pitcher. If anything, it's the Kershaws who often get some small advantages in the voting from playing for the inferior team, starting with the likelihood that he received less run support. (No idea if that applies this year, with the Phillies having such a mediocre offense.) If you check back, I think you'll see more than a few cases where certain pitchers did better in the MVP voting than the Cy Young.

Just want to mention something from my post that started all this: To reiterate: I'm trying to guess how the writers will vote. I was actually trying to sidestep the argument about what the MVP means with that. People have always disagreed on this. I come down on the messy, 1001-different-ways-to-define-valuable side of the argument. Again, it's what makes the award interesting to me. Kevin wants "more educated votes using a wider variety of metrics than your standard BA/HR/RB"--that is a process that has been underway for a while, and I'm all for that, which is why I'd rather see Braun with than Fielder. But I also want individual performance in the context of team success to be part of that. I simply don't want a parade of MVP winners from sub-.500 teams. And I still believe that "wider variety of metrics" is really just code for "let's give the award to the guy with the highest WAR each year, since that's a quick and easy way to determine who was the year's best player." And that's valid too, if that's how you interpret the award's charter. I don't.

This is the part where I catalog typos: "I'd rather see Braun win than Fielder."

Found a couple of definitions on the Wikipedia MVP page. The Chalmers Award, a precursor, was given to the "most important and useful player to the club and to the league" from 1911-1914. From 1922-1929, League Awards were given to "the baseball player who is of the greatest all-around service to his club." Make of that as you will. The MVP that's in place now began in 1931, and they don't provide any information on the original wording attached to the award.

I don't see why you are certain I think WAR is the sole determinant of the best player. (Do I even understand the 2 different formulas for calculating it? Hell no.)

Actually, I use slash stats after August 15, since that's CRUNCH TIME!

That wasn't directed at anyone specific, it was in response to something Kevin wrote. Let me put it this way: what are the metrics that Kevin wants considered that aren't being considered now? On-base and slugging get lots of attention these days, as they should; I think most writers take into account inequalities created by park effects. What is it that they're not considering? Also: how would you weigh pitchers against non-pitchers? How would you measure Verlander's value against Bautista's?

Positional adjustments, defense, value of OBP vs. BA. I think park effects are still taken for granted by a lot of dudes.

I don't think pitchers should get MVPs by and large (they have their own award all for themselves). But WAR is actually a pretty decent tool at measuring value across positions. So I'd probably use that.

Just to be clear, if I was deciding then Mays and Williams should have won many more MVP awards. I was saying that the definition of MVP has always been wishy washy because people (=the voters) interpret the *literal* meaning of "valuable" in different ways. It was *never* meant to mean simply "league's best player".

The Cy Young is a different thing--that goes to the year's outstanding pitcher.

I disagree, it's always been treated as a "MVP award for pitchers" with criteria that are every bit as vague as the league MVP awards.

It's really only in the past few years, with e.g. Lincecum and Hernandez winning, that the voters have been looking beyond giving the Cy to pitcher with the best W-L percentage on a playoff bound team. It's too soon to tell whether this will last though.

well that's how i've always viewed it. Cy went to the best pitcher in the league - MVP went to the man whoms absence from a team would have been the most devastating.

xpost

I do think the history of the winners shows that team contention doesn't matter as much with the Cy (ie, Carlton in '72). But I could swear I saw a photo of the trophy once (w/ Seaver?) and it had the words "most valuable pitcher" on it.

OTOH, Andre Dawson didn't remotely deserve Player of the Year, MVP, or any other 'best' award the year he won MVP w/ the last-place Cubs, the the oldschool writers just looooved that he signed an under-value contract.

The three things Alex lists, I think those are taken into account. I realize there's a bias for offense against defense, just because offense is easier to quantify and understand (as I've admitted many times, guilty as charged). As some of the newer defensive metrics enter the mainstream, I'm sure that will evolve. Positionally, though, there have been times in the voting when middle infielders were treated very well: Marty Marion, Nellie Fox, Zoilo Versalles, a few others. (There are awards the writers messed up, but Versalles' in '65 is one of the first I'd point to as evidence that writers take more into consideration that you might think they do: they made what appears at first glance to be a very eccentric pick, yet it was Versalles who actually led the league in WAR that year.) Park effects, I don't know. At the extreme edges, I think writers notice, else there would have been more MVPs out of Colorado. I think pitchers should be very much in the mix. I mean, I wouldn't necessarily want to see them winning often, but if circumstances warrant, like I think they do in the AL this year (thus far--there's still a month-plus to go), I wouldn't hesitate to vote for a pitcher. At some point in the past 20 years, it's clear that a number of writers reached the same conclusion as you, that pitchers should not be eligible.

"But WAR is actually a pretty decent tool at measuring value across positions. So I'd probably use that." Again, this seems to me to be the logical end-point of this argument. I think Kevin is saying the exact opposite of what he means. He's arguing for a wide variety of metrics, but I think he really wants one, the one that saves you all the time of wading through all those numbers yourself. (Like Morbius, I haven't a clue how to calculate WAR, and I'm guessing it's not something that can be calculated easily. OBP, SA, runs created per 27 outs, those are all things I can easily calculate myself, and I know exactly what the resultant number means.)

Carlton in '72 was a rare exception. In general the voters tend to get it right more often than for MVPs, partly because there there are fewer realistic candidates and they don't have to compare people who play different positions (unless we're talking about starters vs relievers, but let's not get into that right now). For most of the 90's the winners were deserving because the decade was dominated by obvious HOFers having clearly great years (Clemens, Pedro, Unit, etc.) but the votes were abominable for most of the 80's.

xpost

Not having any luck pinning down the league's original description of the Cy Young Award--everything I come across says "best" or "top" pitcher, but that seems to be people just stating what is already assumed.

i wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't one.

There is, but it's scrawled on the back of a matchbox sitting inside Ford Frick's casket.

To turn this a bit from being an awards thread... Kevin Goldstein asserted at a SABR/BP event at Citi Field this weekend that "Adam Jones of the Orioles is a better player than Willie Mays." ie, because of athletic development over the decades, Jones is superior in the same way that Bill Russell's Celtics would be destroyed by the current Lakers, high-school kids are now running times comparable to Jesse Owens in 1936, etc. (KG used both those examples.)

There was general consternation in the audience, like when Paul Muni says in an old movie "Germs cause disease!" Is KG correct or was his example unsupportable?

He's probably correct. The idea isn't exactly new, but it's one of those things that seems easy to understand (and agree with) but really difficult to prove quantitatively (wrt baseball).

Just one last thing about awards. I found an interesting old Baseball Digest article, Feb. '85, on Google Books: "Lets Inject Some Logic Into Voting for MVP Awards" by Bob Ryan. Excuse the unwieldy URL:

http://books.google.com/books?id=nzMDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA59&lpg=PA59&dq=creation+of+cy+young+award+1956&source=bl&ots=FqlTRBtLoe&sig=zYQy3Dtr4ktO6iEwK7L40o3Czdc&hl=en&ei=X25STtJ2g7-BB7qB2YgH&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CEgQ6AEwBzge#v=onepage&q=creation%20of%20cy%20young%20award%201956&f=false

Like you guys, he thinks that the MVP should simply be for the most outstanding player; like me, he thinks arguments over who should win are fun, and doesn't want to lose that. He also advocates for two Cy Youngs per league, a starter's award and a reliever's. So these arguments have been going forever.

Complete issues of Baseball Digest from the 80's on googlebooks? There goes my weekend!

but the relievers still have the Rolaids award! ... Don't they?

Complete issues of Baseball Digest from the 80's on googlebooks? There goes my weekend!

I'm laughing at this, because I don't know if you're kidding or not! "Complete episodes of The Partridge Family from the 70s's on YouTube? There goes my weekend!" If I said that, it'd mean one thing, and if someone else said it, it might mean something different.

ilx! there goes my workday!

I was being serious!

"Adam Jones of the Orioles is a better player than Willie Mays"

I think this is pretty indisputable, but it doesn't really mean much since Adam Jones isn't a better player compared to his current competition than Willie Mays was to his. And that's who Adam Jones has to actually play against.

"At some point in the past 20 years, it's clear that a number of writers reached the same conclusion as you, that pitchers should not be eligible."

That isn't what I said, but whatever.

"Again, this seems to me to be the logical end-point of this argument."

I indicated it was a good tool to compare pitchers and position players (in some ways it is really the only good tool to do so). I also think it's a good way to measure players in general, but I do think it should be one of many tools.

You're right--you said "by and large." So we're actually on the same page there.

It does seem to be true of some writers, though. In '99, there were two writers who did not think that Pedro was one of the 10 most valuable players in the league; last year, six writers left Halladay off their ballot. I'm sure they didn't actually believe that, they've just decided pitchers already have the Cy Young.

"The three things Alex lists, I think those are taken into account."

Right except in years where Justin Morneau wins.

They still get starry-eyed over RBI on occasion, no argument there. Jeter or Mauer should have won that year.

Pedro not getting on ballots is criminal, no doubt (that's a good example of a year where you could make an argument for any number of players getting the award).

I missed the obvious joke for 2006: "No, Morneau won for his defense. The writers courageously looked beyond Ortiz's extra 20 HR and 7 RBI, and they went for the guy with the glove."

http://mlb.sbnation.com/2011/8/18/2368819/topps-all-star-rookies-donruss-rated-rookies-baseball-cards

Neat. I've got two or three of the Madduxes, and one Randy Johnson.

AND YOU BOUGHT THEM AS AN 11 YEAR OLD BECAUSE THEY WERE PROJECTED TO LEAD IN PITCHING WAR

CASE CLOSED

Sadder: I bought them as a 35-year-old because part of my life is spent in a fantasyland (ILX included).

I agree it's kinda shitty that relievers don't really have their own award, because Kimbrel deserves a gold medal for what he's doing for the Braves.

I don't see what's wrong with having a starter, reliever, and position player award. I know some players can be both starters and relievers but those aren't usually the guys considered for Cy Youngs.

I checked, and they do indeed still have the Rolaids award--the fact that I had to check says a lot about how much people pay attention to it. They use a rather specious formula to determine the winner: (3 x saves) + (2 x wins) - (2 x losses). Kimbrell and Valverde are leading this year.

http://www.rolaidsreliefman.com/

Kimbrell has obviously been phenomenal, so I don't mean to take anything away from him, but the only thing I'd say is that such seasons for closers have become devalued a bit over time because there have been so many of them. It seems like there's somebody having a Kimbrell-type season every year, often by guys with a relatively short shelf life.

bcz any good pitcher with stuff can be a 'great' closer for awhile.

Guys who make a living by throwing 100 MPH are bound to blow out their arms sooner rather than later, except that nobody bothers to protect closers because the role is so easy to fill. Nobody babies their closer the way they'd look after, say, a future #1 or #2 starter.

i think a bunch of teams do! never bring them in in the 8th NO MATTER WHAT! never let them pitch more than 1 inning NO MATTER WHAT! sorry i can't recall a specific example. it's pretty hard to baby someone who only pitches 1 inning every few days but i know i've seen it!

Yeah relievers in general aren't protected, but some closers get paid a shit-ton of money. You bet those guys get babied.

Clemenza, Joe Posnanski agrees with me (sorry, there was no way to make that sound not smug): http://joeposnanski.si.com/2011/08/23/most-productive-player-award/

I love the "this balding middle-aged dude agrees with me" game! For the record my father who is older and balder than Bill James or Joe P agrees with clemenza <link broken>.

Haha! Oldness and baldness trumps everything, which bodes well for me in a few years.

ha!

I have a full head of hair, FYI

You lose.

Look forward to reading it. No argument, my view--once the majority view--is probably on its way to becoming obsolete. (I skimmed the piece a bit--towards the end he mentions Verlander in passing, and doesn't seem to rule out voting for a pitcher.) I do hope that anyone ready to vote for Bautista looks at how much of his production was disproportionately in the first two months. (I'd like to see who Telly Savalas agrees with, but unfortunately he's dead.)

Thinwall's description above is accurate. That also ties in with this weird attitude that teams developed where the closer must only be used in situations where he can actually earn a save. If you're four runs up in the ninth, you don't dare use him that day.

"(I'd like to see who Telly Savalas agrees with, but unfortunately he's dead.)"

I'm sure that dude who talks to the dead on Fox can get his opinion (also Yul Brynner's!)

Agreed on the bit w/ closers - they definitely get pampered in their own way. As Joe Posnanski says, the "save" many be the most influential statistic of all time, as it directly changed the way managers use their relievers. In the abstract, yes, that is the best time to bring in your best reliever, but say it's the 7th, you're up by one, and the opponent has the bases loaded, 1 out? You wouldn't want your best reliever in there?

Essentially his point was that teams leading in the 9th won the game about the same % of the time even before the advent of the "closer", so yeah, something's wrong there

I meant that closers don't get the Joba Rules treatment. Nobody's worried about managing Craig Kimbrel's workload so that he doesn't get injured. Obviously I hope he stays healthy but when guys like him flame out (where art thou Joel Zumaya?) they're replaced fairly easily and it's not considered to be as much of a disappointment as when a Mark Pryor loses his career to injuries.

Guys, I was away for a while... was there any talk of Mike Jacobs becoming the first active MLB player to test positive for HGH?

Guys, I was away for a while... was there any talk of Mike Jacobs becoming the first active MLB player to test positive for HGH?

it's cool -- like andy pettitte, he was just trying to heal more quickly so he could get back and help his beloved colorado springs sky sox

ha, so was it a MiLB test or an MLB test?

Major League Baseball began testing Minor Leaguers for HGH after an announcement by Commissioner Bud Selig in July 2010.

I wonder why there is no test in MLB?

Lenny Dykstra is the worst person in the world.

Former New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies outfielder Lenny Dykstra has been charged in Los Angeles for allegedly exposing himself to women he met on Craigslist.

The city attorney’s office said Thursday the 48-year-old former baseball star could face up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine for each indecent exposure count.

Dykstra is accused of finding victims by placing online ads seeking personal assistants or housekeepers. He allegedly exposed himself to women who responded to the ads on several occasions between 2009 and 2011.

County records show Dykstra has been jailed since June on $455,000 bail on car theft and drug possession charges. He also faces bankruptcy fraud charges.

Mark Hathaway, whose law office represented Dykstra in the past, does not know who is now representing Dykstra.

When is Irene landfall expected in Phi/NY/Bos? I wish MLB would announce something re: Braves-Mets.

sunday

Can't imagine they'll play Saturday at 4pm, let alone Sunday.

Craigslists personals: you just might meet Lenny Dykstra

but he used the jobs board; that's over the line

Can't imagine they'll play Saturday at 4pm, let alone Sunday.

yeah, I keep hoping for a doubleheader today, but they're cutting it a little close to announce that.

The Braves' WC lead is getting to the point where they may not even try to do makeups.

Suits me, considering they've played 40+ extra innings this season.

ajcbraves
Hurricane Irene alters #Braves vs. #Mets series, Sunday game postponed and Saturday moved to noon start http://bit.ly/rcviyp

look for a very small crowd as they won't be able to take transit home.

Saturday game cancelled now.

BNightengale Bob Nightengale
#MLB Girardi says the #Yankees have not agreed to play Sept 8 in makeup date

#toughguy

A second Posnanski column about why the MVP should simply be the best player:

http://joeposnanski.si.com/2011/08/26/the-myth-of-pressure/?sct=mlb_t12_a1

What I find interesting is that here's a guy who writes for Sports Illustrated, someone who I think most us would agree is a good writer, and he's now spent a few thousand words in the past week grappling with the same issue as us. I don't think all the writers will be on the same page anytime soon. But I think the movement is definitely away from my view and towards Posnanski and everyone else here who agrees with him.

tbf, posnanski would spend a few thousand words describing almost anything

keith law has been rather more succinct

geez let's not even get started about derrick rose

I love how Posnanski rambles. He reminds me a lot of--well, he reminds me of another famous baseball writer.

I do agree with Joe, but wording it as "MVP" makes everything so confusing. I mean by that logic I would say Verlander is definitely "MVP" since it's likely that his team wouldn't make the playoffs without him, and he's far and away the best player on his team. But there's an unwritten rule that pitchers probably shouldn't win it now, so that complicates the issue. You could argue that no player on a non-contending team really had any "value". But I do think that voting only for players on competing teams really cheapens the award. 20 years from now we don't want to look at the MVP to see who was the best Red Sock, we want to know who the best player was. etc. etc.

Yeah...you'll find similar sentiments above. I don't follow the other three major sports--do they have this problem too? Or is it harder to stand out as an individual on a mediocre team playing football or hockey or basketball?

hockey's only a 'major' sport up there, clem :p

no one really cares about football statistics & there doesn't seem to be nearly the nerdery over awards like there is in baseball, but there's an ongoing sabermetric-like revolution in the basketball world that thankfully seems to be gaining traction. last year's nba mvp race is actually pretty relevant: derrick rose, the biggest star and best player on the team with the best record, won mvp - he's by virtually no accounts the league's best player, he's in the 5-10 range probably. there was some (righteous) complaining about that award by statheads but it doesn't get the kind of attention the baseball issue does.

Well the NFL MVP is bullshit, check out the list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Football_League_Most_Valuable_Player_Award

Basically, every single year, it's either the QB on one of the best 2-3 teams, or a running back that rushed for like 2000 yards. the only other time it has been someone else was LT in 1986, Alan Page in 1971, and then the infamous 1982 strike shortened season in which they bizarrely gave the award to a place kicker. like, you know how RBIs are really a terrible stat in baseball, well, practically every stat in football is like that, there aren't any good WAR-type stats that voters can use to really say who deserves it, so it's pretty well-known that it's basically always going to be the QB or RB who scored the most on a 1st place team

Basketball usually does go to whoever is the most valuable, as in they tend to pick players who are great and play for top 5 teams that wouldn't be close to the top 5 without them. So they'll pick Lebron when he's a Cav since nobody else on that team was really any good, but not when he's on the Heat b/c they have two other all-stars.

also yeah the NBA MVP doesn't make any sense, the fact that Steve Nash won 2 MVP awards while Shaq only won 1 blows my mind.

i've mentioned this on here before, but an interesting stat about MVP awards in the NBA is that Nash was actually the latest draft pick to ever win one, and he went 15th. and he probably didnt even deserve his. there's really not that many candidates.

I just remembered that when I was 11 or 12, I shared my house league's MVP with Jim Peardon, our arch-rival. They were dominant in the regular season, we came from last place to win the championship; both of us pitched. Not sure how our WARs or WHIPs stacked up, and I think there may have been some vote-splitting going on.

ZMPG I just remembered my arch nemesis Butch Jenkins. He had a Fred McGriff rookie cards. I had a few Ken Griffey Jrs. lol?

I hope you're not one of those people who took early retirement on your Griffeys. (Not that Butch made out any better.)

NYY 5, BOS 9
Game time: 3:16

How did they manage this?! 14 runs, 7IP from Beckett, under 3:30?

first-ball hitting?

Athletes and their dogs:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/multimedia/photo_gallery/1002/athletes.and.their.dogs/content.1.html

ben rofflesburger and his dog "rapist"

NYY 5, BOS 9
Game time: 3:16

How did they manage this?! 14 runs, 7IP from Beckett, under 3:30?

― Halal Spaceboy (WmC), Thursday, September 1, 2011 11:17 AM (8 hours ago)

still in the top of the 1st tonight, otoh...

43 pitch first inning for lester, only gives up one run

my brother and i freaked out over this ^^

we were watching the game, after swisher strikes out for the second out we went to set the table for dinner, fifteen minutes later we flip the game on to see burnett throw the first pitch of b1

during us open tennis coverage, dick enberg and mary carillo just agreed that far too much time is taken between pitches these days in the major leagues

I think there should be more time taken btwn US Opens and NFL seasons.

all these fucking delays! i don't even mind the delay as much as I mind that the television stops carrying the game when it's on delay and mlb.tv doesn't show it either. how do i watch a game if it experiences a delay???

morbs do you like tennis?

I pretty much don't watch it anymore (when I had TV, that is), but I loved, among others, the Borg-McEnroe classics.

Anyway: Is this the first year under wild-card play that all the playoff spots are fucking sewn up 3 weeks from the finish? And imagine if the 2nd WC was in effect this year, and all the crappy teams that would still be in it.

OK, i suppose the AL West is still up for grabs, but Texas is a good bet.

i've got a borg-mcenroe final on DVD that i have to get around to watching as soon as i finish the 1998 NBA finals

Cabrera
Men on (299 PA): .368/.472/.624
RISP (170 PA): .398/.518/.672

Bautista
Men on (266 PA): .313/.477/.581
RISP (154 PA): .237/.500/.412

that doesn't really say anything other than that bautista is being pitched around

...and that Cabrera is reaching base with roughly equal or greater frequency.

and out-slugging him like a mofo.

Gonzalez
Men on (323 PA): .357/.421/.530
RISP (198 PA): .337/.419/.470

not a huge fan of giving great weight to these stats; all runs count.

They're worth considering.

maybe to break a "virtual tie."

oh boy! are we going to argue abt weather or not "clutch" is a real thing?!

i'm very curious about man-on stats and what they actually mean so not totally opposed to an argument about whether or not clutch is a real thing

as a repeatable skill, all studies indicate it is statistically insignificant, which is why the same guys don't lead in the 'close & late' sitches year after year.

Chris Davis, 5Ks.. no not the Mets pitcher.

titanium?

so apparently selig isn't gonna let the astros sale go through unless the new owner moves the team to the AL?

i don't understand how you're gonna get people interested in an astros/rangers rivalry when one of them is winning the division and the other is going 50-112

Chris ((Portland))
Bautista had a massive advantage at the ASB, but Ellsbury has now passed him in WAR. Does this change your opinion on AL MVP, or should we be skeptical about the UZR difference?

Klaw (1:12 PM)
I think they're basically even now, right? 0.1 difference is a rounding error. Depends on how seriously you want to take Ellsbury's high defensive rating - I should clarify that this is Fangraphs' WAR - and whether Bautista's defensive rating is unfair to a guy who's played two positions.

bbref WAR which is what i mainly look at has bautista 1.5 ahead still

Bats since the ASB: .247/.401/.487
9 home runs.

for a vote like mvp i'd tend to not put too much stock into a WAR that's inflated by the UZR of a player that has not previously been regarded as a plus fielder

aka i'd be voting for bats still

so apparently Selig has declared that even rainouts between out-of-it teams should be made up this month. Maybe look for a ton of doubleheaders in 2 weeks. What a doof.

The two Cy Young races have essentially flip-flopped in a month. Then: in the AL, two sabermetric guys almost dead-even at the top (Verlander and Weaver), with the win guy, also pretty strong sabermetrically, hanging back in third (Sabathia); in the NL, a favourite (Halladay), with some others like Kershaw and Lee not too far behind. Today: in the AL, a clear favourite (Verlander), with some others not all that far behind; in the NL, two sabermetric guys almost dead-even at the top (Kershaw and Halladay), with the win guy, also pretty strong sabermetrically, hanging back in third (Kennedy). The AL-then/NL-now parallel is exact; the NL-then/AL-now not so much, as the AL race isn't all that close.

mant ppl wd put Cliff Lee ahead of Kennedy.

Also Hamels, Lincecum, maybe one or two others. I was trying think through the prism of how the voting will go, and my guess is that 21-4 or 22-4 with a good ERA will be enough to secure third for Kennedy.

i think lee is gonna win nl cy

Lee's a lot closer to Kershaw and Halladay than I realized (with a huge advantage in shutouts). Looks like it's down to the last three or four starts for all three of them.

Is there a chance lee and halladay split #1 votes and kershaw sneaks in bc of #2 votes? Not dying to explode the kids arbitration numbers tho..

i don't think ian kennedy is being seriously considered by anyone for the cy young

not for 1st, no

so apparently Selig has declared that even rainouts between out-of-it teams should be made up this month.

morbs, are you arguing they should play meaningless games post Sept 30 thus rendering the postseason one in name only? or that they shouldn't play the games at all?

between two non-playoff teams, I don't see why they should play

(btw, season ends Sept 28, dude)

so they should go sub 162 games? what about those precious counting stats Scott Boras needs for next year?

the lost game would be statistical noise @ this point

Marlins-Nats should skip all six of the games they have left with each other, obv.

teams have 'gone sub 162' quite regularly, add some of the seasonal W-L records.

eg, I count five in the 2002 NL

http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/NL/2002.shtml

mariners at cleveland on a rainy monday afternoon

it's 7-4 in the third inning and there are maybe 20 ppl in attendance

That's too sad even for Brook Benton.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRKqfrct070

From KLaw chat, pondering Verlander's dominance (fWAR is Fangraphs' WAR, rWAR is B-R's):

David (Bethlehem, PA)
Why does rWAR give Verlander a huge lead over Sabathia (8.4 - 6.8), but fWAR they are tied at 7.0?

Klaw (1:51 PM)
rWAR doesn't normalize BABIP. fWAR does. That is, if Sabathia has been hurt by a bad defense behind him (or just rotten luck on balls in play), rWAR doesn't attempt to credit any of that back to him, while fWAR does.

mike (detroit)
I've never been a fan of normalizing BABIP. it seems to imply Detroit is a good defensive team for Verlander which when you look at the players individually doesnt hold.

Klaw (2:01 PM)
OK, so think about it this way. We know pitchers don't have a lot of control over BABIP. They may have some, but outside a certain range it's probably not sustainable. Verlander's career BABIP coming into this year was around .290-.300 and his single-season low was .279. This year he's at .235, and it's not like his stuff is magically better. What's your bet - that he's suddenly defying everything we think we know about pitchers and balls in play, or that, say, more than half of that 60-point drop in BABIP is due to factors beyond his control?

Baseball Reference has Matt Kemp's WAR up to 9.6. This edges him into the 100 greatest seasons ever; it he can push it to 10, he moves into the top 80.

I don't quite get why his year ranks so high. His numbers are very good: 36 HR, 40 steals, .326/.403/.582. I know he gets a bump for playing in Dodger Stadium, and I know offensive levels have returned to normal. I don't know anything about his defense; his defensive WAR is in the black. What hidden numbers make it such an historic season?

Not sure if WAR is league adjusted? A near 1.000 OPS is a great season in the post-roids era (esp if you play the majority of your games in pitchers' parks).

"post-roids"

Man, this could be one wacky finish.

can we talk about the new era commercial w/ alec baldwin and that guy?

R.A. Dickey is 6th in the NL in pitcher WAR... ahead of Lincecum.

"RIP"

trading the manager, featuring the chuck tanner-for-manny sanguillen deal

someone give me ozzie's fwar and rwar over a replacement manager

MLB_PR MLB Public Relations
Potential AL Wild Card tiebreaker on Thurs would start at 4:07pm ET on #TBS. NL Wild Card tiebreaker would follow at 8:07pm ET.

MLB_PR MLB Public Relations
ALDS Game 1 (BOS/TB @ TEX or DET) Friday 5:07pm ET. Other ALDS Game 1 (DET or TEX @ NYY) 8:37pm ET. @MLB_TBS @TurnerSportsPR

MLB_PR MLB Public Relations
For those asking, both NLDS series will begin on Saturday. Times still TBD at this point. @MLB_TBS @TurnerSportsPR

And what TV for the tiebreakers?

Both NL games tonight are listed on ESPN2 (with BOS-BAL on the main), how the fuck is that possible? They're just gonna bounce us back and forth I presume.

MLB_PR MLB Public Relations
Potential AL Wild Card tiebreaker on Thurs would start at 4:07pm ET on #TBS. NL Wild Card tiebreaker would follow at 8:07pm ET.

so TBS has all the regular season tiebreakerts as well as the LDS? I'm hoping that means we get 'alternate feed' at least on mlb.tv.

did anyone see the D-Backs' ridiculous comeback last night. ffffffffffffffuuuuuuuuuuu

Current Vegas odds for the WC team games:

PHI +180
ATL -190

STL -200
HOU +187

BOS -230
BAL +190

NYY +224
TAM -240

Hey clemenza, all that boring arguing over the batting triple crown (of which Kemp may only lead one cat by the end of today) but zero mentions of the TWO pitching triple crowns by Verlander and Kershaw?

pitching triple crown also a nonstarter

haha well I figured clemenza would be all over that. is the pitching triple crown happen less rare?

Prior to this season, there have been 11 pitcher Triple Crowns since the advent of the Cy Young Award:

Sandy Koufax three times
Roger Clemens twice
Steve Carlton
Dwight Gooden
Pedro Martinez
Randy Johnson
Johan Santana
Jake Peavy

And 11 times, the Triple Crown was accompanied by a Cy Young Award. (neyer)

I expect it will be again, notwithstanding the narrowness of Kershaw's leads and that Dodger Stadium still ranks as a pretty good pitcher's park.

(but I think this is the one Keith Law is voting for)

I think overall, there have been more pitching TCs than those by hitters. For some reason, it never became a big deal like the hitting TC. Not saying that's right or wrong, just the way it is. Verlander and Kershaw obviously had spectacular years; until his last bad start, I think Verlander had a shot at an MLB triple.

Anyway, wins = RBI, the discredited category. K = home runs, I guess, the glamour category. ERA = BA, except ERA is the more meaningful metric. Of course, I'm very anxious for the WAR/win-probability added/BABIP triple crown to catch on for pitchers; that's when things will really start to liven up.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qLsHkXytUu8/Tf27HuqsxjI/AAAAAAAAIFU/S1zVPyafuEY/s320/jkjkh.jpg

I don't think that in the wild-card era we've ever entered the last day of the season where none of the LDS matchups were set in either league.

this is crazy, looks like we're likely to have two game 163s
that Boston one is gonna be so epic should it actually happen

batting race machinations:

http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/16808/jose-reyes-leaves-game-to-protect-title

brian kenny is on mlb network now?!? i love him, tbh. im like personally sorry for him he presumably cant cover boxing now also

Pujols will be sitting tonight to protect .300, right? (Yes, yes, I'm kidding.) I'm sure Morbius remembers the wild '76 finish, with Brett at .333, McRae at .332, Carew at .331, and accusations of racism from McRae (over a ball that fell in for a hit from Brett...forget the left fielder who was involved in the play).

brian kenny is on mlb network now?!? i love him, tbh. im like personally sorry for him he presumably cant cover boxing now also

― johnny crunch, Wednesday, September 28, 2011 6:32 PM (11 minutes ago)

I read a brief interview with him last week and he said he's making arrangements to cover boxing during the MLB offseason -- not sure for who, but --

ya i just read probably the same thing. espn is so monolithic & exclusionary i knew they wouldnt let him. hopefully hbo, thatd be great actually

morbs' link mentions the brett/mcrae/carew debacle as well as bill madlock's achy hammy, among others

in '76 I was more interested in seeing the Yanks get punished in October (it worked out)

Thanks, didn't click on the link. There's a link inside the link that takes you to a piece on the '76 race. I love this part:

Here's what amazes me most: this story is buried on page 31 of The Sporting News. Just one more story in the stream of basic pieces that appeared in page after page. No cover tease. No editorial on page two. Nothing.

Can you imagine if this happened today? We'd be viewing replays of the flyball round the clock, with every baseball writer in America essentially required to weigh in on the issue. There'd be a pro-McRae party, to be sure, along with a vociferous party against him. There'd also be those simply arguing that the play might instead just be changed to an error. There'd be a really cool post someone analyzing the physics of the play, and comparing the fielder's position on that play as compared to similar situations.

Pretty accurate summary of the distance between then and now, similar to how someone pointed out (in contrast to the 9/11 anniversary coverage) how the 10-year anniversary of Pearl Harbor got a short paragraph in the [i]Times<i/>.

Wish I could watch the Red Sox or Cardinals, but all I've got is the lopsided Tampa game plus updates.

braun 0-for-1

guess i should have paid for mlb.tv tonight huh

you can pay for just one night?!

in that it is the end of the regular season, yes

can't you see BOS & ATL on ESPN.com? I can.

I'm only using MLB for the Rays' audio

such a ridic night, it was crazy 2 watch all this

looking fwd 2 rays/rangs & az/mil a lot

i know no one gives a shit, but on monday i was like "ah yeah, i might as well go up and see my cousins for rosh hashana, I HAVE NOTHING TO DO ON WEDNESDAY NIGHT"

great night, amazing stuff. probably better night than any other the rest of the season.

i feel like i slept through 9/11

lol

ANDINO DID 9(/29)/11

#Kevin_Goldstein
It's like something amazing happens every 93 seconds.

they should just cancel the playoffs

Walter Matthau as J0rdan:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-A2zB-e3mro

http://desmond.yfrog.com/Himg576/scaled.php?tn=0&server=576&filename=v38i.jpg&xsize=640&ysize=640

Four games will be played on Saturday.

I know everyone's focused on the playoffs, but is there any point in doing an AL MVP poll? I figure the Boston players are probably officially out now (rightly or wrongly), leaving Bautista, Verlander, Granderson, and possibly Cabrera. I don't know if Verlander's a sure-thing, or if his missing 25 and the ERA title throws it back to Bautista or Granderson.

Yes.

By unanimous consent then.

this is slightly ott, but a nice summary video of last night in chronological order: http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=19789807

can't-find-on-the-internet type question: Is there anywhere on the Web I can get all the 2011 regular-season game results on a single page in a more-or-less simple table? I've been through mlb, baseball-reference etc, but can at best find per week, per team etc.

may i ask why you're looking?

Easy import into excel for analysis etc. Historical seasons is easy because of Retrosheet; current season less so.

So is theo going to the cubs or no

Brewers-Tigers is the WS I'm hoping for btw.

http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2011/10/03/oh-good-a-j-pierzynski-to-be-a-part-of-foxs-world-series-coverage
http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2011/10/03/oh-good-a-j-pierzynski-to-be-a-part-of-foxs-world-series-coverage
http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2011/10/03/oh-good-a-j-pierzynski-to-be-a-part-of-foxs-world-series-coverage
http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2011/10/03/oh-good-a-j-pierzynski-to-be-a-part-of-foxs-world-series-coverage
http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2011/10/03/oh-good-a-j-pierzynski-to-be-a-part-of-foxs-world-series-coverage

still more likeable than joe morgan/tim mccarver/joe buck/almost every other baseball broadcasting personality

yeah the announcers have been terrible so far. the only decent one is Brian Anderson. maybe this is just because fans of the teams watch so many games and thus are exposed to so much more, but it's crazy just how often these guys are totally off base on just about everything. it's not enough that they suck at calling the games!

Joe Simpson is top-notch, you guys are crazy.

no one is as bad as chip caray was a few years ago

No argument there. He's a little improved, but still not very good. Fewer Mister Haney impressions, at least.

Watching the Rangers-Rays game, I realize I'm close to the point where Buck Martinez's voice is nails-on-a-chalkboard for me, maybe because I've put in extra time with him on local Jays broadcasts.

yeah the announcers have been terrible so far. the only decent one is Brian Anderson. maybe this is just because fans of the teams watch so many games and thus are exposed to so much more, but it's crazy just how often these guys are totally off base on just about everything. it's not enough that they suck at calling the games!

― frogbs, Monday, October 3, 2011 5:46 PM (53 minutes ago) Bookmark

I've liked him fine during Brewers telecasts, but he has been absolutely terrible during the ALDS.

Would Jason Giambi make a good commentator? He's got to be approaching the end (though all signs point to him being on the Rockies' 25-man in 2012) and seems to be full of personality - I understand he's one of the most popular players in the locker room.

I'm 100% in favor of Giambi as commentator if he throws "Your wish is granted, long live Giambi" out there at least once a day.

I've liked him fine during Brewers telecasts, but he has been absolutely terrible during the ALDS.

how so? tbh I thought the ones going the NLDS for Milwaukee/Arizona were awful because they knew absolutely nothing about the teams but kinda yammered on about them anyway, at some point just making things up. I suppose I wouldn't really know if the other announcers were doing the same things...

Michael Kay -- I mean Brian Anderson -- on Garcia having to remove a bracelet:

"...the Tigers searching for any possible advantage..."

― A Chuck Person's Guide to Mark Aguirre (Andy K), Sunday, October 2, 2011 3:37 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark

Also, Brian Anderson: Tiger Stadium has been demolished. The Tigers do not play there.

― A Chuck Person's Guide to Mark Aguirre (Andy K), Sunday, October 2, 2011 3:39 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark

Cabrera ranging too close to second has been a "constant theme for the Tigers this year." Probably the first time I've seen it happen all season. It was a problem when Cabrera first converted from third, though (years ago).

― A Chuck Person's Guide to Mark Aguirre (Andy K), Sunday, October 2, 2011 3:57 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark

He wasn't bad for game three, but there are several other things I could have posted about, including his reaction to Russell Martin making a routine block on a pitch in the dirt. Something like "For a catcher, that's like hitting a home run!" It's not like preventing a runner from advancing?

Yeah I admit that what he says doesn't really line up with the facts sometimes but really very few announcers do that. I like BA because he has a good sense of the moment and has a good voice for TV, plus he can inject a little humor sometimes which is always welcome (at least, on the Brewers broadcasts). A lot of national announcers may not be terribly different but they don't really have "the voice". He's always struck me as fairly knowledgeable though. I guess it must be hell to have to suddenly announce another team as there are so many things to learn. It annoyed me on the NLDS broadcasts because the announcers were giving shit to the Brewers for doing things like "watching their home runs", c'mon nobody on the Crew does that (outside of Braun's big one that clinched a playoff berth), that's the Cardinals! I mean you can give them shit for untucking years ago, or the "beast mode" thing, or whatever Nyjer Morgan does, but come on, if you're gonna rail on a team at least get the facts right