Just watched Wednesday's PTI. Le Batard and Wilbon talk new contract for Ichiro, and ten seconds in, Wilbon's making Le Batard look like Richard Feynman. (I have to admit, I've got issues with Le Batard, but if you ask me, that dude ranks in like the top two percent of people who talk about baseball on TV, in terms of "getting it.")
Here are four things that Michael Wilbon actually said, and three things that he did not say, but should have. Collect 'em all!
"I don't care about OPS! That sounds like -- what is that, OPS is a rap title?"
"Long before anyone discovered on base plus slugging, people talked about runs scored, batting average, and hits in a season!"
"Just so everyone remembers: there was a song called OPP that came out seventeen years ago. When I say OPS sounds like a rap title, this is -- I think -- the reference I am making. Cuz I'm [at this point he does some upper body pop-locking] down with it, yo!"
"(On base percentage) is not as important (as batting average.)"
"I do this weird thing where I button the top button of my shirt, but I don't wear a tie, and usually I wear the kind of shirts where you can't even see the top button. I do this for a reason. And that reason is: I'm a crazy man."
"Let me ask you this: when (Ichiro) goes to second or to third, and he's in scoring position, does that count in the OPP or whatever it is?"
"Here, I've got one for your new, fake statistics: 'OPS. What can brown do you for you.' Get it? Like UPS. Nevermind."
A: He said them all!
Labels: batting average, ichiro, michael wilbon, naughty by nature, ops, pti
There isn't a lot of bad stat-bashing, or SmartBall references, or anything, but I really like the way
this one starts:
This is the new Scott Podsednik. He's good at baseball now?! Fantastic!
The one who isn't going to rush back from an injury, the one who won't let the anxiety of seeing his teammates playing in Cactus League games overwhelm him.
The Sox then decided to take his return to the next level.
They told him to forget everything he does in the batter's box. Then they told him to stop trying to steal bases, because his career ~75% success rate means it's barely worth it. Then they told him to gain 40 pounds of muscle so he can hit some doubles. Then they told him to walk more. Then they just said, fuck it, this is taking too long, and traded him to the Astros to get Carlos Lee back, and became a way better team.
''He started on the field a few days ago, and I really like what I see,'' hitting coach Greg Walker said.
This is bad journalism. A key part of context was left out of this sentence accidentally. Here's how it should read:
Walker: "[Podsednik] started on the field a few days ago, and --
Walker hears a solid crack of the bat. He turns away from where Podsednik is shagging flies and sees Jermaine Dye in the batting cage lining ball after ball into the gap.
Walker: ...I really like what I see!
Context is everything.
''Until he faces live pitching in a game, it's going to be hard to tell, but we're already in the process. All he has to do now is get up to game speed.''
Cowley cut this quote off early. I listened to the tapes, and the entire quote is:
"All he has to do now is get up to game speed, and then he'll be able to be terrible at the level at which we have come to expect him to be terrible."
Again. Context.
It is well-documented now that he rushed to get back from a strained thigh muscle last spring, and once he started the season in an 0-for-16 slump, his bat easily could have been mistaken for a shovel.
Boy. Shoddy. Again, there is a missing piece here. It should read:
...once he started the season in an 0-for-16 slump -- or, at any other time in his major league career, except for in 2003 with Milwaukee (the only season his OPS+ was over 100, meaning, by that relatively crude but sometimes telling statistical measure, that that was the only season he was better than league average as a hitter) -- his bat easily could have been mistaken for a shovel.
Makes more sense that way, yes?
''First and foremost, my legs feel good. If I have my health and my legs underneath me, I can work from there. It gives me a confidence at the plate that I can always fall back on [my legs].
Without your legs you might not have been able to achieve your awesome career 88 OPS+, or legged out almost but not quite 30 doubles in any year of your career.
I can lay down a bunt, beat out an infield chopper, those sort of things. I can measure everything by the way I feel from my health.
I can ground out softly to the right side. I can pop up to short. I can single into the hole between short and third. Then I have gone 1-for-3 and people will get excited because I am hitting .333! Scotty's back!
"Last year, I rushed to get back. I mean, we're taking the field as the defending champions, and I wanted to be there on Opening Day. And because of that, I kind of dug myself into a hole.''
That hole led to Podsednik pressing, pressing led to questioning, questioning led to a disappointing .261 batting average, and the Sox lost a weapon at the top of the lineup that played a big part in their 2005 World Series title.
Podsednik did have a dreadful year last year. How dreadful? It was even worse than the year he had in 2005, when everyone decided he was awesome. For the record, his "disappointing" .261 in 2006 represented ten fewer hits than he had in his world-beating 2005. Ten. Fewer. Hits. In only 17 more AB.
He had one fewer double in 2006, but 5 more triples (so his legs were fine, I guess) and 3 more home runs. Which means his SLG was actually higher last year than in 2005. He also walked seven more times in 2006. And if you care about RsBI, which I do not, he had 20 more.
All things considered, he probably had a better hitting year in 2005...his OPS+ was 10 points higher, and despite the fact that of his 147 hits, 118 were singles and zero were HR, he did get on base more efficiently. Whatever. They are both abysmal years for a starting outfielder in MLB. And more importantly, this is why you can't use BA to judge anything. .290 vs. 261, in roughly the same number of AB, represents about two bloop singles per month.
''I'm starting to get that confidence back and starting to get over that mental hurdle as far as my health goes,'' Podsednik said. ''I've had no setbacks, no complications. Skill-wise, it's going to be a matter of going out there, getting my work in, making adjustments and go from there."Hopefully the adjustments will be: suddenly becoming good at hitting.
Labels: batting average, scott podsednik
ESPN.com is having a baseball vote called
Which stats do you use?The early results are troubling:
2) What do you trust more when evaluating a player?
73.6% Old-school statistics (AVG, RBIs, wins)
26.4% Sabermetric statistics (OBP, VORP, WHIP)Note the inclusion of OBP and WHIP, pretty damn straightforward stats, into the wonky category of "Sabermetric statistics." VORP is going to remain a mystery to most people for awhile, I would think.
Congratulations, America. 73.6% of you think that in 2006, Freddy Sanchez was better than Albert Pujols (higher AVG), Raul Ibanez was better than Travis Hafner (more RBIs), and Jon Garland was better than Brandon Webb, Chris Carpenter, and Roys Halladay and Oswalt (more wins).
I'm cherry-picking, but come on. You're better than that, America.
3) Which stat do you use the most when evaluating hitters?
43.6% Batting average (AVG)
25.7% On-base plus slugging (OPS)
18.2% On-base percentage (OBP)
10.2% Runs batted in (RBI)
2.4% Slugging percentage (SLG)Whoops! No, you're not better than that. You're really stupid. No wonder you hate Pat Burrell. He batted .258! Send that guy to the minors!!!
(Pat Burrell's OBP was .388. That's better than Vladimir Guerrero's, Miguel Tejada's, Ichiro's, and AL MVP Justin Morneau's. Was he more productive than those players? No. But you have to give it to the guy: he got on base like a motherfucker.)
5) Which stat do you use the most when evaluating fielders?
69.4% Errors (E)
13.1% Range Factor (RF)
12.5% Fielding runs above average (FRAA)
5.1% Assists (A)I'll say that on this one, there's still not a really good option. Well, no, there is: the best option is to
not rely on errors. Judging a player's defense solely on errors is like saying I'm the best firefighter in the world because I've never left a baby inside a burning building when making a daring rescue. (Because my daring rescue count is zero. Okay, one. And I got all twelve babies.)
Now, these poll numbers are already pretty bleak. But consider this: they're even worse when you take into account that the pool of people who would even think about taking an online poll on their computers about statistics in baseball is pretty fucking nerdy. My guess is that the real numbers -- ones that would represent all baseball fans -- are much, much worse.
There's a ray of hope, though.
6) What do you think about the focus on statistics in baseball?
70.5% It enhances my enjoyment of the game
26.9% It doesn't affect the way I watch the game
2.6% It detracts from my enjoyment of the gamePeople love nerding their shit up!
Labels: batting average, sabermetrics, statistics
