The moron-ery of of starting a baseball blog a month before the end of the season has finally caught up to The Elephant Seal – and with no significant baseball happenings here in the Bay Area (except for Li’l Andy Bailey winning Rookie of the Year!), the musings have tapered off.
I will take the offseason to refine my craft, learn more about boring statistical analysis, and even learn some new jokes – and I’ll see all (5?) of you in the spring.
Love,
The Elephant Seal
Bruce Bochy on Freddy Sanchez, he of the recently-inked 2 year deal worth $12 million:
“His history is that he plays every day. To have him at the top of your order pretty much every day is going to do a lot for this lineup.”
2009: 111 games played. And sure, the larger sample size of his earlier career shows that, yes, he played in a lot of games, but then the ESPN article about the deal also says this: “The Giants, who were in contention for the NL wild-card spot until the last week of the regular season, are convinced Sanchez’s health issues are over.”
Oh, that’s good. They’re “convinced.” Convinced that his shoulder strain and torn meniscus and 31 years of age are a good combo for a healthy guy. Convinced that his lack of plate discipline is a good fit for the team.
I’m fine with having Sanchez on the team – if he plays decently in the field and hits at his career average, he’s worth the salary. But over the last two full years, he’s been worth a total of 2.6 Wins Above Replacement – a pretty low number. But hey, let’s assume a return to his norms, and that he’ll be a guy worth around 4 WAR yearly. But: he also needs to stay healthy, and how on Earth are the Giants convinced of that? They are really into offering two-year deals that are suspect on all sorts of different levels.
Stay healthy, Freddy. Stay crazy, Bruce and Brian.
As you may recall, Bobby Crosby was awarded the 2004 American League Rookie of the Year trophy for putting up the following line: .239/.319/.426 for an OPS+ of 93. His wOBA – weighted on-base average – was .324. wOBA, if you don’t know, is essentially OPS but better, as it doesn’t weigh on-base and slugging equally and takes into account the run value of each “batting event” (like a walk or a dinger). It’s also adjusted to look like OBP, meaning – you guessed it – Crosby pretty much sucked in 2004, as an OBP of .324 is nothing to write home about, unless you like writing home about shitty things. He managed 22 home runs but struck out almost three times as often as he walked. He also was above-average in the field, where almost all of his value was and has been since.
Luckily for Bobby, 2004 featured a historically weak crop of AL rookies, and he won the award going away (one vote shy of a unanimous vote), despite having the lowest batting average in history for a Rookie of the Year winner. You could actually have made a pretty damn good case for Zack Greinke, as he put up some seriously decent numbers for a rookie pitcher on the Royals: a 3.97 ERA, a 1.166 WHIP, and a very impressive 3.85 K/BB rate, the second-best of his career. In fact, it appears that the main reason Greinke was not given the award was because he racked up a record of 8-11, which, though almost 100% meaningless, was not very sexy to voters. Bobby edged him in Wins Above Replacement, 2.8 to 2.6, so Bobby winning it over Zacky is pretty defensible in terms of value. Plus, Bobby was sexy to voters, with his chiseled good looks and adorably awkward batting stance. Greinke in the end didn’t come anywhere near Crosby – he finished a distant 4th.
“Baseball is the only field of endeavor where a man can succeed three times out of ten and be considered a good performer.”
This quote is attributed to Ted Williams, but has been a staple of baseball wisdom since statistics were incorporated into the game. It’s typically used to demonstrate how difficult baseball is, specifically the act of hitting – a tiny projectile hurtling towards you at incredible speeds, darting and dancing, spinning and diving, with only a split second to decide if you want to try to strike it with a bat. But striking it is only the beginning – where it goes once you’ve struck it is the next piece of the puzzle. If you can strike it in such a way that (a) no one catches it and (b) you have enough time to get to (at least) first base, and do that three times out of ten, you are a “good performer.”
And, well, it’s true: baseball is very hard. Hitting is exceedingly hard, in general and especially at the major league level. Only a tiny fraction of people on Planet Earth can do it well, and though that fact can be applied to almost any skill, a great many people claim that hitting a baseball is perhaps one of the very hardest skills to master in all of sports. It’s harder to hit a baseball consistently well, say, than to throw a touchdown, or hit a three-pointer. That may or may not be true, but the point is, hitting is SO hard that a 30% success rate – a failure in most other endeavors – is considered excellent.
Here are some of the absolute worst things to watch as a baseball fan, in no particular order:
- A pitcher walk a better with the bases loaded.
- A pitcher hit a batter with an 0-2 count.
- A batter swing at the first pitch after a four-pitch walk to the previous hitter (ahem, Giants).
- A runner get picked off, especially second or third.
- A runner get thrown out at home.
- An opposing runner score on a wild pitch.
- A hitter ground into a double play.
- Your team lose on an error in extra innings in the playoffs against the Yankees.
People love to be afraid of Slippery Slopes – in sports, politics, and anything else that is hotly debated. It’s just so trendy. It’s like the Michael Cera of classic informal fallacies. Gay Marriage, possibly the very slipperiest slope of all, will lead to men marrying trees and trees marrying shrubs, forever ruining marriage as we know it and thereby letting the terrorists win. Legalizing marijuana will lead to the legalization of cocaine, crack, LSD, and even gay marriage – it’s just that slippery. In baseball, instant replay on home runs will lead to replay on fair/foul balls, plays at bases, and eventually balls and strikes and the sabermetric stat “BallStrikes.”
The instant replay slope is getting greasier – it’s now being discussed for use in fair/foul calls down the line. A horrific call in the Twins-Yankees series – truly one of the worst calls you will ever see in professional sports – has spurred the debate, one that is undoubtedly been intensified by the precedent set with home run calls. Do we need it? Haven’t we survived just fine without it for over a hundred years? What’s to stop MLB from eventually implementing it on every pitch? Aren’t the games long enough? What’s the deal with airplane food?
aka The Giants Are Going To Hell. Especially with regard to #9.
1. Thou Shalt not Bunt.
2. Thou Shalt Have no Low On Base Percentages Before the Cleanup Hitter.
3. Honor the three-run homer and the leadoff walk.
4. Thou shalt not steal at anything less than a 70% success rate.
5. Thou shalt make no idol of the light-hitting middle infielder.
6. Thou shalt not count to the credit of the pitcher that which is done by his fielders or by his hitters, nor charge him with their failings.
7. Thou shalt not abuse thy starting pitchers.
8. Thou shalt make no effort to ride the hot hand, for the hot hand is but a shape in the wind.
9. Place thy faith not in veterans, when youth be available to ye.
10. Thou shalt not pass freely thy opponent’s number eight hitter, nor his cleanup hitter, nor his left-handed pinch hitter, nor any hitter that is thy opponent’s.
I harp on Bengie Molina a lot – I’ll admit it. He’s the butt of many jokes, and the joke of many butts, if you think about it. But to be honest, I actually like the guy in a lot of ways. He hit some big-time home runs this year, he’s a pretty good defensive catcher, he was worth almost 2 WAR despite everything, and he’s one of a trifecta of catching Molina Brothers, which is really pretty amazing. Sometimes I just don’t really believe that there are three brothers out there – Jose, Yadier, and Bengie – from Puerto Rico who all became major league catchers. 10% of all major league teams have a Molina Brother catching for them. If you are a fan of a baseball team, there is a not-insignificant chance that it has a Molina Brother on it. There’s a documentary there waiting to be made.
But his lack of patience at the plate is so frustrating, so ruthless, and so representative of a Giants team that refused to take a pitch all year long, that he ultimately bore the brunt of my disdain for the Giants offense. And his truly awe-inspiring lack of speed resulted in so many double plays and killed rallies that I’d often find myself rooting for the strikeout during his slumps. With a patient, promising, spry young catching prospect waiting in the wings, it was frankly hard to maintain a positive view of Bengie all year long.
Bengie’s 2009 season in review: He walked 13 times in 520 PAs, with a .265/.285/.442 line that came out to an OPS+ of 87 – an OPS 13% worse than league-average, despite his 20 home runs and 80 RBI. Only 58 times since 1900 – that’s 109 years ago, for those keeping score at home – has anyone turned in a 13-or-fewer walk season with 500 or more plate appearances. It’s probably not that shocking to see Shawon Dunston near the top (or bottom) of that list, with his mind-bending 1997 season in which he walked EIGHT times and batted an even .300, a walking poster child for the “Empty Batting Average Award.” Ah, The Empties – a storied award ceremony. Barry Bonds can walk 8 times in his sleep with his hands tied behind his back and flies buzzing in his face.
