Long-time readers of this blog know I prefer the National League version of baseball without the designated hitter. Still, if MLB decided tomorrow that they would no longer use the designated hitter I would be happy Evan Gattis finally has a position, hope the Braves try to re-sign Brian McCann this offseason, and would probably be a happy kid. I prefer the National League version of baseball without the designated hitter, but I'm fine with both leagues having different rules and wouldn't lose sleep if the designated hitter rule was implemented in both leagues. Terence Moore feels differently. He's a baseball "traditionalist," or so he believes himself to be. I think a traditionalist is a person who is generally opposed to change in baseball, but is open to changes that help the game. Terence is opposed to everything new in baseball, even things like the designated hitter that aren't new. He hates expanded replay, baseball celebrations, and how the designated hitter is ruining baseball followed by bizarre reasoning on why he won't vote for DH to enter the Hall of Fame all while stating he has voted for a DH to enter the Hall of Fame.
Did you hear the news? When David Ortiz ripped a double into
left-center field for the Red Sox in the second inning on Wednesday
night at Safeco Field against the Mariners, he broke the Major League
record for most hits by a designated hitter.
You may yawn now.
I'm reading an article that you have written, Terence, I was well prepared to yawn anyway.
We're in the midst of (ahem) celebrating the 40th anniversary of the DH,
The DH has been used for 40 years now and Terence Moore still isn't used to it. I guess it takes time.
and Ortiz just provided the latest reason why this thing needs to go the
way of flannel uniforms, long train rides for teams on road trips and
hitters swinging without helmets.
These are all things Terence Moore either (a) misses being a part of baseball or (b) should miss since he is such a traditionalist who hates change and all.
The DH isn't going anywhere. There are too many folks who cherish the thing, and they do so with gusto.
This is as opposed to Terence, who opposes the DH rule through well-reasoned thinking that basically involves him saying "I don't like change and I'm a traditionalist, the Braves and the Big Red Machine, baseball was better back when Joe Morgan played and no good teams ever lost two games in a row."
My friend, Milton, for instance, who is a diehard Yankees fan, said, "I
love offense, and who wants to see the dang pitcher hitting up there
wearing a jacket, just trying not to get hurt?"
Then there are the ongoing whispers that both leagues either will have
the DH or just play real baseball. The Miltons of the world will be
smiling at the end. I'm frowning over the thought.
It's a sad Terence Moore we are hearing from now. Terence would have normally included a sad emoticon to show his extreme unhappiness at the thought of both leagues adopting the DH, but emoticons are part of technology and technology brings change and change is bad.
As the Last Great Traditionalist, all I can do is hope for the
impossible -- you know, that we'll all rise one morning and discover the
DH has just gone away.
And yet Terence doesn't realize the irony of this sentence in that calling himself the Last Great Traditionalist it will actually be that one day he doesn't wake up and we will find the dislike for the DH has gone away. Maybe that's not irony. Terence is like the last dinosaur wondering why it is so cold and where all his friends have gone, hoping maybe tomorrow all this cold weather will just go away...hey look, a meteor!
Baseball's professional roots go back to 1869, which means there is
nothing traditional about a rule change that only has been around since
1973.
As I seemingly always write, using this logic there is nothing traditional about African-American players playing in MLB and not the Negro Leagues. I'm fairly sure Terence Moore suddenly becomes a non-traditionalist if it turns out African Americans can't play in the majors anymore and have their own separate professional baseball league. I understand though. Terence is a diehard traditionalist except when he likes the change that is being made. When Terence doesn't like the change being made to professional baseball he hides his fear of progress and change in sports behind being a traditionalist. Calling himself a traditionalist is just a lazy way of making excuses for his poor use of reasoning and logic.
Consider, too, that even though the concept of a designated hitter was
mentioned for decades before its actual implementation, it wasn't
approved until 40 years ago, because American League owners were
searching for something to help their overall attendance that regularly
lagged behind their National League counterparts.
And now the player's union has 15 DH jobs that the union is not going to allow MLB to get rid of. So that's where we are. The DH was used to make the game more exciting (and really, why would anyone want the game to be more exciting...it's madness!) and now it has become a staple of the American League.
The DH was a gimmick, and the gimmick became more than that. It became a
way of life in the AL, and now that gimmick-turned-staple is affecting
the game in so many ways.
The DH is a cancer that forces itself into the game of baseball only to slowly eat the game away until the sport has become more exciting to watch. There are quite a few changes in sports that started out as gimmicks and now have become staples of the sport. The three-point line in college basketball is one example and now I can't imagine the sport without it. That's one example of a change in sports that was seen as a gimmick that eventually became an important part of the sport. Another example is the change in the NBA to where dunking was allowed. It made the game more exciting and now I can't fathom basketball without the athletes having a chance to dunk the ball.
Just two examples ...
After months of recovering from a damaged ankle, Derek Jeter returned
to the Yankees' lineup on Thursday -- as a DH. Team officials thought
it was the best way to ease the 39-year-old "shortstop" back into
action, which means so many guys who otherwise wouldn't have played in
the past for whatever reason are playing now.
How terrible. A Hall of Fame shortstop is allowed to play baseball because he can be the DH. It's always horrible when fans get to see a Hall of Fame player on the field rather than sitting injured on the bench.
Mickey Mantle. I keep thinking about the Mick. He spent the majority of
his career with the Yankees maneuvering on notoriously bad knees. You
know where I'm going. If the DH was around for Mantle during the 1950s
and '60s, his 18-year career would have been significantly longer --
along with his list of accomplishments.
Terence tends to use reasoning in his columns that he believes is helping to prove his point, but this reasoning usually only serves to help prove the point he is arguing against. This is a situation where the reasoning Terence is using isn't exactly helping to further his argument against the use of the DH. Having the DH around would have allowed Mantle to have played longer and given baseball fans more of a chance to see him play. I don't see that as a bad thing, yet Terence is framing this as a negative for some reason.
You also could apply that to other aching players of yore.
Again, why is this bad?
Switching gears, let this sink in: Ortiz is the all-time DH hits leader
after his 1,689th career hit this week while playing that position. That
doesn't exactly have the same feel as, say, Hank Aaron and Cal Ripken
Jr. surpassing 714 home runs and 2,130 consecutive games played,
Let this sink in, why does every MLB record that gets broken have to have the same feel as a historical long-time record being broken? The DH isn't new, but it is still new relative to baseball, so why does this record being broken require a mid-game ceremony and a lap around the field for David Ortiz?
Aaron topped Babe Ruth's old mark, and Ripken soared passed that of Lou Gehrig.
Lou Gehrig passed Everett Scott for the MLB record for consecutive games played. Passing Everett Scott just doesn't have an historic feel to it, does it?
Whose record did Ortiz surpass?
Harold Baines.
Baines is a nobody! Look at his Baseball Reference comparables and you find more no-names. Tony Perez, Al Kaline, Dave Parker, Billy Williams, Andre Dawson, and Jim Rice. I'm sorry I've never heard of any of those guys, have you? Who is this "Harold Baines" guy? He's definitely not Hank Aaron. If any player breaks a record that wasn't previously held by one of the top 10 baseball players of all-time then Terence finds that broken record to be boring.
See what I mean?
Not at all. Do YOU see what you mean? You mean a record isn't worthy of mention if it isn't held by a player you deem to be one of the best players of all-time.
That said, nobody ever would confuse Baines with Ruth or Gehrig.
No one is trying to confuse Baines with Ruth or Gehrig. Baines not being on the level of Gehrig or Ruth doesn't mean Ortiz passing Baines' hits record is not impressive.
The same goes for Ortiz, and that's despite the fact that historians
could say he is the greatest DH of all-time -- whatever that means.
I don't know who these unnamed "historians" are (I always love it when a writer introduces an opposing opinion based on a generic group of people who hold this opinion), but I think Edgar Martinez is probably the greatest DH of all-time. Regardless "the greatest DH of all-time" means exactly that, the greatest player to be a DH for most of his career.
I'm not sure how it is possible to be confused by this phrase. If these generic historians said "he is the greatest pitcher of all-time" or "he is the greatest second baseman of all-time" I doubt Terence would be confused.
Who was considered the best DH before Ortiz?
Edgar Martinez.
I still consider Martinez to be the best DH of all-time, but of course I am not a "historian."
As was the case with Barnes, Martinez was pretty good...but he'll likely never make the one in Cooperstown, because some Hall of
Fame voters (like myself) don't believe players who primarily were DHs
deserve such an honor.
I don't believe left-handed starters deserve to be in the Hall of Fame. I don't believe Hispanic third basemen deserve to be in the Hall of Fame. I don't believe a player who played less than 10 seasons deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. I don't believe Mariano Rivera should be in the Hall of Fame because he's a reliever.
It sounds pretty stupid to cherry-pick certain players who shouldn't be in the Hall of Fame, doesn't it? It's just silly to draw a line in the sand and say, "DH's don't deserve to be in the Hall of Fame" without at least going over Martinez's batting statistics to see if they are superior enough to merit induction into the Hall of Fame.
Would Terence Moore not vote for Chipper Jones to enter the Hall of Fame simply because (or if) he wasn't a great fielder? If you aren't going to keep a player out of the Hall of Fame because he isn't a good fielder then why not vote for a player because he didn't field at all for the majority of his career?
To vote DHs into Cooperstown would be unfair to those who had to perform with a bat and a glove more often than not.
Not entirely. Relief pitchers like Mariano Rivera don't always pitch more than 1-2 innings per game and I don't think anyone would be stupid enough to suggest Rivera doesn't deserve Hall of Fame induction. I'm fine with keeping DH's out of the Hall of Fame as long as hitters who otherwise would make the Hall of Fame for their batting statistics are kept out of the Hall of Fame due to their fielding ineptitude. If a player was a below-average fielder then keep him out of the Hall of Fame. If that happened, fine, keep DH's out. Don't pretend fielding is part of the game and then completely ignore it as a criteria for the Hall of Fame if a player hits the baseball well enough to merit induction.
Still, this gets a little messy, because of Paul Molitor and Frank
Thomas. While Molitor did enough DH-ing to rank sixth on the all-time DH
hits list, he spent a slew of his 21 years with the Brewers in the
infield and the outfield. He already is in the Hall of Fame, and he got
my vote.
Why did Molitor receive your vote, Terence? Surely since you have written an article about why the DH needs to go away and you won't vote for a DH to enter the Hall of Fame, yet you voted for the player who is sixth on the all-time DH hits list, you will explain how Molitor isn't too DH-y for you? So what say you?
As for Thomas,
I guess Terence just wants to skip over the explanation for why he contradicts himself and voted for Molitor to enter the Hall of Fame. It's better that way because I am betting Terence has no good reason for why he voted for Molitor but would not vote for Ortiz.
during much of his 19 years with the White Sox, he alternated between
first base and DH. To be exact, he had 968 starts at first, compared to
1,308 as the DH. He even spent his last six seasons just as a DH.
Anyways, he is eligible for the baseball Hall of Fame for the first time
in December, and he'll make it with ease.
What terrible writing. So even though Frank Thomas played more games as a DH than he did at first base Terence Moore will vote for Thomas to enter the Hall of Fame? I guess Thomas has the luxury of not having gotten too many hits as a DH because otherwise Terence would see that kind of excellence at the DH spot like he sees in David Ortiz and proclaim Thomas as too DH-y to deserve Hall of Fame induction.
The lesson is that Terence Moore will vote for a player if he was a great DH, but if a player was too good at being a DH then he won't get Terence's vote. Don't excel at your job or else you don't deserve induction into the Hall of Fame. Above-averageness at being a DH is all that can be accepted when it comes to being considered for the Hall of Fame.
You can't ignore Thomas' 521 homers and lifetime .301 batting average.
He also has a great nickname (The Big Hurt), and he did spend a bunch of
games on defense.
Edgar Martinez has a .312 career average along with 309 home runs. Ortiz hit .286 and has hit 420+ home runs. They didn't have snappy nicknames, which apparently is now a part of the Hall of Fame criteria a player must meet.
Sorry, fellow traditionalists.
Didn't Terence say he was the Last of the Great Traditionalists? If so, he is apologizing to himself when he should really be apologizing to all of his readers. If anyone wants an example of Hall of Fame voters with their head up their butt, then look no further than this column.
Showing posts with label Jim Rice is Dumb. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jim Rice is Dumb. Show all posts
Monday, August 12, 2013
Monday, April 15, 2013
6 comments Dan Shaughnessy Beats the Negativity Drum a Little Bit More Since It's All He Knows
Dan Shaughnessy thinks team chemistry is overrated. I'm not inclined to believe he is wrong necessarily, but it all depends on how a person rates team chemistry. There are those who believe ubuntu is the key to winning (ahem, Bill Simmons), while there are those who don't believe team chemistry means much at all (apparently Dan Shaughnessy). One thing I do believe is a team has to enjoy playing with each other and there has to be at least a common thread of trust and business-like respect among teammates. Everyone doesn't have to like everyone else, but there has to be more like than dislike. Either way, Dan has nothing obviously negative to write about so he just uses the idea team chemistry is overrated to bash the Red Sox for not spending enough money and signing the right kind of players. Sure, Dan bashes the Red Sox when they do spend money and sign the "right" players and it fails. He's like many sportswriters who are just incredibly outcome driven. Dan never writes in April that the Red Sox will fail and why, but he is one of many sportswriters who are glad to write in October that the Red Sox were doomed for failure and why. It's amazing how that works, isn't it? Writing a column based on upon information gained from hindsight is so much fun.
The Red Sox are selling character this spring. They have cleaned up their toxic clubhouse.
I know this accomplishment is unimpressive to Dan because the Red Sox aren't winning games and nothing impresses Dan except for success. Yet, I would think a guy who wrote an entire book with Terry Francona about the Red Sox and how a poison atmosphere in the clubhouse and in management helped submarine the success of the Red Sox over the last couple of years would at least acknowledge cleaning up a toxic clubhouse is a good first step to putting a winning team together.
No more Josh Beckett snarling and looking for snitches.
The snitches were part of the way Dan Shaughnessy gathered his information for the Terry Francona book and any columns he wrote about the Red Sox poisoned clubhouse. Maybe Dan is just mad the Red Sox have tried to clear the clubhouse of as much drama as possible. It makes it so hard to do his job when there isn't misery around the Red Sox.
No more Carl Crawford complaining about how mean everybody is in Boston. No more aloof Adrian Gonzalez, arms folded, looking down on those who would question his commitment.
Dan is making a list of the Red Sox players who had issues over the last couple of years, but he also wants you to know that team chemistry is overrated and whether these ex-Red Sox players were on the team or not does not affect the team as a whole. So the attitude of these players had nothing to do with the Red Sox struggles over the last couple of years nor did it negatively affect the clubhouse Dan's opinion. It's just that Gonzalez was aloof, which Dan finds worthy enough to mention constantly, but not worthy of any consideration on how this attitude may have affected his teammates.
Kevin Youkilis isn’t here to gossip or complain. Goofy Bobby Valentine is gone and so are the coaches who wouldn’t talk to the manager.
And really, how could a player who gossips and complains or coaches who won't talk to the manager negatively affect the Red Sox team in any fashion? It's not like coaches need to communicate in order to have a functioning, winning team.
It’s all Hakuna Matata in Camp Farrell.
And of course Dan can't stand all of this happiness and immediately has to interject some misery and drama into the mix. Dan is a miserable person and he doesn't believe other people can naturally be happy, so he has to get to the bottom of all this happiness and create suspicion the Red Sox clubhouse is actually miserable. It's all a facade!
Character guys have been brought into the fold. Shane Victorinio is the Flyin’ Hawaiian, the man who lit the room with his smile when the Phillies won the World Series in 2008. Jonny Gomes is quick with a joke or to light up your smoke.
Billy Joel song quotes are always cool to use in a column...as long as it is 1977. Quick digression/psychoanalysis about this specific song quote that is probably way off the mark:
Dan Shaughnessy quotes "Piano Man" by Billy Joel. This is a song about a piano player who goes about his business of playing the piano and making tips in a bar while ruminating on the regulars (who all appear to be miserable) that come in and out of the bar. The narrator (the piano man) helps them forget about their troubles for a while, but in return these mostly miserable patrons give the piano man tips and shower with him with compliments about how he could do so much better than he is doing by playing piano in this specific bar.
So that's the background of the song and I can't help but wonder if Dan sees himself as the humble piano man who sees all of these miserable Red Sox fans and Red Sox players around him and he believes he cheers them up by writing about the issues the team has. Dan probably sees himself as being able to do better than he is doing in his professional career, but he chooses to cover the Red Sox and make Red Sox fans feel better about their team. People come and go, while Dan is still here commenting on what he sees. What Dan probably fails to realize in this scenario I have cooked up is that HE is the source of the Red Sox fan's misery. He isn't making them feel better about the team, but he is wallowing in the misery of the team. Dan isn't the piano man who makes everyone feel better, Dan is a patron of the bar who only comes off to his readers as being completely miserable and enjoying the misery he wallows in. He's the asshole who wistfully wants the Red Sox team to be what they were in the past when they shared his misery through the Curse of the Bambino.
Ryan Dempster is rumored to be a successor to Alex Trebek. Stephen Drew is as polite as his brother,
Plus, Stephen Drew is an unemotional asshole just like his brother. I don't understand the Alex Trebek reference for Dempster, possibly because I am not close enough to the Red Sox team to get it. I'll just call this reference stupid because I feel like it is a safe assumption this reference is stupid.
John Lackey is auditioning for Comeback Player of the Year and Mr. Congeniality.
We all know if John Lackey came back to the Red Sox camp after missing a year due to Tommy John surgery and acted like an asshole, then Dan would be sure to write about what an underachieving, overpaid douchebag Lackey is. Damn Lackey for daring to have a good attitude and not be as cranky as he used to be.
It’s all just swell. These Red Sox are contending for a playoff spot and the Lady Byng Trophy.
How dare the Red Sox try to find players who won't act like conceited assholes and seem to have a positive attitude about them! I have said this before, but the reason Dan is mocking the good attitude and personality of the Red Sox players is because it makes him unhappy to see them happy. If there isn't drama and the team isn't losing he has nothing to write about. He can't write columns saying what a bunch of assholes the Red Sox team has if they are nice guys and he can't write columns saying how terrible the Red Sox team are if they aren't struggling. It's the worst of all worlds for him. So Dan resorts to mocking the Red Sox players for being congenial in an effort to stir up trouble.
Or . . . Sox fans may wake up in the middle of the summer with the horrible realization famously expressed by the townie character (played by Rob Schneider) in “The Waterboy” when he learns that the football team will be without its best player:
“Oh no! We suck again!’’
That’s when it’ll be time to issue the Edvard Munch “Scream” masks on Yawkey Way.
I think reasonable Red Sox fans know the team isn't going to be very good. Also, Dan stated Picasso painted "The Scream" when he originally wrote this column. In his defense, facts aren't as important as important to him as his ability to troll his audience.
I hate to break it to everybody, but chemistry in a baseball clubhouse is way overrated. Winning requires talent, pitching, and three-run homers.
Thanks for the update on what baseball requires, Earl Weaver. So clubhouse chemistry may be overrated, but this doesn't mean issues in the clubhouse can't also affect a team on the field. It's entirely possible a player's attitude or struggles can affect the clubhouse as a whole. I'll remember this statement by Dan that clubhouse chemistry is overrated the next time he compliments (I know, he won't ever compliment anyone, but I'll be on the lookout regardless) a player for working hard and this hard work rubbing off on his teammates.
More than the other team sport, baseball is built on individual skill sets. A batter gets no help from his teammates. It’s the same for the pitcher.
I think Dan should interview some starting pitchers to see if they don't get help from their catcher while on the mound. I have a feeling the answer Dan gets will contradict the idea a pitcher gets no help from his teammates.
That’s that’s why you can have winning teams when you have a clubhouse full of guys who hate each other.
That's why you can have winning teams when you have a clubhouse full of guys who like each other a lot. It can go both ways.
The 1986 Sox won the American League pennant and came within a strike of winning the World Series in six games against the Mets. That team had miserable John McNamara as manager, lazy Calvin Schiraldi at closer, entitled Roger Clemens as MVP, and an angry Jim Rice who told Sport Magazine that “my teammates aren’t friends, they’re associates.’’
Calling his teammates "associates" instead of friends doesn't mean Jim Rice didn't get along with his teammates. It simply means they weren't good friends. Teams who don't have great chemistry can win, there's no doubt about that, but just because the 2013 Red Sox appear to like each other doesn't mean the team is on the wrong long-term path. It's not like Ben Cherington has made a decision to only sign and draft players who are really nice guys. He's obviously looking for talented players, but a clubhouse that gets along is one less thing for the Red Sox to have to worry about during the season. It's not like the Red Sox are only choosing to sign players who are nice.
McNamara hated all young players and believed reliever Sammy Stewart was one of the worst human beings who ever lived.
Coming from Dan Shaughnessy that is saying something. Dan has something negative to say about everyone and everything.
Oh, and the 2004 team — the iconic team that threw off the Curse of the Bambino? Let’s not forget all the personal stuff they had to overcome. Pedro Martinez was wildly jealous of Curt Schilling. Manny refused to speak to his manager at times and insisted on taking an off day when the Sox were strapped for outfielders.
It got so bad that the fellows decided to pour a little Jack Daniel’s into cups before Game 4.
Through a 162 game season it is going to be very rare for 25 baseball players to get along all of the time. Things will happen and angry words will be said that don't affect the long-term team chemistry. Players won't all get along all of the time. That's very important to know and chalking up a few personality conflicts or arguments as "bad team chemistry" may be overstating the case a bit.
Also, the 2004 Red Sox drank alcohol in the locker room? Haven't we learned from the beer and fried chicken stories from 2011 that drinking alcohol is how a team starts to lose games and lose focus? How can the overblown nature of the fried chicken and beer story being attributed to the Red Sox collapse square with the Red Sox drinking alcohol before a playoff game in 2004? Shouldn't the Red Sox have lost this series with the Yankees because they weren't focused enough on the game at hand?
Think of all the bad stories we’d have read about the 2004 Red Sox if Dave Roberts got thrown out stealing and they lost Game 4.
You know which idiot would have been writing these stories? Dan Shaughnessy.
Jack Daniel’s before the games? What a bunch of losers. If the Sox had lost four straight to the Yankees, news of the Jack would have made “Chicken and Beer” sound like “Remember the Titans.’’
Except the Red Sox didn't lose so no one cared about the Jack Daniel's before games. This is just like if the Red Sox didn't collapse down the stretch of the 2011 season no one would have cared about the fried chicken and beer. What this tells me is that the amount of alcohol or fried chicken a team consumes doesn't necessarily have anything to do with whether a team wins games or not. It's obvious Dan understands this as well, but he passes up writing real columns for the sake of having a cheap lede where he can bash the Red Sox at any possible opportunity.
But those 2004 Sox were not losers. They won.
It’s all about winning. The winners gets straight A’s in chemistry. The losers are chemistry’s F Troop.
They were also a team who appeared to be (at least from an outsider's perspective) a fairly close-knit team that enjoyed playing with each other. I'm sure there were a few disagreements during the season, but the Red Sox were a loveable team and they won the World Series. World Series can be won with good team chemistry.
Which is why chemistry is overrated.
Some talent would be good.
Chemistry isn't overrated. The Red Sox are trying to get some talent on the team, but they are trying to rebuild their team right now. Dan criticizes the Red Sox when they make stupid free agent signings, yet it seems he wants the Red Sox to keep playing the lottery that is trying to lure in big name free agents who want big money. Dan will complain about the Red Sox no matter what they do. They have held back on spending as much money and traded away their "mistake" players and he talks about how the team has no talent. This is why sportswriters don't and should not have any pull with teams. They tend to be impatient idiots at times, just like the fans are.
Nice guys finish last.
But they don't finish last because they are nice guys. So while team chemistry may be overrated, being nice and having good team chemistry isn't the reason the Red Sox may finish in last place. I realize Dan has no patience with anyone who tries to be positive, but if John Lackey was being a moody asshole then you and I both know Dan Shaughnessy would criticize him for this. That's the good part about being a sportswriter who has no true beliefs other than a commitment to negativity. The Red Sox spend money and Dan criticizes these big free agent signings for not smiling and playing pretty with the media, while if the Red Sox don't spend money, then Dan criticizes the Red Sox for signing guys without talent and says team chemistry doesn't mean anything. Just remember the next time Dan accuses a Red Sox player of being moody that he thinks team chemistry and being a nice guy is overrated.
Further evidence of Dan's trolling ability can be seen in his MLB predictions for the 2013 season.
Dan picks the Blue Jays to win the AL East and states the Yankees are going to win the first Wild Card spot. He's just trolling Red Sox fans by predicting the Yankees will still manage to win the Wild Card. Then Dan has the Los Angeles Dodgers, the same Los Angeles Dodgers team the Red Sox traded those bums Adrian Gonzalez, Josh Beckett, and Carl Crawford to, winning the World Series. This is significant for two reasons:
1. The Dodgers greatly increased their payroll this offseason, so Dan is saying in a way that he thinks the Dodgers will win the World Series because they spent a lot of money to acquire talent. This is, of course, something he wishes the Red Sox would do simply because they didn't do this. Go buy some players guys! If the Red Sox signed expensive free agents Dan would write a column about how these guys better perform and these are the same old free spending Red Sox with expensive, underachieving players.
2. The choice of the Dodgers to win the World Series is also significant because Dan is saying the same assholes who didn't play well in Boston are going to lead the Dodgers to the World Series. Quite a few articles were written by Dan on how Crawford/Gonzalez/Beckett weren't worth the money they were paid, but now he is essentially saying they are worth that money once they have left Boston because they will lead the Dodgers to the World Series.
There is one thing Dan does know how to do and that is troll Red Sox fans. He says Crawford/Beckett/Gonzalez suck and are overpaid when they play for the Red Sox, and then once they are traded, he predicts them to be a part of the team that wins the World Series the next season. I feel bad for Dan. His need for attention is so great. It must be lonely and sad to be a miserable, negative person who craves any type of attention even if it is negative attention.
The Red Sox are selling character this spring. They have cleaned up their toxic clubhouse.
I know this accomplishment is unimpressive to Dan because the Red Sox aren't winning games and nothing impresses Dan except for success. Yet, I would think a guy who wrote an entire book with Terry Francona about the Red Sox and how a poison atmosphere in the clubhouse and in management helped submarine the success of the Red Sox over the last couple of years would at least acknowledge cleaning up a toxic clubhouse is a good first step to putting a winning team together.
No more Josh Beckett snarling and looking for snitches.
The snitches were part of the way Dan Shaughnessy gathered his information for the Terry Francona book and any columns he wrote about the Red Sox poisoned clubhouse. Maybe Dan is just mad the Red Sox have tried to clear the clubhouse of as much drama as possible. It makes it so hard to do his job when there isn't misery around the Red Sox.
No more Carl Crawford complaining about how mean everybody is in Boston. No more aloof Adrian Gonzalez, arms folded, looking down on those who would question his commitment.
Dan is making a list of the Red Sox players who had issues over the last couple of years, but he also wants you to know that team chemistry is overrated and whether these ex-Red Sox players were on the team or not does not affect the team as a whole. So the attitude of these players had nothing to do with the Red Sox struggles over the last couple of years nor did it negatively affect the clubhouse Dan's opinion. It's just that Gonzalez was aloof, which Dan finds worthy enough to mention constantly, but not worthy of any consideration on how this attitude may have affected his teammates.
Kevin Youkilis isn’t here to gossip or complain. Goofy Bobby Valentine is gone and so are the coaches who wouldn’t talk to the manager.
And really, how could a player who gossips and complains or coaches who won't talk to the manager negatively affect the Red Sox team in any fashion? It's not like coaches need to communicate in order to have a functioning, winning team.
It’s all Hakuna Matata in Camp Farrell.
And of course Dan can't stand all of this happiness and immediately has to interject some misery and drama into the mix. Dan is a miserable person and he doesn't believe other people can naturally be happy, so he has to get to the bottom of all this happiness and create suspicion the Red Sox clubhouse is actually miserable. It's all a facade!
Character guys have been brought into the fold. Shane Victorinio is the Flyin’ Hawaiian, the man who lit the room with his smile when the Phillies won the World Series in 2008. Jonny Gomes is quick with a joke or to light up your smoke.
Billy Joel song quotes are always cool to use in a column...as long as it is 1977. Quick digression/psychoanalysis about this specific song quote that is probably way off the mark:
Dan Shaughnessy quotes "Piano Man" by Billy Joel. This is a song about a piano player who goes about his business of playing the piano and making tips in a bar while ruminating on the regulars (who all appear to be miserable) that come in and out of the bar. The narrator (the piano man) helps them forget about their troubles for a while, but in return these mostly miserable patrons give the piano man tips and shower with him with compliments about how he could do so much better than he is doing by playing piano in this specific bar.
So that's the background of the song and I can't help but wonder if Dan sees himself as the humble piano man who sees all of these miserable Red Sox fans and Red Sox players around him and he believes he cheers them up by writing about the issues the team has. Dan probably sees himself as being able to do better than he is doing in his professional career, but he chooses to cover the Red Sox and make Red Sox fans feel better about their team. People come and go, while Dan is still here commenting on what he sees. What Dan probably fails to realize in this scenario I have cooked up is that HE is the source of the Red Sox fan's misery. He isn't making them feel better about the team, but he is wallowing in the misery of the team. Dan isn't the piano man who makes everyone feel better, Dan is a patron of the bar who only comes off to his readers as being completely miserable and enjoying the misery he wallows in. He's the asshole who wistfully wants the Red Sox team to be what they were in the past when they shared his misery through the Curse of the Bambino.
Ryan Dempster is rumored to be a successor to Alex Trebek. Stephen Drew is as polite as his brother,
Plus, Stephen Drew is an unemotional asshole just like his brother. I don't understand the Alex Trebek reference for Dempster, possibly because I am not close enough to the Red Sox team to get it. I'll just call this reference stupid because I feel like it is a safe assumption this reference is stupid.
John Lackey is auditioning for Comeback Player of the Year and Mr. Congeniality.
We all know if John Lackey came back to the Red Sox camp after missing a year due to Tommy John surgery and acted like an asshole, then Dan would be sure to write about what an underachieving, overpaid douchebag Lackey is. Damn Lackey for daring to have a good attitude and not be as cranky as he used to be.
It’s all just swell. These Red Sox are contending for a playoff spot and the Lady Byng Trophy.
How dare the Red Sox try to find players who won't act like conceited assholes and seem to have a positive attitude about them! I have said this before, but the reason Dan is mocking the good attitude and personality of the Red Sox players is because it makes him unhappy to see them happy. If there isn't drama and the team isn't losing he has nothing to write about. He can't write columns saying what a bunch of assholes the Red Sox team has if they are nice guys and he can't write columns saying how terrible the Red Sox team are if they aren't struggling. It's the worst of all worlds for him. So Dan resorts to mocking the Red Sox players for being congenial in an effort to stir up trouble.
Or . . . Sox fans may wake up in the middle of the summer with the horrible realization famously expressed by the townie character (played by Rob Schneider) in “The Waterboy” when he learns that the football team will be without its best player:
“Oh no! We suck again!’’
That’s when it’ll be time to issue the Edvard Munch “Scream” masks on Yawkey Way.
I think reasonable Red Sox fans know the team isn't going to be very good. Also, Dan stated Picasso painted "The Scream" when he originally wrote this column. In his defense, facts aren't as important as important to him as his ability to troll his audience.
I hate to break it to everybody, but chemistry in a baseball clubhouse is way overrated. Winning requires talent, pitching, and three-run homers.
Thanks for the update on what baseball requires, Earl Weaver. So clubhouse chemistry may be overrated, but this doesn't mean issues in the clubhouse can't also affect a team on the field. It's entirely possible a player's attitude or struggles can affect the clubhouse as a whole. I'll remember this statement by Dan that clubhouse chemistry is overrated the next time he compliments (I know, he won't ever compliment anyone, but I'll be on the lookout regardless) a player for working hard and this hard work rubbing off on his teammates.
More than the other team sport, baseball is built on individual skill sets. A batter gets no help from his teammates. It’s the same for the pitcher.
I think Dan should interview some starting pitchers to see if they don't get help from their catcher while on the mound. I have a feeling the answer Dan gets will contradict the idea a pitcher gets no help from his teammates.
That’s that’s why you can have winning teams when you have a clubhouse full of guys who hate each other.
That's why you can have winning teams when you have a clubhouse full of guys who like each other a lot. It can go both ways.
The 1986 Sox won the American League pennant and came within a strike of winning the World Series in six games against the Mets. That team had miserable John McNamara as manager, lazy Calvin Schiraldi at closer, entitled Roger Clemens as MVP, and an angry Jim Rice who told Sport Magazine that “my teammates aren’t friends, they’re associates.’’
Calling his teammates "associates" instead of friends doesn't mean Jim Rice didn't get along with his teammates. It simply means they weren't good friends. Teams who don't have great chemistry can win, there's no doubt about that, but just because the 2013 Red Sox appear to like each other doesn't mean the team is on the wrong long-term path. It's not like Ben Cherington has made a decision to only sign and draft players who are really nice guys. He's obviously looking for talented players, but a clubhouse that gets along is one less thing for the Red Sox to have to worry about during the season. It's not like the Red Sox are only choosing to sign players who are nice.
McNamara hated all young players and believed reliever Sammy Stewart was one of the worst human beings who ever lived.
Coming from Dan Shaughnessy that is saying something. Dan has something negative to say about everyone and everything.
Oh, and the 2004 team — the iconic team that threw off the Curse of the Bambino? Let’s not forget all the personal stuff they had to overcome. Pedro Martinez was wildly jealous of Curt Schilling. Manny refused to speak to his manager at times and insisted on taking an off day when the Sox were strapped for outfielders.
It got so bad that the fellows decided to pour a little Jack Daniel’s into cups before Game 4.
Through a 162 game season it is going to be very rare for 25 baseball players to get along all of the time. Things will happen and angry words will be said that don't affect the long-term team chemistry. Players won't all get along all of the time. That's very important to know and chalking up a few personality conflicts or arguments as "bad team chemistry" may be overstating the case a bit.
Also, the 2004 Red Sox drank alcohol in the locker room? Haven't we learned from the beer and fried chicken stories from 2011 that drinking alcohol is how a team starts to lose games and lose focus? How can the overblown nature of the fried chicken and beer story being attributed to the Red Sox collapse square with the Red Sox drinking alcohol before a playoff game in 2004? Shouldn't the Red Sox have lost this series with the Yankees because they weren't focused enough on the game at hand?
Think of all the bad stories we’d have read about the 2004 Red Sox if Dave Roberts got thrown out stealing and they lost Game 4.
You know which idiot would have been writing these stories? Dan Shaughnessy.
Jack Daniel’s before the games? What a bunch of losers. If the Sox had lost four straight to the Yankees, news of the Jack would have made “Chicken and Beer” sound like “Remember the Titans.’’
Except the Red Sox didn't lose so no one cared about the Jack Daniel's before games. This is just like if the Red Sox didn't collapse down the stretch of the 2011 season no one would have cared about the fried chicken and beer. What this tells me is that the amount of alcohol or fried chicken a team consumes doesn't necessarily have anything to do with whether a team wins games or not. It's obvious Dan understands this as well, but he passes up writing real columns for the sake of having a cheap lede where he can bash the Red Sox at any possible opportunity.
But those 2004 Sox were not losers. They won.
It’s all about winning. The winners gets straight A’s in chemistry. The losers are chemistry’s F Troop.
They were also a team who appeared to be (at least from an outsider's perspective) a fairly close-knit team that enjoyed playing with each other. I'm sure there were a few disagreements during the season, but the Red Sox were a loveable team and they won the World Series. World Series can be won with good team chemistry.
Which is why chemistry is overrated.
Some talent would be good.
Chemistry isn't overrated. The Red Sox are trying to get some talent on the team, but they are trying to rebuild their team right now. Dan criticizes the Red Sox when they make stupid free agent signings, yet it seems he wants the Red Sox to keep playing the lottery that is trying to lure in big name free agents who want big money. Dan will complain about the Red Sox no matter what they do. They have held back on spending as much money and traded away their "mistake" players and he talks about how the team has no talent. This is why sportswriters don't and should not have any pull with teams. They tend to be impatient idiots at times, just like the fans are.
Nice guys finish last.
But they don't finish last because they are nice guys. So while team chemistry may be overrated, being nice and having good team chemistry isn't the reason the Red Sox may finish in last place. I realize Dan has no patience with anyone who tries to be positive, but if John Lackey was being a moody asshole then you and I both know Dan Shaughnessy would criticize him for this. That's the good part about being a sportswriter who has no true beliefs other than a commitment to negativity. The Red Sox spend money and Dan criticizes these big free agent signings for not smiling and playing pretty with the media, while if the Red Sox don't spend money, then Dan criticizes the Red Sox for signing guys without talent and says team chemistry doesn't mean anything. Just remember the next time Dan accuses a Red Sox player of being moody that he thinks team chemistry and being a nice guy is overrated.
Further evidence of Dan's trolling ability can be seen in his MLB predictions for the 2013 season.
Dan picks the Blue Jays to win the AL East and states the Yankees are going to win the first Wild Card spot. He's just trolling Red Sox fans by predicting the Yankees will still manage to win the Wild Card. Then Dan has the Los Angeles Dodgers, the same Los Angeles Dodgers team the Red Sox traded those bums Adrian Gonzalez, Josh Beckett, and Carl Crawford to, winning the World Series. This is significant for two reasons:
1. The Dodgers greatly increased their payroll this offseason, so Dan is saying in a way that he thinks the Dodgers will win the World Series because they spent a lot of money to acquire talent. This is, of course, something he wishes the Red Sox would do simply because they didn't do this. Go buy some players guys! If the Red Sox signed expensive free agents Dan would write a column about how these guys better perform and these are the same old free spending Red Sox with expensive, underachieving players.
2. The choice of the Dodgers to win the World Series is also significant because Dan is saying the same assholes who didn't play well in Boston are going to lead the Dodgers to the World Series. Quite a few articles were written by Dan on how Crawford/Gonzalez/Beckett weren't worth the money they were paid, but now he is essentially saying they are worth that money once they have left Boston because they will lead the Dodgers to the World Series.
There is one thing Dan does know how to do and that is troll Red Sox fans. He says Crawford/Beckett/Gonzalez suck and are overpaid when they play for the Red Sox, and then once they are traded, he predicts them to be a part of the team that wins the World Series the next season. I feel bad for Dan. His need for attention is so great. It must be lonely and sad to be a miserable, negative person who craves any type of attention even if it is negative attention.
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
6 comments Hall of Very Good Alert for Steve Garvey
Let's start off with a comparison of two baseball players.
Player A: 2332 games played, 1143 runs, 2599 hits, 440 doubles, 272 home runs, 1308 RBI, 83 stolen bases, .294/.329/.446 career line, one MVP award, five Top-10 MVP award finishes, four Gold Gloves, and 10 All-Star Games over 19 seasons.
Player B: 2557 games played, 1285 runs, 2586 hits, 407 doubles, 173 home runs, 1194 RBI, 281 stolen bases, .298/.365/.417 career line, zero MVP awards, zero Top-10 MVP award finishes, zero Gold Gloves and 3 All-Star Games over 23 seasons.
Obviously these two players aren't directly comparable. Player A was a player seen as having a bigger yearly impact given his MVP award finishes and All-Star game appearances, but Player B played 225 more games over his career and had similar statistics to Player A. It seems the big differences are in MVP award finishes, Gold Gloves, and All-Star appearances. Two of those three categories are essentially popularity contests, especially in the age Player A played, which consisted of 1969-1987. Player B played from 1982-2007, right in the middle of the Steroid Era, so I am sure he could be suspected of steroid use. My basic point is Player B played in an era when home run and offensive numbers were jacked up, which I suspect prevented him from making an All-Star appearance or two. Regardless, All-Star Game appearances and Gold Gloves are popularity contests and those are the two major categories that separate these two players.
So Player A is Steve Garvey, who Steve Wulf thinks should be in the Hall of Fame, while Player B is Julio Franco, who Steve Wulf doesn't mention at all in terms of deserving to be in the Hall of Fame...and rightfully so. I don't think either player deserves to be in the Hall of Fame and Steve Garvey should be a founding member of the annoyingly titled "Hall of Very Good."
The Hall of Fame would have no trouble writing the plaque:
"Steve Garvey was pretty good for a while. There are a lot of other players who were much better than Garvey but we suspect they cheated. So because there were cheaters who cheated, we have lowered the standards for the Hall of Fame. Garvey was pretty good for a while. Fuck you Fred McGriff. You were clean and can't sniff the Hall of Fame."
HOLDS NATIONAL LEAGUE RECORD FOR CONSECUTIVE
GAMES PLAYED (1,201).
Irrelevant. The inability to not get injured doesn't make Steve Garvey a bigger contributor to baseball history.
VOTED THE 1974 NL MVP
AND SELECTED TO THE ALL-STAR GAME 10 TIMES.
The All-Star Game is a popularity contest.
A FOUR-TIME GOLD GLOVE WINNER, HE
ONCE HELD THE RECORD FOR MOST CONSECUTIVE GAMES
AT 1B WITHOUT AN ERROR (193).
It's easy to not commit an error if you don't make an effort to get to a ground ball. I'm not saying Steve Garvey did this, and while consecutive games without an error streaks are impressive, again, he doesn't hold this record any more and this isn't impressive enough to merit his Hall of Fame induction.
The problem with Steve Garvey, though, is that he's not going to Cooperstown anytime soon,
No, the problem with Steve Garvey is there are three first basemen (off the top of my head) who deserve induction before he does. Jeff Bagwell, Don Mattingly, and Fred McGriff deserve induction before Steve Garvey deserves induction.
"I don't think I was imagining it," said George Brett, who is in the club. "I know I read a lot of stories about 'future Hall of Famer' Steve Garvey."
Because we all know if sportswriters write "future Hall of Famer" a few times in front of a player's name during his playing career that means the player definitely deserves induction once he retires. Sportswriters couldn't be wrong about something this serious, could they?
For a lot of us who saw him on a regular basis, Garvey was a clutch hitter who could hit for average or power, depending on what the Dodgers needed;
There are three parts of the "traditionalist" argument for a player's Hall of Fame induction contained in this sentence.
1. You had to see Garvey play in order to appreciate him. If you didn't watch him, there's no way you appreciated him. His statistics only tell part of the story. The other part of the story is anecdotal evidence based on that sportswriter's recollection of how impactful that player was and you will never understand this because you didn't see the player play.
2. He was super-duper clutchy. Like really clutchy in certain cherry-picked circumstances.
3. He was a team player. He would hit a home run if the Dodgers needed that or get on-base if the Dodgers needed that. Sometimes a home run just clears the bases out, killing a rally, so Garvey was happy to provide a base hit in lieu of a rally killing home run.
and a paragon who played the game the right way and treated people with consideration.
Garvey treated people the right way as long as you weren't married to him or were owed money by him. Outside of his personal and business life, Garvey treated everyone with consideration. He considered whether to not pay debts he owed and then he considered whether it would feel nice to cheat on his spouse. Do these things mean he shouldn't be in the Hall of Fame? Of course not, but don't say he treated people with consideration when there is a record that says the opposite.
I don't even know what "played the game the right way" means. Were there Dodgers players showing up to the ball park on game days trying to field a ground ball with a fishing rod or something? This phrase is bullshit for when a writer isn't competent enough to find something more interesting to say about a player.
He single-handedly carried his second team, the Padres, into the 1984 World Series --
Tony Gwynn and his .351 average is sad to learn he didn't contribute to the World Series run. The Padres pitchers, all of whom who had more than 31 starts and four of them had ERA's below 4.00, are also sad to learn they didn't contribute to that Padres team at all. It was Steve Garvey, he of the .284/.307/.373 line, that singlehandedly got the Padres to the World Series. Garvey had a great NLCS, but the Padres didn't win 92 games solely because of him. Plus, Steve Wulf is cherry-picking the shit out of some statistics by leaving out how Garvey hit .200/.200/.300 in the 1984 World Series. This part of the cherry-picking of statistics that goes on among traditionalists in order to advocate for their player of choice.
when "The Natural" was shown on a plane from Chicago to San Diego for the start of the Series, the passengers chanted, "Gar-vey! Gar-vey!" at the climax.
Then Garvey went on to stink it up in the World Series. But since the passengers on a plane chanted Garvey's name, that definitely should count on Garvey's Hall of Fame resume since it is so incredibly relevant and isn't anecdotal evidence at all.
In Bill James' seminal book on the Hall of Fame, "The Politics of Glory," first published in 1995, he used a point system called the Hall of Fame Monitor to predict which current and recently retired players would be voted in by the Baseball Writers' Association of America. He had Garvey going into the Hall in 1997, along with Phil Niekro. But Garvey would never finish higher than fourth (1996), or come close to the 75 percent of the vote needed for induction (a high of 42.6 percent in '95), even though he did outpoll future HOFers Jim Rice, Bruce Sutter and Bert Blyleven in some years.
Oh sure, now traditionalist Steve Wulf uses Bill James' research as empirical evidence something is true when it fits the point Wulf wants to prove. Bill James and Sabermetricians are the enemy when what they write doesn't match the conclusion Steve Wulf wants to reach. Sabermetrics are stupid unless they can be used to prove a point a traditionalist writer wants to prove.
"To be honest, I am disappointed," Garvey said. "I always thought of my career as a body of work and not just about numbers."
Yes, but your body of work is your numbers. Perhaps I am stupid, but I don't get how I am supposed to evaluate Steve Garvey's body of work and not make it about the numbers. I'm not sure what else the Hall of Fame committee should consider. Morality? Well, Dale Murphy should be in way before Steve Garvey. He didn't cheat? Again, there is a list of players who didn't cheat at least 10 players long who would get in before Garvey.
What happened to Garvey is partly schadenfreude: Writers turned on him for a complicated personal life that smudged an image so golden that he once had a middle school named after him.
Well, if Garvey doesn't want it to be all about the numbers then he will have to accept this as part of the consideration. If Garvey wants his "body of work" to represent him, not his statistics, and this means we look at the 10 All-Star Game appearances he made only...well that's just dumb. All-Star Game appearances should not be the main argument for a player entering the Hall of Fame.
But he's also one of the great players from that period who have been hurt by the inflation of statistics fueled by the increasing use of PEDs,
This is a lie. Plain and simple. Garvey fell off the ballot after his 15th year on the ballot in 2007. There were no accused PED users eligible for the Hall of Fame from 1992-2007. Well, maybe there was 1-2 suspected users, but none made it into the Hall of Fame at the expense of Steve Garvey. Garvey had 15 years of not being compared to PED users, including six years of eligibility before the Steroid Era even began, to get voted into the Hall of Fame and he failed to make it. Steve Wulf is lying. In reality, Garvey didn't make the Hall of Fame because of his statistics pre-Steroid Era.
which happened to coincide with the HOF eligibility for the earlier era. And, as Garvey points out, "That was also a period when the veteran writers who relied on what they saw gave way to younger writers who focused on statistics."
What the fuck does Steve Garvey want us to focus on? He doesn't want anyone to focus on statistics, but to focus on "what they saw" to get him into the Hall of Fame. I saw Jeff Bagwell, Alan Trammell, Fred McGriff, Tim Raines, Dale Murphy, Don Mattingly, and Edgar Martinez play and they all deserve to be in the Hall of Fame before Steve Garvey does.
Now Garvey is lying. The so-called "Statistical Revolution" didn't begin until 2002 or so. Why wasn't he elected to the Hall of Fame during the years of 1992-2002? Voters weren't relying on statistics at that point. Garvey is simply in denial. His numbers didn't qualify him and what the voters saw, those who voted based on "what they saw" didn't qualify him to make the Hall of Fame.
The irony, of course, is that the writers are now punishing the players whose numbers they feel were artificially bolstered. Wouldn't it be nice if they could channel their disillusionment into a more positive re-examination of those who have been relegated to the scrap heap?
Absolutely, let's do this. Garvey would be further down this list as well, especially considering some of the players up for Hall of Fame induction over the next three or four years. I would vote for at least six other borderline players before I voted for Garvey. He's not good enough, deal with it. Maybe if Wulf and Garvey try hard enough they can find a criteria that would allow Garvey to make the Hall of Fame, but I doubt it.
Not to diminish Jim Rice, but as someone who covered Parker and Rice in their primes, I can testify that Parker was the superior player in almost every regard.
Is this based on the super-special "I saw him play" criteria that can't be quantified or is this based on the idea of comparing the two player's numbers? If it is based on statistics, then Rice appears to be slightly superior to Parker.
"It would've been nice to have gone as a fellow Hall of Famer. I think I belong there. Let's put it this way -- on almost every team I played, I was 'The Guy' or one of them. The system needs to be changed."
Right, the Hall of Fame should use "The Guy" criteria to vote players into the Hall of Fame. Whatever the hell kind of bullshit criteria this is. It tells you a lot about Dave Parker that he thinks he was "The Guy" on on Pirates teams with Willie Stargell and he also thinks he was "The Guy" on the A's teams that had Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire.
Voters need to take a closer look at players they may have bypassed because they didn't see them.
But if they didn't see them play then how the hell are they supposed to reconsider them? Trust the memory of sportswriters from 30 years ago that this player was Hall of Fame-worthy? Memories can't be wrong, can they?
And just as they agonize over what the "Valuable" means in Most Valuable Player, they need to think about what the "Fame" in Hall of Fame really means. (Uh, 10 All-Star Games is a pretty good definition.)
So we should vote in famous players too. Gotcha. Let's see, Steve Howe is pretty famous for his drug problems and he tested the Major League Baseball drug policy, so I can assume he is a unanimous selection to the Hall of Fame. And no, All-Star Game selections are not an indication of "fame," but rather an indication of popularity to be voted onto a team for purposes of an exhibition game. All-Star voting also tells us the strength of a certain position on the baseball field in both the American and National League.
"I know voters are worried about steroids this year," Garvey said. "I would much rather they think about the shot of adrenaline that a few more players would give the Hall of Fame."
I think that is absolutely a great idea, which is why Fred McGriff, Tim Raines, Jeff Bagwell and Jack Morris (it pains me, it really does, but I would vote him in before Garvey) should be voted in this year. In fact, let's put Edgar Martinez in there as well. Yep, Steve Garvey and Steve Wulf, even if the Hall of Fame opens up to let more non-steroid players get inducted, then Steve Garvey is still down the waiting list.
Perhaps Garvey's career isn't forgotten, it just wasn't Hall of Fame-worthy?
Player A: 2332 games played, 1143 runs, 2599 hits, 440 doubles, 272 home runs, 1308 RBI, 83 stolen bases, .294/.329/.446 career line, one MVP award, five Top-10 MVP award finishes, four Gold Gloves, and 10 All-Star Games over 19 seasons.
Player B: 2557 games played, 1285 runs, 2586 hits, 407 doubles, 173 home runs, 1194 RBI, 281 stolen bases, .298/.365/.417 career line, zero MVP awards, zero Top-10 MVP award finishes, zero Gold Gloves and 3 All-Star Games over 23 seasons.
Obviously these two players aren't directly comparable. Player A was a player seen as having a bigger yearly impact given his MVP award finishes and All-Star game appearances, but Player B played 225 more games over his career and had similar statistics to Player A. It seems the big differences are in MVP award finishes, Gold Gloves, and All-Star appearances. Two of those three categories are essentially popularity contests, especially in the age Player A played, which consisted of 1969-1987. Player B played from 1982-2007, right in the middle of the Steroid Era, so I am sure he could be suspected of steroid use. My basic point is Player B played in an era when home run and offensive numbers were jacked up, which I suspect prevented him from making an All-Star appearance or two. Regardless, All-Star Game appearances and Gold Gloves are popularity contests and those are the two major categories that separate these two players.
So Player A is Steve Garvey, who Steve Wulf thinks should be in the Hall of Fame, while Player B is Julio Franco, who Steve Wulf doesn't mention at all in terms of deserving to be in the Hall of Fame...and rightfully so. I don't think either player deserves to be in the Hall of Fame and Steve Garvey should be a founding member of the annoyingly titled "Hall of Very Good."
The Hall of Fame would have no trouble writing the plaque:
"Steve Garvey was pretty good for a while. There are a lot of other players who were much better than Garvey but we suspect they cheated. So because there were cheaters who cheated, we have lowered the standards for the Hall of Fame. Garvey was pretty good for a while. Fuck you Fred McGriff. You were clean and can't sniff the Hall of Fame."
HOLDS NATIONAL LEAGUE RECORD FOR CONSECUTIVE
GAMES PLAYED (1,201).
Irrelevant. The inability to not get injured doesn't make Steve Garvey a bigger contributor to baseball history.
VOTED THE 1974 NL MVP
AND SELECTED TO THE ALL-STAR GAME 10 TIMES.
The All-Star Game is a popularity contest.
A FOUR-TIME GOLD GLOVE WINNER, HE
ONCE HELD THE RECORD FOR MOST CONSECUTIVE GAMES
AT 1B WITHOUT AN ERROR (193).
It's easy to not commit an error if you don't make an effort to get to a ground ball. I'm not saying Steve Garvey did this, and while consecutive games without an error streaks are impressive, again, he doesn't hold this record any more and this isn't impressive enough to merit his Hall of Fame induction.
The problem with Steve Garvey, though, is that he's not going to Cooperstown anytime soon,
No, the problem with Steve Garvey is there are three first basemen (off the top of my head) who deserve induction before he does. Jeff Bagwell, Don Mattingly, and Fred McGriff deserve induction before Steve Garvey deserves induction.
"I don't think I was imagining it," said George Brett, who is in the club. "I know I read a lot of stories about 'future Hall of Famer' Steve Garvey."
Because we all know if sportswriters write "future Hall of Famer" a few times in front of a player's name during his playing career that means the player definitely deserves induction once he retires. Sportswriters couldn't be wrong about something this serious, could they?
For a lot of us who saw him on a regular basis, Garvey was a clutch hitter who could hit for average or power, depending on what the Dodgers needed;
There are three parts of the "traditionalist" argument for a player's Hall of Fame induction contained in this sentence.
1. You had to see Garvey play in order to appreciate him. If you didn't watch him, there's no way you appreciated him. His statistics only tell part of the story. The other part of the story is anecdotal evidence based on that sportswriter's recollection of how impactful that player was and you will never understand this because you didn't see the player play.
2. He was super-duper clutchy. Like really clutchy in certain cherry-picked circumstances.
3. He was a team player. He would hit a home run if the Dodgers needed that or get on-base if the Dodgers needed that. Sometimes a home run just clears the bases out, killing a rally, so Garvey was happy to provide a base hit in lieu of a rally killing home run.
and a paragon who played the game the right way and treated people with consideration.
Garvey treated people the right way as long as you weren't married to him or were owed money by him. Outside of his personal and business life, Garvey treated everyone with consideration. He considered whether to not pay debts he owed and then he considered whether it would feel nice to cheat on his spouse. Do these things mean he shouldn't be in the Hall of Fame? Of course not, but don't say he treated people with consideration when there is a record that says the opposite.
I don't even know what "played the game the right way" means. Were there Dodgers players showing up to the ball park on game days trying to field a ground ball with a fishing rod or something? This phrase is bullshit for when a writer isn't competent enough to find something more interesting to say about a player.
He single-handedly carried his second team, the Padres, into the 1984 World Series --
Tony Gwynn and his .351 average is sad to learn he didn't contribute to the World Series run. The Padres pitchers, all of whom who had more than 31 starts and four of them had ERA's below 4.00, are also sad to learn they didn't contribute to that Padres team at all. It was Steve Garvey, he of the .284/.307/.373 line, that singlehandedly got the Padres to the World Series. Garvey had a great NLCS, but the Padres didn't win 92 games solely because of him. Plus, Steve Wulf is cherry-picking the shit out of some statistics by leaving out how Garvey hit .200/.200/.300 in the 1984 World Series. This part of the cherry-picking of statistics that goes on among traditionalists in order to advocate for their player of choice.
when "The Natural" was shown on a plane from Chicago to San Diego for the start of the Series, the passengers chanted, "Gar-vey! Gar-vey!" at the climax.
Then Garvey went on to stink it up in the World Series. But since the passengers on a plane chanted Garvey's name, that definitely should count on Garvey's Hall of Fame resume since it is so incredibly relevant and isn't anecdotal evidence at all.
In Bill James' seminal book on the Hall of Fame, "The Politics of Glory," first published in 1995, he used a point system called the Hall of Fame Monitor to predict which current and recently retired players would be voted in by the Baseball Writers' Association of America. He had Garvey going into the Hall in 1997, along with Phil Niekro. But Garvey would never finish higher than fourth (1996), or come close to the 75 percent of the vote needed for induction (a high of 42.6 percent in '95), even though he did outpoll future HOFers Jim Rice, Bruce Sutter and Bert Blyleven in some years.
Oh sure, now traditionalist Steve Wulf uses Bill James' research as empirical evidence something is true when it fits the point Wulf wants to prove. Bill James and Sabermetricians are the enemy when what they write doesn't match the conclusion Steve Wulf wants to reach. Sabermetrics are stupid unless they can be used to prove a point a traditionalist writer wants to prove.
"To be honest, I am disappointed," Garvey said. "I always thought of my career as a body of work and not just about numbers."
Yes, but your body of work is your numbers. Perhaps I am stupid, but I don't get how I am supposed to evaluate Steve Garvey's body of work and not make it about the numbers. I'm not sure what else the Hall of Fame committee should consider. Morality? Well, Dale Murphy should be in way before Steve Garvey. He didn't cheat? Again, there is a list of players who didn't cheat at least 10 players long who would get in before Garvey.
What happened to Garvey is partly schadenfreude: Writers turned on him for a complicated personal life that smudged an image so golden that he once had a middle school named after him.
Well, if Garvey doesn't want it to be all about the numbers then he will have to accept this as part of the consideration. If Garvey wants his "body of work" to represent him, not his statistics, and this means we look at the 10 All-Star Game appearances he made only...well that's just dumb. All-Star Game appearances should not be the main argument for a player entering the Hall of Fame.
But he's also one of the great players from that period who have been hurt by the inflation of statistics fueled by the increasing use of PEDs,
This is a lie. Plain and simple. Garvey fell off the ballot after his 15th year on the ballot in 2007. There were no accused PED users eligible for the Hall of Fame from 1992-2007. Well, maybe there was 1-2 suspected users, but none made it into the Hall of Fame at the expense of Steve Garvey. Garvey had 15 years of not being compared to PED users, including six years of eligibility before the Steroid Era even began, to get voted into the Hall of Fame and he failed to make it. Steve Wulf is lying. In reality, Garvey didn't make the Hall of Fame because of his statistics pre-Steroid Era.
which happened to coincide with the HOF eligibility for the earlier era. And, as Garvey points out, "That was also a period when the veteran writers who relied on what they saw gave way to younger writers who focused on statistics."
What the fuck does Steve Garvey want us to focus on? He doesn't want anyone to focus on statistics, but to focus on "what they saw" to get him into the Hall of Fame. I saw Jeff Bagwell, Alan Trammell, Fred McGriff, Tim Raines, Dale Murphy, Don Mattingly, and Edgar Martinez play and they all deserve to be in the Hall of Fame before Steve Garvey does.
Now Garvey is lying. The so-called "Statistical Revolution" didn't begin until 2002 or so. Why wasn't he elected to the Hall of Fame during the years of 1992-2002? Voters weren't relying on statistics at that point. Garvey is simply in denial. His numbers didn't qualify him and what the voters saw, those who voted based on "what they saw" didn't qualify him to make the Hall of Fame.
The irony, of course, is that the writers are now punishing the players whose numbers they feel were artificially bolstered. Wouldn't it be nice if they could channel their disillusionment into a more positive re-examination of those who have been relegated to the scrap heap?
Absolutely, let's do this. Garvey would be further down this list as well, especially considering some of the players up for Hall of Fame induction over the next three or four years. I would vote for at least six other borderline players before I voted for Garvey. He's not good enough, deal with it. Maybe if Wulf and Garvey try hard enough they can find a criteria that would allow Garvey to make the Hall of Fame, but I doubt it.
Not to diminish Jim Rice, but as someone who covered Parker and Rice in their primes, I can testify that Parker was the superior player in almost every regard.
Is this based on the super-special "I saw him play" criteria that can't be quantified or is this based on the idea of comparing the two player's numbers? If it is based on statistics, then Rice appears to be slightly superior to Parker.
"It would've been nice to have gone as a fellow Hall of Famer. I think I belong there. Let's put it this way -- on almost every team I played, I was 'The Guy' or one of them. The system needs to be changed."
Right, the Hall of Fame should use "The Guy" criteria to vote players into the Hall of Fame. Whatever the hell kind of bullshit criteria this is. It tells you a lot about Dave Parker that he thinks he was "The Guy" on on Pirates teams with Willie Stargell and he also thinks he was "The Guy" on the A's teams that had Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire.
Voters need to take a closer look at players they may have bypassed because they didn't see them.
But if they didn't see them play then how the hell are they supposed to reconsider them? Trust the memory of sportswriters from 30 years ago that this player was Hall of Fame-worthy? Memories can't be wrong, can they?
And just as they agonize over what the "Valuable" means in Most Valuable Player, they need to think about what the "Fame" in Hall of Fame really means. (Uh, 10 All-Star Games is a pretty good definition.)
So we should vote in famous players too. Gotcha. Let's see, Steve Howe is pretty famous for his drug problems and he tested the Major League Baseball drug policy, so I can assume he is a unanimous selection to the Hall of Fame. And no, All-Star Game selections are not an indication of "fame," but rather an indication of popularity to be voted onto a team for purposes of an exhibition game. All-Star voting also tells us the strength of a certain position on the baseball field in both the American and National League.
"I know voters are worried about steroids this year," Garvey said. "I would much rather they think about the shot of adrenaline that a few more players would give the Hall of Fame."
I think that is absolutely a great idea, which is why Fred McGriff, Tim Raines, Jeff Bagwell and Jack Morris (it pains me, it really does, but I would vote him in before Garvey) should be voted in this year. In fact, let's put Edgar Martinez in there as well. Yep, Steve Garvey and Steve Wulf, even if the Hall of Fame opens up to let more non-steroid players get inducted, then Steve Garvey is still down the waiting list.
Perhaps Garvey's career isn't forgotten, it just wasn't Hall of Fame-worthy?
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
9 comments Let's Talk A Little Bit About the Baseball Hall of Fame
I tried to ignore the Hall of Fame discussions that went on last week during the Hall of Fame voting. Mostly since I don't enjoy talking about the Baseball Hall of Fame and I feel every discussion just takes us all in circles to where everyone thinks they are right and support their position with really important sounding statistics. I couldn't ignore it after a while though. Hopefully today won't be too spastic for all of you, as I am going to be trying to cover all the articles about the Hall of Fame that I bookmarked and thought were interesting/horrible about the 2010 Hall of Fame voting. We all know only Andre Dawson got in and BotB favorite Bert Blyleven came 5 votes short. I think it is interesting to find out how these voters came to their conclusion of who should be included as a 2010 Hall of Fame inductee.
Let's start it off with Jayson Stark and him going over his ballot.
Dawson hasn't peeled away an ice pack to play a big league game since 1996. Blyleven hasn't broken off one of those legendary curveballs since 1992. So don't ask me why they're still being forced to sweat out these election days after all these years.
If I were the czar of Hall of Fame election rules, we'd be forced to make up our minds within the first five elections -- 10 at the most -- on whether men like this are Hall of Famers.
Apparently Jayson Stark wants a short time period to consider these players. I don't know if I can agree with this. Though 15 ballots does seem like a lot, it also gives the voters plenty of time to consider each candidate's credentials. It also doesn't really hurt anyone to keep a person on the ballot that many years in a row as long as the voters aren't just going to vote someone in the Hall of Fame just to do it (ummm...Jim Rice). It's not like guys who aren't elected their first couple of years on the ballot want OFF the Hall of Fame ballot because they get tired of waiting to see if they made the Hall of Fame.
As for me, I voted for both Dawson and Blyleven, plus all four prominent first-timers (Alomar, Barry Larkin, Edgar Martinez and Fred McGriff). And since I also vote for Tim Raines, Mark McGwire, Jack Morris and Dale Murphy every year, that means I filled up all 10 spots on my ballot for only the second time ever.
My take? Yes, yes, yes, yes, no, no, yes, no, no, no.
Dale Murphy is my idol but I don't think he should be in the Hall of Fame. I named my goldfish after him as a child so I do have a soft spot for him, and if you let Jim Rice in the Hall of Fame, then Dale Murphy has a decent case as well. I don't see their career numbers as being incredibly different from each other. My sportswriting friend Gregg Doyel agrees with me on this issue. (Doyel's comments are in bold italics with different font)
So this is the reality I'm left to contemplate: Dick Vitale is a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame, but Dale Murphy is eliminated from Cooperstown forever.
This entire column Gregg starts talking about Dale Murphy being in the Hall of Fame and comparing it to Dick Vitale being in the basketball Hall of Fame. Honestly, I just don't get the comparison, so I just ignored it and tried to pay attention to the substance of his column.
They're the ones who have treated Murphy with disdain since Day 1 -- he received just 19.3 percent of the votes in his 1999 debut on the ballot -- and dropped him to 11.5 percent last year. In other words, only 1 in 5 voters ever thought Murphy was good enough, and almost half of them have gone gutlessly into the night. Instead of fighting for Murphy, they're letting him fade away.
I know the entire purpose of the 15 year waiting period is for voters to re-evaluate players from year-to-year, but since 1999 what the hell has a good hitting and fielding player done AFTER the Steroid Era done to deserve less support? In light of all the steroid revelations, shouldn't his numbers look better at this point? I don't see how they don't. There is something wrong in not voting for Mark McGwire because of steroids and his connection to them, but in also not recognizing players who didn't use steroids and put up great numbers. You can't penalize the steroids users for tainting the game and then not acknowledge the statistics those who didn't use PEDs put up.
I really don't think Murphy should be in the Hall of Fame, but I am playing Devil's advocate here.
His vote tally steadily increased until he made it into Cooperstown last year, and I'm not here to tell you Jim Rice doesn't deserve it -- he does. I'm here to tell you Dale Murphy deserves it just as much.
This is what irritates me, players setting the floor for induction and then we compare other players to the original player who is the "floor." Now that Rice has entered the Hall of Fame, advocates for players who are similar to Rice are going to be wanting their guy in the Hall of Fame as well. I don't hate Jim Rice, he is just going to be my whipping boy when discussing Dale Murphy.
Stats can be manipulated any way you want -- Murphy had more home runs than Rice (398 to 382), Rice had a much higher batting average (.298 to .265) -- but Murphy was a more versatile player. He had more stolen bases (161 to 58) and more Gold Gloves (five to none). You can tell me Rice is better. Maybe he is. But better to the point where last year he received 76.4 percent of the votes, and Dale Murphy got 11.5 percent?
This is one of the things that irritates me the most about the Hall of Fame. It is a popularity contest to a certain extent and this actually lends credence to Stark's idea of limiting years a player can be on a ballot to 5 or 10 years. It cuts down on the time a player can hang out there and finally garner enough sympathy. Did Jim Rice really deserve 7 times as much Hall of Fame support as Dale Murphy?
Murphy also won two MVP trophies, and of the 20 ballot-eligible players who won that award more than once, 18 are in the Hall. The only ones left out are Murphy and Roger Maris, who also belongs in the Hall for a combination of results and historical oomph, but I'll let someone else fight that fight.
Because it is a stupid fight. One year Maris hit a lot of homeruns while batting in the same lineup as Mickey Mantle who was nearly as hot at the plate as Maris was in 1961. I don't think a player should be allowed in the Hall of Fame based solely on him breaking the home run record. I don't see how this can be an unpopular opinion. Unfortunately, historical oomph isn't too high on my list of good reasons to put Roger Maris in the Hall of Fame either. He isn't Jackie Robinson.
Maybe individual production looked down in the 1980s because expansion had yet to dilute the talent; there were only 12 National League teams in 1985, compared to 16 today. Or maybe -- and that last explanation was only a theory, whereas this one is a stone cold fact -- the offensive numbers from the 1980s are unfairly dismissed because of the steroid explosion of the 1990s and beyond.
I don't know if it is a "fact" that the 1980's offensive numbers are unfairly dismissed because of the steroid explosion of the 1990's, but it certainly could be true. A fact is something that can't be disputed and can be easily backed up with empirical evidence, while this statement of Doyel's can certainly be disputed.
Schmidt led the 1980s with 313 home runs, just five more than Murphy's 308 -- Johnny Bench led the 1970s with 292, by the way -- but Barry Bonds hit 361 in the 1990s and Alex Rodriguez hit 435 in the 2000s. And those guys cheated.
Home runs are not, and should not, be the sole criteria for voting a player into the Hall of Fame. On it's face this seems convincing, but I would need more information to advocate Murphy's induction into the Hall of Fame. Just looking at Murphy's statistics, I don't know if I could advocate his candidacy.
Murphy drove in 1,266 runs, an impressive number in the 1980s but devalued by today's baseball, where Murphy's RBI total is somewhere between that of Garret Anderson (1,353) and Bobby Abreu (1,187).
RBI's are a factor of a team having runners on base to be batted in. Since Murphy played for some terrible Braves teams, I think we could excuse him for not having as many runs driven in as Garret Anderson and Bobby Abreu, both of which played for some teams that had good hitters in the lineup that got on base and could be driven in.
I don't know if RBI's have been devalued as much since the 1980's as home runs have been. I see it more as a factor of having runners on base to be batted in than a product of steroid usage. Homeruns have been devalued because everyone and their brother was cracking homeruns in the late 90s's, but I haven't really thought for sure if RBI's got devalued over that period. It would make sense since more homeruns seems to also indicate there would be more RBI's, but I would need more proof of it.
But the dominant player from the 1980s -- a guy who hit for power and stole bases (he turned in a 30-30 season in 1983, when that actually meant something) and won five Gold Gloves at a premium position like center field -- is about to slip off the ballot for good.
This is the part where I say Gold Gloves don't really mean much either and then list the players who have multiple Gold Gloves but are actually poor fielders...if I had the energy to list the players in the Hall of Fame who were poor fielders. The point is that guys like Dale Murphy realistically should not be considered 7 times less seriously for the Hall of Fame (through votes accumulated) than Jim Rice. That's a problem I have with the process.
Back to Stark's Hall of Fame ballot:
Alomar was a guy who made plays no one else made, saw things no one else saw and did it all with a Human Highlight Video flair that leaped off the field at you.
Much like spit from Alomar's mouth onto John Hirschbeck? Is that how Alomar's plays leaped off at everyone?
He had a 10-year period (1992 to 2001) in which he LED THE MAJOR LEAGUES in hits.
OMG, ARE YOU SERIOUS???
And the three second basemen in history who can match his career numbers (2,724 hits/.300 average/.371 on-base pct./.443 slugging pct.) all started their careers before 1925.
So how anyone could look at Alomar's career and NOT vote for him is a bigger mystery to me than Stonehenge.
I 100% agree. So naturally Alomar didn't get in the Hall of Fame on his first ballot.
Start with his trophy collection: Larkin's nine Silver Sluggers are second only to A-Rod (10) among ALL INFIELDERS in history. He won three straight Gold Gloves -- while Ozzie Smith was still active.
Offensively, Larkin's .815 career OPS was an amazing 137 points higher than the average shortstop of his era. And, according to Lee Sinins' Complete Baseball Encyclopedia, he created a staggering 488 more runs than the average shortstop of his time -- the highest total of any National League shortstop whose career started after World War II.
I'm pretty sold. Barry Larkin didn't get in either. Jack Morris (I am sorry to his supporters, if Blyleven doesn't get in then Morris shouldn't either. They always pop up in the same conversation as each other. I would take Blyleven before Morris. This is just how I feel) got more Hall of Fame support than Barry Larkin did. 52.3% to 51.6%. I never really thought of Barry Larkin as a Hall of Famer until I actually took a peek at his numbers and read some of the arguments for him. I have to say I think I agree. Since I am a defense hating asshole, I think Barry Larkin should get in if Ozzie Smith gets in. What I mean is that Ozzie Smith was a good defense shortstop, but was also the epitome of "light hitting," so I think Larkin should be in the Hall of Fame if Smith is.
After that, McGriff's numbers looked almost exactly the same for the next decade as they'd looked before (.283/.393/.531 from 1988 to 1992, versus .290/.373/.506 from 1993 to 2002) -- as sure an indication he was clean as you'll get without a drug test. So was it HIS fault that a 35-homer, 104-RBI season was league-leader material in 1992, but made a guy Just Another Slugger in 2001? It shouldn't be. Should it?
For a Hall of Fame snob, I sure do want a lot of guys on the current Hall of Fame list to get into the Hall of Fame. I am pretty torn on McGriff, though I think he deserves it before Murphy and Edgar Martinez.
Edgar Martinez was the greatest designated hitter ever. Let's agree on that within the first two sentences of this discussion, OK?
Great, the guy who played Corky on "Life Goes On" is the most famous actor of all-time with Down Syndrome. It doesn't mean we should start getting a place for him in the Television Hall of Fame (if there is one).
No DH ever ripped off 13 relentlessly great seasons like the 13 Edgar had from 1991 to 2003. Don't even bother trying to find one.
No actor ripped off 4 seasons of great family television like Chris Burke did with his Corky character on the show. Don't even try to find a better actor with Down Syndrome.
But it isn't going to be easy for any DH to make it into the Hall of Fame, and it shouldn't be. A Hall of Fame DH had better be one massively dominating masher.
Absolutely not. A Hall of Fame DH had better be as good of a hitter as other players that are currently in the Hall of Fame. That's all I really ask. I stated my opinion here.
His "counting" stats -- 2,247 hits, 309 homers, 1,261 RBIs -- won't look like anything special to the voters who don't take the time to gaze beyond those columns on the stat sheet or don't take into account that this man wasn't allowed to play every day 'til age 27.
I would LOVE to gaze up from the stat sheet and take a better look at this man and ignore the statistics (which is what Hall of Fame should be based upon) and listen to hyperbolic evidence about how great Edgar Martinez was.
How about those 13 seasons in which this guy was one of the most feared hitters alive?
How about that statistic of "most feared hitter" that has no measurement and therefore no way of actually being used to compare hitters to each other? It's so wonderful to be a feared hitter, in fact that's pretty much how Jim Rice got inducted in the Hall of Fame. He got in on the old "fear factor" that may or may not exist, and even if it did exist really doesn't mean all that much since it is hyperbolic evidence of Martinez's greatness. So basically I am saying I don't buy it.
But if we talk total offensive package, how many men in the entire sport would you rank above Edgar in that time? Bonds and who else? That answer is nobody, friends. Nobody. Do the math. Ask the pitchers. Survey the scouts.
I am going to sit down immediately and write emails to all the pitchers that faced Edgar Martinez to see if they were scared of him and I will see if some of the crusty old scouts that Bill Plascke knows can give me some evidence based on how the ball sounded after being hit by Martinez's bat as to how great he was. Because I have the capability to do this. What a stupid challenge...
Measure it any way you want.
That's the thing, you can't measure how much a player is feared other than walks and how scared pitchers look in replays of old games. I am not denying Martinez was a great hitter, I just don't think he was a Hall of Fame hitter. Merely saying he was a feared hitter isn't going to convince me either.
Danny Knobler agrees that Edgar Martinez is not a Hall of Fame player. (His comments are in bold with different font)
By my count, 24 Hall of Famers spent at least one game as a DH, and 16 of them accumulated a full season's worth of games (130 or more) as a DH during their careers.
I find it fairly relevant that Martinez didn't play in the field often. Defense is a part of the game too. I think we should take what fielding percentages that Martinez did accumulate while he was at third base, or possibly project him as a bad fielder, and see if we would elect him to the Hall of Fame at that point. The bottom line is that a bad fielding, great hitter is going to make the Hall of Fame, so Martinez may need to be set to that hitting standard more than the fielding standard.
Martinez had a career fielding percentage of .952, including a .946 percentage at third base. He wasn't exactly a spectacular fielder for various reasons.
We can elect a DH who was so dominating at the plate that we overlook the fact that he rarely did anything else.
Agreed. A DH has to be one of the greatest hitters of all-time to make the Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame should be about what a player did well in relation to his job. If a closer closed games well, and didn't just accumulate saves, he should be in the Hall of Fame. If a player was an great hitter, but he was a fantastic fielder then perhaps he should make the Hall of Fame. It's a combination of job duties for a team and how well that duty was performed that should put a player in the Hall of Fame.
I don't rely totally on stats, but 309 home runs and 1,261 RBI (Martinez's career totals) aren't enough to make him stand out. He made seven All-Star teams, but that puts him in line with Don Mattingly, Dave Parker, Tim Raines and Alan Trammell, other outstanding players who have not gotten my vote.
His statistics are impressive but not eye popping and All-Star teams are ever so not relevant to this discussion, since they are essentially popularity contests. They should have little bearing on Hall of Fame candidacy in my mind. I don't think Edgar Martinez should be in the Hall of Fame, because his numbers fall short in my belief of the Hall of Fame standard. If he played third base his entire career, I would probably still believe this.
Then Knobler talks about how he voted for Jack Morris, but not Bert Blyleven, and really that irritates me a little bit and I need to move on so I don't get stuck on this. Now that I have discussed Edgar Martinez, again, let's get back to Stark's Hall of Fame ballot, where he talks about Andre Dawson:
And all you need to know about Dawson's massive impact was that he won one MVP award and finished second TWICE. He won a Rookie of the Year trophy and eight Gold Gloves.
A little note to baseball writers everywhere when discussing a player's candidacy for the Hall of Fame...don't include Gold Gloves because they are a semi-hoax of an award. I also want to mention the Rookie of the Year award is also shared by Dawson with guys like Todd Hollandsworth, Jerome Walton, Marty Cordova, Angel Berroa, Eric Hinske, and Bob Hamelin. That's not exactly great company, and there are more players who eventually faded away who won the Rookie of the Year award, so it doesn't seem like it is a path to Cooperstown.
So obviously, as attractive a candidate as Blyleven's 287 wins, 60 shutouts and dazzling strikeout-to-walk ratio (3,701 whiffs to only 1,322 walks) make him, some voters are still asking the questions I once asked.
Why the hell isn't he in the Hall of Fame?
Why did he make only two All-Star teams?
All-Star teams are popularity contest and pitchers for bad teams don't usually get a whole lot of consideration due to their record.
Why was he a top-three finisher in only two Cy Young elections?
Because the same people who vote for the Cy Young are overwhelming impressed with the statistic "wins" which is completely based on the strength of the team around a player.
How come he had a lower winning percentage (.534) than John Burkett or Charlie Leibrandt?
Because he didn't have control over how many runs his team put up. He can only pitch well, he can't hit the damn ball for his team. Is anyone sensing a trend in my answers to Stark's difficult questions?
Bert Blyleven played for bad baseball teams so that had an effect on his win-loss record. This isn't his fault.
And why, for that matter, was he getting only 14 percent of the vote, back when his career was much closer in the rearview mirror?
Because only now in the "statistical revolution" are people open minded and smart enough to base the Hall of Fame candidacy of a player on things like "wins" or any other statistic that is a team statistic and not an individual statistic.
Bet you didn't know that Juan Pierre has already been thrown out stealing more times in his career (155) than Raines (146) was, even though Raines stole nearly twice as many bases (808-459) as Pierre has swiped.
I bet you I could have easily guessed that. Juan Pierre sucks. The world needs to know this.
Mark McGwire
I vote for him because there's no other fair way to handle the players of his generation. I vote for him because we now know that hundreds and hundreds of players in his era took some kind of PED, and we'll never know exactly who did what, or why.
Unless those people actually admit to using steroids. I wonder what Jayson thinks about Mark McGwire now that he has admitted to using steroids off and on for nearly an entire decade? I don't know how I feel about it. Is it different from A-Rod or any other player's admission because McGwire went on and back off PEDs every once in a while, so it couldn't really have been a mistake he made once, but repeatedly? Or is it all the same thing? I don't really know, but I do know I don't like how Jayson Stark defends McGwire for the Hall of Fame.
And a man who was ALWAYS a feared slugger from day one -- a man who (lest we forget) slugged .618 in his rookie year.
What's with Jayson Stark being hung up on players who are "feared?" Also, the fact McGwire hit the ball well one year when he wasn't on PEDs is no reason to vote him in the Hall of Fame. I am torn on McGwire and have no idea how to handle his candidacy, but I do know being "feared" and how he slugged his rookie year isn't a great way to advocate for him when we should have been looking at his entire body of work.
Just so you know how to compute that, Adam Dunn, Adrian Gonzalez and Jason Bay are among the many folks who have never slugged .618 in ANY season.
So he did better his rookie year when compared to three players who aren't currently on pace to be in the Hall of Fame? Possibly comparing McGwire to actual Hall of Fame players would be a better comparison to justify his candidacy.
Jack Morris
But this is where I remind the lecturers that we're talking about a pitcher who threw a no-hitter, started three All-Star Games, was the winningest pitcher of his generation, made a major impact on three World Series teams and was more than just a man who put on the greatest Game 7 World Series show I've ever witnessed.
I will let someone else take down Jack Morris later, but let's just say...color me not impressed. A lot of pitchers have thrown a no-hitter, All-Star game appearances should not be relevant, and a hyperbolic personal ranking of a pitcher's Game 7 performance doesn't feel solid to me.
So I checked his box for the 10th straight year. I haven't been embarrassed to do that once.
Perhaps he should have been embarrassed to check the box 10 times then...or maybe Jayson doesn't embarrass easily.
Dale Murphy isn't ever going to have a plaque in Cooperstown. I know it. He knows it. But I keep waiting for the PED backlash to restore the luster to the forgotten stars of the '80s.
Those glittering credentials convinced 116 voters to vote for him a decade ago. So I have no sensible explanation for why there were only 62 people voting for him by last year. But I've checked his name for 11 straight years. No reason to stop now.
I will say it again...I can understand not voting for Dale Murphy into the Hall of Fame, but how does he get less votes now than he used to? Just logically I would think with the knowledge we have now about home run totals in the Steroid Era would make Murphy's statistics look even better. I am not necessarily against PED users being inducted into the Hall of Fame, but I don't know if 1980's hitters should be punished because their numbers don't match up well with Steroid Era sluggers' numbers.
I have to say Stark's "I have voted for this person every year and refuse to re-evaluate my decision" stance is very unconvincing overall.
-Bert Blyleven was probably not surprised, but still a little bit upset, about his not being inducted into the Hall of Fame. He wrote a column about it and expressed his dismay in his own recognizable fashion...by talking about himself when he faced Andre Dawson (the only inductee for 2010) and covertly calling the Hall of Fame writers idiots.
I’ve vented in the past about not making it. But getting so close (five votes short) and making such a big leap overall in percentage (from 62.7 percent to 74.2 percent), I have to look at is as a positive. ESPN’s Chris Berman gave me the nickname Bert “Be Home” Blyleven.
Because we all know that anything Chris Berman says is definitely a good omen.
By the way, I am already dreading the Home Run Derby this year during All-Star Weekend when called by Chris Berman. I can hear the "back, back, back" call in my nightmares.
I am very happy for Andre Dawson making it to Cooperstown,
"Congratulations Andre, and now everyone let me mention that I owned Dawson when I pitched against him."
I faced Dawson when I was with the Pirates, and while I did pretty well against him (.195 batting average in 41 at-bats), he did hit a couple home runs off me,
"Oh by the way, that player you just voted into the Hall of Fame...he couldn't hit very well off me. I guess that doesn't make me a Hall of Fame pitcher, but then how is he a Hall of Fame hitter?"
You know Bert is thinking this. I like how Bert writes about the Hall of Fame voting because we all know what he is really trying to type. Here's what Bert really means we he types the following sentences...
I’m very happy for Dawson, but I must admit that when they told me only one player got in to Cooperstown, I assumed it would be Roberto Alomar, a dominant second baseman with the glove and the bat. I thought he would be a lock, and all the experts were expecting him to go right in.
"The experts aren't idiots, the voters are idiots. Robert Alomar not be elected in this year on his first ballot is proof of that. Me not being elected into the Hall of Fame for the past 13 years is further proof these voters are moron. Please vote for me Hall of Fame morons."
I’m sure he’ll be in there next year as he logged only three fewer votes than I did in his first year of eligibility.
"I should have been voted into the Hall of Fame my first year of eligibility as well."
I also think Barry Larkin, who got just more than 50 percent, is a future Hall of Famer as probably the best shortstop of his era.
"Further proof these voters are idiots."
And next year, Rafael Palmeiro, Jeff Bagwell and Larry Walker will be among the new eligible players, and all are deserving.
"I support everyone who is suspected of or found to use PEDs to make the Hall of Fame. I support anyone who supports me being in the Hall of Fame."
It will be a year of anticipation, and hopefully the same voters who selected me will stick with me, and we can convince a few others to join.
"I will send 6 voters a free 'I love to fart" shirt, as well as an unspecified sum of money as long as he/she votes for me. Actually, 6 people just name something you need me to do and I will do it. Murder, robbery, and any other illicit crime I will do it...just put me in the Hall of Fame."
-Craig Calcaterra FJM-style rips apart Jon Heyman's excuse for a Hall of Fame ballot. For fear of repeating what he says, I will just hit some highlights. Read the entire thing though, I promise it is good.
To review, he had Robbie Alomar, Andrew Dawson, Barry Larkin, Dave Parker, Jack Morris and Don Mattingly. Many people took issue with this ballot, myself included. It's a pretty awful one all things considered. Parker? Morris? Mattingly?
I am pretty sure Heyman just pulled names out of a hat. He's the guy who voted for David Segui and Kevin Appier probably. Both of them got one vote...unbelievable. All things considered, I take issue with half of his ballot. Serious issue with half his ballot.
My three favorite parts of Calcaterra's takedown (Heyman in red and Calcaterra's in black):
1. My contention regarding Blyleven is that almost no one viewed him as a Hall of Famer during his playing career, and that is borne out by the 17 percent of the vote he received in his first year of eligibility in 1998, followed by 14 percent the next year.
Yet he is a fan of Morris, who got 22.9% of the vote in his first year and 19.6% of the vote in his second. And he spent a paragraph talking about how his mind is changing on Tim Raines, who got 24.3% in his first year of eligibility, but not Heyman's vote. And Don Mattingly, who was last seen hovering at around 16%, and also did not previously get Heyman's vote. And Dave Parker, who continues to get way less than 20% of the vote (and who has a drug history unmatched in the game, which Heyman says should disqualify McGwire).
2. After going on and on about how Blyleven never showed greatness as opposed to the ability to merely compile stats, Heyman says:
Some will say that Blyleven's career was equal to Hall of Famer Don Sutton's but I say it is just short of Sutton's. They both had big totals in other categories but Sutton wound up with 37 more victories, going over the magic 300 mark by 24.
Got that? Stat compilers suck, unless of course they compile long enough to reach some arbitrary number like 300.
This "compiler" argument is pretty much the crux of the argument against Blyleven, along with wins, which are stupid anyway. The anti-argument that can beat the "compiler" argument is exactly what Calcaterra wrote here.
3. Heyman would, and often does, point to winning percentage as a key factor, noting that while his supporters often cite the fact that Blyleven pitched for bad teams, his career winning percentage -- .534 -- wasn't that much better than the teams on which he pitched: .496. What he leaves out is that the difference between Morris' career winning percentage -- .577 -- and the teams on which he pitched -- .547 -- is actually less than Blyleven's. In other words, Blyleven outpitched his teams at a better clip than the supposedly dominant Morris did.
This is a very unfortunate statistic for Jon Heyman. It knocks his "winning percentage" argument against Bert out of the water. The bottom line is that I would have more respect for the anti-Blyleven crowd if they could provide a cogent argument that actually made sense. It hasn't happened yet. Every time they compare guys like Jack Morris or Don Sutton to Blyleven, it just shows the stupidity of the argument because it is based on team statistics like wins and arbitrary numbers like 300 wins that Blyleven never hit. I am open to hearing a reason that can't be fairly rebutted as to why Blyleven should not be in the Hall of Fame.
-Bill Conlin also seems to struggle with the Hall of Fame voting process. I hate to give you guys homework, but I am not going to comment on this. Just read this short takedown of Bill Conlin. This is my biggest problem with the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame voting process. It's so arbitrary and it's arbitrary because the voters make it arbitrary.
Bill Conlin has a self-imposed "I vote for 6 guys rule." That's idiocy. Pure and simple idiocy. What if there are 7 deserving players to be voted for? Why only put 6 players on the ballot when you can put 10 on the ballot? I love baseball and I love the Hall of Fame. I hate the debates, which are only going to get worse as the Steroid Era players start to trickle on the ballot, and I don't mind if someone disagrees with me on who should be a Hall of Fame player. Voting for the Hall of Fame is a serious task (in the realm of sports) and a person voting like he has always voted or refusing to accept new statistical data that should cause him to re-think his position is not acceptable.
The voters need to take this seriously and not make the process more difficult than it needs to be. If a player is deserving, vote for them, but don't vote for a player or not vote for a player because you don't have an open mind. These voters don't have to buy into the statistical revolution or why once thought ideas may not be completely correct, but they also can't dismiss it simply because they refuse to listen to new arguments.
Let's start it off with Jayson Stark and him going over his ballot.
Dawson hasn't peeled away an ice pack to play a big league game since 1996. Blyleven hasn't broken off one of those legendary curveballs since 1992. So don't ask me why they're still being forced to sweat out these election days after all these years.
If I were the czar of Hall of Fame election rules, we'd be forced to make up our minds within the first five elections -- 10 at the most -- on whether men like this are Hall of Famers.
Apparently Jayson Stark wants a short time period to consider these players. I don't know if I can agree with this. Though 15 ballots does seem like a lot, it also gives the voters plenty of time to consider each candidate's credentials. It also doesn't really hurt anyone to keep a person on the ballot that many years in a row as long as the voters aren't just going to vote someone in the Hall of Fame just to do it (ummm...Jim Rice). It's not like guys who aren't elected their first couple of years on the ballot want OFF the Hall of Fame ballot because they get tired of waiting to see if they made the Hall of Fame.
As for me, I voted for both Dawson and Blyleven, plus all four prominent first-timers (Alomar, Barry Larkin, Edgar Martinez and Fred McGriff). And since I also vote for Tim Raines, Mark McGwire, Jack Morris and Dale Murphy every year, that means I filled up all 10 spots on my ballot for only the second time ever.
My take? Yes, yes, yes, yes, no, no, yes, no, no, no.
Dale Murphy is my idol but I don't think he should be in the Hall of Fame. I named my goldfish after him as a child so I do have a soft spot for him, and if you let Jim Rice in the Hall of Fame, then Dale Murphy has a decent case as well. I don't see their career numbers as being incredibly different from each other. My sportswriting friend Gregg Doyel agrees with me on this issue. (Doyel's comments are in bold italics with different font)
So this is the reality I'm left to contemplate: Dick Vitale is a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame, but Dale Murphy is eliminated from Cooperstown forever.
This entire column Gregg starts talking about Dale Murphy being in the Hall of Fame and comparing it to Dick Vitale being in the basketball Hall of Fame. Honestly, I just don't get the comparison, so I just ignored it and tried to pay attention to the substance of his column.
They're the ones who have treated Murphy with disdain since Day 1 -- he received just 19.3 percent of the votes in his 1999 debut on the ballot -- and dropped him to 11.5 percent last year. In other words, only 1 in 5 voters ever thought Murphy was good enough, and almost half of them have gone gutlessly into the night. Instead of fighting for Murphy, they're letting him fade away.
I know the entire purpose of the 15 year waiting period is for voters to re-evaluate players from year-to-year, but since 1999 what the hell has a good hitting and fielding player done AFTER the Steroid Era done to deserve less support? In light of all the steroid revelations, shouldn't his numbers look better at this point? I don't see how they don't. There is something wrong in not voting for Mark McGwire because of steroids and his connection to them, but in also not recognizing players who didn't use steroids and put up great numbers. You can't penalize the steroids users for tainting the game and then not acknowledge the statistics those who didn't use PEDs put up.
I really don't think Murphy should be in the Hall of Fame, but I am playing Devil's advocate here.
His vote tally steadily increased until he made it into Cooperstown last year, and I'm not here to tell you Jim Rice doesn't deserve it -- he does. I'm here to tell you Dale Murphy deserves it just as much.
This is what irritates me, players setting the floor for induction and then we compare other players to the original player who is the "floor." Now that Rice has entered the Hall of Fame, advocates for players who are similar to Rice are going to be wanting their guy in the Hall of Fame as well. I don't hate Jim Rice, he is just going to be my whipping boy when discussing Dale Murphy.
Stats can be manipulated any way you want -- Murphy had more home runs than Rice (398 to 382), Rice had a much higher batting average (.298 to .265) -- but Murphy was a more versatile player. He had more stolen bases (161 to 58) and more Gold Gloves (five to none). You can tell me Rice is better. Maybe he is. But better to the point where last year he received 76.4 percent of the votes, and Dale Murphy got 11.5 percent?
This is one of the things that irritates me the most about the Hall of Fame. It is a popularity contest to a certain extent and this actually lends credence to Stark's idea of limiting years a player can be on a ballot to 5 or 10 years. It cuts down on the time a player can hang out there and finally garner enough sympathy. Did Jim Rice really deserve 7 times as much Hall of Fame support as Dale Murphy?
Murphy also won two MVP trophies, and of the 20 ballot-eligible players who won that award more than once, 18 are in the Hall. The only ones left out are Murphy and Roger Maris, who also belongs in the Hall for a combination of results and historical oomph, but I'll let someone else fight that fight.
Because it is a stupid fight. One year Maris hit a lot of homeruns while batting in the same lineup as Mickey Mantle who was nearly as hot at the plate as Maris was in 1961. I don't think a player should be allowed in the Hall of Fame based solely on him breaking the home run record. I don't see how this can be an unpopular opinion. Unfortunately, historical oomph isn't too high on my list of good reasons to put Roger Maris in the Hall of Fame either. He isn't Jackie Robinson.
Maybe individual production looked down in the 1980s because expansion had yet to dilute the talent; there were only 12 National League teams in 1985, compared to 16 today. Or maybe -- and that last explanation was only a theory, whereas this one is a stone cold fact -- the offensive numbers from the 1980s are unfairly dismissed because of the steroid explosion of the 1990s and beyond.
I don't know if it is a "fact" that the 1980's offensive numbers are unfairly dismissed because of the steroid explosion of the 1990's, but it certainly could be true. A fact is something that can't be disputed and can be easily backed up with empirical evidence, while this statement of Doyel's can certainly be disputed.
Schmidt led the 1980s with 313 home runs, just five more than Murphy's 308 -- Johnny Bench led the 1970s with 292, by the way -- but Barry Bonds hit 361 in the 1990s and Alex Rodriguez hit 435 in the 2000s. And those guys cheated.
Home runs are not, and should not, be the sole criteria for voting a player into the Hall of Fame. On it's face this seems convincing, but I would need more information to advocate Murphy's induction into the Hall of Fame. Just looking at Murphy's statistics, I don't know if I could advocate his candidacy.
Murphy drove in 1,266 runs, an impressive number in the 1980s but devalued by today's baseball, where Murphy's RBI total is somewhere between that of Garret Anderson (1,353) and Bobby Abreu (1,187).
RBI's are a factor of a team having runners on base to be batted in. Since Murphy played for some terrible Braves teams, I think we could excuse him for not having as many runs driven in as Garret Anderson and Bobby Abreu, both of which played for some teams that had good hitters in the lineup that got on base and could be driven in.
I don't know if RBI's have been devalued as much since the 1980's as home runs have been. I see it more as a factor of having runners on base to be batted in than a product of steroid usage. Homeruns have been devalued because everyone and their brother was cracking homeruns in the late 90s's, but I haven't really thought for sure if RBI's got devalued over that period. It would make sense since more homeruns seems to also indicate there would be more RBI's, but I would need more proof of it.
But the dominant player from the 1980s -- a guy who hit for power and stole bases (he turned in a 30-30 season in 1983, when that actually meant something) and won five Gold Gloves at a premium position like center field -- is about to slip off the ballot for good.
This is the part where I say Gold Gloves don't really mean much either and then list the players who have multiple Gold Gloves but are actually poor fielders...if I had the energy to list the players in the Hall of Fame who were poor fielders. The point is that guys like Dale Murphy realistically should not be considered 7 times less seriously for the Hall of Fame (through votes accumulated) than Jim Rice. That's a problem I have with the process.
Back to Stark's Hall of Fame ballot:
Alomar was a guy who made plays no one else made, saw things no one else saw and did it all with a Human Highlight Video flair that leaped off the field at you.
Much like spit from Alomar's mouth onto John Hirschbeck? Is that how Alomar's plays leaped off at everyone?
He had a 10-year period (1992 to 2001) in which he LED THE MAJOR LEAGUES in hits.
OMG, ARE YOU SERIOUS???
And the three second basemen in history who can match his career numbers (2,724 hits/.300 average/.371 on-base pct./.443 slugging pct.) all started their careers before 1925.
So how anyone could look at Alomar's career and NOT vote for him is a bigger mystery to me than Stonehenge.
I 100% agree. So naturally Alomar didn't get in the Hall of Fame on his first ballot.
Start with his trophy collection: Larkin's nine Silver Sluggers are second only to A-Rod (10) among ALL INFIELDERS in history. He won three straight Gold Gloves -- while Ozzie Smith was still active.
Offensively, Larkin's .815 career OPS was an amazing 137 points higher than the average shortstop of his era. And, according to Lee Sinins' Complete Baseball Encyclopedia, he created a staggering 488 more runs than the average shortstop of his time -- the highest total of any National League shortstop whose career started after World War II.
I'm pretty sold. Barry Larkin didn't get in either. Jack Morris (I am sorry to his supporters, if Blyleven doesn't get in then Morris shouldn't either. They always pop up in the same conversation as each other. I would take Blyleven before Morris. This is just how I feel) got more Hall of Fame support than Barry Larkin did. 52.3% to 51.6%. I never really thought of Barry Larkin as a Hall of Famer until I actually took a peek at his numbers and read some of the arguments for him. I have to say I think I agree. Since I am a defense hating asshole, I think Barry Larkin should get in if Ozzie Smith gets in. What I mean is that Ozzie Smith was a good defense shortstop, but was also the epitome of "light hitting," so I think Larkin should be in the Hall of Fame if Smith is.
After that, McGriff's numbers looked almost exactly the same for the next decade as they'd looked before (.283/.393/.531 from 1988 to 1992, versus .290/.373/.506 from 1993 to 2002) -- as sure an indication he was clean as you'll get without a drug test. So was it HIS fault that a 35-homer, 104-RBI season was league-leader material in 1992, but made a guy Just Another Slugger in 2001? It shouldn't be. Should it?
For a Hall of Fame snob, I sure do want a lot of guys on the current Hall of Fame list to get into the Hall of Fame. I am pretty torn on McGriff, though I think he deserves it before Murphy and Edgar Martinez.
Edgar Martinez was the greatest designated hitter ever. Let's agree on that within the first two sentences of this discussion, OK?
Great, the guy who played Corky on "Life Goes On" is the most famous actor of all-time with Down Syndrome. It doesn't mean we should start getting a place for him in the Television Hall of Fame (if there is one).
No DH ever ripped off 13 relentlessly great seasons like the 13 Edgar had from 1991 to 2003. Don't even bother trying to find one.
No actor ripped off 4 seasons of great family television like Chris Burke did with his Corky character on the show. Don't even try to find a better actor with Down Syndrome.
But it isn't going to be easy for any DH to make it into the Hall of Fame, and it shouldn't be. A Hall of Fame DH had better be one massively dominating masher.
Absolutely not. A Hall of Fame DH had better be as good of a hitter as other players that are currently in the Hall of Fame. That's all I really ask. I stated my opinion here.
His "counting" stats -- 2,247 hits, 309 homers, 1,261 RBIs -- won't look like anything special to the voters who don't take the time to gaze beyond those columns on the stat sheet or don't take into account that this man wasn't allowed to play every day 'til age 27.
I would LOVE to gaze up from the stat sheet and take a better look at this man and ignore the statistics (which is what Hall of Fame should be based upon) and listen to hyperbolic evidence about how great Edgar Martinez was.
How about those 13 seasons in which this guy was one of the most feared hitters alive?
How about that statistic of "most feared hitter" that has no measurement and therefore no way of actually being used to compare hitters to each other? It's so wonderful to be a feared hitter, in fact that's pretty much how Jim Rice got inducted in the Hall of Fame. He got in on the old "fear factor" that may or may not exist, and even if it did exist really doesn't mean all that much since it is hyperbolic evidence of Martinez's greatness. So basically I am saying I don't buy it.
But if we talk total offensive package, how many men in the entire sport would you rank above Edgar in that time? Bonds and who else? That answer is nobody, friends. Nobody. Do the math. Ask the pitchers. Survey the scouts.
I am going to sit down immediately and write emails to all the pitchers that faced Edgar Martinez to see if they were scared of him and I will see if some of the crusty old scouts that Bill Plascke knows can give me some evidence based on how the ball sounded after being hit by Martinez's bat as to how great he was. Because I have the capability to do this. What a stupid challenge...
Measure it any way you want.
That's the thing, you can't measure how much a player is feared other than walks and how scared pitchers look in replays of old games. I am not denying Martinez was a great hitter, I just don't think he was a Hall of Fame hitter. Merely saying he was a feared hitter isn't going to convince me either.
Danny Knobler agrees that Edgar Martinez is not a Hall of Fame player. (His comments are in bold with different font)
By my count, 24 Hall of Famers spent at least one game as a DH, and 16 of them accumulated a full season's worth of games (130 or more) as a DH during their careers.
Paul Molitor played nearly half his games as, some would say, half a player.
I don't think the debate should be about whether Martinez was a Hall of Fame DH or not, because there are plenty of good players in the Hall of Fame who weren't good fielders but made it in the Hall of Fame on their hitting prowess. Simply because Martinez didn't field very often in his career doesn't mean we should necessarily hold that against him. His hitting numbers have to be up to Hall of Fame standards though. I think the DH argument is a sort of diversion the media has brought up in Martinez's Hall of Fame debate that is clouding the issue of whether he deserves it based on his hitting prowess or not.I find it fairly relevant that Martinez didn't play in the field often. Defense is a part of the game too. I think we should take what fielding percentages that Martinez did accumulate while he was at third base, or possibly project him as a bad fielder, and see if we would elect him to the Hall of Fame at that point. The bottom line is that a bad fielding, great hitter is going to make the Hall of Fame, so Martinez may need to be set to that hitting standard more than the fielding standard.
Martinez had a career fielding percentage of .952, including a .946 percentage at third base. He wasn't exactly a spectacular fielder for various reasons.
We can elect a DH who was so dominating at the plate that we overlook the fact that he rarely did anything else.
Agreed. A DH has to be one of the greatest hitters of all-time to make the Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame should be about what a player did well in relation to his job. If a closer closed games well, and didn't just accumulate saves, he should be in the Hall of Fame. If a player was an great hitter, but he was a fantastic fielder then perhaps he should make the Hall of Fame. It's a combination of job duties for a team and how well that duty was performed that should put a player in the Hall of Fame.
I don't rely totally on stats, but 309 home runs and 1,261 RBI (Martinez's career totals) aren't enough to make him stand out. He made seven All-Star teams, but that puts him in line with Don Mattingly, Dave Parker, Tim Raines and Alan Trammell, other outstanding players who have not gotten my vote.
His statistics are impressive but not eye popping and All-Star teams are ever so not relevant to this discussion, since they are essentially popularity contests. They should have little bearing on Hall of Fame candidacy in my mind. I don't think Edgar Martinez should be in the Hall of Fame, because his numbers fall short in my belief of the Hall of Fame standard. If he played third base his entire career, I would probably still believe this.
Then Knobler talks about how he voted for Jack Morris, but not Bert Blyleven, and really that irritates me a little bit and I need to move on so I don't get stuck on this. Now that I have discussed Edgar Martinez, again, let's get back to Stark's Hall of Fame ballot, where he talks about Andre Dawson:
And all you need to know about Dawson's massive impact was that he won one MVP award and finished second TWICE. He won a Rookie of the Year trophy and eight Gold Gloves.
A little note to baseball writers everywhere when discussing a player's candidacy for the Hall of Fame...don't include Gold Gloves because they are a semi-hoax of an award. I also want to mention the Rookie of the Year award is also shared by Dawson with guys like Todd Hollandsworth, Jerome Walton, Marty Cordova, Angel Berroa, Eric Hinske, and Bob Hamelin. That's not exactly great company, and there are more players who eventually faded away who won the Rookie of the Year award, so it doesn't seem like it is a path to Cooperstown.
So obviously, as attractive a candidate as Blyleven's 287 wins, 60 shutouts and dazzling strikeout-to-walk ratio (3,701 whiffs to only 1,322 walks) make him, some voters are still asking the questions I once asked.
Why the hell isn't he in the Hall of Fame?
Why did he make only two All-Star teams?
All-Star teams are popularity contest and pitchers for bad teams don't usually get a whole lot of consideration due to their record.
Why was he a top-three finisher in only two Cy Young elections?
Because the same people who vote for the Cy Young are overwhelming impressed with the statistic "wins" which is completely based on the strength of the team around a player.
How come he had a lower winning percentage (.534) than John Burkett or Charlie Leibrandt?
Because he didn't have control over how many runs his team put up. He can only pitch well, he can't hit the damn ball for his team. Is anyone sensing a trend in my answers to Stark's difficult questions?
Bert Blyleven played for bad baseball teams so that had an effect on his win-loss record. This isn't his fault.
And why, for that matter, was he getting only 14 percent of the vote, back when his career was much closer in the rearview mirror?
Because only now in the "statistical revolution" are people open minded and smart enough to base the Hall of Fame candidacy of a player on things like "wins" or any other statistic that is a team statistic and not an individual statistic.
Bet you didn't know that Juan Pierre has already been thrown out stealing more times in his career (155) than Raines (146) was, even though Raines stole nearly twice as many bases (808-459) as Pierre has swiped.
I bet you I could have easily guessed that. Juan Pierre sucks. The world needs to know this.
Mark McGwire
I vote for him because there's no other fair way to handle the players of his generation. I vote for him because we now know that hundreds and hundreds of players in his era took some kind of PED, and we'll never know exactly who did what, or why.
Unless those people actually admit to using steroids. I wonder what Jayson thinks about Mark McGwire now that he has admitted to using steroids off and on for nearly an entire decade? I don't know how I feel about it. Is it different from A-Rod or any other player's admission because McGwire went on and back off PEDs every once in a while, so it couldn't really have been a mistake he made once, but repeatedly? Or is it all the same thing? I don't really know, but I do know I don't like how Jayson Stark defends McGwire for the Hall of Fame.
And a man who was ALWAYS a feared slugger from day one -- a man who (lest we forget) slugged .618 in his rookie year.
What's with Jayson Stark being hung up on players who are "feared?" Also, the fact McGwire hit the ball well one year when he wasn't on PEDs is no reason to vote him in the Hall of Fame. I am torn on McGwire and have no idea how to handle his candidacy, but I do know being "feared" and how he slugged his rookie year isn't a great way to advocate for him when we should have been looking at his entire body of work.
Just so you know how to compute that, Adam Dunn, Adrian Gonzalez and Jason Bay are among the many folks who have never slugged .618 in ANY season.
So he did better his rookie year when compared to three players who aren't currently on pace to be in the Hall of Fame? Possibly comparing McGwire to actual Hall of Fame players would be a better comparison to justify his candidacy.
Jack Morris
But this is where I remind the lecturers that we're talking about a pitcher who threw a no-hitter, started three All-Star Games, was the winningest pitcher of his generation, made a major impact on three World Series teams and was more than just a man who put on the greatest Game 7 World Series show I've ever witnessed.
I will let someone else take down Jack Morris later, but let's just say...color me not impressed. A lot of pitchers have thrown a no-hitter, All-Star game appearances should not be relevant, and a hyperbolic personal ranking of a pitcher's Game 7 performance doesn't feel solid to me.
So I checked his box for the 10th straight year. I haven't been embarrassed to do that once.
Perhaps he should have been embarrassed to check the box 10 times then...or maybe Jayson doesn't embarrass easily.
Dale Murphy isn't ever going to have a plaque in Cooperstown. I know it. He knows it. But I keep waiting for the PED backlash to restore the luster to the forgotten stars of the '80s.
Those glittering credentials convinced 116 voters to vote for him a decade ago. So I have no sensible explanation for why there were only 62 people voting for him by last year. But I've checked his name for 11 straight years. No reason to stop now.
I will say it again...I can understand not voting for Dale Murphy into the Hall of Fame, but how does he get less votes now than he used to? Just logically I would think with the knowledge we have now about home run totals in the Steroid Era would make Murphy's statistics look even better. I am not necessarily against PED users being inducted into the Hall of Fame, but I don't know if 1980's hitters should be punished because their numbers don't match up well with Steroid Era sluggers' numbers.
I have to say Stark's "I have voted for this person every year and refuse to re-evaluate my decision" stance is very unconvincing overall.
-Bert Blyleven was probably not surprised, but still a little bit upset, about his not being inducted into the Hall of Fame. He wrote a column about it and expressed his dismay in his own recognizable fashion...by talking about himself when he faced Andre Dawson (the only inductee for 2010) and covertly calling the Hall of Fame writers idiots.
I’ve vented in the past about not making it. But getting so close (five votes short) and making such a big leap overall in percentage (from 62.7 percent to 74.2 percent), I have to look at is as a positive. ESPN’s Chris Berman gave me the nickname Bert “Be Home” Blyleven.
Because we all know that anything Chris Berman says is definitely a good omen.
By the way, I am already dreading the Home Run Derby this year during All-Star Weekend when called by Chris Berman. I can hear the "back, back, back" call in my nightmares.
I am very happy for Andre Dawson making it to Cooperstown,
"Congratulations Andre, and now everyone let me mention that I owned Dawson when I pitched against him."
I faced Dawson when I was with the Pirates, and while I did pretty well against him (.195 batting average in 41 at-bats), he did hit a couple home runs off me,
"Oh by the way, that player you just voted into the Hall of Fame...he couldn't hit very well off me. I guess that doesn't make me a Hall of Fame pitcher, but then how is he a Hall of Fame hitter?"
You know Bert is thinking this. I like how Bert writes about the Hall of Fame voting because we all know what he is really trying to type. Here's what Bert really means we he types the following sentences...
I’m very happy for Dawson, but I must admit that when they told me only one player got in to Cooperstown, I assumed it would be Roberto Alomar, a dominant second baseman with the glove and the bat. I thought he would be a lock, and all the experts were expecting him to go right in.
"The experts aren't idiots, the voters are idiots. Robert Alomar not be elected in this year on his first ballot is proof of that. Me not being elected into the Hall of Fame for the past 13 years is further proof these voters are moron. Please vote for me Hall of Fame morons."
I’m sure he’ll be in there next year as he logged only three fewer votes than I did in his first year of eligibility.
"I should have been voted into the Hall of Fame my first year of eligibility as well."
I also think Barry Larkin, who got just more than 50 percent, is a future Hall of Famer as probably the best shortstop of his era.
"Further proof these voters are idiots."
And next year, Rafael Palmeiro, Jeff Bagwell and Larry Walker will be among the new eligible players, and all are deserving.
"I support everyone who is suspected of or found to use PEDs to make the Hall of Fame. I support anyone who supports me being in the Hall of Fame."
It will be a year of anticipation, and hopefully the same voters who selected me will stick with me, and we can convince a few others to join.
"I will send 6 voters a free 'I love to fart" shirt, as well as an unspecified sum of money as long as he/she votes for me. Actually, 6 people just name something you need me to do and I will do it. Murder, robbery, and any other illicit crime I will do it...just put me in the Hall of Fame."
-Craig Calcaterra FJM-style rips apart Jon Heyman's excuse for a Hall of Fame ballot. For fear of repeating what he says, I will just hit some highlights. Read the entire thing though, I promise it is good.
To review, he had Robbie Alomar, Andrew Dawson, Barry Larkin, Dave Parker, Jack Morris and Don Mattingly. Many people took issue with this ballot, myself included. It's a pretty awful one all things considered. Parker? Morris? Mattingly?
I am pretty sure Heyman just pulled names out of a hat. He's the guy who voted for David Segui and Kevin Appier probably. Both of them got one vote...unbelievable. All things considered, I take issue with half of his ballot. Serious issue with half his ballot.
My three favorite parts of Calcaterra's takedown (Heyman in red and Calcaterra's in black):
1. My contention regarding Blyleven is that almost no one viewed him as a Hall of Famer during his playing career, and that is borne out by the 17 percent of the vote he received in his first year of eligibility in 1998, followed by 14 percent the next year.
Yet he is a fan of Morris, who got 22.9% of the vote in his first year and 19.6% of the vote in his second. And he spent a paragraph talking about how his mind is changing on Tim Raines, who got 24.3% in his first year of eligibility, but not Heyman's vote. And Don Mattingly, who was last seen hovering at around 16%, and also did not previously get Heyman's vote. And Dave Parker, who continues to get way less than 20% of the vote (and who has a drug history unmatched in the game, which Heyman says should disqualify McGwire).
2. After going on and on about how Blyleven never showed greatness as opposed to the ability to merely compile stats, Heyman says:
Some will say that Blyleven's career was equal to Hall of Famer Don Sutton's but I say it is just short of Sutton's. They both had big totals in other categories but Sutton wound up with 37 more victories, going over the magic 300 mark by 24.
Got that? Stat compilers suck, unless of course they compile long enough to reach some arbitrary number like 300.
This "compiler" argument is pretty much the crux of the argument against Blyleven, along with wins, which are stupid anyway. The anti-argument that can beat the "compiler" argument is exactly what Calcaterra wrote here.
3. Heyman would, and often does, point to winning percentage as a key factor, noting that while his supporters often cite the fact that Blyleven pitched for bad teams, his career winning percentage -- .534 -- wasn't that much better than the teams on which he pitched: .496. What he leaves out is that the difference between Morris' career winning percentage -- .577 -- and the teams on which he pitched -- .547 -- is actually less than Blyleven's. In other words, Blyleven outpitched his teams at a better clip than the supposedly dominant Morris did.
This is a very unfortunate statistic for Jon Heyman. It knocks his "winning percentage" argument against Bert out of the water. The bottom line is that I would have more respect for the anti-Blyleven crowd if they could provide a cogent argument that actually made sense. It hasn't happened yet. Every time they compare guys like Jack Morris or Don Sutton to Blyleven, it just shows the stupidity of the argument because it is based on team statistics like wins and arbitrary numbers like 300 wins that Blyleven never hit. I am open to hearing a reason that can't be fairly rebutted as to why Blyleven should not be in the Hall of Fame.
-Bill Conlin also seems to struggle with the Hall of Fame voting process. I hate to give you guys homework, but I am not going to comment on this. Just read this short takedown of Bill Conlin. This is my biggest problem with the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame voting process. It's so arbitrary and it's arbitrary because the voters make it arbitrary.
Bill Conlin has a self-imposed "I vote for 6 guys rule." That's idiocy. Pure and simple idiocy. What if there are 7 deserving players to be voted for? Why only put 6 players on the ballot when you can put 10 on the ballot? I love baseball and I love the Hall of Fame. I hate the debates, which are only going to get worse as the Steroid Era players start to trickle on the ballot, and I don't mind if someone disagrees with me on who should be a Hall of Fame player. Voting for the Hall of Fame is a serious task (in the realm of sports) and a person voting like he has always voted or refusing to accept new statistical data that should cause him to re-think his position is not acceptable.
The voters need to take this seriously and not make the process more difficult than it needs to be. If a player is deserving, vote for them, but don't vote for a player or not vote for a player because you don't have an open mind. These voters don't have to buy into the statistical revolution or why once thought ideas may not be completely correct, but they also can't dismiss it simply because they refuse to listen to new arguments.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
27 comments I Liked Jim Rice Better Before He Got Into The HOF
UPDATE: It seems Joe Posnanski saw the exact same thing and is hopefully preparing a strong rebuttal that will probably blow the doors off mine. Stay tuned.
If theres one dude you dont want hearing about the smack you've been talking about Greinke, its Joe.
Hello everyone. Gosh, its been a long time since I've posted. Sorry, I've been busy with some things lately. What could possibly be more important than posting on a blog that I don't get paid to write on, you might ask? I'm glad you did. Well, I happened to be cruising car dealerships to look at cars and I stopped at one and came away with this beauty.
Yup, I bought a brand new 2010 Camaro, as you can see it proudly displayed in my mothers basement. But anyways I had to go through the pain in the ass process of getting it registered in NH to avoid getting killed by RI taxes, so I've been busy the past couple of weeks. Well, that and I've been playing Smokey and the Bandit with it since I got it.
Okay, now that I've got that out of the way, on to more important matters. Some of you might remember Jim Rice basically talking smack about Derek Jeter and a bunch of other ball players to some little league kids. In a nutshell it was along the lines of "they arent half as good as the players back in my day, I was dominant and feared, blah blah blah.....". Well, Mr. Rice has a blog and on it he made an interesting observation about Zack Grienke.
Greinke is a Good Pitcher-Not Dominant
To this I say: Jim Rice was a Good Ballplayer-Not Dominant. Really, Jim Rice? Now your going to start talking shit about Zack? This coming from the man who got elected into the HOF from a bunch of boston sportswriters lobbying the supposed "fear" he put into opposing pitchers? Nevermind the fact that Dick Allen, Albert Bell, hell, even Ron Santos has a better Cooperstown argument then you do.
Zack Greinke didn’t really impress me last night. He pitched well and maybe I caught him on a bad night, but to me he didn’t seem dominant.
Keeping in mind the fact that he is one start removed from having a Miguel Cabrera line drive hit him in the elbow, Zack threw six shutout innings, allowing only 2 hits, striking out 5 and walking 0. Maybe not his most dominant performance but, he did shut down one of the most potent lineups in the league. What? Theres more? Okay.
Greinke has may have the lowest ERA in the AL since Pedro Martinez in 2000, but he doesn’t strike me as the dominant force that Pedro was during his statistical peak.
Its kind of unfair to compare Greinke to a pitcher that had one of the most dominant pitching runs IN MLB HISTORY, dont you think, Jim? I mean, christ. After the game his ERA stood at 2.08. That is insane. He is 2nd in the league in K's and first in just about every meaningful statistic.
Don’t get me wrong, Greinke pitched very effectively but he was not the unhittable beast on the mound that Pedro or Clemens (or even Johan Santana) were during their reign of dominance.
Actually, I think I am getting you wrong. You are basically telling me that instead of being one of the best pitchers in the league, he is just.....meh. Not to mention, this is the only game you have seen him in this year. You know he does pitch to others teams besides those that reside in the AL East, right?
Side Rant: Why does it matter that he hasnt pitched that much to teams in the AL East? The AL Central has some really good hitters, too. Cabrera, Mauer, Morneau, Konerko, Thome (when he was still with the ChiSox), Beckham, Choo.....This seems to be the argument idiots make when saying they will not vote for him. Well, that and he doesnt have enough wins, which, I guess, is even stupider.
He only gave up two hits in 6 innings but struggled with his command and, with 5 strikeouts, it’s not like he was punching tickets up and down the Red Sox lineup
Yes. He struggled with his command WHILE WALKING ZERO BATTERS!!!!ZERO!!! He also struck out a little less than 1 per inning. What did you want, 10K's against one of the better hitting teams in the league? Plus he was one start removed from getting smacked on the elbow by a line drive. Man, Jim, its a good thing the HOF doesnt have the standards you have, eh?
He reminds me of a right-handed Roger Moret. He has that long and lean frame but good speed on his fastball and sporadic command.
Roger Moret: Career ERA+ 108. Career High ERA+ 128 Highest K Total: 111
Zack Greinke: Career ERA+120 Career High ERA+ sitting at 210 this year Highest K total: 229 and counting this year.
Where are the similarities? I mean, asides from them both having long and lean frames. Its like comparing Dustin Pedroia to David Eckstein (all hail the mighty ball of grit) even though the only thing similar is they are short and white.
How the fuck can you call Greinke good but not dominant based on one start? Jim Rice: Congrats on being elected into the HOF, but please stop writing stupid entries, such as this one, on your blog.
If theres one dude you dont want hearing about the smack you've been talking about Greinke, its Joe.
Hello everyone. Gosh, its been a long time since I've posted. Sorry, I've been busy with some things lately. What could possibly be more important than posting on a blog that I don't get paid to write on, you might ask? I'm glad you did. Well, I happened to be cruising car dealerships to look at cars and I stopped at one and came away with this beauty.
Yup, I bought a brand new 2010 Camaro, as you can see it proudly displayed in my mothers basement. But anyways I had to go through the pain in the ass process of getting it registered in NH to avoid getting killed by RI taxes, so I've been busy the past couple of weeks. Well, that and I've been playing Smokey and the Bandit with it since I got it.
Okay, now that I've got that out of the way, on to more important matters. Some of you might remember Jim Rice basically talking smack about Derek Jeter and a bunch of other ball players to some little league kids. In a nutshell it was along the lines of "they arent half as good as the players back in my day, I was dominant and feared, blah blah blah.....". Well, Mr. Rice has a blog and on it he made an interesting observation about Zack Grienke.
Greinke is a Good Pitcher-Not Dominant
To this I say: Jim Rice was a Good Ballplayer-Not Dominant. Really, Jim Rice? Now your going to start talking shit about Zack? This coming from the man who got elected into the HOF from a bunch of boston sportswriters lobbying the supposed "fear" he put into opposing pitchers? Nevermind the fact that Dick Allen, Albert Bell, hell, even Ron Santos has a better Cooperstown argument then you do.
Zack Greinke didn’t really impress me last night. He pitched well and maybe I caught him on a bad night, but to me he didn’t seem dominant.
Keeping in mind the fact that he is one start removed from having a Miguel Cabrera line drive hit him in the elbow, Zack threw six shutout innings, allowing only 2 hits, striking out 5 and walking 0. Maybe not his most dominant performance but, he did shut down one of the most potent lineups in the league. What? Theres more? Okay.
Greinke has may have the lowest ERA in the AL since Pedro Martinez in 2000, but he doesn’t strike me as the dominant force that Pedro was during his statistical peak.
Its kind of unfair to compare Greinke to a pitcher that had one of the most dominant pitching runs IN MLB HISTORY, dont you think, Jim? I mean, christ. After the game his ERA stood at 2.08. That is insane. He is 2nd in the league in K's and first in just about every meaningful statistic.
Don’t get me wrong, Greinke pitched very effectively but he was not the unhittable beast on the mound that Pedro or Clemens (or even Johan Santana) were during their reign of dominance.
Actually, I think I am getting you wrong. You are basically telling me that instead of being one of the best pitchers in the league, he is just.....meh. Not to mention, this is the only game you have seen him in this year. You know he does pitch to others teams besides those that reside in the AL East, right?
Side Rant: Why does it matter that he hasnt pitched that much to teams in the AL East? The AL Central has some really good hitters, too. Cabrera, Mauer, Morneau, Konerko, Thome (when he was still with the ChiSox), Beckham, Choo.....This seems to be the argument idiots make when saying they will not vote for him. Well, that and he doesnt have enough wins, which, I guess, is even stupider.
He only gave up two hits in 6 innings but struggled with his command and, with 5 strikeouts, it’s not like he was punching tickets up and down the Red Sox lineup
Yes. He struggled with his command WHILE WALKING ZERO BATTERS!!!!ZERO!!! He also struck out a little less than 1 per inning. What did you want, 10K's against one of the better hitting teams in the league? Plus he was one start removed from getting smacked on the elbow by a line drive. Man, Jim, its a good thing the HOF doesnt have the standards you have, eh?
He reminds me of a right-handed Roger Moret. He has that long and lean frame but good speed on his fastball and sporadic command.
Roger Moret: Career ERA+ 108. Career High ERA+ 128 Highest K Total: 111
Zack Greinke: Career ERA+120 Career High ERA+ sitting at 210 this year Highest K total: 229 and counting this year.
Where are the similarities? I mean, asides from them both having long and lean frames. Its like comparing Dustin Pedroia to David Eckstein (all hail the mighty ball of grit) even though the only thing similar is they are short and white.
How the fuck can you call Greinke good but not dominant based on one start? Jim Rice: Congrats on being elected into the HOF, but please stop writing stupid entries, such as this one, on your blog.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)