I'm not sure if you have heard, but there is a big, massive war going on (not really, but the media gets bored and loves to write articles that paint the two sides against each other) over baseball players and media members who like advanced statistics and those baseball players and media members who hate advanced statistics. Bob Nightengale points out that two players on opposite sides of this spectrum not only play on the same team, but bat 2nd and 3rd respectively in the same batting order. How do the modern day Biggie and Tupac stand each other while in the same lineup? Will this war tear the Reds team apart? Does Brandon Phillips have a fucking clue how RBI work and that MLB Network didn't invent a statistic? Bob Nightengale has all the answers for his readers.
The debate still rages and plays out every day for the Cincinnati Reds,
inviting intrigue, discussion and even divisions within their own
organization.
I imagine both Phillips and Votto have their own colors they wear and have lockers on the opposite side of the clubhouse from each other. Don't show up on Votto's side of the locker room wearing blue. That's a good way to get a baseball bat upside the head. Just try to step on Phillips' side of the clubhouse showing out wearing green. The police won't know where the blood stops and starts on the red uniform Cincinnati wears. They ain't called "the Reds" for nothing.
From the corner of power and patience: First baseman Joey Votto's hitting philosophy.
From the corner of opportunity and aggression: Second baseman Brandon Phillips' hitting approach.
And remember, THERE CAN BE NO IN BETWEEN! A batter has to either be patient like Votto or aggressive like Phillips. No baseball player can change his strategy at the plate based on the count, the pitcher or any other game situation. Be aggressive or be patient. Two options. That's it.
Where else could you have a team paying $225 million to a four-time
All-Star first baseman who's their greatest power hitter, but since he
thrives on his on-base percentage and passes up RBI opportunities for
walks, he'll bat second?
He passes up RBI opportunities, yet has been Top 10 in the NL in RBI twice over his 8 year career. Once in 2010 when he was 3rd and once in 2011 when he was 6th. Don't let this little fact ruin the narrative that Votto passes up RBI though.
And where else could you spend $72.5 million on a three-time All-Star
second baseman who despises walks and loathes on-base percentage but
will do everything possible to drive in runs, so he'll bat third?
Phillips does everything possible to drive in runs, yet he has been in the Top 10 in the NL in RBI once in his 13 year career. He was 4th in the NL in RBI during the 2013 season. Isn't weird how the guy who hates RBI averages more RBI during a 162 game season during his career (94) than the guy who loves RBI so much (84 RBI in a 162 game season during his career) that he would marry them if it wasn't so gross to be married to a statistic?
Votto averages an RBI every 7.3 plate appearance during his career and Phillips averages an RBI every 8.2 plate appearance during his career. So which one likes RBI so much and which one passes up RBI opportunities again?
Sorry, I'm ruining the poorly researched narrative.
Nothing against Votto, Phillips says, but he's up there swinging the
bat, believing driving in runs is the best way to help your team win.
And yet, Votto has shown himself to actually be better at driving in runs. Weird how that works isn't it?
Nothing against Phillips, Votto says, but he believes the best way to score is simply getting on base, no matter the situation.
And regardless what statistics might say, they'll never change their ways, believing their method is best.
Whatever works for either player. It really doesn't matter as long as the team is happy and the player is happy. There is no wrong or right answer. There are wrong and right assumptions on which conclusions can be drawn though. Therein lies the issue with the "Votto hates RBI, while Phillips loves RBI" assumption.
"I don't do that MLB Network on-base percentage (stuff),'' Phillips told USA TODAY Sports.
Well, they did invent on-base percentage, so it's fair to blame MLB Network.
"I think that's messing up baseball. I think people now are just worried
about getting paid and worrying about on-base percentage instead of
just winning the game.
If it weren't for those meddling kids at MLB Network then more runs would be driven in and baseball players would perform better.
"That's the new thing now. I feel like all of these stats and all of
these geeks upstairs, they're messing up baseball, they're just changing
the game.
I think everyone should listen to Phillips and read what he is saying, because this sounds like some really, really informed criticism.
It's all about on-base percentage. If you don't get on base, then you suck.
This has been true for quite some time now. If a team doesn't have players who get on base then it is really hard to score runs without hitting several solo home runs every night and hoping your pitching staff keeps the other team under 2-3 runs. Getting on base is a great way to score runs and win games, so yes, if a player doesn't get on the base a lot then there is a chance he could suck.
That's basically what they're saying. People don't care about RBI or scoring runs, it's all about getting on base.
And how in the heck can a person get an RBI if there is no one on base, outside of hitting a solo home run of course? Brandon Phillips shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how RBI work. The only way to get an RBI with no runners on base is to hit a home run. Otherwise, it should be all about getting on base, because without batters getting on base then there is no way to get an RBI or score a run. It's sad that Brandon Phillips plays the game of baseball and isn't capable of understanding in his screed about why no one cares about scoring runs or RBI that someone has to be on base for the batter to get an RBI or the runner to score a run. This shouldn't be hard to understand, yet in his screed towards on-base percentage Phillips seems to miss this basic point.
"Why we changing the game after all of this time?
No one is changing the game. Why are you being so stupid?
If we all just took our walks, nobody would be scoring runs.
That's partially incorrect because if everyone took walks then at some point the pitcher would walk home a run.
Nobody would be driving anybody in or getting anybody over. How you
going to play the game like that? People don't look at doing the things
the right way and doing things to help your team win.
Oh, nobody is doing "things the right way." Like, drawing a walk to get on base so that you can drive them in with one of your non-patented RBI that you have fewer of than Votto despite the fact you talk like you are the RBI king?
And Joey Votto has done more to help the Reds win during his career than Brandon Phillips has done. He's a better ball player and has more RBI than Phillips despite the fact Phillips seems to think Votto doesn't care about RBI in such an extreme way that it hurts the team.
"I remember back in the day you hit .230, you suck. Nowadays, you hit
.230 with a .400 on-base percentage, you're one of the best players in
the game. That's amazing. I've never seen (stuff) like that. Times have
changed. It's totally different now.
Not that Phillips is talking in generalities or anything like that. There aren't that many player who hit .230 with a .400 OBP other than Adam Dunn and he wasn't considered one of the best players in the game. I'm sure Phillips' generic screed against people that may or may not exist is very convincing for the anti-stats crowd though. They love fictional strawman arguments that exaggerate the position of the advanced statistics crowd.
Votto takes the other extreme and gets vilified for his approach –
even by Reds Hall of Fame broadcaster Marty Brennaman – but couldn't
care less what people think of him.
He's gone from a power hitter
and National League MVP (37 homers with 113 RBI in 2010), to the king of
on-base percentage. He is baseball's active on-base leader at .417 and
has led the league in walks three consecutive years, with injuries
ending his streak last year.
Right, but how does Votto expect Brandon Phillips to drive him in if he's taking walks and getting on base? If Votto would be more aggressive at the plate then he would get on base more and Phillips would have more chances to drive him in. Sure, Votto gets on base more than any other active player, getting on base leads to runs scored and runs scored lead to RBI, but shut up because Brandon Phillips doesn't want to talk about this anymore.
"I still don't understand the conversation,'' Votto says. "I'm like
(fifth) in active players in slugging percentage (.533), second in
batting average (.310), and the on-base percentage just happens to be
the one thing everyone highlights because I've had some success with
that.
Yeah Joey, but you don't drive as many people in as Brandon Phillips does, unless you want to count the RBI total you have compared to Phillips. And really, that doesn't count so let's not talk about it right now. It's not reasonable for you to get on base by drawing walks. You should be swinging the bat and trying to drive runs in rather than getting on base so that Brandon Phillips can drive you in. An RBI is only an RBI if the runner gets on base due to a base hit. Runs batted in due to the runner getting on base with a walk doesn't count in a player's RBI total.
Yet by taking all of his walks, Votto sacrifices some power. If the
pitch isn't in the strike zone, he's not swinging. If a runner is on
third base with less than two outs, he's just as content to take his
walk rather than drive him in, taking nearly as many pitches in the zone
than outside with runners in scoring position.
And yet, despite Bob Nightengale insisting this is true, Votto still has been in the Top 10 of the NL in RBI twice. Brandon Phillips bitches and moans about how RBI should be how a player is measured and yet he bats behind a guy who gets on base more than any other active player. If Phillips thinks RBI is how a player should be measured then he should be pretty fucking happy Votto walks a lot because that puts Votto on base so that Phillips can drive him in.
"No, I don't care about the people around me,'' Votto says. "It
wouldn't matter to me. It just doesn't make a difference. It's never
made a difference in my career. I've never been in a situation where I
was getting pitched differently except when Billy (Hamilton) is on
first.
"Our lineup should be perpetual. It shouldn't stop. It should just continue to roll through.''
Votto's career batting average is .310 and so he's nothing like the hypothetical, generic player that Brandon Phillips claims gets undue credit for being one of the best players in the game. So Phillips' screed against on-base percentage really has nothing to do with the results Votto shows at the plate. Phillips has created a boogeyman out of thin air.
If he had the desire, Votto believes he could lead the NL in homers. But
the days of a .400 on-base percentage and .300 batting average would be
gone, too. His batting average would likely plummet to .250, Votto
says, if he focused on his power game.
Yeah, but then he would run the risk of being one of those players who hits .230 with a .400 on-base percentage that don't actually exist. To further hurt Phillips' point, let's check out what hitters have the highest on-base percentage throughout the history of baseball. I bet it's full of scrubs and assholes who didn't care enough to swing the bat and drive their teammates in.
Ted Williams
Babe Ruth
Lou Gehrig
Billy Hamilton
Rogers Hornsby
Ty Cobb
Who are those guys? Just scrubs who are considered the best in the game, but really aren't because they dared to get on base often. There was one player in the majors last year who had a high OBP and an average near to .230 and that was Carlos Santana. He hit .231 with a .365 OBP. Guess what else he had though? 85 RBI. In fact, players like Brandon Moss and Brian Dozier, guys who had higher OBP and a low average also had RBI totals that were in the Top 65 of the majors. It's almost like they were able to get on base and get RBI at the same time.
And that way has a tendency to drive folks batty, with Brennaman echoing
the sentiments of many frustrated Reds fans, and some club officials,
by saying the Reds won't be a contender if Votto is content leading the
league in on-base percentage.
The Reds certainly won't be a contender if there isn't anyone hitting behind Votto that can drive him in. I'm sure the fact Phillips may not be able to drive Votto in isn't Phillips' fault, but instead is the fault of geeks who love on-base percentage. Brandon Phillips can't drive a guy in who gets on base with a walk. He needs that guy ahead of him in the lineup to get a base hit in order to be properly motivated to drive that runner in.
"I don't want people to think I'm hating on Joey, because I'm not,''
Phillips says. "There's nothing wrong with how he plays the game. He
does what's best for him. He's going to do what makes him successful. So
you can't get mad at somebody's approach.
You can tell by this quote and how he says "what's best for him" that Brandon Phillips thinks Votto is being selfish by drawing walks. Of course drawing those walks gets runners on base for Brandon Phillips, but he's too thick to understand this.
Phillips, 33, laughs. He never has cared about on-base percentage. He
has a career .319 OBP, but with 168 homers is the greatest power-hitting
second baseman in Reds history. In 1,600 more plate appearances, he has
202 more career RBI and 11 more homers than Votto.
Yes, the guy who is all about hitting home runs and driving runs in doesn't do either of things as well as Joey Votto does. If Votto were to want to be more like Phillips than maybe he should draw fewer walks and ending up regressing into no longer being one of the best players in the game.
I'm swinging the damn bat. I'm a guy that drives in runs. If you give
me an RBI opportunity, a guy on third base and less than two outs, I'm
getting that guy in. I'm not walking. I'm getting that guy in.
Well, sort of. Phillips does have a fair amount of RBI, but he's not exactly an RBI machine who is constantly in the Top 10 of the NL in this statistic.
"That's just how I am. I play the game to win. I don't play the game for stats.
Apparently Brandon Phillips doesn't think RBI is a stat. Because Brandon Phillips wants more people to care about RBI and runs, both of which are statistics, and he cares about his RBI statistic. So he doesn't play the game for stats, but gets mad because others don't play the game for the same stats that he plays the game for.
"I'm not talking about nobody else. I don't penalize nobody. I don't talk negative about nobody. I'm just talking about me.
Yes, Phillips doesn't talk negative about nobody, doesn't penalize nobody nor is he talking about nobody else. Quotes from this article by Phillips:
"That's the new thing now. I feel like all of these stats and all of
these geeks upstairs, they're messing up baseball, they're just changing
the game.
I think people now are just worried about getting paid and worrying about on-base percentage instead of just winning the game.
People don't look at doing the things the right way and doing things to help your team win.
It certainly seems like those are examples of Phillips talking negative about somebody, penalizing someone, and talking about someone else. But hey, it's clear based on Phillips not understanding that runners on base leads to RBI that he isn't dealing with a full deck of cards and critical thinking isn't his thing. It's probably best he just show up and hits the ball. I'm not sure the Reds need him thinking too much at the plate.
Maybe he's right.
You just won't get a certain teammate to agree.
YES! Create a narrative where these two teammates are against each other and will battle to the death over their different approaches to the plate. Sure, it may not be true and there is room in baseball for both approaches, but that's no fun to write about is it?
Showing posts with label cincinnati reds. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cincinnati reds. Show all posts
Monday, April 6, 2015
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
6 comments Murray Chass Continues the Battle Against Numbers, Says He Can Look In the Mirror To Know How Old He Is
Dylan Murphy of "Pardon the Opinion" and I did another podcast this week. We are going to try and make this a weekly thing if all possible. We did an NFL review of sorts from this past weekend. Unfortunately, the podcast file got corrupted and could not post at all so I can't link what we said since it apparently doesn't exist anymore. It's frustrating, but those are the breaks I guess and there isn't much to be done about it.
I didn't have anything to post for today, so I will call an audible (sports-related term being used on a sports-related site. How clever!). I am going to look at a rarity today, a not-so-bad column by Steve Phillips and then Murray Chass will continue his hatred against numbers.
First, I will get to the Steve Phillips column. I don't agree with everything he writes in this column and some of the ways he justifies his picks aren't the best, but Steve Phillips names his 2010 MLB Awards and gets them fairly correct (in my opinion) based on the low standards I would normally have for a Steve Phillips award column. I'll see what you think.
AL MVP:
This is really a two-player race: Josh Hamilton and Miguel Cabrera.
Cabrera is third in the league in hitting (.328), second in home runs (38) and first in RBI (126). He is a few points behind Hamilton in OPS. The fact that Cabrera has 31 intentional walks (to five for Hamilton) shows how little protection he had in the Tigers lineup.
Winner: Miguel Cabrera, Detroit Tigers
Not really the best way to defend his choice to go with intentional walks, but I do agree with his conclusion. I think Cabrera should be the guy.
AL Cy Young:
This is probably the most hotly debated award of the season. It challenges the belief that wins are one of the most important stats in defining the quality of a pitcher's performance. Felix Hernandez is leading some important categories, ERA and innings pitched. He is second in strikeouts and WHIP and third in opponents' slugging percentage and batting average. However, King Felix only has a 12-12 record. He would have the fewest wins ever for a Cy Young Award winner.
The good news for Hernandez is that voters are more educated now than in the past.
Murray Chass spits on your idea of voters being educated. He doesn't see how knowledge should have anything to do with who wins the Cy Young award. It's educated in his opinion to ignore alternative ways of evaluating a player at the major league level.
Winner: Felix Hernandez, Seattle Mariners
Steve Phillips doesn't even put CC Sabathia in his Top-5, which I am not sure I could agree with. I think that is discounting Sabathia's performance a little bit too much, but I agree with his conclusion. He had David Price second, which I also agree with him upon.
NL MVP:
This is a three-man race: Joey Votto, Albert Pujols and Carlos Gonzalez. Pujols currently leads the NL in home runs, RBI and runs scored. Pretty compelling numbers. Carlos Gonzalez leads the NL in batting average; he is second in RBI and runs scored. Joey Votto is first in OBP, SLG and OPS; he is second in home runs; third in RBI and fourth in runs scored. You can make a case for any of the three but Votto's Cincinnati Reds are headed to the playoffs.
I like the conclusion, but I don't like the reasoning. Using Phillips' own reasoning for why Miguel Cabrera deserves the AL MVP over Josh Hamilton, if the Reds are headed to the playoffs couldn't that mean Pujols had a weaker lineup around him? Pujols had 38 intentional walks, while Votto only had 8 intentional walks. This was the criteria Phillips used to decide Cabrera deserved the AL MVP over Hamilton. It is possible the same reasoning could be used to say Pujols deserves the NL MVP. I still agree with the conclusion, even if I would not use which team made the playoffs as the determining factor.
The Reds' pitching staff is not great (ranked eighth in the NL) so offense is what has gotten them to the playoffs. Votto's performance is the most valuable of the three.
That's really what it is all about in the end. Which player was most valuable to his team. Votto should be the winner probably, though it is close.
NL Cy Young:
So it comes down to Wainwright and Halladay. With his outing Monday night Roy Halladay lowered his ERA from 2.53 to 2.44. Wainwright has 20 wins while Halladay now had 21. Entering Monday the numbers slightly favored Wainwright over Halladay. Halladay pitches in Citizens Bank Park, which is a notorious hitters' stadium. Wainwright pitches in Busch Stadium which plays pretty fairly. Halladay leads in innings pitched and strikeouts.
I am pretty sure Joe Morgan would agree that more wins for Halladay means he deserves to win this award, but he has been pushing Wainwright on us all year long for this award pretty hard. I think Halladay is the obvious choice.
NL Rookie of the Year:
This is another tight race. Jaime Garcia is the lone pitcher in the race but he has a very strong case for the award.
On the hitters' side of things, Jason Heyward, Buster Posey and Gaby Sanchez can all make a case for the award.
The Giants made a bold move trading veteran backstop Bengie Molina to open space for Posey to move behind the plate and get more playing time. He has made the Giants' staff look brilliant as he has shown the ability to hit, hit with some pop, handle a pitching staff and throw out base-stealers. His .317 average is further enhanced by his 16 homers and 64 RBI.
I came in to this column with Heyward as my selection but the more I look at the numbers I believe that someone else has had more of an impact because of the two-way nature of the position.
Winner: Buster Posey, San Francisco Giants
I agree with this award as well. Even though he was called up late, and contrary to what Joe Morgan thinks about catchers, it is hard to come up as a young catcher and handle a pitching staff. Granted, Posey has a good pitching staff to handle, but he seems to have a done a good at a difficult position. I think the voting should go Posey, Heyward, and Garcia.
Anyway, I actually did not hate Steve Phillips opinion on the 2010 awards, which shocked me. Now onto Murray Chass. He is writing words in his non-blog again and this time he talks about Walk Jocketty's new team, the Reds, making the playoffs. Score one for people who hate statistics.
Walt Jocketty has too much class, is too much of a gentleman to thumb his nose, stick out his tongue and say to the St. Louis Cardinals and their principal owner, Bill DeWitt Jr., “na na na na na.” So I’ll do it for him: Na na na na na.
(Bengoodfella rolls on the floor laughing) Do another one! A good baseball column on a non-blog ALWAYS starts off with a good "na na na na" joke.
Dewitt deserves this rude treatment because three years ago, only a year after his Jocketty-built team won the World Series, he fired Jocketty. Now Jocketty’s new team, Cincinnati, is on the brink of dethroning the Cardinals as National League Central champions.
I am sure someone somewhere thinks this is the very definition of ironic.
I don't know if Walt Jocketty should have been fired from the Cardinals or not, but he was fired because of divisions in the front office, not based on his performance. Also, the Cardinals have had success since he left, so it is not like he was solely responsible for their overall success as a team.
The Cardinals had come off a 78-84 season in 2007 when Jocketty was fired and they made the playoffs last year in 2009. It's not like they gone in the toilet since Jocketty left.
DeWitt did not return a telephone call to discuss his decision to fire Jocketty, who said “not really” when I asked him if he understood why he was fired.
This comment is contrary to most people who get fired and understand completely why they were fired. I would say 99% of the time when a person is fired, even after being told the reason, they still don't completely understand. So Jocketty's lack of understanding for his firing doesn't mean it was the wrong decision at the time. Not only that, but you can't really ever trust either side's reasoning for why a person was fired because generally both sides see the situation completely differently from each other.
I can't believe I am semi-defending the Cardinals owner for firing a good GM, but I sort of am...I guess.
“It was philosophy, the direction they wanted to take the organization, how they put their team together,” Jocketty said. “I didn’t necessarily go along with the thinking. We had a pretty good organization in place. I was given the right to run the organization the way I thought it should be, and I think people would say we had done the right job in scouting and player development and had the right people, quality people, to run it.”
That was Jocketty's reasoning and here is why the Cardinals say he was fired from the team...
Jocketty took umbrage at the 2006 promotion of Jeff Luhnow, who had been head of amateur scouting, to a position that oversees both scouting and player development. The move came at the expense of Bruce Manno, one of Jocketty's closest aides.
"He clearly didn't agree with the decision," DeWitt said. "I think he said that publicly. I think that my view is that one person should run both: procurement, development and international. Three things, but international is really procurement. And he felt it should be split."
Murray is going to chalk this up to a win for the anti-statistics crowd when it was really an issue about how the front office should be split up and Jocketty didn't like his buddy got his position taken away.
There was also another reason the Cardinals left Jocketty go:
Though Jocketty had another year left on his contract, there were several media reports throughout the season that had the GM's name linked to possible job openings in other cities.
So with there being front office animosity and the feeling their GM was going somewhere else, Jocketty got fired. Maybe not the most popular or smartest move, but possibly also the pulling off of the Band-Aid in a situation where Jocketty would have left very soon regardless.
Jocketty was probably the most notable victim of the modern-day baseball war between evaluation and analysis. It mattered not to DeWitt that Jocketty’s belief in player evaluation had worked extremely well for the Cardinals. The owner was seduced by others in the organization into believing that statistical analysis was the way to go.
(Picturing basement-dwelling statistics lovers luring Bill Dewitt into the basement with promises of more profits and more championships, but at the very expense of his soul)
I don't know the inside situation, but it seems like there was more than just a disagreement over the importance of statistics in this situation. There seems to be other issues that caused the Jocketty-Cardinals divorce that Murray doesn't feel the need to address.
That was the method created by Bill James and was featured in the Michael Lewis book “Moneyball,” which ridiculed one Oakland scout not for his inability to judge players but for the fact that he was fat.
Fat people were mocked? Statistics-lovers have gone over the edge of sanity now!
However, John Schuerholz, architect of the Atlanta Braves’ unparalleled 14-year run in first place, criticized the “Moneyball” concept in his 2006 book, “Built to Win.”
Hmmm...not exactly. I've read the book. He did criticize statistics-based analysis, but in the realm of making it the sole way to evaluate a player, which doesn't happen.
“As portrayed in that book,” Schuerholz wrote, “it is a bogus concept because I know you can’t make baseball judgments entirely on statistical analysis to build a team.”
Notice the key parts of these sentences, "as portrayed in the book" meaning it is portrayed in real life differently, and "you can't make baseball judgments entirely on statistical analysis" with the key word being "entirely."
No one is saying to build an entire team around statistical analysis. I am not sure anyone has ever said that or that was the intent of the book. Schuerholz didn't seem to condemn statistical-based analysis, but just say it is limited in its scope, which is true, just like ignoring statistics completely limits the scope of analyzing a player. As far as Schuerholz goes, he did a great job as the Braves GM...but I'm also not going to go year-by-year with some of the trades made by Schuerholz towards the end of his time as Braves GM, but let's just say at one point Brian Jordan and Raul Mondesi were playing RF and LF respectively (as starters) and it was not 2000, but was 2005.
“He called me the day after I was fired,” Jocketty said in a telephone interview last Friday evening, when the Reds’ division-clinching number was three. “I wasn’t ready to go to work yet. I went there in the middle of January.”
I am sure there is a 100% chance that Jocketty had never talked about working for the Reds before he was fired. I am also lying about this.
Easier said than done, but Jocketty has done it quickly. A critical factor in his effort has been the addition of three men who worked for him in St. Louis – Jerry Walker, Cam Bonifay and Mike Squires. These scouts and scouting executives know how to use calculators and computers, but more important, they use their eyes and can evaluate what they see.
This is the most irritating thing in the world. Those who use statistics-based analysis do this as well! No person is sitting in an office and avoiding sunlight while recommending a team sign a player based completely on the numbers he sees on paper. Nearly every scout or executive worth a shit uses statistical analysis and their own eyes to judge a player. Any suggestion to the opposite is a lie.
Has Jocketty made any changes in his method of operation since becoming the Reds’ general manager? “No, not really,” he said but acknowledged that “you have to use a certain amount of statistics.”
Lately, Murray Chass has been the master of making a point and then disproving his own point in a column on in his non-blog.
While the Washington Nationals kept their pitching prodigy, Stephen Strasburg, in the minors for the first two months of the season because, they said, he had had no professional experience, the Reds put Mike Leake in their starting rotation from the start of the season despite his lack of professional experience.
Where is Mike Leake now? He is not really able to pitch the rest of the season because of arm fatigue. He's essentially in the same position as Stephen Strasburg, except the Nationals will be able to keep Strasburg a year longer than the Reds could keep Leake.
The right-handed rookie responded with an 8-4 record in 22 starts before he was shut down Aug. 24. By then Jocketty had promoted another rookie pitcher, Travis Wood, who has a 5-4 record in 15 starts.
It's really simple to start a rookie all year and then shut him down when you have another quality rookie pitcher in the minors. That's a nice luxury to have. If the Nationals shut down Stephen Strasburg, they would be stuck starting one of the shitty pitchers they currently have in their rotation. They don't have as many options in the minors as the Reds have, so it would not be as easy for them to start Strasburg all year and then replace him with another quality pitcher.
But Jocketty saved his pitching piece de resistance for last, summoning Aroldis Chapman Aug. 31. Earlier in the year Chapman, a Cuban defector, was a highly sought left-handed pitcher, the kind that usually costs a lot of money and the Reds shy away from.
Jocketty said, “We tried to tell the players in spring training we thought we had a team that had an opportunity to win but it was up to them to carry it through. I told them I thought we had a team that would be in contention and would be for some years to come.”
Jocketty has done a good job in Cincinnati. Granted, he isn't responsible for getting many of the current players on the team, but he is a quality GM. What I am trying to say is that Jocketty's departure from the Cardinals wasn't just about statistics, but was about Jocketty looking for other jobs and not liking how the owner split up duties in the front office. Murray Chass chalks it up incorrectly to a victory of the statistics-lovers of the world.
Bill DeWitt has to wonder if the Cardinals will be there with them.
Obviously the Cardinals will never be a successful MLB team again.
I didn't have anything to post for today, so I will call an audible (sports-related term being used on a sports-related site. How clever!). I am going to look at a rarity today, a not-so-bad column by Steve Phillips and then Murray Chass will continue his hatred against numbers.
First, I will get to the Steve Phillips column. I don't agree with everything he writes in this column and some of the ways he justifies his picks aren't the best, but Steve Phillips names his 2010 MLB Awards and gets them fairly correct (in my opinion) based on the low standards I would normally have for a Steve Phillips award column. I'll see what you think.
AL MVP:
This is really a two-player race: Josh Hamilton and Miguel Cabrera.
Cabrera is third in the league in hitting (.328), second in home runs (38) and first in RBI (126). He is a few points behind Hamilton in OPS. The fact that Cabrera has 31 intentional walks (to five for Hamilton) shows how little protection he had in the Tigers lineup.
Winner: Miguel Cabrera, Detroit Tigers
Not really the best way to defend his choice to go with intentional walks, but I do agree with his conclusion. I think Cabrera should be the guy.
AL Cy Young:
This is probably the most hotly debated award of the season. It challenges the belief that wins are one of the most important stats in defining the quality of a pitcher's performance. Felix Hernandez is leading some important categories, ERA and innings pitched. He is second in strikeouts and WHIP and third in opponents' slugging percentage and batting average. However, King Felix only has a 12-12 record. He would have the fewest wins ever for a Cy Young Award winner.
The good news for Hernandez is that voters are more educated now than in the past.
Murray Chass spits on your idea of voters being educated. He doesn't see how knowledge should have anything to do with who wins the Cy Young award. It's educated in his opinion to ignore alternative ways of evaluating a player at the major league level.
Winner: Felix Hernandez, Seattle Mariners
Steve Phillips doesn't even put CC Sabathia in his Top-5, which I am not sure I could agree with. I think that is discounting Sabathia's performance a little bit too much, but I agree with his conclusion. He had David Price second, which I also agree with him upon.
NL MVP:
This is a three-man race: Joey Votto, Albert Pujols and Carlos Gonzalez. Pujols currently leads the NL in home runs, RBI and runs scored. Pretty compelling numbers. Carlos Gonzalez leads the NL in batting average; he is second in RBI and runs scored. Joey Votto is first in OBP, SLG and OPS; he is second in home runs; third in RBI and fourth in runs scored. You can make a case for any of the three but Votto's Cincinnati Reds are headed to the playoffs.
I like the conclusion, but I don't like the reasoning. Using Phillips' own reasoning for why Miguel Cabrera deserves the AL MVP over Josh Hamilton, if the Reds are headed to the playoffs couldn't that mean Pujols had a weaker lineup around him? Pujols had 38 intentional walks, while Votto only had 8 intentional walks. This was the criteria Phillips used to decide Cabrera deserved the AL MVP over Hamilton. It is possible the same reasoning could be used to say Pujols deserves the NL MVP. I still agree with the conclusion, even if I would not use which team made the playoffs as the determining factor.
The Reds' pitching staff is not great (ranked eighth in the NL) so offense is what has gotten them to the playoffs. Votto's performance is the most valuable of the three.
That's really what it is all about in the end. Which player was most valuable to his team. Votto should be the winner probably, though it is close.
NL Cy Young:
So it comes down to Wainwright and Halladay. With his outing Monday night Roy Halladay lowered his ERA from 2.53 to 2.44. Wainwright has 20 wins while Halladay now had 21. Entering Monday the numbers slightly favored Wainwright over Halladay. Halladay pitches in Citizens Bank Park, which is a notorious hitters' stadium. Wainwright pitches in Busch Stadium which plays pretty fairly. Halladay leads in innings pitched and strikeouts.
I am pretty sure Joe Morgan would agree that more wins for Halladay means he deserves to win this award, but he has been pushing Wainwright on us all year long for this award pretty hard. I think Halladay is the obvious choice.
NL Rookie of the Year:
This is another tight race. Jaime Garcia is the lone pitcher in the race but he has a very strong case for the award.
On the hitters' side of things, Jason Heyward, Buster Posey and Gaby Sanchez can all make a case for the award.
The Giants made a bold move trading veteran backstop Bengie Molina to open space for Posey to move behind the plate and get more playing time. He has made the Giants' staff look brilliant as he has shown the ability to hit, hit with some pop, handle a pitching staff and throw out base-stealers. His .317 average is further enhanced by his 16 homers and 64 RBI.
I came in to this column with Heyward as my selection but the more I look at the numbers I believe that someone else has had more of an impact because of the two-way nature of the position.
Winner: Buster Posey, San Francisco Giants
I agree with this award as well. Even though he was called up late, and contrary to what Joe Morgan thinks about catchers, it is hard to come up as a young catcher and handle a pitching staff. Granted, Posey has a good pitching staff to handle, but he seems to have a done a good at a difficult position. I think the voting should go Posey, Heyward, and Garcia.
Anyway, I actually did not hate Steve Phillips opinion on the 2010 awards, which shocked me. Now onto Murray Chass. He is writing words in his non-blog again and this time he talks about Walk Jocketty's new team, the Reds, making the playoffs. Score one for people who hate statistics.
Walt Jocketty has too much class, is too much of a gentleman to thumb his nose, stick out his tongue and say to the St. Louis Cardinals and their principal owner, Bill DeWitt Jr., “na na na na na.” So I’ll do it for him: Na na na na na.
(Bengoodfella rolls on the floor laughing) Do another one! A good baseball column on a non-blog ALWAYS starts off with a good "na na na na" joke.
Dewitt deserves this rude treatment because three years ago, only a year after his Jocketty-built team won the World Series, he fired Jocketty. Now Jocketty’s new team, Cincinnati, is on the brink of dethroning the Cardinals as National League Central champions.
I am sure someone somewhere thinks this is the very definition of ironic.
I don't know if Walt Jocketty should have been fired from the Cardinals or not, but he was fired because of divisions in the front office, not based on his performance. Also, the Cardinals have had success since he left, so it is not like he was solely responsible for their overall success as a team.
The Cardinals had come off a 78-84 season in 2007 when Jocketty was fired and they made the playoffs last year in 2009. It's not like they gone in the toilet since Jocketty left.
DeWitt did not return a telephone call to discuss his decision to fire Jocketty, who said “not really” when I asked him if he understood why he was fired.
This comment is contrary to most people who get fired and understand completely why they were fired. I would say 99% of the time when a person is fired, even after being told the reason, they still don't completely understand. So Jocketty's lack of understanding for his firing doesn't mean it was the wrong decision at the time. Not only that, but you can't really ever trust either side's reasoning for why a person was fired because generally both sides see the situation completely differently from each other.
I can't believe I am semi-defending the Cardinals owner for firing a good GM, but I sort of am...I guess.
“It was philosophy, the direction they wanted to take the organization, how they put their team together,” Jocketty said. “I didn’t necessarily go along with the thinking. We had a pretty good organization in place. I was given the right to run the organization the way I thought it should be, and I think people would say we had done the right job in scouting and player development and had the right people, quality people, to run it.”
That was Jocketty's reasoning and here is why the Cardinals say he was fired from the team...
Jocketty took umbrage at the 2006 promotion of Jeff Luhnow, who had been head of amateur scouting, to a position that oversees both scouting and player development. The move came at the expense of Bruce Manno, one of Jocketty's closest aides.
"He clearly didn't agree with the decision," DeWitt said. "I think he said that publicly. I think that my view is that one person should run both: procurement, development and international. Three things, but international is really procurement. And he felt it should be split."
Murray is going to chalk this up to a win for the anti-statistics crowd when it was really an issue about how the front office should be split up and Jocketty didn't like his buddy got his position taken away.
There was also another reason the Cardinals left Jocketty go:
Though Jocketty had another year left on his contract, there were several media reports throughout the season that had the GM's name linked to possible job openings in other cities.
DeWitt said he spoke to Jocketty about those reports.
"We would have conversations about it," DeWitt said. "This was as early as mid-season, I guess, and he said he didn't know where the rumors were coming from and I certainly didn't know where they were coming from. We were focusing on the season, but I could sense he wasn't all that happy with the overall situation and some of the direction of the organization."
Naturally because Murray is a professional journalist he leaves this little tidbit of information out of the discussion as well. The Cardinals were all-but-sure that Jocketty would leave them for another team. This may have had something to do with his firing as well. Jocketty doesn't seem like such the noble hero forsaken by those who once loved him if it turns out he was seeking jobs elsewhere does he? It turns out just three months after he was fired Jocketty did get a new job with the Reds. Three months after that, he was the Reds General Manager. Maybe Jocketty wasn't actively seeking new employment, but where there are rumors there is also a grain of truth. Jocketty probably would have gone to another team at some point.So with there being front office animosity and the feeling their GM was going somewhere else, Jocketty got fired. Maybe not the most popular or smartest move, but possibly also the pulling off of the Band-Aid in a situation where Jocketty would have left very soon regardless.
Jocketty was probably the most notable victim of the modern-day baseball war between evaluation and analysis. It mattered not to DeWitt that Jocketty’s belief in player evaluation had worked extremely well for the Cardinals. The owner was seduced by others in the organization into believing that statistical analysis was the way to go.
(Picturing basement-dwelling statistics lovers luring Bill Dewitt into the basement with promises of more profits and more championships, but at the very expense of his soul)
I don't know the inside situation, but it seems like there was more than just a disagreement over the importance of statistics in this situation. There seems to be other issues that caused the Jocketty-Cardinals divorce that Murray doesn't feel the need to address.
That was the method created by Bill James and was featured in the Michael Lewis book “Moneyball,” which ridiculed one Oakland scout not for his inability to judge players but for the fact that he was fat.
Fat people were mocked? Statistics-lovers have gone over the edge of sanity now!
However, John Schuerholz, architect of the Atlanta Braves’ unparalleled 14-year run in first place, criticized the “Moneyball” concept in his 2006 book, “Built to Win.”
Hmmm...not exactly. I've read the book. He did criticize statistics-based analysis, but in the realm of making it the sole way to evaluate a player, which doesn't happen.
“As portrayed in that book,” Schuerholz wrote, “it is a bogus concept because I know you can’t make baseball judgments entirely on statistical analysis to build a team.”
Notice the key parts of these sentences, "as portrayed in the book" meaning it is portrayed in real life differently, and "you can't make baseball judgments entirely on statistical analysis" with the key word being "entirely."
No one is saying to build an entire team around statistical analysis. I am not sure anyone has ever said that or that was the intent of the book. Schuerholz didn't seem to condemn statistical-based analysis, but just say it is limited in its scope, which is true, just like ignoring statistics completely limits the scope of analyzing a player. As far as Schuerholz goes, he did a great job as the Braves GM...but I'm also not going to go year-by-year with some of the trades made by Schuerholz towards the end of his time as Braves GM, but let's just say at one point Brian Jordan and Raul Mondesi were playing RF and LF respectively (as starters) and it was not 2000, but was 2005.
“He called me the day after I was fired,” Jocketty said in a telephone interview last Friday evening, when the Reds’ division-clinching number was three. “I wasn’t ready to go to work yet. I went there in the middle of January.”
I am sure there is a 100% chance that Jocketty had never talked about working for the Reds before he was fired. I am also lying about this.
Easier said than done, but Jocketty has done it quickly. A critical factor in his effort has been the addition of three men who worked for him in St. Louis – Jerry Walker, Cam Bonifay and Mike Squires. These scouts and scouting executives know how to use calculators and computers, but more important, they use their eyes and can evaluate what they see.
This is the most irritating thing in the world. Those who use statistics-based analysis do this as well! No person is sitting in an office and avoiding sunlight while recommending a team sign a player based completely on the numbers he sees on paper. Nearly every scout or executive worth a shit uses statistical analysis and their own eyes to judge a player. Any suggestion to the opposite is a lie.
Has Jocketty made any changes in his method of operation since becoming the Reds’ general manager? “No, not really,” he said but acknowledged that “you have to use a certain amount of statistics.”
Lately, Murray Chass has been the master of making a point and then disproving his own point in a column on in his non-blog.
While the Washington Nationals kept their pitching prodigy, Stephen Strasburg, in the minors for the first two months of the season because, they said, he had had no professional experience, the Reds put Mike Leake in their starting rotation from the start of the season despite his lack of professional experience.
Where is Mike Leake now? He is not really able to pitch the rest of the season because of arm fatigue. He's essentially in the same position as Stephen Strasburg, except the Nationals will be able to keep Strasburg a year longer than the Reds could keep Leake.
The right-handed rookie responded with an 8-4 record in 22 starts before he was shut down Aug. 24. By then Jocketty had promoted another rookie pitcher, Travis Wood, who has a 5-4 record in 15 starts.
It's really simple to start a rookie all year and then shut him down when you have another quality rookie pitcher in the minors. That's a nice luxury to have. If the Nationals shut down Stephen Strasburg, they would be stuck starting one of the shitty pitchers they currently have in their rotation. They don't have as many options in the minors as the Reds have, so it would not be as easy for them to start Strasburg all year and then replace him with another quality pitcher.
But Jocketty saved his pitching piece de resistance for last, summoning Aroldis Chapman Aug. 31. Earlier in the year Chapman, a Cuban defector, was a highly sought left-handed pitcher, the kind that usually costs a lot of money and the Reds shy away from.
But Jocketty liked what he heard from his scouts and convinced Castellini he was worth the $30.25 million the Reds gave him.
What? You mean Walt Jocketty didn't watch Chapman pitch with his own two eyes and get a feel for how he pitches without looking at statistics? I thought that is exactly what Jocketty stands for in the mind Murray Chass? Scouting without relying on others or statistics, but seeing a pitcher and just knowing he will be a good player.Jocketty said, “We tried to tell the players in spring training we thought we had a team that had an opportunity to win but it was up to them to carry it through. I told them I thought we had a team that would be in contention and would be for some years to come.”
Jocketty has done a good job in Cincinnati. Granted, he isn't responsible for getting many of the current players on the team, but he is a quality GM. What I am trying to say is that Jocketty's departure from the Cardinals wasn't just about statistics, but was about Jocketty looking for other jobs and not liking how the owner split up duties in the front office. Murray Chass chalks it up incorrectly to a victory of the statistics-lovers of the world.
Bill DeWitt has to wonder if the Cardinals will be there with them.
Obviously the Cardinals will never be a successful MLB team again.
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