Baseball Ranting and Rambling
Saturday, May 03, 2003
 
While attempting to study I found this interesting article about the young Cubs rotation. The former DBack catcher says this group could end up achieving great things, I think he compares them to the Braves.

Other than that studying is killing me. I have way too much Russian to memorize. So I'm sooner or later going to give up and look at my other two finals (and the research paper I need to finish). But until then . . .

Also, I cannot study and have on a gametracker of the Yankees at the same time. Just doesn't work. CBSSportsline's the best game tracker if you care, it blows espn and mlb's right out of the water. No refreshing, and its pretty quick. Ok, back to the books. . .
Friday, May 02, 2003
 
i am a bum. i need to study. but since espn.com doesn't change every five minutes, i have begun to read more and more of the baseball blogs i've linked to on the left. and the ones they link to. i am going to bomb this russian final. baseball stuff will come a lot more wednesday afternoon. i got a lot of stuff i want to rant about.
Thursday, May 01, 2003
 
I'm not sure if study days actually aid in the study process. They sure do provide me time to hone my MVP Baseball skills and my NBA Street vol 2 skills.

Yanks won last night, and Mo is back, and struggled a little, but ended up closing out the game. Contreras looked sharp in his first AAA game the other day, which is good news. Well, on some levels. Because this means now people may try and push him into the rotation. Which I'm not sure is good. But then again, I'm sure seventy years ago people didn't think a 5 man rotation was a good idea (ie, Spahn, Sain and pray for rain). But I think in August and September they should rotate him in for each of the starters just to give them two full rotations off to rest. Which hopefully will prevent the miserable performance of last years post season debacle in Anaheim.

Also I think keeping Raul Mondesi is a good idea, not just because he's batting well now, but more importantly because of his arm. A) It's fun as hell to watch him gun someone out at second (I saw him warm up last year at the Stadium, he's unreal); B) it keeps people on first because of pt A; C) THEY DON"T NEED MORE OFFENSE! Yes, right field is traditionally is a positive contributor to offensive, but he's not that awful. Even when he's not batting .347 and has an OPS of 1.030, he's still useful. Ok, I just realized that he batted .232 and had an OPS of .740. So that's not that good, but his average was .007 over league average, and his OPS was only .017 below league average. So that's not awful, but it's not a big time contributor, but at least he's not killing you on offense. He still hit 26 HR last year, which was about league average for regulars. So, again, not an offensive powerhouse, but a defensive monster. And the Yankees have enough offense.

OK, now Giambi. sigh. What are we going to do with this guy. I say trade him for a player to be named later. Not really. I dunno, but I'd start by having him play 1B more (assuming he's healthy). This is something they talked a lot about last year when Nick Johnson was struggling. They said the bad at-bats would sit with him while he was on the bench for an inning or two, and it would snowball. I wouldn't be surprised to see the same thing happen to Giambi if he's splitting time at 1B/DH. Hopefully he'll snap out of it on his own.


See, this is the stuff I do instead of studying.
Wednesday, April 30, 2003
 
This is a great article about why you gotta love Steinbrenner.
 
OK, I think the biggest problem standing between me and doing any kind of stat thing fairly is my dislike of Barry Bonds. To me, he is an example of what is wrong with sports today. Hey, I don't the guy personally, and maybe all the things every press person EVER has written about him has been wrong. But one way or another his last two seasons keep popping up as very high on anything I do trying to find the best seasons of the last 65 years (I'll explain this later). I just can't deal with it. I just can't bring myself to say that this man is the greatest player ever. Because I honestly don't think he is. I can't figure out why yet, but when I do, I'll explain. My best guess is that his seasons are great compared to the last 65 years, but if you look at more recent trends, his last two season are only the first of many to be there. But I can't believe the game will let itself go this way. But what do I know, people would much rather see an 7-6 dong-fest than a 2-1 game won on an 8th inning double, bunt, sac fly score.

As for why the last 65 years, I'm probably going to do my paper on the summer of '41 when Joe DiMaggio had a 56 game hitting streak, and Ted Williams batted .406. Both feats are pretty incredible (the closest anyone has gotten to either in the past 61 seasons has been Tony Gwynn in strike shortened '94 with .390 (he still played 110 games) and 39 by Paul Molitor in '87). These are close, but no cigar (Gwynn was 3 hits short of finishing with an .40095 average, Molitor was 17 games short or about 30% short).

PS - Yes I know Rose hit in 44 straight games in '78, but I'll reserve that rant for another day. I'm debating whether or not I should include his feats in any of my work for consideration. I do definately have a rant festering about Mr. Pete Rose.
Tuesday, April 29, 2003
 
Ok, I've been thinking about things to do over the summer (well, if I don't end up staying here and doing research), and I thought maybe developing a way to rank the best player of each year. I know a million people do this, and there are a lots of different ways to compute this (ie Bill James, etc). But I'd like to start from the beginning, just for kicks.
The first thing I think should be considered that isn't usually thrown in, is the team's winning percentage. I know people dispell this becuase you can't control how good your team is. But, like in most sports, I have to believe that good players make their team better. And not just through their own statistics. Michael Jordan and the Bulls, not the six championships, but the two years in between the three year runs. I'm not exactly sure how to factor this in, but I think it must be considered, but not too a huge degree, but it at least factor in.
OK, there are a million other things I need to throw in there, but right now, that's it. I guess average, OBA, SLG, etc, will have to factor in at least some time.

Any ideas? Lemme know.
 
Here is my first post with my stat work involved. Many of you have seen this before in my away message. This is the crap I do instead of working on finishing my research paper which is due next week. Is it a bad sign when the first thing your advisor writes on your paper is, "Don't be disturbed by the quantity of red ink."? Well, here are some stats, which, of course, never lie.

Imagine a pitcher, who for 4 years would have the following stats:
-Wins more than 50 Games
-Winning % above .650
-Has an ERA .738% below league average (in '99-'02 - 3.36)
-SO/9 is 1.11% better than the league average ('99-'02 - 7.31)

In '99-'02, there were only two pitchers who did this, Randy Johnson, and Pedro Martinez.
In the '98-'01 time frame you can tack on Kevin Brown's name.
In '95-'98, you again see Johnson, but now add David Cone, John Smoltz, and Roger Clemens.

Now, in the 1915-'18 range, you see two names, Grover C. Alexander (also known as Pete), who won 373 games, had a lifetime winning percentage of .642, and an career era of 2.56. He's in the Hall of Fame.

Oh, the other guy? You probably haven't heard of this little known former Red Sox pitcher.


Babe Ruth.
Stats from '15 - '18
W: 78 L: 40 Winning %: .661
ERA: 2.06 (League Average 2.79)
SO/9: 3.92 (L.A. 3.52)
Shutouts: 17 (L.A. 10)
Complete Games: 92 (L.A. 67)

 
"remember kid,
there's heroes and there's legends,
heroes get remembered,
but legends never die."
-The Babe to Benny in The Sandlot

This is why baseball is a sport unlike any other, because of legends like the Babe.
This is why I'm starting this Blog, to try and figure out why people are legends, and who from our time will get there someday.


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