Junior Retires

by Coltrane

Great career. It was time.

The final seasons of the top 5 home run hitters of all time, excluding Bonds:

Name	Age	G	AB	H	2B	HR	BB	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
Aaron	42	85	271	62	8	10	35	.229	.315	.369	.684
Ruth	40	28	72	13	0	6	20	.181	.359	.341	.789
Mays	42	66	209	44	10	6	27	.211	.303	.344	.647
Griffey	40	33	98	18	2	0	9	.184	.250	.204	.454
Average	41	53	163	34	5	6	23	.211	.305	.343	.648

Beer Leagues and Major Leagues

by Coltrane

In his New Historical Baseball Abstract (2001), Bill James lists 16 indicators that he believes can used to determine the quality of play in Major League Baseball. He calls these “Peripheral Quality Indicia”, or “PQL for short.” (An acronym that didn’t catch on, go figure.) Using Bob Lemon as an example, James writes about the fact that hitting by pitchers has declined steadily over the history of major league baseball, and that this is because the overall quality of play has improved with the passage of time.

The List, make a mental note of the items that are in bold:

1. Hitting by pitchers.

2. The average distance of players, in age, from 27.

3. The percentage of players who are less than six feet tall or more than 6’3″. [Ed: Percentage of players who differ from the ideal size for the sport.]

4. Fielding Percentage and Passed Balls.

5. Double Plays.

6. Usage of pitchers at other positions.

7. The percentage of fielding plays made by pitchers.

8. The percentage of games which are blowouts.

9. The average attendance and seating capacity of the game location.

10. The condition of the field.

11. The use of players in specialized roles.

12. The average distance of teams from .500.

13. The percentage of games that go nine innings.

14. The standard deviation of offensive effectiveness.

15. The standard of record-keeping.

16. The percentage of managers who have 20 years or more experience in the game.

James’ list looks specifically at major league baseball. I think that the items in bold apply to any sporting event. Take for example– a bunch of 13 year-old kids playing basketball at the playground. The kids are young and small, the rim’s probably bent and there are likely cracks in the blacktop, nobody is watching them play because nobody really cares who wins, and when somebody does win it might be by a score of around 15-5, and that’s if anyone is keeping score at all. It’s not good basketball, and by extension it isn’t much of a sporting event.

Competition has increased in the NFL too. It used to be that players were expected to play both offense and defense– to be “two-way players.” Frank Gifford played Running Back and Defensive Back. Pat Summerall played Tight End, Defensive End, and Kicked for good measure. They both played for the Giants in the late 50’s. The Giants had five positions covered by two guys in the “Greatest Game Ever Played“, the NFL Championship, in 1958. (The game also featured Vince Lombardi as the Giants Offensive Coordinator, and Tom Landry as their Defensive Coordinator– 17 Hall of Famers in all.) The NFL has now evolved to the point that in order to hold a job a player has to resemble whatever the idealized phenotype is for their position.

Where else can this be seen? Notable achievements in “Low Competition” settings include: Joe DiMaggio’s 56 game hitting streak in 1941. The UCLA Bruins basketball winning streaks in the 60’s and 70’s. The UConn women’s basketball streaks (and their average winning margin of nearly 30 points) of the new millenium.

“High Competition” settings include: The development left-handed relief specialists in major league baseball. The explosion of sabermetrics and advanced statistics in baseball and basketball. Football now has “3rd down backs”, “nickle” defensive backs, specialized punters and kickers, and players that only return those kicks.

Probably the quickest and easiest way to know if it’s competitive? Look in the stands and see how many paying customers are at the event. If the spectators are all kids — if the crowd sounds like a Justin Bieber concert– it tells you all you need to know.

Historical Baseball Abstract link here.

Bill James is from Kansas. Here’s probably the strangest music video ever made entitled Kansas, by The Wolfgang Press. Check out those creepy Kennedy masks! The way the song is mixed it seems to me that it’s intended to be listened to loud. Annoy the neighbors.

Destination Unknown

by Coltrane

The chart below shows the ages of the “rotation” players (19+ minutes per game) of three teams I think Lebron is most likely to go to, listed by order of playing time. I don’t think he’s going to the Knicks or Nets. (The Knicks don’t have the second star to play with, or cap room to afford it without gutting the team. The Nets just plain stink.)

The “21” in the Bulls column is Derrick Rose. Rose is a potential perennial All-Star. The Bulls have Joaquim Noah too. Noah is developing into a very good player.

The “21” in the Heat column is headcase Michael Beasley. Beasley is basically trade bait. The “28” is Dwayne Wade, who has more miles on his odometer than the usual 28 year-old. If Wade breaks down what does Miami have to offer?

Cavs	Heat	Bulls
27	28	25
33	21	21
27	31	29
34	29	25
26	30	24
38	33	34
34	23	30
21	30	27
25	24

Average	Average	Average
29.4	27.7	26.9

The Cavs are borderline old and they’re not going to get better going forward– they’re just going to get more old. It’s time for Lebron to go to elsewhere. If it weren’t for the shadow of Jordan I’d assume he was going to Chicago.

I’m guessing Chicago regardless. My second guess is Miami. It should be fun watching the circus.

The PBA: ‘The Bar Is So Low!’

by Coltrane

As you may or may not be aware — Kelly Kulick won a PBA event in January, drawing the praise of Billy Jean King.

On Sunday a 12 year-old won $400 at a PBA Regional Tournament in Georgia.

What’s next? Obviously, if there are players that are too young to legally drive a car competing it’s either not much of a sport or it’s World War II baseball. (Given that the major leagues featured a one-armed outfielder at about the same time…)

Did You Know? Bobby Riggs was 55 years old at the time of the Battle of the Sexes? After his pro tennis career he became a tennis (and other things) hustler. He used to play guys for money with things like park benches on his side of the court.

Finally– the best song about bowling ever, covered by three girls on ukelele’s. The band name is No Skanks on Sunday. The music starts at about the 45-second mark.

Mike Sweeney and Scooping USS Mariner

By Blaidd Drwg

This post on USS Mariner sums up Mike Sweeney’s At-Bat against Fernando Rodney the other night.

I also would like to point out that I scooped USS Mariner on their story about the pitch selection that Griffey is seeing this season – by almost 2 weeks. I would like to think they stole my idea, even if they didn’t.

Congrats to Mike Saunders on hitting his first big league home run. He made his mom extremely happy.

Breaking News From The Mariners

By Blaidd Drwg

The M’s have fired Alan Cockrell as hitting coach and replaced him with Alonzo Powell.

I have a couple of issues with Cockrell taking the blame for the terrible offense – he has done a nice job at getting the team to be more patient this season and this is a veteran team – the average age of the hitters that have appeared in a game is 30.6 – only the Yankees and Red Sox have older average ages in the AL (The M’s were actually tied with the Sox until the got Mike Saunders in a game). I really don’t think the hitting coach has too much impact on the vets, but something had to be done and firing the coach is much easier than changing the players.

Will Powell help – I seriously doubt it. He was the hitting coach in Tacoma where, despite playing in one of the best hitters parks in the league, the team is in the bottom half of the PCL in OPS and the prospects (Mike Carp, Greg Halman and Mike Saunders) have all struggled so far this year. We will see if this helps at all.

Musings on Last Night’s Mariners Game

By Blaidd Drwg

So much interesting stuff from last night’s game, so here we go:

— Last night’s true WTF moment occurred before the first pitch. The home plate ump, Ed Rapuano, who I have no great love for because of his horribly inconsistent strike zone, did something that made me want to go down to the field and ask him what was he doing – he intentionally erased the inner lines of the batters boxes (the one closest to the plate). Being a former umpire who actually enforced the rule of hitters being too close to the plate, this actually made me sick and angry. It seems that Rapuano truly has no interest in enforcing the rules of the game.

— Low and behold, the Mariners actually had an extra base hit in the game, 3 of them in fact, and 2 of them resulted in all of the runs they scored. The importance of hitting for power made obvious. As I keep saying, getting on base is great, but you need the occasional extra base hit to break an inning open.

— The flip side was the 9th inning for the M’s. Fernando Rodney could not get the ball over the plate, proceeding to walk the bases loaded. The M’s managed to not get the ball out of the infield and thus failed to score.

Two critical decisions were made in this inning, one by Wakamatsu and one by Scioscia, that I question.

— Wak – with no one out and Ichiro on first in a tie game in the bottom of the 9th inning why the heck would you sacrifice Ichiro to second? You have a guy who tends to not swing at bad pitches (Figgins) up, you have your best base stealer on first, a catcher who is not terribly good defensively (Budde) and a pitcher who has control issues (Rodney). To me, you let Figgins work the count or you send Ichiro instead of trading the out for moving the runner. I hate the sacrifice to move a runner to 2nd base when you have the top of you lineup up, especially in a tie game. If Ichiro is successful, you then try the sac and move him to 3rd with 1 out. Figgins is your #2 hitter for a reason, don’t waste the out.

— Scioscia – why not bring in Fuentes in the bottom of the 9th instead of Rodney. You had L-S-L hitters coming up and you have one Lefty in the pen. Seems to me to be the better call, but despite the ugly inning, it did work out with Rodney.

— The Mariners drew 9 walks in the game (which was nice to see) but left 12 runners on base, including 9 in the last 5 innings. This team will continue to lose games if they keep doing that.

— As much as it pains me to say this, why the heck is Sweeney hitting against a RH pitcher with the bases loaded, 2 outs in the bottom of the 9th? You have 2 LH bats you can use in this situation – Griffey and Saunders. Why not use them?

— This team has now lost 12 out of their last 14 and is now 5.5 back of Texas. At what point does Z realize something needs to be done?

On a belated note – Congratulations to Ryan Budde of the Angels on his first MLB HR Friday night. I love seeing milestones for 31-year-old backup catchers!

Sure, I am probably beating a dead horse…

By Blaidd Drwg

The Mariners are LAST in the American League in Runs, Home Runs (and have fewer home runs as a team than current AL HR leader Paul Konerko has by himself), OBP and SLG. They have an OPS+ of 73 (which means that their On Base Percentage + Slugging – a measure of productivity, is 27% worse than league average) and now for the truly frightening stat – they have a team SLG that is lower than 9 teams’ OBP. All of the pitching and defense in the world is not going to help with offensive numbers like those.

This team would have been competitive in about 1977 with the way it is built, but unfortunately, it is 2010.

The M’s Fundamental Problem

By Blaidd Drwg

Reason # 12434231 why the Mariners need to do something about their offense. I am a big fan of On Base Percentage – if you can’t get on base, you can’t score and walks are a great thing. It is nice to see the Mariners finally embracing that concept. The problem is, they seem to have sacrificed hitting for power (slugging) in the meantime. It is pretty rare to see a guy with a higher on base than slugging percentage, especially a month after the season starts – the Mariners have 3 (and almost 5) of those guys in their lineup.

I give you the Mariners’ lineup (before tonight’s game – including the catcher platoon):

Player	OBP	SLG	Difference
Ichiro	.371	.380	-.009
Figgins	.351	.278	+.073
Gutierrez	.393	.475	-.082
Lopez	.250	.290	-.040
Griffey	.269	.226	+.043
Bradley	.313	.371	-.058
Kotchman	.303	.425	-.122
Johnson	.367	.306	+.061
Moore	.200	.209	-.009
Wilson	.266	.338	-.072

Folks, this is one of the worst lineups in baseball. You have 3 guys in Figgins, Griffey and Johnson who have combined for exactly 9 extra base hits in 188 At Bats, you have a cleanup hitter with a .250 OBP and a .290 SLG and this list doesn’t even cover Sweeney, Byrnes and Tuiasosopo who managed to squeeze out a collective .250 OBP with a sub-.200 SLG in 90 AB.

As I said to Mrs. Drwg over the weekend, you don’t feel like this team can score since it seems like it takes at least 3 hits in an inning for them to get 1 run.

Post Script: In watching tonight’s game, the announcers mentioned that Guti’s HR was the first one the Mariners have hit since April 23rd – That is over 8 games ago. Time to get a bat Z.

Cardboard Gods New Book

by Coltrane

Josh Wilker of Cardboard Gods has a new book– Cardboard Gods: An All American Tale Told Through Baseball Cards

Here’s the product description on Amazon.com:

Cardboard Gods is the memoir of Josh Wilker, a brilliant writer who has marked the stages of his life through the baseball cards he collected as a child. It also captures the experience of growing up obsessed with baseball cards and explores what it means to be a fan of the game. Along the way, as we get to know Josh, his family, and his friends, we also get Josh’s classic observations about the central artifacts from his life: the baseball cards themselves. Josh writes about an imagined correspondence with his favorite player, Carl Yastrzemski; he uses the magical bubble-blowing powers of journeyman Kurt Bevacqua to shed light on the weakening of the powerful childhood bond with his older brother; he considers the doomed utopian back-to-the-land dreams of his hippie parents against the backdrop of inimitable 1970s baseball figures such as “Designated Pinch Runner” Herb Washington and Mark “The Bird” Fidrych. Cardboard Gods is more than just the story of a man who can’t let go of his past, it’s proof that — to paraphrase Jim Bouton — as children we grow up holding baseball cards but in the end we realize that it’s really the other way around.

That’s better than I could have put it. Buy the book at the link above.