Ichiro! is fast
Pitcher’s made his move, Ichiro! takes off and he gets what, two, three miles of distance between him and first before the pitcher’s even gotten rid of the ball. If Ichiro! had played before Rickey Henderson, in an age before endless pickoff moves and pitchouts, he could steal bases until stealing bases no longer amused him.
Give me slack or kill me!
Not the best shot I’ve ever taken: I was using the speed-o-matic feature and the focus got a little messed up, but that white streak there through Randy Winn’s head? That’s a monster home run, folks.
Bucky out
Reading Musings this morning, I was dismayed to find that Jacobsen’s out for the year:
An MRI on the knee revealed a defect in the articular cartilage (the surface covering the bone). Surgery has been scheduled for next week, and Jacobsen isn’t expected to play between now and then.
Peter’s got an interesting comment on how Jacobsen’s strikeout rate isn’t important, but that misses the point — the Mariners think it’s important. It’s a big part of why they didn’t offer Cameron arbitration, it’s why they don’t like A.J. Zapp, and the fixation on strikeouts is a huge organizational blind spot that’s going to dog them… until they get over it, really.
Peter also points out there’s an obvious error in the article (which hasn’t been corrected yet, either) — the PI gets Jacobsen’s strikeout total wrong.
The other thing in the article worth mentioning comes when they talk about Ibanez working out at first:
Right fielder Ichiro Suzuki, center fielder Randy Winn and Ibanez are all locked into contracts for at least two more seasons. That would make it hard for the Mariners to go after a big-name free agent outfielder like Houston’s Carlos Beltran.
How so? I understand the team might be reluctant to spend more money (which is already a given) but the fact that you’ve got awful contract A on the books doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try and upgrade the team. You’re stuck with the first contract no matter what. You can’t figure you’ll play him some and they’ll have a hot streak that allows you to dump them and move on (see: Jarvis, Kevin).
Also, technically Winn’s not locked in for two more seasons. The last year’s a complicated option where the team or the player can both elect to extend the deal, and depending on who does the extending, the price differs. It’s possible the team could decline to bring him back and he could decline to return. I see that as unlikely.
Game Report, Indians over M’s, 9-5
Coming soon! A post!
Okay, sorry, I ended up having to cover for a Prospectus content outage and I turned around a column when I got back from the game.
So! Notes from the game. But first —
If anyone out there knows a good first amendment lawyer, preferably one who’s a fan of the site, and is willing to answer a limited-in-scope but potentially thorny question for a… uh… a sister site of ours which is, in all respects relating to the question itself, exactly like this site (as in… broke and unable to pay for an answer to that question), could you please drop us a line? This is entirely serious, but Dear Readers, please let this progress on its own, and I’ll offer updates as I can. Don’t panic or anything. Really.
On to the game!
Today’s early omen came when I was waiting for my bus to downtown and a bunch of helicopters flew over. Because I was a bit of a military geek in my youth (as every other boy I knew was, to some degree), I could guess that it was a pair of Kiowa scouts, then two pairs of Apaches, then a trailing Kiowa. The Apaches appeared loaded, I couldn’t make out enough details on the Kiowas to see if they were. Seven helicopters, apparantly armed, loud, passing between me and the five o’clock overcast sky, then heading southwest. Who bases attack helicopters near Bellevue? What the hell were they doing? If there were heading to Kent/Renton/Auburn, couldn’t they at least have called me and asked for some targeting suggestions (please note that I am not suggesting the Army should use precision munitions to exact petty revenge for my childhood, only that they should maybe give them a good scare)?
So with a knot of fear that something requiring attack helicopters was happening in Seattle, I headed to the game.
Edgar is awesome. I almost expect to see him or Ichiro! do a full Matrix mind-over-matter feat soon, where for his record-setting hit Ichiro! hits a ball back to Orix, or in Edgar’s last game he goes 10 for 5 with ten monster home runs.
Overheard at the Ballpark, 9/8 edition:
“After a grand slam, the next at-bat is always a pop-up… but if you get eight base hits in a row, it kiiiillls them.”
Bonus overhead at the Ballpark, 9/8 edition:
“What? That’s insane. Do you have any idea the probabilities against getting eight base hits in a row? You can’t — the OPS those guys would have — there’s no way you can–”
“Well, uh, that’s why you need a bunch of Ichiros in your lineup.”
Once again, I had a great seat and the Mariners were stomped. Look… I’m not a suspicious person. If you’ve read this blog for any length of time you’ve probably seen me take a swipe at astrologers or purported psychics or whatever. And we can talk about small sample sizes, and the fact that the team isn’t good this year anyway… but at a certain point, the Mariners should consider paying me off to stay in my regular seats. I think we’re at that point.
Blowouts aren’t good for the fan base, they wear out the bullpen, and no one wants to be on ESPN four times in one night as the team getting shelled over and over. Does ESPN still air highlights anymore?
Wild pitches my eye. Olivo blocks pitches like he’s on tape delay. I’m not saying I’d rather have Wilson catching. As I’m fond of saying, Olivo’s a hit-and-throw catcher, rather than a catch-and-throw guy. It’s just that… come on, dude, this is the major leagues, and unless you’re Mike Piazza (younger, awesome version) you’ve got to get to some of those. Look for Wilson to be re-signed as a defensive specialist backstop next year.
Olivo at one point faked a passed ball, which was weird — he stabbed at it, snagging it, and kept turning away, eyes darting to second to see if he could get the runner to go. It was strange to see, but it is plausible: he lets a lot of balls go by, and the way he snagged it it didn’t make a noise when it hit the glove. Plausibility was further enhanced when he immediately let another ball by him, advancing the runner.
Uh, the rest of the game… bad. Bad defense, bad hitting, more bad defense… that was just ugly.
Going out with a bang
We interrupt today’s scheduled philosophy debates to bring you actual baseball talk.
Edgar launches homers in his first two at-bats tonight, making him 12 for his first 22 to begin September. He’s hitting .545/.583/.863 the past week. This is the last month we ever get to enjoy the incomparable Edgar Martinez. I have a feeling he’s going to make sure it’s one to remember.
Edgar esta caliente, indeed.
Ichiro! and why baseball debate sucks
Dave’s post on Ichiro and the MVP has inspired me to write something I’ve been chewing on for a while. Here’s why I think the dialogue between the scout and stat crowds has gone so badly. It’s not because one side is more arrogant, as they’re both arrogant, or because some people have termed it a war, which it’s clearly not. It’s not anything close.
It’s the nature of argumentation we’re having. It’s like.. okay, I’m going to use a politically tainted example here, but bear with me:
“John Kerry served in Vietnam dishonorably, didn’t earn his medals, wasn’t under fire…”
“But all available evidence points to those being… well, lies, frankly. There’s a ton of evidence and testimony that none of that is true… and why is this an issue anyway?”
“Of course you’d say that, you’re a Democratic tool of the liberal media.”
You see what happened there, it’s totally obvious. The attack is facts + you’re an idiot for arguing the other point.
The stat/scout debate takes this to a new level.
“I think Ichiro’s a great player, and I enjoy Mariners games in no small part because he’s so much fun to watch.”
“Ichiro is overrated, because he doesn’t do the things great hitters do. You only think that he’s a great player because you’ve been trained to overrate contact hitters and told over and over that his defense is good, even though there’s no evidence for that.”
It’s a whole three-pronged attack:
– You’re wrong, for these reasons (reasons can be fact-based or subjective, doesn’t matter)
– Your whole argument is stupid anyway, I don’t know why you bother
– You poor thing, though, you don’t even know what you’re arguing because you’re the product of a whole set of beliefs given to you by another bunch of morons
It’s totally understandable that the reaction to this kind of argumentation is hostility.
It happens in reverse:
“Willie Bloomquist is the most valuable player on the Mariners because he contributes in ways that don’t show up in the statistics. He makes other players better and adds energy to the team, but I guess you don’t see that because you’re too busy looking at your spreadsheet. This is exactly the kind of think you would know if you went out and watched a game once in a while, instead of listening to the sophistic arguments of the stathead community.”
Except that I’ve never heard sophistic worked into that sentence. Same deal:
– You’re wrong
– You’re a moron
– You sad thing, you’ve been seduced by the dark side and don’t even know what you’re saying
Take RBIs. We know facts about RBIs: they’re not a good measure of a player’s hitting ability, as they’re dependent both on the rest of the team and even within that, the player’s position in the lineup — but at the same time, a guy with 120 RBIs is almost certainly better than the guy with 12.
We can debate the utility of RBIs using facts. But we don’t.
“Joe Carter was a historically great hitter, as you can see from his many RBIs.”
“Carter batted in the middle of the lineup of some great offensive lineups, but if you look at his offensive stats, he wasn’t outstanding and certainly doesn’t seem to qualify as a historically great hitter, no matter what criteria you use for that.”
“But Joe Carter was a huge clutch hitter and won championships.”
“Again, we can look at his stats and see that compared to others…”
“When they needed a hit, he got one. Did you ever see him play?”
… and we’re off to the races. That’s almost word-for-word an actual conversation I’ve had. I’m not a big Carter fan.
I wonder if this is even avoidable, if there’s a way to keep these kind of arguments that touch on belief issues substantive. I think there is, but it requires a patience and energy by the debater that is hard to invest and rarely rewarded. It requires a dedication to elevating the level of conversation that requires too much work. It requires time and an ability to argue at length, to discover the “why” behind your opponents beliefs and intelligently discuss the foundation of their argument. Done well, done politely and respectfully, objective truth can be arrived at, even it’s a complicated and grey truth of compromise.
Time isn’t in abundence for a television or radio guy with 20 seconds to sum up what’s wrong with the Tigers this year, though, but that’s not the limit of why this kind of quick, easy wave-of-the-hand argumentation pervades sports discussion. If you read enough press coverage of baseball (or anything, really) you know that there’s a predictable story pattern, where an event occurs and reporters, columnists, and editorial pages line up to crank out an easy set of column-inches. There are easy controversial tacts to take, and easy standard themes to hit.
If you pay attention, you can pretty accurately predict the column topics of many regular writers and the arguments they’ll make. They’re on autopilot. These are the showcase name writers for major newspapers, websites, stathead and clubhouse insider alike, and you could skip weeks of their columns and catch up by reading the headlines you missed. There’s no reward for them to make a continual fight for reasoned dialogue that doesn’t escalate the insults and contempt.
If anything, employing this trident of argumentation makes them safe. It keeps people at bay, because even incorrect facts can and are defended by this. You say Joe Carter didn’t hit that well in the clutch? Well, your stats are wrong because you don’t understand the magic of Joe Carter. This is how the two sides have dug their trenches, and those who have dared to stand up and charge across no-man’s land have been met in large part by indifference or when noticed, machine gun fire. Steve Goldman wrote a column at Baseball Prospectus about how many stathead truisims are proofs of long-held pearls of baseball wisdom. Jonah Keri wrote a great column about a day at the ballpark talking stats and scouting with a bunch of baseball organizational guys. Nobody seems to notice — BP for instance still seems to be regarded as some fortification on a hill, taking potshots at scouts who pass by.
I didn’t expect that these attempts to defang the debate and show people the common ground and goals of the two sides would bring about any kind of great wall-comes-down, LaMar-and-Beane-dancing-in-the-street festival of love. But for nothing to happen, for the autopilot guys to have slept through it, is disappointing. If you love your work, if you want to be a better writer, a better fan, and even a better person, trying out new ways of looking at things should be an important part of your job.
I wrote this in the 2002 Baseball Prospectus:
Along with Vladimir Guerrero, Cliff Floyd, and Chipper Jones, Ichiro is hugely productive despite not seeing many pitches: these guys swing at and hit the first good pitch they see. Jones somehow managed to walk nearly 100 times, but the others weren’t even close. Ichiro is one of the best reasons in baseball to buy a ticket. While he’s not as productive as some other players—and was a lousy MVP selection—Ichiro’s crazy bat artwork, base-stealing, and his sometimes brilliant defense all combine to make him an entertainment bargain.
I believe, and will check when I have a chance, the MVP thing was inserted by my editors. Two years ago, I was calling Ichiro! hugely productive as an impatient singles hitter. Today, I don’t even want to talk about it.
I like Ichiro! and I always have. It is some measure of how bad the tone of debate is that I cringe when someone writes about Ichiro! from any viewpoint. I don’t want him examined for purposes of making a larger point about the state of media coverage of contact hitters. I don’t want to be told I’m dumb for enjoying his play. I know, as a reasonably well-informed baseball fan, that my opinion is my own to cherish or discard, freely formed, and while informed by it is not the product of the local media, or their attackers from afar.
And I, like Dave, think there’s a great argument to be made for Ichiro! as statistical hero as well. I don’t want to read about how Ichiro! didn’t pick up the clubhouse enough, doesn’t get the clutch hits, and how I’m somehow an unsophisticated fan for not noticing his failure to contribute intangibly to the team, glued to a computer screen watching his hit count go up.
What kind of screwed up world is it where I don’t want to read analysis of my favorite player on my favorite team? I read anything you put in front of me. When I was a kid I read the ingredients on a box of cereal if I didn’t have a random section of the newspaper to look at over breakfast. I haven’t read any of the Ichiro! articles, pro or con, that Dave mentions. Doesn’t that say all that can be said about how bitter this debate tactic has made our world? How can we all enjoy baseball so much and yet dismiss and heap contempt on people who share that love with us?
So to those who employ this three-pronged attack, obvious and implied: lay down your trident. Let’s make baseball discussion worth having.
Ichiro and the MVP
Besides mentioning how unbelievable he’s been playing the past few months, we’ve basically stayed away from the Ichiro/MVP debate that has begun to sprung up, simply because I know there’s not a chance in the world he’s going to win the award, nor do I really care who Phil Rogers thinks is “valuable”. The postseason awards are essentially meaningless, pieces of hardware given out by people who have no idea what it takes to win baseball games.
But recently, some people who should know better have started to fire upon Ichiro for no apparent reason. Last week, Dayn Perry wrote an anti-Ichiro piece for Fox Sports. I like Dayn, he’s a good guy and a good writer, but disagreed with the piece. No big deal, though. He’s just one guy. A few days later, Joe Sheehan took a shot at Ichiro in his AL MVP column as well. Today, Rob Neyer made it a trio of supposedly “enlightened” writers jumping on the bandwagon, ending a paragraph on Ichiro with the sentences “There are a half dozen solid MVP candidates in the American League. But Ichiro’s not one of them.”
Apparently, the undying devotion to patience and power is just as blinding to reality as the clubhouse leadership crap that the mainstream media has bought into. The new age of baseball journalists are just drinking a different flavor of kool-aid. Three of the most well respected national baseball writers, writing to thousands of people, have seen it necessary to go out of their way to make sure we all realize that Ichiro isn’t as good as everyone thinks. He just hits singles, so his .380 batting average isn’t as valuable as it would appear. If you look into the real meaningful stats, they say, you’ll find better players.
They’re wrong.
AL VORP Leaderboard (a BP designed and heavily promoted stat used to measure offensive value to a team):
1. Ichiro, 71.3
2. Mora, 69.4
3. Santana, 67.7
4. Guerrero, 67.1
5. Guillen, 66.5
6. Hafner, 65.3
7. Tejada, 64.4
8. Ramirez, 64.2
9. Ortiz, 63.8
10. Sheffield, 61.0
Those are the only ten players with a value over replacement level of 60 or greater in the American League. The metric measures the amount of runs a player contributes above what any minor league veteran could, so Ichiro has added about 71 runs to the M’s this year. No one else is over 70. Now, the differences between the top 4 or 5 guys are really negligible and easily made up in other, non-hitting aspects of the game. Defense and baserunning aren’t calculated into VORP, so the actual value of players isn’t as easy as reading off the list. But defense and baserunning are things Ichiro excels at, while his competition is mostly lead-glove slugs who should get penalized when taking those factors into account. VORP underestimates Ichiro’s value to the team in comparison to other players. And he’s still leading the American League.
I’m not saying Ichiro should win it or is the clear favorite. There are a bunch of guys of similar value, several of whom play more important defensive positions. But to say that Ichiro is not a “solid MVP candidate” is just as stupid as campaigning for Shannon Stewart due to his sparkplug-effect on the Twins last year.
Three of the more prominant statistical analysts on the planet stopped thinking rationally and decided to campaign for the cause in spite of evidence that goes contrary to their beliefs. It’s this kind of writing that drives me nuts. Dayn, Joe, and Rob oughta know better. If they want to be held in higher regard than the Phil Rogers’ of the world, they need to keep a higher standard and understand that Ichiro’s lack of patience and power doesn’t change the fact that he’s singling his way to unbelievable greatness. Accept his skills for the value that they are rather than condemning him because he doesn’t fit into the sabermetric box of what a great player should be.
Managerial speculation (but not from me)
Ken Rosenthal, in a piece at Foxsports (which, like ESPN, is apptly MSN-associated… why?):
Bob Melvin, Mariners. First-year general manager Bill Bavasi exercised Melvin’s option for 2005 on May 4, temporarily quelling speculation about the manager’s future. Melvin, however, continues to draws criticism within the industry for his bland persona.
Again with the personality thing. Anyway… Steve Kelley, possibly the worst in the Seattle Times’ cavalcade of awful writers, offers “Uninspiring Melvin must pay price for lifeless M’s“. You know it’s obvious when Steve Kelley’s writing about it. He offers some suggestions for replacements that are — I’m not actually sure if he’s serious or not, to be honest. Maybe his whole column’s a sarcastic send-up of the kind of attack on Melvin we’ve been reading elsewhere (like Rosenthal) and his suggestions are supposed to give away the joke.
I would bet not.
No managerial speculation
Hi all.
We’ve received a couple of requests in email and in the comments to other articles asking us to speculate on possible managerial replacements for Melvin. Now that (I know you’re all shocked) the rest of the local media’s now agreed on the “Melvin’s a fired man walking” story, there’s a lot of speculation on who’s available, who’s good, and so on.
I’m not going to speculate on this until he’s actually fired. He will be fired, but I’d like to put off the “who’s next” for a while. It just seems… it doesn’t seem right, and there’s nothing to be gained from speculating on a possible replacement a couple weeks early.
That’s my thought, though — Dave and Jason may well post a detailed breakdown later today on their thoughts on who might replace Melvin.
Misunderstood Melvin
John Levesque on Bob Melvin.
I think Levesque’s essential point: that criticism of Melvin because of his demeanor is misplaced, is a reasonable one. Managers come in all forms, and success is a package with one particular style. And it’s reasonable to point out that other managers rise and sink with the fortunes of their team, their style praised and attacked depending on fortunes often outside their control.
That said, he misses a larger point here, which is that Melvin’s laid-back style does not, from what we hear from other channels, include accountability, that he demands very little from his players and they respond in kind. You can be a player’s manager and still get results out of your players — Dusty Baker comes immediately to mind. Melvin does not do this.
The other point this article misses is that Melvin’s deficencies that will lead to his firing aren’t limited to his style. I’ve made some pretty serious arguments against Melvin’s unmotivating style in this space, but that’s the small of it. He’s bad at putting together lineups. He runs his bullpens badly. He’s a bad judge of talent. He’s out-foxed on the field by other managers.
It may, in the way other players’ attitudes and public relationships have led to their ouster, be the reason why Melvin’s fired. But there are many reasons to fire Melvin, and they can’t all be defended so easily.