[Juan] Gonzalez: A two-time MVP and an RBI machine. Like Jim Rice, the American League’s most-feared hitter at his peak.

This is pressing all my buttons at once. I am so annoyed at reading this sentence that I have to right about why.

First off, Gonzalez’s MVPs were terrible and he should have not won them if the award means “Best Player in the League” and not “Dude Who Hit Homeruns in Texas”. Check out the voting billboard on B-R: 1996, 1998. His winning two MVPs has irked me basically since it happened and is one of those things that just makes me irritation irritated.

Next let’s say Gonzalez’s peak was from 1993-1999. His line during that time was , .307/.356/.599 which is really good even if you take into account Arlington. It’s important to note that he was good.

Now let’s take a look at some people hitting in the American League at the same time as Juan Gonzalez. This is just an off the top of my head list sampling.

Gonzalez winds up in the middle of the pack here, which is certainly excellent company but by any measure he’s not the best hitter of the group. “Most feared” then does not mean “best hitter” (which we already knew). In that case, what does it mean? Does it mean he was intentionally walked the most because pitchers and managers were so scared of him that they refused to throw him anything to hit? From 1993-1999 Gonzalez was intentionally walked 55 times. Edgar Martinez who missed much of 1993 and a big chunk of 1994 due to injuries was walked 56 times in the same time period.

Calling someone “most feared” really means–as far as I can tell–that you want to say someone a really good hitter, but can’t call him the best because it’s clearly not true and need to come up with some way of saying that he was really good with a bit of extra impact. That’s silly, Juan Gonzalez was an excellent hitter during his peak and doesn’t need any kind of silly mythos to emphasize that. Especially when you want me to believe that pitchers would rather face Ken Griffey or Frank Thomas rather than Gonzalez. That’s without even considering that it’s a ridiculous question to pose anyway because who would want to face any of these guys??

I’m not even going to touch “RBI machine” because it’ll cause my brain to explode.

I’m working on distracting myself from being a crazy pessimist right now, so here’s a recap of the terribleness of these days both on and off the field.

Game 1 – June 1st vs Baltimore

I was supposed to attend this game with my mother, but I had to cancel at the last minute. Not because I had to stay late at work or because I wasn’t feeling well. No, I wish it was something only vaguely irritating like that  but sadly I had to put my cat who I loved more than just about anything and had since I was 9 to sleep two hours before I would have had to leave for the game. I didn’t exactly feel up to going and elected to mope around at home all night instead.

The Yankees did win this game 3-1 and Javier Vazquez allegedly pitched well (I didn’t watch) but it didn’t help me feel better.

Game 2 – August 18th vs Detroit

This game was never really in doubt thanks to Jeremy Bonderman being toast but with Dustin Moseley pitching it was an adventure. Miguel Cabrera hit two homeruns off him, which is not a shocking event but Moseley threw a curveball that hung for approximately three hours and Don Kelly smacked a homerun. Don Kelly hit a homerun!!!

I had to buy an overpriced stadium beer to recover mentally from that. What had I just seen? How was it possible?? I bought a beer for the friend I took to the game too because I felt it would have been irresponsible of me to allow him to attempt non-beer aided recovery.

Another more mild annoyance was the gentleman in the row in front of us wearing an astonishingly ugly Tigers hat. Here is a picture:

From Tigers vs Yankees 08-18-2010

Game 3 – September 23rd vs Tampa Bay

I woke up yesterday morning feeling like someone had hit me at least four times with a truck (and no, nosy people I was not hungover). I rolled out of bed, managed to call in sick to work and took some painkillers and drank a lot of nice relaxing tea. The painkillers didn’t work very well and the tea didn’t do its job either so at about 5pm I realized I would not be making the game in my state.

I was feeling so terrible, in fact, that my boyfriend went out and bought me a PS3. He is a very nice boyfriend and the PS3 was a nice distraction from watching CC Sabathia walk in runs or Joba Chamberlain give up a very hard hit ball to BJ Upton who has extreme problems doing that off of righthanded pitchers, especially ones as good as Joba.

I heard some rumors that Vazquez went all Daniel Cabrera on the Rays, but I haven’t actually checked. At least he had the decency to lose 5MPH or so off his fastball before plunking several batters in a row unlike DCab.

So yeah, 2010 was not a good year for me and $5 games but at least last night it was an act of mercy. Next time I would prefer to be stuck at work or something instead of feeling awful all day, though.

These two graphs don’t tell us anything we don’t know about AJ Burnett: He is inconsistent and has magnificent and truly horrible starts. That’s just how he rolls. Like a roller coaster that is not actually possible. The line is simply tracking up many runs he’s given up each start.

This year’s roller coaster has been a bit bumpier than what we experienced in 2009. It hasn’t really been much fun to watch. Hopefully–and this is hope beyond hope–we’ll go down that hill and not have another long climb up. But he’s facing the Rangers in Texas tonight and that is honestly rather frightening, though the good news is he’s not likely to give up more runs than he did in his last start!

Click for full size

Click for full size

I understand their motivation too: When are you gonna see another guy hit a round number like 600 homeruns again? Not for a while though there are some people on with a great chance to do so. But I hate them as the people I’m sharing my baseball experience with because I am a temperamental crazy sorta snobby baseball fan.

Last night there were throngs of people wearing brand new A-Rod jerseys who seemed to have no idea what a baseball is. The rows around me in the bleachers emptied out between A-Rod at bats. People who were familiar with this baseball thing complained a lot about Lance Berkman being the the most horrible acquisition the Yankees have ever made. Apparently he is a terrible baseball player, maybe even the worst in MLB and it’s not close.

In 2007 when Alex was closing in on 500 homeruns a lot of the same idiocy was around, of course. Much like now whenever he hit a ball into the air, thousands of people went nuts even if it didn’t leave the infield. I was aggravated then too but wasn’t going to as many games. The game before he hit 500, I actually was driven nearly insane by the yell at all fly balls crowd. It was not pretty.

If the team could harness the alleged wind tunnel and just push a lazy fly ball over the wall tonight at some point, I would appreciate it. Not because I’m going to be there but because I’m tired of hearing about it, and being exposed to people who think every pop up is outta here, and because if I stab someone I’m probably going to jail which I don’t really want to do.

MLB doesn’t schedule double-headers as a regular thing anymore, and for perfectly sensible reasons. They can play every day of the week without problems, every team except the Cubs can play all the night games they want, and there’s really no reason to exhaust the rosters of both teams just to play two games in one day under normal circumstances.

Now, double-headers do rule a ton and so I get really excited (when other) teams have them. I have also been known to buy tickets for any Minor League single admission double-headers that I can get myself to in the area. There’s something inherently fun about attending six or so hours worth of baseball with a short break between games to recover. That something in my case is that I just really really like watching baseball.

With all that said, I don’t really get enthused about doubleheaders that involve the Yankees.

A double header for the Yankees means things like Ramiro Pena having seven plate appearances in one day, Marcus Thames playing in the field against a right-handed pitcher and so on. I know both that it is necessary for our old infielders to get some rest and that I am a spoiled baby and most fans have to watch something equivalent every game, but I don’t and frankly my expectation of this team is that I shouldn’t really have to. It just reminds me of how hard it’s going to be for the team to find a shorstop who doesn’t suck completely at the plate once Jeter is done at the position and that’s something I choose not to think about very often.

If you think that I’m whining about this because it exposes the Yankees’ weak bench, yes it does, but it exposes everyone’s. Ramiro Pena is a perfectly fine bench player who is around for his glove and not his bat like most of the utility infielders floating around in MLB. The team has a bench just about on par with everyone else’s and if it becomes a problem or just needs to be upgraded a bit like it did last year I totally believe that Brian Cashman will just go out and find another Jerry Hairston Jr for cash or Chase Weems.

What it comes down to is that I just really, really, really hate watching Pena bat and watching it seven times in a day is enough to drive a girl crazy. Unfortunately with Jeter day-to-day after being Daniel Cabrera’d by Justin Verlander yesterday I might have to invest in some kind of Pena-at-bat blocking technology.

Looking at the dates in my Friday+ plan, I noticed something that didn’t make me very happy.

I realize that 7/02 corresponds with the weekend of July 4th of course and 9/03 with Labor Day Weekend, but neither of these holidays include getting a Friday off. You get labor day off, and after looking at my work calendar I asked around and it seems the norm is getting Monday the 5th off.

How aggravating. What do they gain by having these games at 1pm at a time when people will be at work? I had planned on going to all the day games across my plans but because of this insane Friday fiasco I now hold tickets for many more weekday day games than I had planned which makes that not really feasible. And as I’ve mentioned a couple of times, I’m really annoyed by that. I doubt I’ll be able to find takers for the single seats since generally everyone I know has a job and isn’t getting those days off. Argh.

So that’s my whine for the year. Much smaller than last year but a whine nonetheless.

(Oh and hi, I’m back.)

For my own crazy purposes, I keep track of the Hall of Fame ballots that are made public by writers every year. You can see the crazy nerdsheet here.

This year, the shocking thing that happened was the difference between the support between online voters and whoever it is with a vote that doesn’t make their ballot public (which is a lot of people, once you have a Hall of Fame vote you have it forever) for Roberto Alomar. I expected a difference in Bert Blyleven for sure and I was disappointed that he missed it by five ballots but Andre Dawson going in by himself was a shock.

So here are some ugly graphs covering the vote over the past two years. I’ll probably write up my oh-so important thought on this later. They’re kinda big so the full-size versions are linked. I may also make the graphs less ugly!

Comparison of return candidates and their vote totals 2009 and 2010.

]]> http://teamnerdrage.com/2010/01/06/2010-baseball-hall-of-fame-results-with-ugly-graphs/feed/ 1 http://teamnerdrage.com/2009/11/24/stop-overvaluing-firstbase-offense-dammit/ http://teamnerdrage.com/2009/11/24/stop-overvaluing-firstbase-offense-dammit/#comments Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:44:58 +0000 leokitty http://teamnerdrage.com/?p=2320 Here’s the top 10 finishers for the AL MVP. The actual AL MVP was as big a no-brainer as you can get outside of the NL MVP this year, so we’re not looking at that (or the rogue Miguel Cabrera vote).

Here’s that list of 10, their slash stats and primary position (along with home runs).

If you didn’t already realize it: There is a huge stack of 1B in the top 10. Had Justin Morneau stayed healthy he would probably also be here (I would guess Zobrist would be the one bumped). You’ll also notice that the 1B have pretty similar stats.

There’s a reason for that: If you play 1B you are expected to produce offense that is much better than if you play anywhere else. You know that guy, who can hit, but can’t field? He’s playing first base where his defense can’t hurt the team as much. It’s true, there are some players like Kevin Youkilis who are athletic enough to play 3B or in the outfield but Youkilis is some kind of mutant designed for playing baseball which makes him an exception to the rule.

Players who can field a somewhat competent position up the middle (C/SS/CF/2B, traditionally) and hit like maniacs are really hard to find. It’s hard to find a bat exactly like Mark Teixeira’s at 1B but you’re far more likely to find a decent replacement there than if you try to find a shortstop who hits anything like Derek Jeter. The same goes for Zobrist at 2B, where he played most of his games this year.

I really don’t want to spend a lot of time talking about positional differences because it’s the kind of thing where if you think about it for two seconds it makes sense. Ask anyone: Why is Joe Mauer so great? Because he hits like he does and he’s a catcher. It’s there in the back of people’s minds, they know what it means something. Just like they know that it means something for Jeter to hit like he does at shortstop.

But then when the people with MVP ballots get their votes in, this all goes out the window and it seems to mostly become dingers! dingers!! dingers!!! Which means a lot of 1B (because you stick people who hit a lot of homeruns and can’t play elsewhere there, see?)

It’s insane that Ben Zobrist received so little attention and it’s pretty crazy that Teixeira got more second place votes than Derek Jeter. I’m not even going to discuss the NL ballot with Chase Utley finishing 8th. Just, please, stop with the dingers and the first basemen BBWAA. Please.

So here in second-guess land apparently Joe Girardi should go back in time because AJ Burnett having a Bad AJ start means Chad Gaudin should have gotten the ball.

Briefly and in bullet-point(ish, as I still talk too much) format:

• Chad Gaudin has pitched 2.1 innings since September 28th. One of which came in the ALCS. In the theoretical land we are living in where AJ Burnett would have pitched spectacularly in Game 6 because of full rest (or extra day, even, but let’s not think about the last time he pitched on an extra day rest) Gaudin “starting” would have really meant a bullpen game. In the World Series. Even if he shrugged off his woes against LHB the first time through, his arm surely would be tired and die. Since he hasn’t pitched in forever (and with good reason).
• Chad Gaudin has awful platoon splits, almost as bad as Sergio Mitre’s. For extra emphasis here are his career splits again:
  Vs RHB – .249/.318/.409
  Vs LHB – .293/.389/.433
  As a whole, lefties hit him as though they are a bit better than Johnny Damon. Since there are very few lefty batters out there who hit as well or better than Damon, this is a bit of a problem. How do you think guys like Howard, Utley, Victorino, Ibanez would hit him? (The answer is: To the moon.)
• There is no way to guarantee Good AJ will be the one who shows up. Now I don’t assume that everyone crying about AJ on short rest has actually ever watched AJ Burnett pitch a whole bunch and they probably just don’t know better. So to get this out of the way:  he is like Two-Face in pitcher form and you never know which version is going to be on the mound until the game starts. By then it’s too late. And it has nothing to do with rest. It has to do with him being erratic and having to pitch from the stretch from the get-go and losing his mechanics because of that immediately.  And in general, being AJ Burnett. If there was a way to know you were getting good AJ and not “holy hell that was awful” AJ don’t you think someone would have utilized it?

So no even with the horrid effort AJ put forth he was not the wrong decision. Because people seem to be forgetting that it’s really likely that Gaudin would have given the same or worse results and extra rest doesn’t mean extra good AJ.

And before wrapping this up I would just like to take a second to curse Phil Coke again. Curse you, Phil Coke.

The location Jorge Posada called for.

The location Phil Hughes hit.

I don’t really have much else to say. I was disappointed with the outcome obviously, and I’m somewhat worried about Swisher not being hit a 91mph fastball down the pipe further than second base but I got over it pretty quickly.

The Yankees have got two chances to win it at home and pitchers better than broken Kevin Brown starting both games. Optimally they win Game 6 so that CC can go a billion times in the World Series. Let’s do this thing, Andy.