October 5th, 2006 → 6:24 pm @ Seth Mnookin
“Little Decides to Use Penny, and Dodgers Pay the Price”
That succinct head ran on top of Bill Paschke column in today’s LA Times after the Dodgers pretty much handed the Mets Game 1 of the NLDS.
And the money quote: “This game was lost. … when [Grady] Little, with the score tied in the top of the seventh inning, decided his best possible reliever would be his most struggling starter.”
It hasn’t been an easy couple of days for ol’ Grady. Yesterday’s Times featured a story in which Little was read sections of Feeding the Monster that describe Red Sox management’s take on the man who refused to call on Alan Embree in Game 7 of the ’03 ALCS. “A hunch manager” who exhibited a “total lack of preperation” and “was not capable of dealing with…flexibility and creativity.”
Grady’s response: “I’m not going to lower myself to make any comments on what you’re talking about right there. And I accent the words ‘lower myself.’ Because they run a big business around there, they’ve got to justify everything they do, just like I do as a manager. So, you’ve got to respect them for that. Whatever they’ve got to do to justify their decisions and their moves, so be it. But I’m not lowering myself to comment on it.”
How long before Grady won’t lower himself to comments about his tenure with the Dodgers?
Post Categories: 2006 Playoffs & Grady Little
October 5th, 2006 → 10:25 am @ Seth Mnookin
I know: you don’t have enough sites to check every day before you start “work.” This site should either help you consolidate your online viewing time or should help you spend much more time surfing; either way, you win. Sort of.
The site’s called Yardbarker, and it’s essentially a Digg for sports bloggers. If you read a good post (of mine), you submit it to the site; then when you read posts (of mine) that you like, you give them positive ratings; the most popular posts get pushed to the front of the line. (Recently posted posts: “ESPN Hates You: Joe Morgan to Call both NY Games,” “Cage Match: Tex Winter vs. Shaq,” and “Is Theo Epstein An Idiot?” Plus, Barry Zito’s surprisingly witty realtime blog. The man has a quicker trigger finger than Schilling.)
So check it out. It’s far too early in the day to start dealing with flowcharts and data entry.
Post Categories: Yardbarker
October 5th, 2006 → 9:48 am @ Seth Mnookin
Back on August 24, I launched the Big Papi Prediction Contest, in which loyal readers guessed the total number of dingers and RBIs Papi would end up with at the end of the year; the closest guess (without going over) would win a signed, personalized copy of Feeding the Monster.
At the time, Ortiz had 45 homers and 119 RBIs. Then he missed a bunch of time due to his heart murmur. Ortiz’s year-end totals were 54 and 137, leaving him with 191…and not a single one of the 52 entries guessed 191 or below. So I’m exercising my executive right and am changing the rules: now the closest entry wins even if s/he goes over.
Without further ado, the two winners are geigerm (52+140 for a total of 192) and souljade (49+143=192); I’ll be emailing both of them to figure out the specifics. (Not that it matters, but Randy Kutcher (53+140, 193) and sdillard (52+141, 193) tied for second place.) So congrats, guys (or gals).
Post Categories: Contests & David Ortiz
October 4th, 2006 → 6:13 pm @ Seth Mnookin
Just last night I was telling someone how I regretted, um, engaging with MarketWatch media columnist Jon Friedman. In fact, I regretted it within days of actually doing it. Since then, I’ve managed to avoid commenting on even a single one of his columns. And there have been some doozies.
But today, Jon sucked me back in to your odd, through-the-looking glass world with a column titled “I hate the media — and why you should too.” Jon’s bete noires: “a) we feel compelled to pander to all points of view b) we all too often forsake analysis in our reporting, overlooking the real meaning about why something has happened and c) we make ill-advised judgments, especially when celebrities are involved, in the hope of getting a big fat scoop.” (What do you mean “we,” white man?)
WIthout further ado, Jon’s examples:
a) A NYT piece on Donald Rumsfeld’s squash game, which, apparently, was written to “appease pro-Rumsfeld readers.”
Funny, I didn’t quite get that from the story, which did claim to offer a “window into Mr. Rumsfeld’s complicated psyche.” Let’s go to the tape:
* Rumsfeld cheats: “He…often wins points because, after hitting a shot, he does not get out of the way so his opponent has a chance to return the ball, a practice known in squash as ‘clearing.'”
* Rumsfeld is in danger of losing his mind: “The almost-daily matches, Mr. Rumsfeld, a former Princeton wrestler, acknowledged last year, have helped preserve his ‘sanity’ in a period in which he and the administration have come under increasing political attack.”
* Rumsfeld refuses to acknowledge that it’s a different world than it was thirty years ago: “‘One time I saw Rumsfeld and I referred to hardball as an old man’s game, and he just stared at me,’ says David Bass, a public relations executive who sometimes plays on the Pentagon courts.”
* Rumsfeld is an obnoxious braggart: “Nor does Mr. Rumsfeld lack for bravado. Mohamed Awad, a former champion player who was once ranked as high as ninth in the world, spent a half hour hitting with him last February at a racquet club in Munich, where Mr. Rumsfeld was attending a military conference. … Afterward, he said, Mr. Rumsfeld suggested that he could outplay another septuagenarian politician still known for his prowess in squash, the 78-year-old Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak.”
* Rumsfeld gets his ideas for transforming the military from squash: “Mr. Rumsfeld himself has suggested that his ideas about transforming the military into a smaller, more agile force, like the one he pushed for in invading Iraq, were influenced by his squash playing.”
Indeed, Jon, the Times did apparently conclude, “since Rumsfeld isn’t going anywhere, we might as well get to understand him a little better.” And when they did, it clearly was an example of “pandering to the right wing.”
b) Stories detailing former President Carter’s criticism of Bush that don’t acknowledge that Carter’s son is running for the Senate.
Jon’s example? Well, he’s been “noticing headlines — even on AOL’s ‘news’ site, for heaven’s sake — proclaiming ‘Carter Rips Bush.'”
Doing a Nexis search of the last 60 days, I found one story that had the words “Carter Rips Bush,” and that was in a brief in the San Jose Mercury News. The headline? “Campaigning for son, Carter rips Bush tenure.” A search for “Carter criticizes Bush” turned up two stories: a 9/28 story from the Reno Gazette-Journal (“Ex-president, son make stop in Fallon on campaign trail; Carters criticize Bush administration”) and one an AP from that same day (“President Carter criticizes Bush at son’s campaign stop”). (Searches for “Carter Slams Bush,” “Carter Disses Bush,” and “Carter Bitchslaps Bush” didn’t turn up anything at all.) The only NYTimes story since mid-August that talked about Carter criticizing Bush was one whose headline read, “Fathers Defeated, Democratic Sons Strike Back.”
c) The stories detailing Roger Clemens’s supposed presence in the Jason Grimsley steroid affidavit. “Just as Clemens’ team, the Houston Astros, was trying to close in on an improbable position in the postseason, a shadowy news item from the Los Angeles Times’ Web site began making the rounds. It said that Clemens and other star players had allegedly been using performance-enhancing substances, adding to the biggest scandal in sports today. … On Oct. 3…the federal prosecutor. … was quoted in the ESPN.com piece as saying that the Los Angeles Times’ story contained ‘significant inaccuracies.’ … It’s irresponsible for a reporter to circulate unconfirmed information and portray it as hard news. But it’s worse than that. It’s just not fair.”
Now, let’s put aside that this report was actually printed in the Times; it wasn’t some “shadowy news item” that only ran on the paper’s web site. Nor was it unsubstantiated: “A source with authorized access to an unredacted affidavit allowed The Times to see it briefly and read aloud some of what had been blacked out of the public copies. A second source and confidant of Grimsley had previously disclosed player identities and provided additional details about the affidavit.” It would appear that the Times actually read the affidavit. And speaking of lack of context, how about pointing out that the prosecutor could be covering for Clemens because he’s trying to get him to cooperate? Or, for that matter, the possibility that some of the names are wrong…but Clemens is one of the people named?
You know what I hate about the media? People who criticize without understanding, people who talk about “trends” without offering examples, and people who rush to a celebrity’s defense before all the evidence is in. Oh, and I also hate it when I get sucked back in to writing about Jon Friedman again.
Post Categories: Jon Friedman & Media reporting
October 4th, 2006 → 5:12 pm @ Seth Mnookin
Remember the item I posted yesterday? You know, the one looking at how Pedro had broken down blah blah blah. I ended by saying, “More year-end wrap-ups and report cards — as well as a look back at the free-agent pitching class of 2004 — in the days to come.”
And then today, Peter Gammons has an ESPN column on…Pedro and the free agent class of 2004! Yeah, I’m so sure you just came up with that on your own, Gammo. It’s not like you revolutionized baseball writ…oh. Anyway.
For those of you without ESPN Insider, Gammons’s piece makes a Pedro observation I hadn’t even realized: that since July of 2005, the right arm of god has gone 12-13. Ouch.
Then, Gammons takes a look at the rest of the pitchers who came on the open market in ’04. After Pedro’s 4-year/$52 million deal, there was Carl Pavano’s 4-year/$39.999999 million deal, Lowe’s 4-year/$36 million contract, and Russ Ortiz’s 4-year/$33 million windfall. Neither Pavano (4-5) nor Ortiz (5-19) has managed to even win 10 games in ’05 and ’06 combined, and only Lowe has thrown more than 400 innings (at 440). In fact, out of all of the free-agent pitchers available after the ’04 season — a class which includes Matt Clement (3 years/$25.5 million), Eric Milton (3 years/$25.5 mil), Jaret Wright (3 yrs/$21 mil), and David Wells (2 yrs/$8.2 mil with plenty of bonus clauses) — Lowe’s the only guy who’s thrown more than 400 innings. Pedro and Derek and the only two guys with ERAs under 4 (3.37 and 3.62, respectively), and out of a class of 12, only six guys — Pedro, Derek, Wells (18-12), Wright (16-12), Jon Lieber (3 yrs/21 mil, 26-24), and Chris Benson (3 yrs/$22.5 mil, 21-20) — have winning records.
So what does that tell us? Well, that old straw about pitching being notoriously hard to predict is, in fact, true. And I don’t think there’s a Red Sox fan alive — or a member of the team’s front office — that doesn’t wish the team had re-signed Lowe instead of picking up the equally mopey but not nearly as durable Matt Clement. But what’s made Lowe so valuable isn’t that he’s been that good; a lot of his peripheral numbers, including batting average on balls in play, have been fairly similar in LA compared to what they were in Boston, suggesting that, had he been pitching in the AL East the past two years, he likely would have ended up with a record and an ERA somewhere between what he was doing in ’03 and ’04 — sucking — and what he did in ’05 and ’06. (In Boston, Lowe’s lack of success and his poor BABIP numbers corresponded pretty starkly, which could be due to crappy defense or could be do to the fact that batters pound the ball when they see hanging sliders. But I digress.)
Does that mean the Sox made a mistake when they didn’t even offer Lowe a courtesy contract? Yes and no. The Sox were worried about that Lowe’s off-field activities would become a distraction…and they were right. If Derek had been in Boston when he left his wife for a sportscaster, we’d still be reading about it. And Pavano and Clement were widely considered the two best pitchers of the class (or at least the two pitchers with the most upside)…and not just by New York and Boston.
But looking back, Lowe (and arguably David Wells) has been the best pitching deal of that year. Lowe likely had more pure physical ability than anyone else on the market (and yes, I’m including Pedro), and he’d already shown a remarkable ability to stay healthy. Hindsight being 20-20 and all, both of those things were clearly undervalued.
As it is, Derek Lowe will go down in Red Sox history as a) one-half of one of the great heists of all time (Lowe and Varitek to Seattle for Healthcliff Slocumb)*, b) a remarkable bargain for the years he played in Fenway, c) the inspiration for Bill Simmons’s best-ever coined phrase (the Derek Lowe Face), and d) the only man alive to clinch the deciding game in all three rounds of the playoffs. That’s a great resume.
Right now, it would be awfully nice if Lowe was adding to that resume. I was firmly in the camp of people who thought it was a mistake to offer Lowe a contract. I still understand the reasons why I thought that. I also see much more clearly how important a pitcher’s physical history and his ability to succeed in a specific environment should be taken into consideration.
* It’s amazing how many lopsided trades Boston has had a part in: Ruth; Parish and McHale for Joe Barry Carroll and Rockey Brow (not that simple, but still); Bagwell to the Astros…and then there’re the trades that included future Sox stars, like then-Oriole Curt Schilling, et al, to the ‘stros for Glenn Davis and then-Dodger Pedro to the Expos for Delino DeShields (I shit you not.)
Post Categories: 2006 Wrap-ups and report cards & Derek Lowe
October 4th, 2006 → 5:05 pm @ Seth Mnookin
It’s the best show I’ve seen in a long, long time. It’s obviously impossible to judge a show by one episode (if we could do stuff like that, Devern Hansack would be a HoF lock), but last night’s show — which will be rebroadcast tonight — was the best hour of TV I’ve seen in a long, long time.
(Also: Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip is one of the worst hours of TV I’ve watched in a while. I just had to get that off my chest.)
Post Categories: Friday Night Lights & Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip & TV
October 4th, 2006 → 5:01 pm @ Seth Mnookin
A reader sent me in this youtube clip, which features Tommy Lasorda in a surprisingly humorous Sox-themed (and anti-Yankee themed) ad. For all I know, they’ve been showing this during the playoffs; I haven’t been watching.)
Post Categories: Ads & Tommy Lasorda
