Old Sportswriter Notes One Fact, Makes Insane Generalization

I'm sorry, I know Frank Deford is a crotchety old dude. I know the NPR just hires him for some color commentary.  I know that his segment is called "Sweetness and Light", so it's not supposed to be serious, but when he says things this stupid, I can't hold back.  Here's one of his segments from this spring: "As American Sports Skew More Arm-Centric, Throwing Injuries Rise"

Whatever happened to rotator cuffs? It seems like just yesterday that every pitcher who was injured had a problem with his rotator cuff. But baseball player injuries now invariably require something called "Tommy John surgery," which has become epidemic.

Right, this is one fact, Tommy John surgery is up. Let's see where we go here.

The difference is simple: The rotator cuff involves the shoulder while Tommy John relates to the elbow, or more precisely, the ulnar collateral ligament. The corrective surgery, by Dr. Frank Jobe, was first performed 41 years ago on Dodgers pitcher Tommy John, and for years it remained fairly uncommon. Now, it is downright commonplace.

Ok, so this is just an extension here.  So far so good. 

It is also indisputable that as more pitchers throw faster — mid-90 mph becoming routine — the more Tommy John surgeries we encounter. It doesn't require a crack detective to solve the case: The more pitchers throwing with all their might for just a few pitches, the more ulnar collateral ligaments that are failing. Pitchers' arms are becoming like football players' heads. The happy difference is that you do not need a good arm to keep on living a long normal life the way you do need an undamaged brain.

Wohoo!  Take that, football! You guys all have damaged brains! But even so far Frank is  just ambling along saying nothing interesting.  But here we go:

But let's face it: American athletics are armcentric. Not just the pitcher — everybody on a baseball team has to throw the ball. Football depends more and more on passing. "What's his arm strength?" the scouts first ask of quarterbacks. Basketball shots are propelled by strong arms, especially now with the long 3-point basket in vogue.

What?  There are so many levels of stupid here:

1. First basemen, offensive tackles, and power forwards basically never throw anything with one arm.  Nothing at all about their games is increasingly armcentric.  In fact, this whole paragraph makes the insane point that Tommy John surgeries are up, and that must be tied to the increasingly armcentric wold of sports.   It's like Frank Deford hates modernity so much that he just makes wild generalizations just to show how life is going to hell in a handbasket.

2. Were scouts in previous ages no longer primarily concerned with arm strength?  Do baseball position players throw any more now than they used to?

3.  What about the statement that "the long 3-point basket in vogue"?!  The NBA adopted the 3 in 1979.  That was 36 years ago, Frank!  Where the hell have you been?

Throwing is certainly not unnatural, but pitching a baseball overhanded is too abnormal an action for the human body. In contrast, throwing a softball underhanded is a pretty smooth motion. A cricket bowler delivers the ball to the batsman in something of a high loop, without being allowed to break the elbow.

Are Tommy John surgeries in cricket bowlers up or something?  Who cares?

It would seem that pitchers have survived, barely, these past 150 years or so, but now the added stress — especially for pitchers who started throwing too hard too young — is just enough to break down too many arms.

It would seem that Frank Deford has survived, barely, these past 150 years or so, but now the added stress - especially for bitter bloggers who started blogging too hard too young - is just enough to break down dan-bob's sanity.

Rob Manfred, is, officially, only the commissioner of professional baseball, but just like the bumbling NFL commissioner, Roger Goodell, Manfred is really the steward of his game. 

Take that, football! Your sport is becoming inceasingly armcentric and your commissioner is so incompetent that even 150-year old fossils get their digs in!

Manfred should convene some sort of all-baseball conference to examine this serious issue. Until then, it appears that baseball simply feels that pitchers are fungible, that there's always another kid with a temporarily live arm who can fire it by the hitters.

"Fungible"?  Put away your thesaurus, Frank, The whole article sticks in a pretty simple diction, appropriate for a general audience on the radio, and then Frank drops a totally unnecessarily fancy word as he moves towards his close.  It's the same thing he did in my last post with "high-falutin'".

Really, we've got to do better by our best arms.

National Public Radio really has to do better by its ordinary listeners.

OK, I will take Mitch Albom's bait

Undoubtedly someone has already linked you to this, and it's possible you've already seen someone make fun of it.  Still, I've got to take a crack at it.  It's just too fucking awesome to pass up.

The eyes have it.

That pun, which he will go on to repeat in his final sentence, is probably the best part about this whole article.  Not because it's clever or insightful (or even sensical--it's not like the MVP vote is a yes/no proposition like HOF voting is or something); just because it's not as offensive as everything else this cretin writes.

In a battle of computer analysis versus people who still watch baseball as, you know, a sport, 

It is a well-known fact that people who like computer analysis watch baseball as a romantic comedy.

what we saw with our Detroit vision 

Detroit Vision (patent pending): from the company that brought you Cleveland Smell.

was what most voters saw as well:

Cabrera won the Triple Crown and happened to play for a team that wasn't in the same division as Texas and Oakland.  I, too, saw all that.

Miguel Cabrera is the Most Valuable Player in the American League this year.

Shouldn't have been.  Chris W put it best: he was a deserving candidate, just definitely not the most deserving candidate.  I think that's a very levelheaded and fair way to describe his credentials.  Now let's watch Mitch work his magic.

"It means a lot," he told reporters over the phone from Miami. 

(Between rounds of shots)

"I'm very thankful. ... I thought it was gonna be very close."

So did everyone. But the debate ended Thursday night when the results were announced, with Cabrera earning 22 of the 28 first-place votes from the Baseball Writers' Association of America. It reinforced what Tigers fans have been saying all season: This guy is a monster.

All season long, Tigers fans have been trying to convince other fans that a guy who has a career triple slash of .318/.395/.561 was having yet another awesome offensive year.  But those other fans wouldn't listen!  They were too busy doing computer nerd things on computers, and refusing to watch any baseball.  Finally, some vindication for those Tigers fans, in the form of acknowledgement from the always-credible BBWAA.

It also answered the kind of frenzied cyberspace argument that never shadowed baseball 20 years ago but may never stop shadowing it now.

Wasn't life so much better when we had less information?  That's how I feel.  It's so annoying that the rise of the internet and the computer age has allowed us to expand our baseball analysis knowledge base.

Statistics geeks insisted Cabrera was less worthy than Angels rookie centerfielder Mike Trout. Not because Trout's traditional baseball numbers were better. They weren't. Cabrera had more home runs (44), more runs batted in (139) and a better batting average (.330) than Trout and everyone else in the American League. It gave him the sport's first Triple Crown in 45 years.

The funny part is, if Trout gets 3 more hits and see his BA go up to .331, ruining Cabrera's Triple Crown, you can bet that Trout would have won the MVP.

But Trout excelled in the kind of numbers that weren't even considered a few years ago, mostly because A) They were impossible to measure, and B) Nobody gave a hoot.

A is correct.  B is not.  We've been keeping track of errors for decades because people wanted to have a way to quantify defensive ability.

Today, every stat matters. There is no end to the appetite for categories -- from OBP to OPS to WAR. 

"There is no end to the appetite for categories" -- guy who gets paid a generous salary to express thoughts through writing

I mean, OMG! 

LOL

The number of triples hit while wearing a certain-colored underwear is probably being measured as we speak.

It probably is not.  But highest OBP while wearing certain colors of underwear?  That is most definitely "being measured" (again, Albom is a professional journalist) right now.

So in areas such as "how many Cabrera home runs would have gone out in Angel Stadium of Anaheim" or "batting average when leading off an inning" or "Win Probability Added," Trout had the edge. At least this is what we were told.

DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING THE TROUT-RUN LIBERAL MEDIA TELLS YOU, SHEEPLE.  KOOKY STATS LIKE "BATTING AVERAGE LEADING OFF AN INNING" ARE NOT TO BE TRUSTED.  JUST STICK TO RBIS AND DETROIT VISION APPROVAL RATING.

I mean, did you do the math?  I didn't. 

Why bother when people around Detroit had already concluded that Cabrera "was a monster?"  CASE CLOSED

I like to actually see the sun once in a while.

PARDON YOUR ZINGER

Plus he has intangibles

That's a subheadline, not an editing mistake, but I think he should have just ended the article there.  What would the computer people be able to say in response?

Besides, if you live in Detroit, you didn't need a slide rule. 

The best part about jokes like that is that the defensive metrics that showed Trout to be an awesome CF and fuel his enormous WAR total cannot exist without extremely diligent viewing of actual game footage.  That's not to say I'm some UZRophile or something--I think most defensive metrics are crappy.  But I'd still rather have them than not have them, you know?

This was an easy choice. 

So far the only ways in which you've compare the two guys are BA, HR, RBI (all numbers which can be trusted and which favor Cabrera), how playing in Anaheim would have affected Cabrera's HR total (favors Trout, supposedly), batting average leading off an inning (favors Trout, but not a number to be trusted, apparently) and win probability added (WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?).  You haven't talked about defense or stolen bases, which are traditionally the kind of things that the I LOVE ME SOME PLAYERS WHO PLAY THE GAME THE RIGHT WAY crowd loves, and which are more or less the reason Trout's WAR total was so much higher than Cabrera's.  I know I'm simultaneously preaching to the choir and shouting into the void here, but holy dogshit, if you're going to make the case for why A was better than B, simply saying "A was great" isn't a very good way to do it.

People here watched Cabrera, 29, tower above the game in 2012. Day after day, game after game, he was a Herculean force. Valuable? What other word was there? 

Defensively inadequate?  Can I use two words like that?

How many late-inning heroics? How many clutch hits? And he only missed one game all year. 

That last stat really makes Justin Verlander's 2011 MVP look silly in hindsight.  Guy didn't even play 75% of the time!

"During the season, a lot of guys tell me I'm gonna be the MVP," Cabrera said, laughing. "But they said the same thing to Trout."
Yes, it's true, Trout is faster, Trout is a better defensive player, 

Here we go!

Trout is a leadoff hitter, and Trout edged Cabrera in several of those made-for-Microsoft categories.

4 WAR is not really an "edged him out" margin, but OK, go ahead.

But if you are going to go molten deep 

Again, this man is paid to use the English language effectively.

into intangibles, 

Like playing defense and stealing bases?

why stop at things like "which guy hit more homers into the power alleys?" (A real statistic, I am sorry to say.)

Still not an intangible.  But in any case, who wants to stop there?  This is the most bizarre and confusing straw man I've ever seen.  "ALL YOU INTANGIBLES LOVERS OUT THERE WHO WANT ME TO CONSIDER TROUT'S DEFENSE AND SPEED, JUST STOP PUSHING HIS POWER ALLEY HOME RUN TOTAL ON ME ALREADY!  WHO CARES ABOUT THE INTANGIBLE THAT IS POWER ALLEY HOME RUNS?"  What?

Why not also consider such intangibles as locker-room presence? Teammates love playing around -- and around with -- Miggy. He helps the room.

When he's not being a total distraction because his wife beat him up and he got a DUI, yes.

How about his effect on pitchers? Nobody wanted the embarrassment of him slamming a pitch over the wall. The amount of effort pitchers expended on Cabrera or the guy batting ahead of him surely took its toll and affected the pitches other batters saw. 

Surely!  Meanwhile, Trout spent the whole season giving opposing pitchers scouting reports on his teammates in exchange for an agreement that those pitchers would throw him BP fastballs.  Hardly a team player.

Why not find a way to measure that? (Don't worry. I'm sure someone is working on it as we speak.)

Why not take three seconds to realize that Trout did the exact same damn thing all season, while batting leadoff?

What about the debilitating power of a three-run homer? How many opposing teams slumped after Cabrera muscled one out? 

Clearly all of them, as evidenced by Detroit's 88-74 record, obtained while playing in the same division as the AL's two worst teams.

How about team confidence? You heard everyone from Prince Fielder to Justin Verlander speak in awed tones about being on the same team as Cabrera. Doesn't that embolden teammates and bring out their best?

I sure don't remember seeing any articles about how Trout energized the Angels and was more or less the sole reason their season turned around the time he was called up.  Anybody else catch any of those?

How about the value of a guy who could shift from first to third base -- as Cabrera did this past season -- to make room for Fielder? Ask manager Jim Leyland how valuable that is.

Yeah, nothing like playing a fat guy out of position so you can add another fat guy to your infield.  True value right there.

How about the fact that Cabrera's team made the playoffs and Trout's did not? ("Yes," countered Team Trout, "but the Angels actually won more games.") 

No response to that completely valid argument is provided.

How about the fact that Cabrera played the whole season while Trout started his in the minors? ("Yes," said the Trout Shouters, "but the Angels won a greater percentage with Trout than Detroit did with Cabrera.")

I like how he thinks that this is a knock on Trout.  Sure, he hit 30 bombs, but he only played in 139 games!  Totally invalidates everything!  /fart

How about this? How about that? The fact is, voters are not instructed to give more credence to any one category than another. Twenty-eight sportswriters, two from each AL city, decide, in their own minds, what is "valuable" and who displayed it the most.
They chose Cabrera.

By an overwhelming majority.

In the end, memories were more powerful than microchips.

I believe that was the original pitch for Forrest Gump.

Which, by the way, speaks to a larger issue about baseball. It is simply being saturated with situational statistics. What other sport keeps coming up with new categories to watch the same game? 

Basketball (PER, +/-)  Hockey (Corsi, Fenwick)  Football (QB Y/A, WR Y/Tgt)?  But wait--are those actually SPORTS, or are they computer games?  Hard to tell.

A box score now reads like an annual report. 

I'd love to be a shareholder of AlbomCorp.  Its annual reports would be awesome, they'd be like THINGS ARE GOING PRETTY GOOD, WE'RE DECLARING A DIVIDEND OF $1,000,000 PER SHARE BECAUSE WE'RE NOT SOME NERD COMPANY THAT USES NUMBERS.

And this WAR statistic -- which measures the number of wins a player gives his team versus a replacement player of minor league/bench talent (honestly, who comes up with this stuff?) 

People who like to know which baseball players are good?

-- is another way of declaring, "Nerds win!"

If you'd prefer the nerds to win after completing a series of athletic and talent show challenges, like in Revenge of the Nerds, I'm sure that can be arranged.

We need to slow down the shoveling of raw data into the "what can we come up with next?" machine. It is actually creating a divide between those who like to watch the game of baseball and those who want to reduce it to binary code.

To the extent such a divide exists, it's entirely the result of the needledicked insecurities of people like you, Mitch.  Your antiquated way of thinking is being challenged by people who like baseball just as much as you do, and have said to themselves, "Hmmmm, stats like RBIs really don't tell us that much about who's good and who isn't.  Maybe there are other, better ways to measure performance.  As someone who likes watching baseball, I'd like to discover/learn about those ways."  Since (most of you) know that you can't make the argument that old stats are more illuminating, of course you and your ilk instead attack the new stat people by saying they don't like to watch baseball, which is elephant shit.  Go read a book, then go fuck yourself, and follow that up by giving the Detroit Free Press your two weeks' notice.  You're a fucking loser and I hope you catch Crohn's disease.  

Christ, I tried to keep it lighthearted, but eventually I got worn down.  Mitch Albom is the fucking worst. 

Buck Showalter Teaches Backpedaling 101

Have you ever been trying to pick up someone attractive, and suddenly said something that pretty much dooms your attempt, but then, rather than bailing out tried pathetically to save the situation? You end up sounding like "You know, I usually don't go for blondes like you. My ex was a blonde, and she was batshit crazy. (pause) Not that I think you're batshit crazy. (pause) And not that I'm still thinking about my ex! I was just noticing how nice your hair is, that's all. (long pause) You have really pretty eyes." See how well that worked? Ugh. Douchechills. And that brings us to Buck on Baseball Tonight yesterday.

(The scene- Red Sox vs. Orioles.)

Karl Ravech: Top 9, Boston within one, no outs, full count, and it's David Ortiz...

(Ortiz strikes out on a fairly obvious failed check swing.)

Eric Young: Buck, did he go?

Buck (taking the bait): Well, it's all about intent.

Karl (confused/disdainful): He didn't "intend" to swing?

Buck: Well, he didn't INTEND to swing... It's a matter of whether or not you................ (suddenly changing to a much brighter and friendlier tone) You know, Laz Diaz is a good umpire.

Oof. Just abandon ship next time, buddy. Nothing you say is going to bring him back at that point.

Also, I hate it when blogs make too big a deal out of this, but I feel it's worth mentioning that FireJay is officially one year old as of this morning. If you'd like, feel free to go back through the archives and read some of our shit from last May. Several things become clear when you do so- PNoles still hates Mariotti with a passion that not even my Simmons bashing can match, Dan-Bob and Chris W should post more often because they are funny dudes, and I've gone from being a shithead who doesn't use capital letters to a shithead who does.

Also also, this is the last you'll hear from me until next Tuesday, as I'm taking off on a vacation to the current murder capital of the country. I'm so glad the Saints made it to the NFC championship game two Januarys ago. As far as I learned at the time from ESPN/FOX/CBS, in doing so they saved the city and proved that there were absolutely no lingering effects from Hurricane Katrina. Awesome! Geeeeaaaauuuuuuxxxxxxxxx Saints!