So what can a guy who never, ever hit to the opposite field teach those young impressionable kiddies about the fundamentals of hitting? Though I generally consider the role of hitting coach high brand quackery, it's still an odd choice. What next--Mitch Williams as pitching coach? David Wells as trainer? Lenny Dykstra as CFO? I could keep this up all night. Oh, but look at the time. Shucks.
Read more...Oh, man... This is too funny. I mean, I feel terrible for the girl. I honestly do, as hard as it is to tell beneath my uncontrolable laughter. I hope she gets some retribution, if not the full lawsuit amount because that's humiliation I wouldn't wish on anyone, or at least not on a majority of my friends and family.
I guess what gets me is the "Ewww!" part. Hahaha... Talk about taking something already incredibly juvenile and making it 100% juvenile and then some. Oh man, I love it.
Well, the YCS staff's dream to one day, collectively visit and comment on all 30 Major League parks is one step closer to reality. Last night after a thoroughly entertaining (and drunken) SLU Law softball game in which my three-run homer (yes, a homer) was not enough to lift Motion to Strike over the Bad News Barristers, my buddy Matt and I decided to head down to kind-of brand spanking new Busch Stadium for the first game of a four-game set between the Cardinals and my Cubs.
With the Cards and Cubs being the hot ticket that it was, we were very fortunate to snag some tickets off the streets from the scalpers for very close to face ($30 for $26 seats), and the view was not too shabby (aside from the hole in the ground beyond left field where old Busch used to stand.)
First off, let me just say that any notion of Cardinals fans being the "best fans in baseball" who are just that much more knowledgeable and passionate for "getting behind the hometown team" is a load of bullshit. The stadium was half-empty in the top of the second inning. There was never really any significant noise from the home crowd, and this is a team that, admittedly while they're in a bit of a tailspin/free fall right now, is still playing meaningful baseball in mid-September, and had the division leaders and their archrivals in for the weekend.
The Cardinals fans in our section, however, were pretty cool to us. After some good-natured heckling, we ended up hanging out with a group of Cardinals fans from Belleville, IL, which is right across the river. When asked who they hated more, the Royals or the Cubs, the answer was simple and direct. "We hate you personally more." OK.
I laughed at the "McDonalds Big Mac" corner in left field where they give the fans giant french fries to wave to distract the opposing batter who's only 340+ feet away. Not to mention the fact that it's there to commemorate where Big Mac hit his 62nd Home Run...except it was in a different stadium. Oops.
Beer, as in any ballpark, is a ripoff, but here, it felt even worse. $8.25 for
Bud Light. That is extortion. Two beers cost me $16.50. The brewery is literally right down the street, so you can't build shipping costs into that. A-B rules St. Louis like the Russian mob, and they're ripping off the townsfolk for $8.25 in exchange for watered-down Clydesdale piss.
Some other strange observations about Busch...
If a tornado strikes St. Louis, and you are a woman at Busch Stadium, you are shit outta luck. Say hello to the flying monkeys for me.
The Olde Tyme charm of a hand-changed scoreboard is kind of lost when it's quoting stocks. I wonder if during day games when the markets are open they hand change it live. If so, my hats off to those guys.
The courthouse near Busch is celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Dred Scott 
Decision. Is that something you'd really like to be proud of? "150 years ago on this spot, informed people of this state determined that people ARE in fact property."
The Cubs just about gave me a heart attack in the 9th inning by allowing two homers, then loading the bases before finally winning 5-3.
Read more...
As the general populace of baseball fandom has grown more familiar with the idea of Pythagorean Win-Loss% (or more generally, the idea of run differential as a predictor of wins), more attention has been given to teams like this year's St. Louis Cardinals who have compiled an actual win-loss record that betters their expected win-loss. And whenever this topic surfaces, so does the manager's name--almost without fail.
In the case of a team like the '07 Cardinals, where the manager is someone as high-profile as Tony LaRussa, he's not only mentioned but given the bulk of the credit. (The latest sportswriting-guy to go with this angle: Phil Rogers of the Chicago Tribune.)
I understand the temptation here: The on-field numbers don't compute, so something intangible must be at work. Someone must be "managing" the runs in a way that stretches their value into a greater number of wins.
And I think there could be some truth to this line of thinking. Say a team consistently loses 4-0 or 6-1 type games but pulls out a lot of 3-2 and 2-1 wins, one could argue that the manager is doing a good job of holding small leads with wise defensive maneuvers or "manufacturing" key runs late in tie ballgames when "agressive" strategies (i.e. sac bunts, moving runners) can prove advantageous.
But that doesn't seem to be the case with the Cardinals this year. (Pay no mind to the fact that the Cardinals, who stand at 59-62, are just 2.4 games over their third-order expected win-loss and just five games over their straight-up Pythagorean win-loss.) While I understand that the general premise behind ExWL is that good teams = more runs = more wins and that individual games shouldn't really be picked apart, I think the real story with the Cardinals is a team that's suffered a lot of blowouts.
Let me show ya sometin'!!
April 4, 10-0 loss to the Mets
May 1, 12-2 loss at the Brewers
May 5, 13-0 loss to the Astros
May 18, 14-4 loss at the Tigers
June 15, 14-3 loss at the A's
July 13, 13-3 loss at the Phillies
July 27, 12-2 loss to the Brewers
Aug 1, 15-1 loss at the Pirates
That's a total score of 103-15, or a run differential of 88 in just eight games.
They have had wins of 12-2, 11-1, 15-6, and 10-1, which alone get back 38 of those runs, showing that it hasn't all been extra-inning wins and blowout losses for the Cardinals. But still, we're looking at a sizable 50-run differential in their twelve most blowout-y games, which leaves the Cards one game over .500 with a 14-run differential in their other 109 games.
Ok, so maybe Darrin Jackson wouldn't manage them to that mark--in large part because he'd probably be starting So Taguchi, Jose Oquendo, and Tom Pagnozzi right now--but it doesn't exactly prove that Tony LaRussa is a sorcerer who can will the trajectory of baseballs.
While I understand that all teams suffer and/or score blowouts that can skew their run differential, it doesn't help the hypothesis that the Cardinals are just 10-15 in one-run games. They are, however, 6-3 in extra-inning games--a fact that should garner LaRussa some credit, albeit some very caveat-loaded credit.
Is Tony LaRussa a good manager? In the debatably insignificant realm of baseball managing, he may be. (I won't answer that question because I hate him for his role in the popularization of current trends in bullpen categorization, and I am therefore biased.) At the same time, I think it's really lazy for analysts to attribute this sort of statistical oddity to something as subjective as "good managing" unless they've really scrutinized that manager's technique throughout the season. Even then, they really can't know.
At this point, David Eckstein has made so many of these heads-up, don't-show-up-in-the-box-scores type plays that we've almost come to expect it. But let's not get spoiled yet.
The situation: Ninth inning, man at first, one out, 3-2 count. Ronnie Cedeno takes off from first on Izzy's delivery. Ball four on a close pitch, throw goes down to second. Cedeno slides head first in vain, as it was ball four anyway. Eckstein, however, being the heady professional Baseball Player that he is, realizes that Cedeno is only guaranteed second on the walk and that any further advance renders him fair game.
So what happens? Cedeno comes off second, and Eckstein, being the heady, team-first gamer he is, puts the tag on Cedeno, who is called out. Can you believe that! How many major leaguers would have the presence and Baseball Sense and headiness to know the situation and the rules that well? Wow. I can only think of exactly six players in the history of baseball with the Baseball Sense to make that play: David Eckstein, Pete Rose, Honus Wagner, Davey Concepcion, Dickie Thon, and F.P. Santangelo. I mean, wow.
(Of course, Eckstein was only holding the tag on a base stealer as any infielder would do out of pure habit from typical base-stealing situations, but just watch this play resurface in a fluff piece the next time Eckstein finds himself in a playoff run.)
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