Author Archives: Ted Berg

A series of reasonable points

Posted on by
4

The optics of James’ announcing that he’s going to Miami while surrounded by local kids who may reasonably cry in grief is what people in the business call a public-relations nightmare. Consider also that an enterprising reporter is sure to find a heartbroken child to be the poster boy or girl for what will be portrayed as heartless flirtation with total innocents.

If it’s not New York, why make the announcement here when he dragged everyone to Akron for the pitches? He could have stayed there and maintained an illusion of neutrality.

– Michael Salfino, SNY.tv.

Salfino makes a series of reasonable points here arguing why LeBron James will inevitably end up with the Knicks. The location, he points out, is as close to New York as you can be without being in New York. The recent talk that he’s going to Miami? Salfino argues that it’s misdirection from James’ camp to build suspense around the announcement.

I don’t know. I’d say I don’t care, but that’s not entirely true. I will care if he comes to New York. That would be cool.

I won’t watch the thing tonight — there’s baseball on. Real sporting events should always take precedence over announcements about future sporting events, I think. I’m sure I’ll find out where LeBron’s heading within five minutes of the announcement, and I won’t have to sit through however many minutes of hype-machine nonsense before it.

But that said, I’m a little surprised by how much backlash there has been to the news that LeBron would announce his decision in this fashion, on ESPN. I mean, how’d you expect it to be? It’s entertainment. LeBron James is a professional basketball player. And yet this particular instance of showmanship and spectacle makes a mockery of the game?

C’mon. Maybe the league-wide disregard for traveling violations makes a mockery of the game, or the gambling officials do. But a player maximizing his time in the spotlight is only that.

The idea of Ted Lilly

Posted on by
2

Matt Cerrone passes on news from Newsday’s Ken Davidoff (a worthy Twitter follow, if you’re not doing so already) that the Mets “like the idea of getting Ted Lilly.”

Moving past the requisite jokes about trade-rumor language, I like the idea of the Mets getting Ted Lilly, too. He’s no Cliff Lee, mind you, but he’s a nice pitcher with good control and a reasonable history of staying healthy. Plus he yields an absolute ton of flyballs, which hurts him in Wrigley Field but would probably play well at Citi.

The big issue, of course, is the cost. Lilly is owed about $6 million over the rest of the season, which should drive his price in prospects down a little bit. But his contract is up after 2010 and he stands to be a Type A free agent, meaning an acquiring team would have to present the Cubs with a package more enticing than the two draft picks they’ll receive if they hang onto Lilly and let him walk after the season.

I have no idea what that means. But it sounds like the price on Cliff Lee is getting steeper by the moment, and that certainly factors into any team’s pursuit of Lilly.

If getting Cliff Lee would indeed require Angel Pagan — a trade I wouldn’t make in the first place — and getting Lilly would not, then Lilly probably makes more sense for the Mets.

The difference, in terms of wins, between Pagan and his replacement in the outfield playing every day for the rest of the season is likely at least as big as the difference between Lee and Lilly. Factor in that Pagan will be under team control through 2012 and there’s really no question Lilly would be a smarter target.

That assumes a lot, though. It assumes the Mets will continue starting Pagan regularly after Carlos Beltran returns, that Pagan will continue playing this well, and that a trade for Lee will require a player of Pagan’s caliber and a trade for Lilly will not. And I don’t know if any of those things are true.

Most importantly, Ted Lilly is a proud member of Team Ted, an exclusive group. Plus his full name is Theodore Roosevelt Lilly, which is awesome.

Reasonable speculation

Posted on by
1

After hitting six bombs in 45 games in AA, Duda has eight in 21 in AAA. He’s hitting a combined .300/.406/.582 for the year and .329/.395/.750 in 21 games in AAA. Three of his eight homers have come against lefties against whom he’s hitting .200/.286/.640 compared to .392/.448/.804 versus righties.

– Toby Hyde, MetsMinorLeagueBlog.com.

I don’t want to bandy about unfounded rumors, but I believe it’s entirely reasonable to start speculating that Mets farmhand Lucas Duda has sold his soul to Satan for home-run power or is otherwise benefiting from a recent foray into the dark arts.

Duda’s previous career high was 11 home runs in St. Lucie in 2008. He averaged about one home run for every 46 at-bats in his first three Minor League seasons, but has stepped it up to about one per every 17 at-bats this season, including a downright Ruthian 1/9.5 rate since his promotion to Triple-A.

Will Duda keep that up? No. Not unless he really entered a contract with Lucifer. But the outburst has to at least earn him consideration as something more than organizational roster filler. By most accounts he’s a pretty terrible fielder in the outfield, and he’d be redundant on the big-league club with Chris Carter already in tow. But he’s probably a better option than Mike Jacobs to get a call if the Mets need left-handed pop in a pinch.

Some stuff about Jon Niese

Posted on by
3

The start was an important one because it was Niese’s second of the season against the Reds. (He gave up four runs in a no-decision on May 5.) A young pitcher like Niese may be able to befuddle hitters the first time around, but the second time, they lose the advantage that comes with their unfamiliarity.

– Thomas Kaplan, New York Times.

This is a point I hear made pretty frequently, and one I’ve definitely considered here numerous times. But I wonder if it’s true. Is there any evidence to back up the claim that a pitcher does better against his opponents the first time he faces them?

Also, even if there is, I’d have to guess it is at least partly attributable to the same logic that explains the beginner’s luck fallacy. The notion of “beginner’s luck” exists because people who win when they first start gambling are more likely to keep gambling, since they’ve been rewarded. If they lost from the outset, they’re more likely to leave the casino. When they win from the start, they stay long enough for the odds to catch up to them, and so when they see someone else win early they say, “aww, beginner’s luck.”

If a young pitcher gets rocked by an opponent in his first start against them, there’s a pretty good chance he’s getting rocked by lots of opponents and he’s not going to last in the Majors long enough to make a second start against any team. If he succeeds his first go-round, he’ll get more chances, and so more opportunities to fail. I’m pretty sure that’s a big factor in the Verducci Effect and “sophomore jinx,” too — no one’s looking for regression from pitchers who sucked in the first place.

Anyway, that’s just something I’m thinking of and has nothing to do with Jon Niese. At least not yet, I guess.

Niese lost last night and got tagged for a couple homers, but he struck out eight guys while walking only one in 7 2/3 innings. That’s excellent.

In fact, Niese’s 2.61 K:BB ratio is the best among Mets starters this year. He’s inducing 49.5% groundballs. Straight up, the kid is good.

People always seem to talk about him as, at best, a middle-of-the-rotation innings eater. But considering his strong start to his career and very good Minor League peripherals, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect a little more than that. He could certainly struggle with a little more exposure, like the quote above suggests, but there’s no evidence that he’s been unduly lucky in his rookie campaign.

Niese has been one of the least heralded reasons for the Mets’ success this year, I think. If he keeps this up, though, that will change. With Jason Heyward hurt and Stephen Strasburg’s innings set to be limited, Niese may contend for NL Rookie of the Year.

Hold on, it turns out Bronson Arroyo is a human treasure trove of YouTube hilarity

Posted on by
1

Here’s Bronson Arroyo covering the Goo Goo Dolls’ “Slide:”

Here’s Bronson Arroyo selling a truck. Language somehow NSFW (?):

Here’s Bronson Arroyo hawking very intriguing sandwich that appears to be a hamburger parmesan hero:

Here’s Bronson Arroyo, ahh– I have no idea what this is. The language is intensely NSFW though:

That’s tonight’s Cincinnati Reds starter right there.

All sorts of stuff I didn’t previously know about squirrels

Posted on by
6

Yet researchers who study gray squirrels argue that their subject is far more compelling than most people realize, and that behind the squirrel’s success lies a phenomenal elasticity of body, brain and behavior. Squirrels can leap a span 10 times the length of their body, roughly double what the best human long jumper can manage. They can rotate their ankles 180 degrees, and so keep a grip while climbing no matter which way they’re facing. Squirrels can learn by watching others — cross-phyletically, if need be. In their book “Squirrels: The Animal Answer Guide,” Richard W. Thorington Jr. and Katie Ferrell of the Smithsonian Institution described the safe-pedestrian approach of a gray squirrel eager to traverse a busy avenue near the White House. The squirrel waited on the grass near a crosswalk until people began to cross the street, said the authors, “and then it crossed the street behind them.”

In the acuity of their visual system, the sensitivity and deftness with which they can manipulate objects, their sociability, chattiness and willingness to deceive, squirrels turn out to be surprisingly similar to primates. They nest communally as multigenerational, matrilineal clans, and at the end of a hard day’s forage, they greet each other with a mutual nuzzling of cheek and lip glands that looks decidedly like a kiss. Dr. Koprowski said that when he was growing up in Cleveland, squirrels were the only wild mammals to which he was exposed. “When I got to college, I thought I’d study polar bears or mountain lions,” he said. “Luckily I ended up doing my master’s and Ph.D. on squirrels instead.”

– Natalie Angier, New York Times.

My wife and I were talking about this not too long ago: I have lived among squirrels my entire life, and yet I have no idea where they sleep. Turns out they “nest communally as multigenerational, matrilineal clans,” which is impressive and ominous but doesn’t really clarify where they’re actually sleeping. Holes in trees? If so, how do they hollow them out to fit their whole squirrel clan in there? Does that kill the tree?

The Times article is pretty fascinating. Turns out squirrels also trick each other when hiding their nuts. They bury them and rebury them to avoid nut theft, because squirrels are super paranoid.

It’s a neat trick squirrels have pulled. How many other rodents live among us that we don’t actively try to destroy? I mean, sure, sometimes some squirrels will overstep their bounds and find a way to burrow in your attic crawlspace and then, you know, chain of animal command and all. Humans are unmistakably the king of the suburbs.

But no one ever puts down squirrel poison or squirrel traps like they do for rats or mice. Really, there’s no other non-domesticated mammal as large and ubiquitous that we so willingly share a habitat with. We fear raccoons and possums disgust us, but squirrels bear no similar stigma. And why? Is it just because squirrels are better looking than rats? Less likely to spread the plague? Less invasive?

And though we don’t seek to rid our yards of woodchucks or chipmunks or any other rodent that doesn’t look to invade our homes or ravage our gardens, they’re not nearly as present and prevalent as the squirrel. So I recommend being a little more suspicious of squirrels. Those little bastards are up to something.