Author Archives: Ted Berg

Either Mark Teahen is hilarious or he has hilariously awful taste in music

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Not only did Justin Bieber throw out the first pitch, but the teen sensation’s hit “Baby” blasted through U.S. Cellular Field when Teahen came up to bat. Teahen usually plays a reggaeton song by former teammate Jose Lima’s band and mixes in other tunes like “Barbie Girl” by Aqua and “A Bay Bay” by Hurricane Chris.

Not this night. With Bieber at the park, Teahen figured why not use “Baby”? Although he’s not necessarily a die-hard fan of the singer, he said he got turned on to the song a few months ago by his girlfriend and even has it on his iPhone.

– Andrew Seligman, Associated Press.

I’ve got to assume those choices are drenched in irony, which catapults Mark Teahen toward the top of the list of my favorite baseball players. I can’t imagine anyone takes “Barbie Girl” seriously. And bonus points for using Jose Lima’s band. Just the reminder of Jose Lima’s existence is probably enough to make a hitter salivate as he walks to the plate.

Also, Teahen operates a Twitter feed in the name of his dog, Espy.

H/T to Baseball Think Factory for the link.


Figuring the figures

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I read what young baseball fans write on their blogs and various comment sections. I get the sense they aren’t haven’t fun with the game, but rather analyzing the game. It’s ok to do that, but it gets to a point where they bog everyone, including themselves, down. Years from now they won’t have stories for their kids, like a Greg Prince, but print outs of graphs of David Wright’s pitch recognition.

Ironically the volume of information, as much as it has helped the game in the front office, has hurt the quality of the fan in the stands. It used to be fun scouring the internet for good baseball discussion. Now I feel like I should be sitting in a classroom with a #2 pencil. I don’t want to be dramatic and say this is the “day the music died”, but with advanced stats and information it very well may be the day it became harder to have fun, dream, and enjoy a summer rooting for your favorite team.

– Mike Silva, NY Baseball Digest.

Look: I’m not out to tell anyone how they should enjoy baseball. I can only speak for myself, and I don’t feel much need to defend my love for the sport. You’ll just have to trust me on this one: I love baseball. Absolutely f@#$ing love it.

I love every in and out and up and down, every dribbler up the middle and crushed foul ball, every called strike three on the outside corner and every ill-timed mound meltdown. Baseball is meant for entertainment, and it is great theater. So I even love it when the Mets blow a seven-game lead in September or trot out a lineup filled with Triple-A caliber players. Heartbreak, as torturous as it can feel, is entertaining too.

And my enjoyment is only furthered by understanding — or trying to understand — the various metrics used to quantify every element of the sport.

I recognize that plenty of people are probably content to appreciate the natural beauty of a sunrise without bothering to learn that it’s caused by the earth spinning on its axis. And I don’t begrudge them that right. I just happen to think understanding the elegance of the mechanisms prompting that sunrise makes the effect even more spectacular.

The numbers driving baseball are dictated by very subtle differences. Anyone can watch a few basketball games and recognize that the guy who put up 30 points in each is probably the best player on the court. But the distinction between a great hitter and a crappy one is as small as safely reaching base once more in every ten plate appearances. If you think you will notice that a .320 hitter gets one more hit over 20 at-bats than a .270 hitter, well, good for you.

I don’t think I can, though, and so trying to know the tendencies and probabilities involved in every play help me better appreciate both the completely predictable events and the staggeringly improbable ones.

Knowing that Rod Barajas has a .275 on-base percentage doesn’t in any way diminish the awesome aesthetics of his moonshots. It does, however, help me realize how unlikely he is to continue homering at such a ridiculous rate, and watching a player triumph over the odds is pretty spectacular, too.

And that’s — to me at least — the redeeming thing about statistics, and maybe about baseball as a whole. We get to watch people succeed against the odds all the time. Adam Kennedy once hit three home runs in a playoff game. If you only watched the games and never studied the numbers, you wouldn’t realize how crazy that was. But just glance once at the back of Kennedy’s baseball card and you recognize it as a beautiful, hilarious, unbelievable, uplifting feat.

That makes baseball more fun.

Maybe other fans don’t care to know more or understand more thoroughly every aspect impacting a baseball game. Again, I can only speak for myself.

I know this: When I come across something that excites me like baseball does, I want to know everything about it. And part of what has made following baseball and writing about baseball so enjoyable, to me, is that every time I think I know everything, someone uncovers some new, deeper way of understanding the game.

It can be frustrating sometimes, and the breadth of information available can be overwhelming, for sure. But the time spent learning to sort through that information to better appreciate all the wonderful intricacies of the game creates a positive feedback loop: Everything I learn about baseball just makes me like baseball more.

French devolution

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Jeff Francoeur produced another 0-fer, and now has a slash line of .230/.295/.393. He’s like that friendly obese friend who has spent a lifetime eating fast food, then goes on a two week crash diet in an attempt to change his ways. Everyone around him is excited and supportive, happy that the all-around good guy is getting his act together. Then one day you drive by Wendy’s, see him sitting in the front window with three Baconators and realize it’s just not meant to be. Yes, Frenchy has loads of potential but after 3,000+ plate appearances actual results are expected.

– James Kannengieser, Amazin’ Avenue.

In May, Frenchy has a .296 OPS. Not OBP, OPS. Tiny sample and all, but that’s abysmal.

Yes, Francoeur was good for the last few months of the 2009 season and excellent for the first couple weeks of 2010. But every day it looks more and more like that success was the exception and the rest is the rule.

After all, the Frenchman’s .230/.295/.393 line is awfully similar to the .239/.294/.359 mark he posted in 2008 and not terribly off the .250/.282/.352 pace he maintained with the Braves in 2009 before the trade. The May stats represent a small sample. The bulk of his career does not.

Like James suggests, it doesn’t make him a bad guy or a bad teammate, it just makes him a bad person to count on for production out of a corner outfield spot.

Judging by the eye and the stats, he’s been good in right field, but not good enough to compensate for his complete lack of offensive production. At some point soon, Chris Carter should see some starts against right-handed pitchers. And again, that’s not to call Carter a savior. It’s just to assume he can at the least be something better than an offensive black hole.

Why get on Francoeur and give Jose Reyes a pass? Pretty simple, really: Besides the fact that Reyes competently fields a defensive position, there’s no overwhelming evidence to suggest Reyes is anything like this bad of a hitter.

He has posted OBPs around .355 with some power in every season since 2006, and smart money says Reyes returns to at least that level — if not better — when he finds his stroke. He missed most of last season and a big chunk of Spring Training. Unless he’s injured again, Reyes is likely still sorting things out. And Jerry Manuel’s not doing Reyes any favors when he forces his new third hitter to give up strikes.

Bud Selig finally recognized for his tireless efforts to protect world from PEDs

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Commissioner Bud Selig was named the first recipient of Taylor’s Award, presented by the Taylor Hooton Foundation to an individual who has made a major impact on efforts to educate and protect American youth from the dangers of using performance-enhancing drugs. …

“I’m extremely proud to present the first Taylor’s Award to Commissioner Bud Selig,” said Don Hooton, Taylor’s father, who serves as president of the Hooton Foundation, said at a media conference after the joint session.

– Barry M. Bloom, MLB.com.

“I was being sarcastic,” Hooton later added.

(Ed. Note: Just to clarify, Hooton didn’t actually say that last part. That part’s the joke/Norm MacDonald reference.)

Same as the old Boss

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The Camden Riversharks announced today that designated hitter, Valentino Pascucci has signed a contract with the New York Mets organization. He will join New York’s AAA team, the Buffalo Bisens, of the International League.

“Valentino was a team leader for us. He came in as a former major league payer and worked hard to reprove himself,” Team Manager, Von Hayes said.

– AtlanticLeague.com.

Hat tip to Phil Hoops from NJ.com for the news.

You’re never going to hear me rail against Val Pascucci’s return to the Mets’ organization. I will go to my grave believing he should have been with the big-league club in 2008 when Marlon Anderson was getting so many pinch-hit opportunities, and that he could probably be a decent enough Major League hitter if given an adequate sample of at-bats, despite concerns about his ability to hit big-league breaking stuff.

And Boss is probably being called to duty in Buffalo because Chris Carter’s up with the Mets and Fernando Martinez is hurt, and the Mets and Bisons want a slugger beyond Mike Hessman and Mike Jacobs to put baseballs and asses in the seats. Organizational soldiers Jesus Feliciano and D.J. Wabick — neither of whom has any appreciable power — have been manning the corner outfield spots in Buffalo since the Fernanchise got hurt and Carter left town, so it’s not like Pascucci will be taking at-bats away from any prospects.

Still, now that the club appears to be progressing prospects through the Minors in the traditional fashion, it will likely want to find Triple-A playing time for at least one of several dudes crushing the ball in Binghamton eventually. Nick Evans, Zach Lutz and Lucas Duda are all maintaining OPSes around .950 or above, and all play corner positions currently manned by the likes of Hessman, Jacobs, Wabick, Feliciano and now, presumably, Pascucci.

Signing Pascucci doesn’t prevent any of that from happening, of course, and since I haven’t seen or been following the B-Mets that closely, I’ll defer to the Mets on the decision of when to promote any of those three. It’s early yet, after all.

Probably Daniel Murphy’s forthcoming rehab factors into the shuffling as well, and almost certainly forebodes more Minor League roster shakeups to come. If it’s true that the Mets will look to play Murph at multiple positions, it could be that they don’t want to clog up too many spots in Buffalo with guys that should be getting regular at-bats somewhere.

In any case, this is a good day for the city of Buffalo and fans of Quad-A mashers everywhere. Welcome back, Val Pascucci.

Radio gaga

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Emmis, which owns WRXP (101.9 FM), WRKS (98.7 FM) and WQHT (97.1 FM), says in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it may consider selling one of them….

[WRXP] is in the top 10 among 18- to 34-year-olds, but rock stations have always faced an uphill ratings and ad climb here.

What’s pretty certain is that if Emmis does decide to sell, ESPN is interested. ESPN has plenty of cash, and its officials make no secret that they would love to put their all-sports WEPN (now at 1050 AM) on an FM signal.

– David Hinckley, New York Daily News.

I apologize for the lack of a link; I can’t find this story online. I don’t want to transcribe the whole thing, but the article goes on to explain that sports stations are growing increasingly popular on the FM dial.

Thinking about radio too long makes my head hurt. This came up in the comments section not too long ago: There’s free music, just floating about in the air, everywhere. All we need is an inexpensive device to access it.

And for the most part, it sucks. It sucks enough that we launch satellites into space, then pay for subscriptions to access better music in our cars and earphones. Sure, there’s probably some low-frequency electromagnetic waves bouncing around with Led Zeppelin on them near you right now, and that’s awesome, but soon that’ll turn to Phil Collins or something.

Apparently sports stations are getting more popular, and maybe as a member of the sports media that should excite me. It doesn’t, though, because I don’t really like listening to sports-talk nonsense and the sports programming I actually do enjoy on the radio — the games themselves — will always find a home somewhere.

Maybe I’m senselessly nostalgic for the medium and should just give in to always plugging my iPod into the cassette-adaptor thing I have, as I sometimes do. But my iPod only plays music I already know, and I can still remember when I relied on the radio to introduce me to new music.

I heard Sublime’s “Date Rape” for the first time on 92.7 WDRE during its short run of alternative-rock programming in the mid-90s. I bought 40oz. to Freedom the next day, I think, and played it about a million times. (Hasn’t gotten old yet, FWIW.)

Obviously WDRE in “The Underground Network” days wasn’t commercially viable, or at least not as profitable as the Adult Contemporary and Spanish-language channels it would become. Presumably the same is true of 101.9, the only station I know of in the city that plays anything like contemporary rock music, now apparently in jeopardy of turning to ESPN Radio.

And presumably market factors explain why Hot 97 and Power 105 don’t play a ton of great hip-hop and Q104.3 rotates some 100 classic rock songs, over and over again.

I can’t pretend to understand the forces that drive radio or what makes a radio station successful. But it strikes me as either baffling or a massive shame that not a single station on terrestrial radio — the source of so much free music — can manage to consistently play music I’m interested in listening to. That’s not abject snobbery either; I don’t know many people satisfied with tuning into a radio station for their music these days.

I’ve said before probably will again that I’d like my epitaph to say something like, “Here lies the man who saved radio.” Problem is, I have no idea how to do that, nor if radio even needs saving. Maybe I’m just crusty and old, and the people at ClearChannel could care less if I like what they’re putting out. I must not be the target audience.

All I know is it’d be pretty damn frustrating if one of the few halfway decent stations in this market started airing Michael Kay all the time.