I got kinda busy today and didn’t get to fully transcribe the stuff from Shaq’s media event at his art exhibition yesterday. (Shaq, for a variety of a reasons, is a difficult man to mic, which makes transcription difficult.)
Anyway, in the meantime, enjoy this brief iPhone video of Shaq talking about art. You’ll have to turn the volume way up:
YouTube is incredible. I found this video today, from the 1990 MTV Rock N’ Jock softball game. It features Bud Bundy, for one thing, plus Keanu Reeves back when he was just “Keanu Reeves, from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.”
We don’t see it, but we’re told that Tone Loc picks off Reeves at first base. But earlier in the video, we see Tone Loc playing catcher, so I can only assume that Tone Loc picked off Keanu Reeves by throwing behind the runner at first, a very aggressive move for any backstop, no less one playing in a celebrity softball game.
So good for Tone Loc for further confirming his own awesomeness. I’m sure manager Sammy Hagar was proud.
The highlight of the clip comes when Darryl Strawberry rips an inside-the-park home run past a diving Reeves, who took a downright terrible route to the ball.
In the comments section for a Jeff Francoeur post on Monday, Brian wrote, “If he hits .300 and slugs .500 I won’t give a damn if his OBP is also .300.”
I happen to disagree — the problem with OPS is that it overvalues slugging percentage relative to on-base percentage, and on-base percentage plays a greater role in helping a team score runs. This is why more OBP-driven stats like wOBA have come into vogue, and a nice overview of the principles distinguishing wOBA from OBP and OPS can be found here.
Regardless, Brian’s comment intrigued me, because it struck me that slugging over .500 with a .300 on-base percentage is probably difficult to do. After all, as I’ve written — and plenty of people have written before me — if you expose to the world that you’re willing to swing at so many pitches, you’re unlikely to see a whole lot of pitches to drive.
So I consulted the incredible — and totally worth the price of subscription — baseball-reference play index to see how often it had been done.
Thrice. At least with the plate appearances to qualify for the batting title since 1901. And one of the guys who did it was a Met, and one of the guys who did it is currently a Met:
| Rk | Player | Year ▴ | OBP | SLG | Age | Tm |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dave Kingman | 1976 | .286 | .506 | 27 | NYM |
| 2 | Tony Armas | 1984 | .300 | .531 | 30 | BOS |
| 3 | Mike Jacobs | 2008 | .299 | .514 | 27 | FLA |
Plus, as Twitterer OldBiscuitPants (one of my favorite Twitter handles and old baseball nicknames, FWIW) points out, Armas actually posted an OBP ever-so-slightly above .300 in 1984: .30044.
So, to Brian’s comment, if Francoeur manages to slug .500 with an OBP at or below .300, it’s probably worth giving a damn, because we’d be witnessing something exceptionally rare in the annals of baseball history.
Almost certainly not a good rare thing, mind you, but something I’m sure would be entertaining as hell to behold.
The Daily News gets Dr. Lewis Maharam on the horn to talk about PRP therapy. “It’s not a controversial technique,” he says on page 54. But according to Teri Thompson, Michael O’Keeffe and Adam Rubin on page 53: “The treatment, which is a controversial but legal procedure…”
Rob Neyer makes an interesting point about Minor Leaguers, per diems and healthy eating.
This absolutely nails it. I am terrified of the Google.
Here’s video of Ike Davis’ double, in case you missed it.
OK, I was going to try to construct something more cohesive on today’s game for all y’all who aren’t permitted (or, in my case, obligated) to watch Mets’ Spring Training games at work, but I just found out I’ve got an opportunity to meet Shaq in an hour so I’m kind of in a rush. Because SHAQ!
Anyway, here are some notes on a very small sample and a very meaningless game:
Ike Davis looked bad in his first two at-bats, chasing a bunch of pitches in the dirt. He struck out against Tommy Hanson in the first — hardly a crime — then grounded out weakly against Kris Medlen in the second (at-bat, not inning).
He roped a double into the gap off Jesse Chavez in his third at-bat, though. And even better, I think, he stroked a nice opposite-field single off lefty Mike Dunn his last time up off an outside fastball.
Ruben Tejada looked rangy in the field, to the eye at least. He made one near-hilarious misfire, wildly overthrowing Davis after making a nice play going to his right. He also worked counts pretty well at the plate, and lined an RBI single in the Mets’ three-run fifth.
Gary Matthews Jr. killed his first rally of the season with a double play.
Bobby Livingston has a sweet chin-strap beard.
Nick Evans still exists.
Chris Coste’s defense left a little to be desired. I’m no Joe Janish, but a few balls got passed Coste that looked like they could have been blocked by a better catcher. They were all ruled wild pitches, so I guess I shouldn’t kill him for them, but, you know, he’s making Bobby Livingston look bad. And look at that chinstrap beard. Bobby Livingston’s clearly putting a lot of effort into looking good.
I read the print edition Daily News every day on my commute into Manhattan. I realize, of course, that I could get all of it online on my iPhone, but I like the effect of seeing the front and back pages, plus I don’t think reading on such a tiny screen is good for my eyes or back.
Anyway, with all the Tony Galea stuff going on that vaguely involves Jose Reyes, Alex Rodriguez, Tiger Woods and now Carlos Beltran, something keeps jumping out at me: The Daily News consistently refers to the platelet-rich plasma therapy that Reyes underwent in June as “controversial,” but it never explains why the treatment is controversial, and I don’t remember it being controversial in the summer.
And it’s always in news stories, too. Actually, the columnists who have mentioned the story — Mike Lupica and Hank Gola — have avoided the term “controversial” when discussing blood-spinning, but just about every reporter mentioning the therapy has not. Check it out:
Michael O’Keefe: “controversial but legal therapy known as ‘blood spinning.’”
O’Keeffe and Teri Thompson: “a controversial technique called platelet-rich plasma injection therapy, also known as ‘blood spinning.’”
Thompson and Adam Rubin: “the controversial ‘blood-spinning’ or plasma-replacement therapy”
Thompson, O’Keeffe, Mark Feinsand and David Saltonstall: “the controversial – but legal – therapy known as ‘blood-spinning.’”
Thompson, O’Keeffe, Nathaniel Vinton and Christian Red: “a controversial blood-spinning treatment.”
I could continue. In all, platelet-rich plasma therapy has, by my count, been noted as controversial 13 times in the Daily News without any mention of the nature of the controversy surrounding the method.
And then there’s this, from a Gola column in December:
“It’s well-established in the sports medicine community to do this,” [Dr. Lewis] Maharam said. “The Steelers’ team physicians have done it with Hines Ward. The team physicians for the Giants have done it. I’ve done it on my patients. People at NYU have done it. It’s all over the country. I call it almost a magic bullet in sports medicine equivalent to when we first got MRI.”
So even though Maharam, the Daily News‘ sports-medicine expert on call, doesn’t note anything controversial about the treatment, the treatment can’t be noted in terms of Woods, A-Rod, Reyes or Beltran without mention of the massive, mysterious controversy surrounding it?
I’m confused. Certainly it’s bad if Galea was distributing HGH and other performance-enhancing drugs, because that’s illegal. And it’s bad if he was practicing medicine without a license, as he allegedly was in Florida, when he performed the platelet-rich plasma therapy on Woods.
And I’ll allow that it’s a little weird that all these guys had to go to Canada to get this treatment, which sounds, from all the reading I’ve done, like a relatively simple procedure.
But this New York Times article from last February makes it sound like the only potential controversy surrounding the treatment is whether or not it works.
And the treatment was not controversial even by the Daily News’ standard in September, when Sean Avery had the treatment, nor a couple of weeks before that when Katie Charles wrote a feature on the subject.
And platelet-rich plasma therapy did not seem controversial in any of the nine times it was mentioned in the Daily News before that, including when Reyes underwent the treatment in June.
Maybe I’m missing something, or I entirely missed something, or the Daily News neglected to cover some story that exposed to the world how blood-spinning therapy is a giant hoax or a stealthy way to inject patients with mind-control drugs or something. The only vaguely fishy thing I can dig up on it is that Brits call it “Dracula Therapy.” (Ed. Note: DRACULA THERAPY!)
Either way, since none of the 13 stories mention why exactly the treatment is controversial, since the treatment was apparently not controversial until it involved a slew of favorite N.Y. media whipping boys, and since several of the reports specify that the treatment is “legal” or “not illegal” — implying that its legality should be even in question — it strikes me that more than just blood is being spun.
Doin’ my duty:
David Wright will join Kevin Burkhardt on SNY’s pre-game show today at 12:30, showing off his now even-more-jacked physique.
If you’re someplace where you can watch TV, I recommend checking it out.
Here’s video of Jose Reyes’ triple in yesterday’s intrasquad game:
Spring Training games start today, weather permitting. Howard Megdal reminds us how little they matter.
I have a feeling this article provides a whole lot of basic background knowledge we’re going to want for the dystopian future.
How terrifying would it be to lift weights for two hours, run on the treadmill for 30 minutes, do 300 lateral sit-ups, then look in the mirror and realize you’re still Carrot Top?
Wait, why did no one tell me the Pirates play in Pirate City? Yarrrgh. How have I missed this for all these years?
I don’t like pat myself on the back, but — oh, wait, I love patting myself on the back. It feels so nice. Soothing back-pats.
The Internet’s blowing up today with this John Harper column about Tony Bernazard and how he’s to blame — because no one’s ever found anything wrong with the Mets that can’t somehow be blamed on Tony Bernazard — for the Mets’ misguided opposite-field heavy approach to hitting in 2009.
Rob Neyer weighed in on the column, agreeing that all the opposite-field hitting was a bad idea.
But you know what has two thumbs and was on top of this in July? This guy. Check it out:
In 2008, the Mets pulled 26 percent of the balls they hit onto the field of play or over the fence, according to the best Web site ever. They hit 59 percent to the middle and 15 percent to the opposite field.In 2009, they’ve pulled 25 percent, hit 56 percent to the middle and 19 percent to the opposite field.
In 2008, David Wright pulled 29 percent, hit 55 percent up the middle and hit 16 percent to the opposite field.
This season, Wright has pulled 26 percent, hit 48 percent up the middle and hit 26 percent the opposite way….
What I do know is this: The Mets, most notably Wright, are hitting the ball the opposite way more frequently this year. And if that’s intentional, they should probably stop. I’m no hitting coach and I’ll never purport to be, but the Mets have not hit a single home run to the opposite field in 2009 according to baseball-reference (Fernando Tatis‘ blast to right-center in Pittsburgh must count as center field, I guess).
Obviously, there are times and places for going the opposite way and good hitters do it naturally, but forcing it more frequently than it is necessary does not seem like a good idea. Power — power that the Mets have so often lacked this year — comes most easily from pulling the ball.
So in conclusion, I hereby announce my candidacy for Tony Bernazard’s job.
Tedquarters 