Category Archives: Baseball

Foo Fighters guitar guy Pat Smear looks a little like Edgardo Alfonzo

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It seemed more apparent during the Global Citizen citizen concert at Central Park on Saturday, but there’s definitely some resemblance there:

It’s no Kruk/Loaf but I like the comp because they sort of fill similar roles — the “shadow hero,” to quote Gary Cohen’s description of Alfonzo. Remember when Nirvana showed up on Unplugged and there was some fourth guy in Nirvana? And you were like, “hey, who the hell is that guy? He’s pretty good at the guitar.” Then he went on to a short stint with the Foo Fighters, left amicably then returned amicably a few years later because it seems like the Foo Fighters do most everything amicably.

As for that: I’m not a huge fan of the band or anything, but their performance in Central Park was awesome. Turns out if you can maintain a two-decade career as a rock star like Dave Grohl has, you’ve probably got some kind of charisma. Also, Dave Grohl’s got about the most impressive discography of any rock musician there is.

On Trout vs. Cabrera, briefly

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Fun fact: If you space out in high school history class and the teacher calls on you to answer some question you did not hear, always say, “Nationalism.” It’s better than even money that’s an acceptable response. Trust me, I spent a lot of time spaced out in high school history class, paying just enough attention to learn that history textbooks will chalk up every international conflict to nationalism, among other things.

In high school, I always thought that seemed ridiculous. Really? People will go to actual war over my side vs. your side silliness? Civilized people? My know-it-all teenage self figured it first for an oversimplification, then a needless complication, something that is really true only in high school history class.

Then I tuned into some of the AL MVP debate online and it didn’t seem so hard to believe.

I’m kidding, obviously, and I know that everyone currently arguing for and against the MVP cases of Mike Trout and Miguel Cabrera realizes that MVP Awards are a frivolity, like sports themselves, and only merit such heated rhetoric within the narrow confines of baseball chatter. And sometime in December when it all has passed, the staunchest Troutite and the loudest Cabreratista might run into each other somewhere and say, “oh hey, that was great fun, both players are excellent, baseball is wonderful,” and share a beer and a hearty bro-hug.

I’m only saying that I don’t really care to pour my teacup of kerosene on an already raging inferno, and that most every argument — good, bad, ironic, angry, etc. — has already been made for both players, plus the backlash to those arguments and the backlash to the backlash. And the season isn’t even over yet.

Anyway, that’s all a lengthy build-up to a rather obvious point: Mike Trout is ridiculously awesome.

Mike Trout deserves to win the AL MVP this year, I believe. But if he doesn’t, he’ll probably get at least one eventually.

By baseball-reference’s standards, Trout is in his age-20 season. He has, to date, a 156 career park- and league-adjusted OPS+ over 765 plate appearances. That’s extraordinary. Here is the complete list of baseball players who put up an OPS+ above 140 over at least 500 plate appearances by their age-20 seasons:

Ted Williams
Mike Trout
Ty Cobb
Mel Ott
Mickey Mantle
Frank Robinson
Jimmie Foxx
Rogers Hornsby

Besides Trout, every single one of those guys is a Hall of Famer. Every one. All but Ott won an MVP award at least once, and Ott got totally jobbed in 1938. The average for non-Trout players on that list is 1.9 MVP Awards (or their equivalent), and both Hornsby and Cobb dominated their leagues in long stretches in which no such award existed. Also, Trout plays a premium defensive position exceptionally well and steals tons of bases without getting caught. In short, if Trout turns out anything like as good as the historical precedents suggest, he should win plenty of MVP Awards by the time he’s through. If Trout’s as good as we hope — and this is a terribly heavy thing to put on a 21-year-old — he’s going to be an inner-circle Hall of Famer.

Cabrera, meanwhile, is no slouch himself. And though the Triple Crown, like everything else, is a frivolity, it’s nonetheless a rare one. And while neither batting average nor RBI is necessarily a great stat with which to assess offensive talent, you’re never going to find a Triple Crown winner who’s not a transcendent hitter. So Cabrera is that. It seems like he has somehow sort of flown under the radar despite being the second best hitter in baseball for most of his career, and if it takes a novelty like the Triple Crown to make him a household name, then great. Guy’s awesome, let us not forget.

Which is all to say, I guess, that it’s not really worth getting so furious about.

Depends on the deal

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No one wants to hear it, and I get that. It’s the time of the year and the type of the year when we’re so fed up and worn down that we just want to worry about which guys the Mets should get rid of without concerning ourselves with why the Mets are getting rid of them.

Sure, if pushed any rational human would allow that no trades happen in vacuums and that all this-guy or that-guy talk in early October is merely a means of passing time between the last remaining regular-season baseball games, and no one really needs to be reminded so frequently that whether this-guy or that-guy should be traded always depends on the deal. And frankly, at this point, it’s getting obnoxious.

But it’s still true every time.

Should the Mets trade David Wright? I don’t know. Should they trade him for Mike Trout? Yes. Should they trade him for Greg Dobbs? No.

The Mets should trade Wright if they believe the players they receive will be worth more to them than Wright and their ability to sign Wright to a contract extension — a difficult thing to evaluate. Wright is a world-class player, the best in franchise history. He endured a few rough seasons by his standards from 2009-2011, but even then was still excellent. In 2012, he returned to form with an MVP-caliber season.

Or maybe 2009-2011 is the form and this is the fluke.

The Mets will finish with 75 or fewer wins this season and don’t appear primed to contend next year, even if it’d be silly to write off any team for 2013 in October, 2012.

Wright will eventually decline, as all players do. But when, and how severely? How much will it cost to extend his contract, and how much more than that price tag will he have to be worth to them to merit keeping him around? If the Mets know they can get multiple cost-controlled everyday players in return for Wright, maybe they can maximize their resources by trading him now and signing someone else with the money they (hopefully) had earmarked for his extension.

But then, how often do players as good and as young as Wright hit the open market these days? Can the Mets really hope to find a better fit in free agency?

Friday Q&A, pt. 2: Mets stuff

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https://twitter.com/MetsLegacy/status/251701574416605185

An outfielder and it’s not close. Josh Thole struggled this year but I don’t think the Mets should bail on him quite yet; he’s still only 25, he’s a lefty-hitting catcher, before this season he always got on base at a reasonable clip, and he can catch the knuckleball. None of those qualities is easily replaced. I don’t know if his offensive nosedive this season is related to the concussion or plain old-fashioned randomness, but either way the Mets should keep him around for 2013. Is he a Hall of Famer? No. Is he even an every day big-league catcher? I’m not sure. But with a decent righty-hitting complement (Kelly Shoppach, for example), Thole’s a fine low-cost option behind the plate to allow them to focus their offseason efforts elsewhere.

Like, say, in the outfield. Right now the Mets’ best and arguably only Major League outfielder under contract for 2013 is Mike Baxter. And Baxter’s resume is barely 200 at-bats long. A healthy Kirk Nieuwenhuis should help somehow too. But that’s two and they both hit left-handed. They need to bring in multiple outfielders this offseason.

Yes? No? Maybe? Depends on the deal?

https://twitter.com/TommBauer/status/251690470885961728

Two reasons: 1) They got our hopes way up and then fell apart, so we had time to reset those expectations. I suspect if they came out of the gate 5-13 like they did last year and had been 67-71 since, we’d be discussing this season in very different terms. But then if ifs and buts were candy and nuts, etc.

2) LOLMets

https://twitter.com/jeffpaternostro/status/251688009676775425

I don’t know if I can name all of them off the top of my head. Obviously Mike Piazza represents the top of the line for Let’s Go Mets rally-video stars. I know Kevin James’ is terrifying and Chris Rock’s is enjoyable, the caveat being that I find most things Chris Rock does enjoyable. John Cena’s doesn’t really do it for me. I’m not a big pro-wrestling guy and I find the way he’s flexing both distracting and emasculating.

I do wish more of the celebrities could actually nail the appropriate rhythm of the Let’s Go Mets chant. It’s not like it’s hard. Why does Kevin James feel the need to syncopate?

One of the many cool things about R.A. Dickey is that you just know he’s as psyched about Ralph Macchio’s endorsement as we are. I think it’d be cool if Paul Pfeiffer from the Wonder Years came out in support of Dickey too, both because then people would inevitably assume it meant Marilyn Manson was an R.A. Dickey fan and because you have to figure Paul Pfeiffer is true SABR. Turns out the actor is a lawyer in New York now. Could easily be a Dickey fan.

Friday Q&A, pt. 1: General baseball

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Via email, Chris M writes:

What do you think of teams still having champagne celebrations for only clinching a wild card birth, considering under the new playoff format the wild card only guarantees a spot in a one game playoff?

I personally think the idea of this extra wild card being considered an additional “playoff berth” has been a farce from the beginning. A one-game playoff is not a spot in “the playoffs.” There is still only one wild card team that makes the playoffs, all they did was add a play-in game to get the wild card spot.

It’s kind of silly, but who wouldn’t seek out every possible excuse for a Champagne celebration? I feel like I should get one every time I come home from the gym. Plus, at the Major League level they seem like the type of thing that was once special but has now become so standardized that every team is constantly trying to outdo its predecessor with the biggest and most extravagant, like it’s Chipper Jones’ Super Sweet 16 or something.

As for the second part of the email, it’s all semantic, but I do think the actual Wild Card winner is the team that wins the play-in game, not both teams that clinch a spot in the play-in game. Right? Is that correct? Does it matter?

In any case, it’s still stupid: It’ll work out this year for the American League because there are a bunch of teams very close in the standings. But if the National League wraps up the way it is today, the Braves would have to play the Cardinals in a one-game play-in for the right to continue in the postseason even though over the course of a 162-game season the Braves have been seven games better than the Cardinals. Screw the Braves and everything, but that’s just ridiculous. The point of making the season so long is to allow the very good teams to distinguish themselves from the just kind of decent ones. One game should never be given so much impact in baseball.

Well, I don’t go that much in for awards not being given to me. But I’d say one possibly useful award would be one for the best setup man. And it’d only be useful if it became so sought after and so well-compensated that great relievers actually wanted to be setup men so they could win it. Anything that opened up good relievers to pitching middle innings would be cool, I think.

Alternately, I’d say a Platinum Glove Award for the single best defensive player in each league. But if that were chosen the way the Gold Glove Awards are, it’d hardly be a reliable standard of defensive excellence. Still, it’d be fun — in some grotesque way — to stomach the annual columns about why some very tall first baseman should win the award, and then the inevitable Internet backlash.

Finally, the Jeff Francoeur Award for a guy who we really want to honor in some way but can’t come up with any other excuse to do so.

https://twitter.com/JGPace/status/251689994568204288

Quite the contrary, I actually imagine we see a few more very good, long-term single-team players in the coming years. With smaller market teams enjoying more revenue and big free-agent contracts frequently fizzling, the trend appears to be toward teams locking up their young players to longterm extensions that buy out their arbitration years and the first few years of their free agency.

To name a few, Joey Votto, Joe Mauer, Ryan Braun and Troy Tulowitzki all have contracts that should take them until at least very deep in their careers with the teams that drafted them.

Also via email, real-life friend Bill passes along this link and asks, “Who should be the new president in the Nats’ race?”

Bill: I am a stalwart of the Stalwarts. It’s Chester A. Arthur or GTFO.