Category Archives: Baseball

Bah

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If you’re a Mets fan trying to squeeze some small, pathetic measure of solace out of Roy Halladay’s no-hitter, I offer you this: The Phillies’ win significantly increases the chances Halladay will pitch again this October, which increases the already-high likelihood he will surpass his career-high single-season innings total of 266, set back in his Cy Young season in 2003. And Halladay struggled with shoulder problems for a large portion of the 2004 season, and he was only 27 then.

But to so much as consider that right now would be tantamount to wishing misfortune, ineffectiveness or injury down the road on a great pitcher in the immediate wake of a historic accomplishment.

If you read this site with any frequency you know I love spectacle, and I like Halladay as a pitcher — laundry aside — because I appreciate excellence in all of its forms.

But I hate the Phillies so much that every part of my soul wanted Brandon Phillips to beat out that dribbler last night. I just couldn’t stand the thought of the Phillies fans I know getting even more to brag about, and spending a night out vomiting on children in celebration.

Still, we got to watch something special, and though it’s great for Halladay, it amounts to only one win for the Phillies. So here’s hoping Bronson Arroyo makes sweet music tomorrow night and Sunday the Reds’ hitters roll up on Cole Hamels like a bunch of werewolves on a sparkly vampire, or something.

Pardon me if that reference is heavy-handed; I don’t read the Twilight books, as Hamels does.

The return of Super Joe?

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I think there is one obvious manager candidate that no one seems to mention, Super Joe McEwing. McEwing was a Met fan favorite while with the team…. Baseball America named him one of their managers of the year the past two years (High A in the White Sox organization). And unlike Backman he does not come with the baggage and potential public relations nightmare….

But the real key is his relationship with LaRussa and Dave Duncan. Joe came to the majors with the Cards and was a favorite of LaRussa, who respected him so much he requested a pair of the Joe’s spikes when he was traded to the Mets (for Jesse Orosco). Why is this important, because Dave Duncan can have more of an immediate impact than any manager or GM the Mets can hire. The timing is perfect, he would have never left the Cards in years past, but now he is upset with the way the Cardinal organization, the local media, and fans handled the situation with his son.

– Reader Dan, via e-mail.

On the surface, Dan’s case is an interesting one. After all, if the Mets are serious about considering Wally Backman — currently a short-season A-ball manager — to helm their big-league club, why wouldn’t they be willing to hire a current High-A ball manager in Flushing? And Super Joe, like Backman, led his team to a lot of success in 2010, taking the Winston-Salem Dash to the Carolina League championship series, where they (it? Are we pluralizing Dash?) lost to the Potomac Nationals.

But I have a pretty strong feeling Joe McEwing, at 38 and with no managerial experience above A-ball, will not be the Mets’ next skipper. And if we’re going to campaign for such unlikely solutions, I might as well lobby for an WPA generator like some folks at Amazin’ Avenue keep advocating.

And maybe there’s a role for Super Joe on the Mets’ bench. Brooke from SNY’s Original Programming department just suggested they could hire him to be a roving bench coach, first-base coach, hitting coach and third-base coach all in one. I remember reading that he was a popular guy in his time with the team, and that David Wright especially was sad to see him go. But though we know the Mets love hiring ex-Mets, it does seem a bit random. Plus they keep saying all hires will be up to the new GM.

I will say that I was no fan of Super Joe during his time with the Mets. I recognize now that there’s some value in a guy willing and at least vaguely able to play absolutely anywhere on the field, but the combination of his inability to hit with the media’s tendency to fawn over him turned me off. But then that really has no bearing on his ability to manage or coach a team.

Following up

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Phil Birnbaum at Sabermetric Research picks apart the Wharton School research I doubted yesterday and comes to a way smarter and better explanation: “The factoid, ‘players hitting .299 or .300 batting a whopping .463 in their final at-bat’ is true — but it’s the result of cherry-picking the AB in the sample. If the player got a hit to pass .300, it was likely to *become* his last at-bat, as he tended to sit out the rest of the season. But if he made an out, the AB wouldn’t be his last.”

Is this something?

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Two economists at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, while investigating how round numbers influence goals, examined the behavior of major league hitters from 1975 to 2008 who entered what became their final plate appearance of the season with a batting average of .299 or .300 (in at least 200 at-bats).

They found that the 127 hitters at .299 or .300 batted a whopping .463 in that final at-bat, demonstrating a motivation to succeed well beyond normal (and in what was usually an otherwise meaningless game).

Most deliciously, not one of the 61 hitters who entered at .299 drew a walk — which would have fired those ugly 9s into permanence because batting average considers bases on balls neither hit nor at-bat.

– Alan Schwarz, N.Y. Times.

OK. I have little doubt that guys who enter their final at-bats of the season hitting .299 take aggressive approaches at the plate. That part of this study passes the smell test for sure.

Beyond that, though, it seems like there’s some small-sample size issues and extrapolation here. I should probably defer to the Wharton School economists, mind you, but why would only hitters with at least 200 at-bats on the season be motivated by round numbers? Wouldn’t a rookie with 120 plate appearances want badly to reach .300 too? What happens if they change the at-bats minimum to 100? What if they use players hitting .199, too?

And consider the competition: Shouldn’t it be at least slightly easier for Major League hitters with at least a half season of hitting around .300 — good hitters, in other words — to succeed in their final at-bats of the season, likely often against September call-ups?

It seems like the conclusions here are a bit far-reaching for 127 at-bats, given baseball’s inherent caprices. Remember that Jeff Francoeur started out the season 16-for-35. A lot of strange and random things can happen when you’re swinging aggressively and putting the ball in play.

Bad in plaid

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If Tampa Bay Rays manager Joe Maddon has his way, the Texas Rangers will be hypnotized by a sea of plaid at Tropicana Field for Wednesday’s ALDS Game 1.

After popularizing the “Brayser” (Rays + blazer) earlier this season and having his team wear caps with plaid bills during a game last week, Maddon said he would like to see Rays fans adopting his fashion trend in the stands for the postseason.

– ‘Duk, Big League Stew.

Well that’s awesome. As ‘Duk suggests later in the article, it would be a pretty difficult thing to organize, but a stadium-wide plaid-out would be pretty amazing. Too bad it would probably be way too expensive to just distribute the Braysers in question:

Anyway, you might have noticed some aesthetic changes happening around here if you came to this site in the past 20 minutes or so. I changed the TedQuarters color scheme to celebrate the Rays’ postseason run, and also to celebrate a baseball team using sky blue and yellow in its uniform, something I’ve felt should happen for a long, long time.

(The Rays didn’t take it far enough, incidentally, since they haven’t yet abandoned the dark blue that’s pretty much ubiquitous in baseball uniforms. But I do credit them for being smart enough to play with my initials on their cap. Also Taco Bell’s.)

Anyway, it turns out that while that color scheme is pretty cool for a baseball club it makes for a butt-ugly website, so I’m not sure how long this will last. But this site design makes it really easy to switch up colors and I intended to do so more often when we relaunched, and I figured now, with the Mets in transition and the playoffs starting and everything, you know, why not?

Why the Rays and not the National League’s obvious good guys, the Reds? I think that color red might be a little jarring on a monitor. Plus it looks too much like the Phillies.