Weird and awesome. BUT WHO WILL PLAY ROYCE CLAYTON!?
Royce Clayton to play Miguel Tejada
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Category Archives: Other Baseball
Stop caring about the Gold Glove award
Yes, Derek Jeter won the Gold Glove again. No, he didn’t deserve it.
Yes, the awards are more based on reputation than evidence. They also, for some reason — perhaps laziness on the part of the voters — seem to unfairly reward incumbents. And there’s no doubt that there’s an offensive component at play, even though they theoretically reward defense.
But really, who cares? Does anyone that knows anything about baseball still really think the Gold Gloves always go to the best fielders at every position? They’ve been a meaningless pageant for years, maybe always. They’re a joke. Use them for jokes if that’s your thing, or just stop paying them any mind.
There are much better ways to determine good fielders, and even better-researched awards.
Is this really happening?
Baseball is a results business.
So is just about every other business, incidentally. I think the term “results business” might even be redundant. Is there any business that’s not a results business? Like can I find a paying job somewhere where my boss won’t care about my performance or the bottom line, but about how much fun I have or how much I learn from the experience?
For what it’s worth, if you Google “is not a results business” — in quotes like that — you only get five results, and they’re all about soccer.
But that’s not the point. What I’m trying to say is that I should temper my enthusiasm, since the Mets’ new front office hasn’t won anything yet. Hell, as a team, Sandy Alderson, J.P. Ricciardi and Paul DePodesta haven’t even done anything yet outside of letting Hisanori Takahashi walk.
Still, after six seasons of Omar Minaya — and Steve Phillips and Jim Duquette before him — it’s hard not to get excited for a front office that appears primed to evaluate players objectively and work to build a sustainable winner from within. These are the things I’ve been bleating about since I started writing for SNY.tv in 2006.
And now, it seems, it’s really happening. Is this really happening?
I’m getting ahead of myself. And despite all my attempts at rationality, the perpetual reminders here that the Mets are not cursed or jinxed or otherwise damned mostly aim to quiet my own ingrained Mets-fan dread. This must go wrong. Right?
I know that’s not true. I know that, in the right hands, it shouldn’t be too difficult to create a regular winner on a $130 million payroll.
But, you know, results business and all. So I will proceed with cautious optimism.
How Pablo Sandoval celebrated
I mean, clearly a snarky link, but a pretty hilarious picture. And you know what? The dude just finished a nine-month marathon of baseball activities and was presumably hounded about his weight throughout. I hope he enjoyed the hell out of that sundae as like a just-this-once type thing before firing up his offseason regime.
Bruce Chen will probably end up on yet another team
As Craig Calcaterra points out, Chen’s looking for a multi-year deal and the Royals aren’t likely to give him one. That means it’s entirely possible Chen winds up on his 11th Major League team in 2011, pretty impressive considering he’s still only 34. For what it’s worth, Chen is 26 wins behind Mariano Rivera among Panamanian-born pitchers, and is by far the all-time leader in strikeouts by a Chinese-Panamanian pitcher.
Mad Dog has his day
Good writeup on Chris Russo’s reaction to the Giants’ World Series win, following up on this amazing rant.
World’s Champions
This just in from the TedQuarters San Francisco desk:
Some Giants fans — specifically, the ones who man the TedQuarters San Francisco desk — have organized a Facebook group in the hopes of bringing back the “World’s Champions” jerseys that the team wore in 1906.
They looked like this:
According to the Baseball Almanac, the unis were the brainchild of legendary manager and baseball fashionista John McGraw:
Since McGraw had also been heavily criticized for his refusal to participate in a post-season series in 1904, his smugness was unrestrained and he outfitted his new champions with the words “WORLD CHAMPIONS” across the chests of both the home and road suits for the 1906 season.
Your move, Bruce Bochy.
Giants win World Series behind awesome pitching, offense of hilarious retreads
And apparently this means — you guessed it: Moneyball has been debunked!
Brian Sabean has singlehandedly shown that shrewd business principles are no longer the way to run a baseball team, or, really, anything.
F@#! it, it’s time for the Mets to go all in on Cliff Lee. Eight years, 160 mil. Because hey, the Giants gave Barry Zito a terrible contract, and now they’re World Champions! Moneyball is dead! Long live JuanUribeBall!
Tim Lincecum is ridiculously awesome, by the way. Look at this World Champion:
The search for ‘lost arts’
Morong uses evidence to counter the Wall Street Journal’s claim that the Rangers and Giants are succeeding based on “lost arts” like sacrifice bunting.
#BlameUtley
Some Philadelphia fans and journalists have taken to blaming the Phillies’ best player for the their struggles. Sound familiar?
Tedquarters 