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.”

True grit

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Let’s start with toughness, the one intangible the Mets have lacked most in recent years. You only have to go back a couple of weeks for a glaring example, when the Mets let Chase Utley wipe out Ruben Tejada at second base with an over-the-line slide and did nothing to retaliate.

Oh, sure, Carlos Beltran managed to get in the way of a double play the next day, but he didn’t even make contact, and when all was said and done, the Mets sent the message that they wouldn’t stand up to the Phillies — the team that has bullied them in one way or another for four years.

I don’t blame Jerry Manuel for the Mets’ failures in recent years, but he clearly failed to instill enough grit in his ballclub. Somebody has to do it because there’s no hard-edged leadership in their clubhouse….

Not that retaliating or even fighting is a cure-all for the Mets. Talent aside, however, winning in the big leagues starts with attitude, with the type of mental and physical toughness that has defined the Phillies and separated them from the Mets.

(Well, that and a farm system that allowed them to trade for Cliff Lee, Roy Halladay and Roy Oswalt over a 12-month period, but that’s another story – and a reminder of one of Minaya’s biggest failings.)

– John Harper, N.Y. Daily News.

OK, first of all, Harper totally ignores the fact that Beltran not only called out Utley for the slide, but then admitted he was trying to hurt someone the next day and regretted that he was unable to do so.

But Harper loves to cite anonymous and mysterious baseball people who think Beltran is selfish and lacks grit, and this documented evidence of Beltran demonstrating precisely the type of grit Harper argues the Mets are missing would contradict not only the point of this column but the crux of many of Harper’s past columns, so, you know, let’s just pretend it didn’t happen.

Also — and way more importantly — talent not aside. Talent absolutely not aside. I don’t understand why it’s so hard for everyone to understand that the big difference between the Phillies and the Mets is not toughness or edginess or some sort of nebulous magic dust but real damn baseball skill, the most important factor in winning real damn baseball games.

The Phillies’ pitching staff posted a 110 ERA+ this year because it got 250 2/3 (!!) stellar innings from Roy Halladay and 208 2/3 excellent ones from Cole Hamels, and a bunch of strong performances from bullpen arms.

Yes, they weathered a slew of injuries to their starting lineup, but they did that because they fielded a deep and strong team, not through Charlie Manuel’s special old-man alchemy. They had the young players to trade for Roy Oswalt. A strong and well-managed farm system merits more than a parenthetical aside.

Now, look: No one’s saying the Phillies don’t hustle or that hustling doesn’t help win baseball games. Certainly the Phillies appear to exhibit a certain mettle, and since we’ve come to associate them with toughness and grit and, above all, winning, we mentally highlight their hustle plays and gloss over their junior moments.

Talent not aside. I’m sorry. I know that doesn’t make for a good story. Remember that during the World Series last year, Harper himself expressed surprise that the “gritty, gutty” Phillies suddenly didn’t “appear to be so tough-minded after all” once they ran into a better Yankee team.

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.