The definition of ambivalence

Posted on October 14, 2009 by Ted Berg

Back when I supported myself by tutoring for the verbal SATs, I spent a lot of time explaining to high schoolers the difference between indifference and ambivalence.

Indifference means you’re impartial or you don’t care. Ambivalence means you have mixed or contradictory feelings, hence the prefix ambi-, meaning both.

I can’t think of anything in New York sports in recent years that I’ve been more thoroughly ambivalent about than the Atlantic Yards landgrab that would move the Nets to Brooklyn, which is hotly contested and going to state supreme court tomorrow.

I lived about five blocks from the proposed site from 2005 until August, first in Prospect Heights, just south, then in Fort Greene, just north. I loved living in Brooklyn, in both spots. It fit me in some way that I can’t say anyplace else I’ve ever lived has.

On one hand, I feel like there are a ton of people there who would absolutely embrace a professional team and create one of the most diverse and energetic fanbases in the league. On the other, I certainly recognize that eminent domain seems unfair, and I find it difficult to argue in favor of kicking people out of their homes against their will.

But progress is progress, and a lot of times unfortunate people have to be displaced for decisions a community — since the city’s and borough’s elected officials are in favor of the development — deems necessary for continued growth. On the other hand, the traffic at Flatbush and Atlantic already sucks, and I could only imagine what it would be like the night of a Nets game, even if the spot is a huge subway and LIRR hub.

I love contemporary architecture, and I hate when people make new buildings that are supposed to look old, so I think it’s cool that Brooklyn would theoretically have a huge 21st century skyline. On the other hand, I’m not at all fond of Frank Gehry’s work and many of the proposed skyscrapers looked completely ridiculous. Then again, I hear Gehry’s off the project, but that in turn makes me worry about whatever they’ll settle on eventually.

I guess my issue is that there’s so much information out there about the project, but it’s very difficult to find any from anyone without some sort of agenda. It seems likely to happen, but not nearly to the scale initially planned.

So that’s cool, I guess. I still don’t know.

Who’s the real Carlos Beltran?

Posted on October 14, 2009 by Ted Berg

Marty Noble, in a mailbag for Mets.com, says the Mets are “boxed in” with Carlos Beltran and probably could not trade him even if they wanted to because of the money he’s owed.

That’s probably true. As great as Beltran is, it’s tough to imagine a team wanting to give up much of value for a guy coming off an injury-plagued season with two years remaining on a huge contract.

Beyond that, trading Beltran, one of the very best players in the game from 2006-2008, would likely amount to selling low for the Mets.

I don’t think it’s even really worth discussing, and, since Beltran is my favorite Met to watch, I would never advocate trading the guy. But there are couple of red flags on Beltran that make me a little nervous about his next two years.

According to Bill James’ Plus/Minus, Beltran went from being one of the top center fielders in baseball in 2007 and 2008 to just slightly above average in 2009. Obviously he was injured, plus defensive stats tend to fluctuate pretty wildly anyway, but that big a dropoff can’t be a good sign.

More alarmingly, and sticking with the BillJamesOnline theme, Beltran went from being consistently one of the best baserunners in baseball (averaging a net gain of about 42 bases a year from 2002-2008) to being a -3 in 2009. That’s a pretty tremendous downfall, and not something that can be explained by a couple of failures to slide.

Naturally, both of these are speed-related problems and so, if Beltran is healthy, we should expect the numbers to head back toward his mean. But his injury was a vague one and I’m a paranoid Mets fan. I can imagine nothing worse than seeing Beltran become an injury-plagued or ineffective albatross in his last couple of seasons with the team, somehow empowering all the misguided fans who have forever felt he was overpaid and apathetic.

Of course, all that said, he did hit .325/.415/.500 in 2009. So, you know, even if he’s not quite Carlos Beltran in 2010 and 2011, smart money says he’ll still be really awesome.

Items of note

Posted on October 14, 2009 by Ted Berg

Mets’ top pitching prospect Jenrry Mejia will make his AFL debut today. Ike Davis had a pretty decent day there yesterday.

The Jets’ defense is appropriately chagrined.

Jay-Z is unwilling to perform “Yankees Rule This Town”, a parody of his “Rule This Town.” Really? Shocker. Joan Jett covered “I love Rocky Road” like a billion times.

(FWIW, I once pool-hopped at a house that supposedly belonged to Joan Jett. Also, there’s probably a special ring of hell for wacky morning DJs on Top 40 stations.)

In advance of the big fella’s start on Friday, Steve Lombardi at WasWatching.com breaks down CC Sabathia’s starts with between 7 and 10 days of rest. There’s no real identifiable pattern, it appears.

Terrifying item of utmost concern

Posted on October 13, 2009 by Ted Berg

I know I promised no more than one non-sports post a day, but I don’t think this constitutes breaking that promise. This horrifying bit of news is entirely connected to sports:

The price of chicken wings is skyrocketing.

More on this will certainly follow in the coming days, but I must now go to ShopRite to start hording. I recommend you do the same. Boneless wings are not wings.

From the Wikipedia: Godwin’s Law

Posted on October 13, 2009 by Ted Berg

The second in the From the Wikipedia series highlights Godwin’s Law, which states that, as any threaded online discussion continues, the probability of a comparison involving NAZIs or Hitler approaches one.

This is both hilarious and pretty obviously true. People love nothing more than comparing one another to Hitler to make their points. And it’s funny because it’s such a pointless thing to do and a bad way to prove an argument.

One of the reasons I’m really excited to have this blog is that it provides a forum through which to more directly interact with readers, because I’m certain that’s where journalism is going. And I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the volume of comments so far, considering this blog technically hasn’t even launched yet.

But please, keep it civil. Hitler, I promise, is not lurking in the comments section of sabermetrically inclined New York sports blogs. Let’s assume that the people who make their way here are smart, reasonable humans with interesting and worthwhile opinions, and let’s not call each other morons until we prove it to be so.

Flushing Fussing’s greatest hits, pt. 1

Posted on October 13, 2009 by Ted Berg

I’m looking for content with which to fill out the sidebars here, and I got the idea from Alex Belth and the folks at Bronx Banter to link up some of my greatest hits, so to speak, from SNY.tv.

I realize that’s a bit self-serving, but so is this entire blog, so, you know, whatever. Anyway, I figured I’d break in down into two groups of five: The five most trafficked, and my five personal favorites.

It’ll take me a while to figure out my five favorites, especially since I’m rarely thrilled with the stuff I write and I’ll be biased against the columns that have turned out wrong. But here are the five most popular:

1) Things Steve Phillips said, May 18, 2009.

If my life’s greatest accomplishment turns out to be defending Carlos Beltran from Steve Phillips, I’ll be fine with that. For whatever reason, many of my most popular columns, it seems, are the ones written in blind rage, and this was one of those.

Probably because I was the only person with the patience to transcribe the nonsense Phillips spewed, the column got linked all over the place, including by Joe Posnanski, one of my favorite sportswriters, and by Maxim Magazine. I guess it had a broad appeal. Plus, it got me quoted in the New York Post. It was weird.

2) What’s next for Minaya, Jan. 30, 2008

My reaction to the Johan Santana trade. This one was so popular, I’m certain, because of the surge in traffic to this site and MetsBlog.com surrounding the deal.

This is funny to me for a number of reasons. I obviously can’t contain my excitement over Santana, but the column gets at a lot of the main points I always make, about the importance of not trading the farm and searching the scrap heaps for cheap talent. Mostly, it’s funny because there are copy-editing mistakes aplenty, and because it’s the first time I mention Val Pascucci — except I spell his name wrong.

3) Why I like Carlos Beltran, July 9, 2008.

More Beltran love. This one I liked. The only one here that could be a crossover candidate for the five personal favorites. (Sneak preview: It won’t be, only because it’d be weird to have it linked twice.)

4) Help from the Far East, Oct. 16, 2007

This one, a rundown of the available Japanese pitching talent, comes with a funny anecdote. Apparently it was so loaded up with falsehoods and general ignorance that it inspired Patrick Newman to start his fantastic English-language Japanese baseball site, NPB Tracker. As someone who spends so much time rallying against ignorance in the mainstream media, I humbly appreciate the irony.

In my defense, NPB Tracker obviously didn’t exist at the time, so I was attempting to do what I could with the data available to me. I caught up with Patrick for an interview a year later.

5) An egging most baffling, July 10, 2009

Another column penned quickly in anger. I remember I was on the B Train heading over the Manhattan Bridge to Brooklyn after work when I got a text message from my buddy Jake Rake, just saying, “Jeff Francoeur, really?” The train was back underground before I could figure out what he meant, but I obviously knew something was up. By the end of the 10-minute walk from the station to my apartment, I had the bulk of the column written in my head, and it was on the site about an hour later.

Obviously, Francoeur played a lot better than I expected. A lot. So maybe it’s egg on my face once more. And I know a lot of Mets fans are now sold on the guy. I’ll know better than to totally thrash a deal like this next time, but I’m definitely not willing to say I was wrong yet.

Let’s not go nuts over Yorvit Torrealba

Posted on October 13, 2009 by Ted Berg

Mike Silva, in a post to New York Baseball Digest, reminds us that Mr. Rocktober, Yorvit Torrealba, was nearly a Met.

It’s true. And Torrealba deserves credit for coming through in the clutch a bunch of times after a brutal year in which his son’s kidnappers made fun of his batting average.

But I suspect there’s a whole ton of randomness at play here. Torrealba did knock the crap out of the ball in 36 high-leverage at-bats in 2009, according to baseball-reference.com, but a) it’s 36 at-bats and b) across his career, Torrealba has been slightly worse in high-leverage situations than in others.

Torrealba had a nice season for a catcher, hitting .291 with a .351 OBP and a .380 SLG, but he posted a .355 batting average in balls in play. Considering his career BABIP is .296, I’m willing to bet there was a little bit of luck involved. Granted, Torrealba’s line-drive rate increased, too, but I, for one, wouldn’t bet on him maintaining either.

In the two years since the Mets backed out of their Torrealba deal and obtained Brian Schneider, Torrealba has posted an 81 OPS+ to Schneider’s 80. Schneider has played a good deal more over that time, though Torrealba obviously had a lot to deal with off the field this season.

Straight up, Torrealba overcame some horrific personal adversity to have a decent season and should be lauded for that. Maybe the run of apparent good luck at the plate was some sort of karmic repayment toward the debt of what happened to his family. But he’s not a better hitter than even Schneider, so it’s hard to get too upset that the Mets missed out on him.

Of course, I’d like it if the Mets could have kept Lastings Milledge, but I fear I’m in the minority there.

The Myth of the Closer

Posted on October 13, 2009 by Ted Berg

Pat Lackey, in an awesome article for Fanhouse, examines Jim Tracy’s decision to let Huston Street face Ryan Howard last night.

As Lackey points out, Street is the Rockies’ closer, and so no one doubted Tracy. But Howard demonstrates a massive platoon split, and lefty Joe Biemel was available in the bullpen.

The whole concept of the one-inning closer makes no sense to me. It seems like the entire role has been developed to serve the save stat, and the save stat is an imperfect one. Is there anything more surreal than seeing the Yankees score a run to go ahead by four, instead of three, in the top of the ninth and watching Mariano Rivera stop warming up?

Check it out: In the 20-year period after Tony La Russa popularized the one-inning closer in 1988, teams won nearly exactly the same percentage of games they were leading in the ninth inning as they did in the 20 years prior.

It’s nice to have a closer that shortens the game, as they say, but all too frequently guys incapable of that job are pigeonholed into it for lack of a better option. And even worse, in the toughest situations — often in the sixth or seventh inning, when the starting pitcher has tired — teams frequently rely on their middle men, almost by definition the worst pitchers on the staff.

The problem is, the best relievers, obviously, want to be paid accordingly, and the way to do that is to accumulate saves. So relief pitchers demand to know their roles, and no pioneering team has yet had the nerve to tell them their role is to retire all the batters they face.

There now are stats that weigh the importance of a situation into which a reliever has been called and his ability to succeed in those situations. Stats Tom Tango creates, like Leverage Index and WPA/LI could help us understand the highest-leverage situations in a ballgame, and the pitchers who best succeed in them.

But I’m getting away from my point. There’s no reason the best pitcher in the bullpen should be limited to the ninth inning in games while his team is winning. Some shrewd team needs to break the mold and stop assigning so much importance to saves and the isolated ninth inning.

It won’t be the Mets, for sure, or likely any team so concerned about public perception. But it will happen eventually, once some smart GM decides not to pay such a premium for 70 innings and instead to find or groom a versatile reliever who can be equally effective in any situation.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: The era of the one-inning closer should end. It brought us one beautiful, awesome pitcher of transcendent greatness: Mariano Rivera. When he hangs ’em up, so should the entire institution.

Items of note

Posted on October 13, 2009 by Ted Berg

Bassett and crew break down the Jets’ breakdown at TheJetsBlog.com. Long story short, they’re going to need to work on their run defense. The Jets, that is, not Bassett and crew.

The Dodgers and Mets are clashing over Jose Reyes’ treatment. That makes sense, since the Mets pretty much threw the Dodgers’ doctors under the bus, and the Mets are ultimately responsible for making decisions on their own players’ injuries.

If you’ve been frustrated with Chip Carey, don’t worry. It only gets worse.

Look, it’s Rafael Santana, and he’s doing stuff!

Wallace Matthews says A-Rod derp de derp derp derp.

Speaking of people doing stuff, I hosted a couple of podcasts this week. First, the NYMetscast with Mike Rudner, in which we break down all the things that went wrong in 2009 and give an overview of the offseason. Second, Perpetual Post Radio with Howard Megdal, the crew from the Perpetual Post, and audio difficulties.

D’Brick house

Posted on October 12, 2009 by Ted Berg

I’m a sucker for offensive line play, so I figured I’d point this out here at halftime of the Jets-Dolphins game. D’Brickashaw Montgomery Ladarius Fantana Ferguson, as he’s known, is having an awesome game.

I’m pretty certain he’s only missed one block all day when he couldn’t catch up with a Dolphins cornerback on a wide receiver screen. He also got called for holding once, but he’s been primarily in one-on-one assignments on the Dolphins d-ends and he’s completely neutralizing them. Pay attention if you’re watching, it’s cool.

A couple of times, on run plays, he has driven his man 5-10 yards downfield. And a lot of the Jets’ running yards have come right off his hip.

I was one of legions of Jets fans who wanted the team to pick someone at a more exciting position when they took Ferguson, and I was unimpressed with his play in his first couple of seasons. I thought it was a bit ridiculous when he talked about making the Pro Bowl in the preseason this year, but if he plays like this all season he should be All-Pro.