No they were not better than I was . No I am not saying there is no difference. You are so into nuance that it appears far bigger than it really is. Your love of quibbling about differences makes then appear to be bigger than they are. I was an outfielder and have been amazed at infielder wrists and reactions. The quality of outfielders does not impress me all that much.
Note the Tigers have been very good team the last couple years with a crappy defensive shortstop. They were trying to find a way to move Guillen out. Yet they were still a very good team. They were an injury away from repeating.
You aren’t impressed by major league outfielders? Really? Wow, how high up did you play?
Obviously, having one position play poor defense isn’t going to mean a whole team sucks; nobody said that. What’re you try to argue against here?
Defense does make a difference, though, and teams with very good defence can win a lot more games that teams with average overall defence (or bad defense.) The difference between Carlos Gullen and the average shortstop - Guillen isn’t good, but he’s not atrocious - is probably no more than one win in the standings, but the difference between a team that has many above average fielders and many that are poor can be substantial. There’s a pretty big difference if you take the teams as a whole, often enough to make the difference between making the playoffs and not. It’s not as big an issue as hitting or pitching (in the major leagues) but it makes a significant difference, and almost all recent AL pennant winners have had above-average defensive teams, including the 2006 Tigers.
Paul Blair and Willie Mays could flag down fly balls. Todays fielders don’tl look like they have spent enough hot summers playing shallow and going deep to get make the tough catches
Al Kaline could play outfield. The players of today play too deep. Fly balls fall in front of them. Few players have the ability to challenge short liners and gap shots .
That may all be about having so many teams. Pitching is watered down. Catchers are hard to find. Almost Eeerybody has a more than competent shortstop though.
Renteria was sought to move Guillen to first. The Detroit papers had talked about it quite a bit.
They liked Casey. He was clutch and good in the clubhouse.
Rick Jay do you have any insight into why Demitri Young was jettisoned a couple years ago?. When they dumped him he was the best hitter on the team for the week or so before he was dropped. Something happened but Detroit Papers never really said what it was.
Nope. I get to call bullshit on you, dad. There’s a reason that David Ortiz is the DH.
I am not saying every single ball player is at the same level. But even lower level players can play. Without DH players like Ortiz would still find a spot.
Right, but then that shoots the entire “big leaguers can almost all field very well” argument to hell. Ortiz would find a spot, but then he’d be one of those players that doesn’t field well.
You know, one of those ones that doesn’t exist.
Well, it’s public knowledge that he had drug and alcohol problems and was charged with with assaulting his wife, and then didn’t show up for a court hearing and was charged with that. The timing, of course, was weird; it was months later, after he’d seemingly tackled his problems. Why not release him in May, right?
So far as I know, nobody has any idea why the Tigers did that. Maybe he had continuing problems that were not released to the press; I suspect we’ll never know.
Boy this thread died. Way to nitpick on a statement that said that almost all could field very well. As in, not all, but almost. As in, not Ortiz, but nearly all of the others. And I remember Ortiz playing first during the World Series and doing a fine job of it, anyway.
Maybe it’s because there’s another player who fields the position better than he does? Maybe it’s because they can play a better fielder and not lose his bat? Doesn’t necessarily mean he’s terrible at fielding, just that someone else is better, and there isn’t a sacrifice in playing the better fielder.
Is that because the Red Sox have better pitching? Higher quality of pitchers are less likely to get their pitches rocketed into gaps and over fences. After all, it’s “batted” balls into outs, meaning any ball put into the field of play, right? Better pitchers typically don’t allow lots of quality contact and we already established the Sox had good pitching. It could also be that they have more sinker ball pitchers (more easy ground outs). Don’t know if they do, but again, it’s possible. I put absolutely zero importance into this stat or its relevance to fielding quality, and I object to the claim that it’s worth 5-10 games in the standings.
Those 2 reasons are (1) his low mobility, keeping him from reaching as many batted balls as Youk or almost anybody else, and (2) his bum knees that would break down if he played the field every game.
Ortiz does play 1B in NL-park no-DH games, and adequately, but wouldn’t hold up over a whole season.
The overriding reason is the one gonzomaz alluded to, though - it’s more important in today’s game to have a good bat than a good glove in the lineup. There is no longer a position where lack of offensive production is assumed or even tolerated for long. The DH rule, of course, permits a team to have a bat and a glove in the lineup.
Well, for the most part, no.
I know it’s hard to believe, but major league pitchers (relative to each other) actually have very LITTLE control over the outcome of a ball hit into play. Generally speaking, the likelihood of a batted ball being a hit or an out is the same, or very close to it, for almost all pitchers, and the exact likelihood is mostly an attribute of how good his fielders are. What pitchers mostly effect are:
- How many men they strike out (which, by extent, reduces hits)
- How many men they walk
- How many home runs they give up, which for this discussion isn’t considered a “ball in play.”
I know this is kind of hard to swallow and that we’ve all been raised on the notion that good pitchers “pitch to contact” and such, but it’s false. Greg Maddux’s career percentage of balls hit into play that become hits - “BABIP” as they call it, Batting Average on Ball In Play - is about .283. Todd Stottlemyre, who nobody will ever mistake for a Hall of Famer, was at .282. Isn’t that amazing? It’s weird, I know, but it’s true.
Just to compare a great pitcher to one who is not so great. I swear to God, I picked these at random:
Pedro Martinez: .269
Josh Towers: .266
Yes, JOSH TOWERS allows a lower batting average on balls in play than Pedro. Pedro is better because he strikes out so many guys and isn’t prone to gopher balls. If you want an even more amazing fact, in Pedro’s best year, (My figures, btw, may be out a point or two because I’m doing this by hand and I cannot find data in double plays and such; however, those don’t differ much between different pitchers, given significant data samples.)
Randy Johnson: .280
Miguel Batista: .289
Small advantage for Johnson there.
Now, I am not saying pitchers have NO control over balls in play.
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Pitchers do have a slight ability to affect BABIP; if we took a huge chunk of pitchers who were really good and a huge chunk who were mediocre, adjusted for context and added it up, the first group would be a little better.
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The effect can be more pronounced for extremely unconventional pitchers, such as lefty control artists like Jimmy Key, or knuckleballers.
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We’re talking about major leaguers. This may not be true for lower levels of baseball.
One way or another, MLB pitchers don’t affect BABIP very much, and team defense can have a much greater impact on a team’s overall BABIP than its pitchers do.
The reason this is useful, by the way, is because just out of sheer luck, a single pitcher’s BABIP can vary wildly from year to year. It’s not uncommon for a guy who have a .245 BABIP one year and .325 the next. If you see a pitcher who has a high ERA, but his strikeouts, walks and homers allowed were all good, he was just giving up an unusually large number of hits, there’s a pretty good chance the pitcher was just unlucky and will improve next year. The reverse is true; if you have a pitcher who didn’t strike many men out and isn’t good at avoiding walks or homers (or both) but had a good year because his BABIP was low, stay away. He’s probably gonna get hammered.
The Devil Rays’ (they were still the Devil Rays last year) incredibly low defensive performance was due largely to the incompetence of their fielders. (I hate to introduce subjectivity here, but, I saw them play a dozen times at least, and sheesh, just watch them. They were brutal.) There’s just no possible way it could be otherwise; their defensive efficiency is just too awful to be explained away as random chance or park effects, and FAR exceeds the likely range of pitcher skill in affecting this. No other team in the AL was even close, and in the NL the Marlins were the only team nearly as bad and they still weren’t as bad as Tampa Bay.
Note that sinkerball pitchers also have good years when the defense behind them is above average. Brandon Webb had a great season in part because of the defense.
Well that is because there is a fourth aspect pitchers have some control over besides HR rate, K rate, and BB rate. Ground ball to fly ball ratio. The correlation isn’t quite as strong as the other three, but it does have an affect. Ground ball pitchers will likely give up more hits, but fewer hits of extra bases. I would emphasize that Webb had a great season in part because of great *infield * defense. More specifically having the best defensive 2b in the game behind him. The defensive strengths lined up well with his virtues as pitcher.
Exactly the point I wished to make, but apparently floundered at. Thanks, kind sir.
So an article is out today saying the Yankees are going to start the season with Joba Chamberlain as a setup man for Rivera, and then send him down to the minors around mid-season to get his arm ready to be in the rotation in the second half. I’m not sure I like this idea, or get it. If they want him to start, get him ready in Spring training. Do they think he’s going to be some savior in the 2nd half? Which of the projected starters (Pettitte, Wang, Mussina, Hughes and Kennedy) are they pre-supposing he’ll replace? I think they’re being too delicate with him. I know he’s young, but I think they should be grooming him to replace Mo. Rivera doesn’t have many seasons left and who’s been more important to their success in the last 12 years?
That is frankly the dumbest idea in the history of the world. They aren’t that stupid. Your analysis is spot on: it makes no sense.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Rivera is not human. He is obviously a cyborg. He will pitch until his plutonium power supply runs out, which is estimated to happen in about 2193.
He keeps pitching with that cut fastball and has amazing year after amazing year…and then he tops that year a little bit. He’s simply incredible.
What’s always amazed me about watching Rivera pitch is the ease of his delivery. It looks almost casual, but he has such good control, and the ball seems *poured * in to the catcher’s mitt.
squeal
So lovely to see pictures of the Dodgers working out today. A quick look at the schedule tells me that we’re exactly two weeks away from the first competitive spring training game, and just one day later (again with the squeal), the first televised game!
The offseason is entirely too long. I’ve got tickets to the Dodgers/Red Sox game at the Coliseum (92,000 people attending a baseball game – it’s going to be something else!), and the idea that it’s still a month and a half away is enough to give me hives.
Not that I’m craving baseball at all.
sits in the corner and rocks slowly
Yankee Spring Training is apparently going to be 24x7 Clemens & Pettitte.
This is not good. Fuck Clemens, fuck Pettitte and fuck the worthless Senate that has nothing better to do.
Torre says Jason Schmidt won’t be ready by Opening Day. What a surprise. C’mon, Dodgers. Dump the chump and concentrate on pitchers that actually have an arm. Schmidt is a goner, and everybody knows it.
Ah, Spring! Hope is in the air.