I hereby pit Terry Francona, Braindead Douchebag of the Year

The BBQ Pit
61

The guy who wrote that article is a fucking moron. I especially love this:

In the month of September, the Yankees have gone 13-4. In that time, they have gone from 5 games back to 1.5 games back in the AL East, and in the Wild Card have gone from 1 game up to 5.5 games up, virtually guaranteeing that they will make the playoffs. All of this sounds a lot like a “pennant chase” to me.

In that period of 20 days and 17 games, A-Rod has gone 21-63, for an average of .333. He has walked 7 times, giving him an OBP of .419. He has hit 8 home runs, giving him a slugging percentage of .730 and an OPS of 1.139!!!

Rodriguez’s WARP for the year is over 10. Do you know where the Yankees would be if they had ten fewer wins this year? Fighting with the Blue Jays for second place in the East, a dozen games behind Boston. And about 5 games back instead of about 5 games up in the Wild Card.

It’s a sort of funny logic vortex. Reporters complain about how A-Rod needs to perform in October, but fail to realize that, if he hadn’t been on the Yankees team, the Yankees probably wouldn’t have even got to play in October this year. As an Orioles supporter, i hope that the reporters keep ragging on him, and that he finally decides he’s had enough and heads for Los Angeles or Chicago, preferably to the National League. Anything to ensure that Baltimore doesn’t have to face him 18 times a season.

Look, every person playing shortstop for a major league team is a good shortstop. Every position player on a major league ballclub is among the best 500 in the world at the job of playing baseball. This isn’t about whether he’s good or not.

Nor do i actually think that he’s bad as a player, even for a shortstop. He has a career EqA of .303, which is good in any company, and is excellent for someone who plays a very demanding defensive position like shortstop. His career OBP of .388 and OPS of .849 are also good, especially for a player at a demanding defensive position.

Nor did i ever say that the Yankees should trade him. Have they overpaid for the level of performance he’s given them? I think so. But when your budget is essentially unlimited, overpaying doesn’t mean very much. There’s no way a club like Oakland or Kansas City could afford to pay him $20 million a year for his level of production, but this doesn’t really matter when you have more money than God. The Yankees can afford to keep him, and good luck to them for it. I wish the Orioles had that sort of money to spend.

And, despite my dislike for the Yankees, i actually quite like Jeter. I also like the fact that he’s a product of the Yankee system, and has been with the team from the beginning. Nor do i blame him for the cultish obsession that Yankee fans and reporters have with him. He’s just a very good baseball player who goes out there every day and does what he’s paid to do.

I just find exasperating the way that Yankee fans and reporters are so blinkered that they are apparently willing to forgive him anything, and to constantly rave about how great he is, when the guy playing 40 feet to his right has played better in a Yankee uniform, and is constantly berated for not being “clutch” or “a true Yankee.”

Wow, i never had you pegged as a baseball irrational. It’s quite surprising.

The question is not whether he makes some great plays; he clearly does. The question is whether he does it often enough to make up for his poor range and other fielding deficiencies. And the stats help precisely because even “those who have watched him day in and day out” tend to remember the spectacular plays and put out of their mind (or miss altogether) the ones he doesn’t make. In the case of someone like Jeter, this tendency is magnified because he doesn’t actually make very many errors. He rarely boots the ball or throws it over the head of the first baseman. There are just a whole bunch of plays he doesn’t make because he’s not fast enough.

And i truly never expected you to come out with the “plays with all his heart” and “tries his hardest” argument. Name me a major league player who doesn’t, who just phones in his performance every day. That is truly a lame argument.

Well, why didn’t you say so? Because now i’m completely convinced.

His teammates won’t criticize him to the media, and Yankee fans love him. That’s all we need to know about how good Derek Jeter is as a player. Game, set, match.

62

Well said and well written.

You are correct, I do get irrational about a handful of players. Jeter and Mo are two of them, Yogi and Thurman are two more.
There are a lot of baseball players that do not run out every ball they put into play, some only do it occasionally, some do it a lot. Jeter always runs out everything.

Jeter is one of those players you need to force out of the line-up even when he is seriously injured. He is not alone in this, A-Rod is the same as was your great HOF SS and many others. Many players are more like Manny or Greg Maddox that despite their greatness, seem to sit out for any excuse.

Jeter plays the game the way you hope every professional player would play. He has so far not been involve in any off field controversy and has the respect of other players. To the point that a few years back, several Boston players were comparing A-Rod to Jeter, calling A-Rod a punk and saying he was not a true Yankee like Jeter. This was mostly BS, but apparently players, even in the rivalry understand Jeter is a little different than most players.

I was not trying to convince you. However, have you ever thought about how often Yankee fans have heard this since Jeter came up, how he is not a good defensive player, or how he is not as good as A-Rod, Garciapara, Tejada or Reyes? Fine keep those players, we love our Captain anyway and are happy to be irrational about it. You blasted out your stats like it was some stunning news to baseball fans. Like it was some undiscovered stat we never heard before. I reacted as a wounded fan who has heard it dozens of times starting with Bill James a decade ago.

BTW: Do you really think Manny and Tejada play as hard as Jeter game in and game out. Do you think either plays as smartly as Jeter?

BTW: You are correct that Jeter is overpaid even by MLB standards. Giambi even more so. Clemens and Farnsworth forget about. A-Rod is pretty much a bargain by today’s standard.

Jim

63

I certainly agree that he plays the game fine. But i really think that about 98 percent of all major league players do this too.

Jeter also has a squeaky-clean public image, as you say. I guess this is just my personal thing, but i’ve never cared very much about the emphasis some people place on off-field activity. I mean, obviously arrests or convictions will probably get you kicked off a team, and should draw some criticism, but as long as it’s legal i don’t really give a shit what a player does on his own time. I don’t care if he goes to strip clubs or refuses to speak to reporters.

I’m sure you’re right that you’ve heard it a lot, but given the level of Yankee irrationality about Jeter, we could be forgiven for thinking that some Yankee fans have never heard it. As i said earlier, i’m not trying to convince the Yankees to trade Jeter. My main interest, in fact, is not even to persuade the everyday Yankee fan. They are welcome to their emotional attachments, because that’s part of what sports is all about. My criticism has been aimed mainly at professional reporters, who get paid to write intelligently about baseball, and who still spend more time talking about nebulous shit like “clutch” and “heart” and “true Yankee” than about actual performance.

Well, again, given the reactions i sometimes get from Yankee fans, it does in fact seem like this is news to them.

And for every time that a Yankees fan has heard statistical arguments against Jeter, the rest of us have heard multiple times how Derek Jeter is the greatest player alive, Mr. Clutch, Captain Courageous, the heart and soul of the Yankees distilled in human form. It gets a bit old for the rest of us too.

Well, i think Manny is one guy who would cause me to rethink my argument that all major league baseballers play hard all the time. Sometimes Manny looks like he’s barely jogging out there in left field, and on a couple of occasions this year i’ve thought that the Boston pitchers must be ready to throttle him for his lazy-ass attitude.

As for Tejada, i absolutely think that he plays as hard as Jeter. This is a guy who, since he joined Baltimore, has been more gung-ho and enthusiastic than anyone else on the team. He’s up there in the dugout clapping when something good happens, he’s always encouraging his team-mates, and he still has a great arm and pretty good (although declining) range at shortstop.

As for “smartly,” i’m not even sure how to judge or measure that. I can think of nothing about Jeter’s play at shortstop that strikes me, offhand, as being smarter than average. He’s a good hitter, and a selective one, something reflected in a good career EqA and OBP, but that’s certainly not unique among major league players. I really don’t know how to respond to your question about playing smartly. I’m constantly amazed by the level of awareness and quick thinking displayed by virtually all major league players; Jeter just doesn’t stand out as exceptional in this regard, at least in my mind.

64

I think that everything that frustrates me, personally, about this whole issue is encapsulated in the two sentences written above.

For the last three years, Yankees fans have had the opportunity to root for a guy who is - let’s just say it, in big Peter King MMQB overwrought terms - the Best Baseball Player of My Lifetime. Alex Rodriguez is such a good player that he can slug .730 for a month and be described in a major print publication as slumping and struggling. Alex Rodriguez is a better baseball player by a fair margin than any position player that has played for my favorite team in its history.

But still the Yankees fans give the man shit. He is and has always been a better player than #2. He was and probably still would be a better defensive shortstop than Jeter. And yet Yankees fans are continually making comments like the one above - “you can keep A-Rod, we love our Captain anyway.”

For fans of teams that don’t have Alex Rodriguez, the bizarre veneration of a player who is his inferior at his expense can be extremely frustrating.

65

mhendo, I agree with much of what you say above and you are correct. I also do believe that some players are clutch and more clutch the bigger the situation. You are correct; too many national game announcers spend too much time talking about Jeter. We love him, but we also know that it only annoys the rest of baseball more to have Moron McCarver and others go on and on about him.

Jeter, Ortiz, Mo’ Rivera are three great current examples who thrive in “clutch situations”. I have had long arguments with **RickJay ** & **PRR ** about clutch and neither side gave much of course.

Jeter hits better in October than in the regular season and that is with one of the largest post-season samples every accumulated.

Mo’ Rivera has more post season save opportunities than anyone does and if you check his post season stats they are amazing, starting with his ERA.

Ortiz thrives against closers like few hitters I have ever seen. Not setup guys, but the actual closers, including Rivera.

So, I do value clutch and not strictly on statistics. I believe statistics are a good way to look at a player but not the complete picture of course. Jeter has a habit of making those little plays and big plays more often than others make. Very few players learn the art of bunting any more. Jeter is one (with Scooter’s advice and encouragement) that did.

As far as Tejada, I have seen him admire his home runs and not always run out the easy outs. He is not the only one, but as one of the biggest stars on your team, I used him as an example. I have never seen Jeter not run out a ball and he has never watched one of his homers sail into the night.

Manny was an easy and blatant example. Thank you for allowing me to use him.

storyteller0910: Most fans prefer there home-grown talent to the expensive import. Yankee fans more than most, because we are sensitive the rightful condemnation that we can and do buy players and overspend for them. There is extra pride in a homegrown superstar therefore. Have you noticed how quickly the Yankee Fans have elevated Joba to superstar level. The kid has great talent; he might be a great pitcher one day. He has less than 20 innings pitched. Let us see what happens before we crown him.

The A-Rod thing is extra bad as Yankee fans always heard and resisted the comparisons to Jeter and so the pressure was on him to produce and produce big in October and in the late innings. For 3 years, he put up great numbers but failed in the times when fans counted on him the most. Unlike Jeter, he has often put his foot in his mouth. It is stupid and disgraceful what my fellow fans have put A-Rod through, but I think it is understandable. I never booed him at the stadium, I was happy we got him and happy he was willing to move to third which I recognize as a huge sacrifice. I was also willing last off season to trade him if we got back a young stud pitcher, a serviceable third baseman and at least one good prospect. He was a distraction to the team and a failure in October and had that nasty out-clause that is going to cause a lot of press and problems after the post-season. I figured, if the Yanks got a good enough package, it was better than getting nothing if he walks away.

By the way, until this season, I still knew fans that thought we should have kept Soriano and not traded for A-Rod. So, yes, Yankee fans are quite capable of being as stupid as any other fans. I know it and I am occasionally guilty of it. (I would never have traded Boomer Wells, Homer Bush & Graham Lloyd for the Rocket, this is completely irrational, but I liked Boomer and I hated Clemens)

One more Note: As great as A-Rod is, he is not our greatest player obviously. He loses to Ruth and maybe Gehrig, Mantle or even DiMaggio. :wink:

Jim

66

I know you said you were sick of statistics, but Alex Rodriguez’s postseason line in 2004 against the Minnesota Twins was .421/.476/.727. His line in the same year against the Boston Red Sox - a Series that the Yankees, you will remember, ultimately lost - was .258 (eh) / .378 / .515.

Captain Derek’s line in that Sox series? Curious? It was .200/.333/.233.

So in that particular instance when “the fans were counting on them most,” A-Rod absolutely did NOT fail, and Jeter absolutely DID. Why does Jeter get credit for the times he comes through in the clutch, but not noticed for the times he does not? Conversely, why is A-Rod a big choking choker who chokes when he puts up a bad line against Detroit last year, but the fact that he hit very well against the Sox under huge pressure while Jeter was laying an egg gets lost? It’s incredibly selective perception.

Well, I did say “in my lifetime.” By the time I was born, all four of those guys were already in the Hall of Fame.

67

Simple, Jeter had already helped bring home 4 rings. He had an overall .314 or so postseason average I think. A World Series MVP, The Flip and he was our ROY.
A-Rod will be remembered for failing in the last 4 games against Boston despite a great series against the twins. In losing to the Red Sox, almost all Yankee fans were looking for scape goats. A-Rod and Sheffield were good ones. Torre for some, Brown was an easy and deserving target. A-Rod was the biggest target, is remembered for flailing at Arroyo with Jeter on base, few Yankee fans would ever blame Jeter or Mo’. They are covered for life with most Yankee fans. I think they have earned that.

I thought you were a Met fan, sorry about that. I just meant A-Rod was not the best Yankee and maybe not even in the top 3 yet.
BTW: My one great example of a truly clutch Post Season player will always be Mariano Rivera Stats, Height, Weight, Position, Rookie Status & More | Baseball-Reference.com. This is fairly ridiculous and it is far from just one or two good post seasons.

Jim

68

No, I’m struggling with the words today. I am a Met fan. I contend that Rodriguez is the best player on any team in my lifetime (ie, since 1977), and better than any position player who has ever played for the Mets.

Yes. That.

69

Well, that puts him past Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle and Hank Aaron. Willie was not Willie when he was a Met. So, so far I agree without argument. I would argue that A-Rod has not yet clearly proven he is better than Barry Bonds of players since 1977, but he probably will be when all is said and done, and I hate Barry anyway. :wink:

I go back to 1966, so my pool of players is a little deeper.

I have no doubts A-Rod is one of the greatest players ever. His name can be debated with Ruth, Cobb, Williams, Mays, Aaron, Gehrig, etc. This alone is very impressive. Regretfully, if we are fair, Bonds also belongs in this debate.

Jim

70

Well, yeah, but who ever said we had to be fair? :slight_smile:

71

Well, I thought you and mhendo wanted me to be rational. Was that just about Jeter? :wink:

72

Jeter, career:

BA: .317
OBP: .388
SLG: .461
OPS: .849

Jeter, postseason:

BA: .314
OBP: .384
SLG: .479
OPS: .863

Those lines look almost identical to me. Jeter has played in 119 postseason games, and he performs almost exactly as well in the postseason as he does in the regular season, as far as i can tell.

His BA and OBP are a tiny bit lower in the postseason, and his SLG is a tiny bit higher. It’s basically a wash. He’s a good player in the regular season; he’s a good player in the postseason.

ETA:

In fact, for all the talk about Jeter’s postseason clutchness, i think you’d actually have do some serious sleuthing to find a player whose regular season and postseason stats were so nearly identical.

73

This reminds me of something Orel Hershiser wrote the other day: the best ‘big game’ players generally don’t rise to the situation, they just do the same things they do in the other games while other players fold under the pressure.

74

If you look at most players, you will find their post season numbers go down compared to regular season. This is based on the fact that they are facing better pitchers in the postseason. I do remember Jeter’s HR/AB goes up in the Postseason, but as the SAs are so close, it must come at the cost of doubles. I doubt I can ever prove my conviction that Jeter is a clutch post season player. It is hard to back up.

Statistically, I can only prove Mo’ is significantly better in the post season than even his great regular season totals.

Jim

75

Paul O’Neill:

Regular: .288/.363/.470/.833
Post: .284/.363/.465/.828

Second player I checked.
Actually, I was trying to prove your point - I’ve always believed that post-season OPS would in general be lower than regular-season. Still think it’s true - but O’Neill’s line was so amazingly similar I had to post it.
Bernie’s line is pretty close too: .297/.381/.477 vs .275/.371/.480. Lower AVG, more power and walks.

I’m sure there are other players who have much lower averages in the post season - Gary Sheffield is one, Jim Thome another.

76

I think there might be something to this, although i think it’s probably got more to do with facing good pitchers, as suggested by What Exit?, than with the more nebulous category of “pressure.” Most teams that make the postseason do so with pretty good pitching staffs, and the breaks in the schedule mean that the top three pitchers in each rotation sometimes get a higher proportion of starts than in the regular season.

Jeter hits a home run about every 38 at-bats in his career, and in the postseason he hits a home run about every 28 at-bats, so his home run production is slightly higher in October.

Based on his regular season stats, we would expect him to have hit about 13 homers in the postseason, but he’s actually hit 17. That’s four extra in total. Is 1 extra home run in every 120 postseason at-bats within the statistical margin of error, or does it provide some evidence that Jeter is actually a better postseason than regular season hitter? I don’t know for sure, but i’m guessing the former. I’m sure that someone who’s better at stats than me could tell you. But what about this as an argument:

Remember that a fairly typical major league season is about 600 at bats. In 479 postseason at-bats, Jeter hit four more home runs than we would expect (based on his career numbers). That means that, in a full season’s worth of postseason games (~600 at-bats), Jeter would hit five extra home runs. Would you consider a five-homer-per-season fluctuation (either way, up or down) to be remarkable over the course of a player’s (any player) career?

Yes, it is. And real fans, people who watch all the games and remember the big moments, understandably remember things like a big home run, or The Flip, or some other spectacular play. There’s nothing wrong with that. Contrary to popular belief, folks who like statistics also love those big plays, and remember them, and associate them with particular players.

But the problem with all of this is that these types of arguments end up going in circles. Look at our own little conversation here.

  1. You tell me Jeter’s clutch.
  2. I say he isn’t.
  3. You say that “Jeter hits better in October than in the regular season.”
  4. I show you figures that demonstrate that he hits almost identically in the regular season and postseason.
  5. You say that, despite this, you still believe he’s clutch, but it’s hard to prove.

Go back to 1, and start again.

I have no problem with people believing in Jeter’s clutchness, even if that belief is based on nebulous criteria and their “feelings” about how he plays in pressure situations. But what often happens is that people who ridicule statistics will also often claim that the stats say something that they don’t.

Your claim about Jeter hitting better in October, buttressed as it was by the observation that he has “one of the largest post-season samples ever accumulated,” was a statistical claim, and yet the numbers showed precisely the contrary of what you claimed.

I’m not making an accusation of lying or dishonesty here. I’m just noting that, with some players, Jeter being the most obvious example, their posteason clutchness has become such an article of faith that people tend to believe it is actually supported by the statistics, when it’s not.

I will admit that there is one aspect of “clutch” hitting that Jeter might be good at, but i don’t know. Sabermetrics folks trying to study the issue of clutch hitting have used the phrase “late and close” to describe a situation that might be used to define clutch. So, if you’re down by one in the top of the ninth, and you hit a two-run homer, that might be taken as an example of clutch hitting. But if you hit a homer in the ninth when you’re up by 7, that’s not clutch.

There has been quite a bit of debate over whether studying a player’s ability in situations where the game is “late and close” can tell us anything about “clutchness.” Some people believe that, even if we can identify players who are better in such situations, it’s usually just a matter of small sample sizes, and that they will likely regress to the mean over time. Others think that there might be an actual, observable and measurable difference in some players, but even these folks concede that it’s probably small and hard to measure, even if it exists.

But, assuming there is a correlation between performance in “late and close” situations, and “clutchness,” i don’t know how Jeter stacks up in that area, because i don’t have the figures for how he hits in “late and close” situations.

Yep, Mo’s stats do look considerably better for the postseason.

Career:

ERA: 2.33
WHIP: 1.046
K/9: 8.09

Postseason:

ERA: 0.80
WHIP: 0.758
K/9: 6.98

His strike rate is down a bit in the postseason, but his ERA is one and a half ruins better, and his WHIP is almost a full 0.3 better. And his regular season numbers are already amazingly good.

I’m still not sure exactly what this tells us. Is there something about the way a closer is used in the playoffs that increases his chances of performing well? Or are Rivera’s postseason numbers really indicative of some special ability to perform under pressure?

The problem is, my historical knowledge of closers isn’t good enough that i can think of anyone who is/was (a) as good a closer as Rivera, and (b) had enough postseason opportunities that we could reasonably make a comparison. A guy like Trevor Hoffman has career stats not far off Rivera’s, but he’s had very few postseason appearances, certainly too small a sample size for meaningful comparison.

77

Strange with Bernie & Paul, you picked two more player that are known are clutch post season players. I would look at Tino, who I liked, but was not particularly known as clutch in the post season.

Here is the oddest guy I can think of. Jim Leyritz has something like a .220 BA in the post season, but a disproportionate number of his few hits either tied the game late or put his team ahead. He did this for both the Yanks and the Padres.

If anyone want to take the time to dissect his post season numbers, they are very strange from my memory.

Dennis Eckersley is the only closer I can think of with a reasonably large post season record to compare Mo against. Fingers & Goose where really different types of closers. Ecks who was great is 3.00 ERA in the pst season. This is close to his career ERA as a closer.

This is hard to compare: I got the list of saves leaders"
Saves Rank Player SV IP

  1. Mariano Rivera 34 112.7
  2. Dennis Eckersley 15 36.0
  3. Jason Isringhausen 11 26.7
    Robb Nen 11 20.0
  4. Rollie Fingers 10 57.3
  5. Mark Wohlers 9 38.3
  6. Rich Gossage 8 31.3
    Randy Myers 8 30.7
  7. Tug McGraw 7 52.3
    Troy Percival 7 9.7
    John Wetteland 7 18.7

Nen is 2.24 in the post season, much smaller sample, but a very good number, just not close to Mo. He is 2.98 lifetime.
Izzy is 2.36 vs. 3,49 career. Again very good but not close to Mo.

A .80 ERA over 112.2 innings is ridiculously great. It is really off the scale. That would be a Cy Young winning regular season in all likelihood. He is also 8-1 with 34 saves.

Jim

78

Tito’s a douchebag for claiming Stan Javier was “a great hitter” in that commercial, just because he struck him out in his only pitching appearance.

But I really don’t have an issue with his managing, when you remember that he’s been trying to set up the staff for the postseason - and that includes setting up their heads as well as their arms. It’s enough that he’s kept Manny from destroying the clubhouse.

79

Back on the topic of Terry Francona, there was an interesting article in Baseball Prospectus the other day that basically said that Francona’s doing exactly what he should be doing at this stage in the season, and argues that Joe Torre should actually follow his example:

80

That is an interesting theory. Jorge & Cano should get a few extra days off, A-Rod doesn’t really need it. The rest of the team has gotten breaks.

I think the Yanks want to try and get the division and Torre doesn’t really believe in resting players until the post season is at least clinched. He knows there is still a tiny chance of Detroit eliminating the Yanks.

Jim {BTW: rejoice Yankee haters, last nights game was a terrible loss to watch, after scoring 4 in the ninth at home to tie the game, you expect to win, cost me 90 minutes of reading time for a loss}