FIVE MO THINGS, 5/14/13
1) Being good when the opposition is bad can lead to really good things. Look at this road trip. Miami, Philly, and Queens. Yuck, Yuck, and Yuck. That's not a statements about the cities or the ballparks, though I have no burning desire to go to a Marlins game, but the opposition. The Reds, already killing it against the league's bottom-feeders, have a chance to do some damage against the bottom of the NL East.
The Reds are very good when the opponents are very bad. They're 16-3 against sub-.500 teams, 6-13 against everyone else. That might alarm you if, like many, you're fixated on what will happen in October.
I'd like to get there first.
They will if they clean up against the more craptastic teams on their schedule.
These last three years, the Reds' fates have been determined by their performances in games they should have won.
Last year the Reds were 57-29 against sub-.500 squads. The Cardinals weren't nearly as good, going 49-34.
In 2011, the Reds went 43-46 against bad teams, while St. Louis went 60-42.
The year before, the Reds famously went 71-38 against losing teams, while the Birds went 49-53.
It says here that the team that does the best against the worst will win the Central.
No, they can't play .316 baseball against winning teams, but if they simply hold their own against them, they'll be fine.
What will it mean in October? No idea. The Reds actually played .526 ball against winning teams, and had winning records against two of the other four playoff teams - including the Giants - and still couldn't get past the Division Series.
But they'll at least have another crack at the postseason if they take care of business of road trips like the one in front of them.
2) Dusty must be doing something right. The Reds issues throughout the first six weeks have been well documented, from injuries to poor player performance.
Not much has gone right.
Except that the team has won 22 out of 38 times.
They've held up more than okay despite looking like they were on the verge of falling apart.
And when panic was setting in certain corners of the fan base, the team yet again remained calm.
Guess the manager is doing a good job.
Maybe the personality trait he's most often criticized for - being too calm and relaxed - is his best attribute.
3) Can't we all just enjoy the game? Seems like this happens on a daily basis. Someone makes fun of, or poo-poos sabermetrics, blogger gets his shorts wound up....
Lowe blames statistical analysis for his difficulty finding a job during the off-season:
Lowe won the job with the Rangers and has since found out that at least three teams wanted to sign him in a similar capacity. However, he didn’t pass the “stats test.”
“If you pump my numbers into the system compared to, let’s say, Tanner Scheppers, of course his stuff is going to outscore my stuff, I’m not naive,” Lowe said. “He’s a young kid who throws 98 mph with a great breaking ball. Listen, I know I don’t pass the test.
“But it doesn’t take into consideration the human element of sports. Don’t get me wrong, I think those stats can be beneficial. But I use more of a human element. Where has the guy had success? What cities has he had success? What cities has he failed at? Has he performed well when it matters?
Lowe also answered “God, no” when asked if Major League players pay attention to Sabermetrics. He’s wrong about that as Zack Greinke (link), Brandon McCarthy (link), and Brian Bannister (link) are three of an increasing pool of players who utilize modern analysis to improve on the field.
It is understandable why a 40-year-old player on the 18th hole of his career wouldn’t feel the need to add math to an already long list of things to do to stay competitive, but as the years go by, players like Lowe — just like the older writers who still reference slide rules and mom’s basement, and make Edwin Starr “WAR, what is it good for?” jokes — sound increasingly anachronistic in their refusal to adapt to the times.
I hate the new-school sabermetrics vs. old-school debate, because no one's wrong.
From a team and player evaluation standpoint, you'd be insane to not at least give some credence to newer, more advanced, and often more complicated statistical ways of measuring collective and individual performance. More important, myopic front offices that either ignore or refuse to embrace new stats are doing themselves (and their fans) a huge disservice.
On the other hand, these metrics only tell us part of the story about individual players. They say little or nothing about what kind of teammate a guy is, how he'll respond to certain mitigating factors in his personal life, how he'll mesh with a manager. And there will always be a certain amount of subjectivity when it comes to evaluating/discussing/watching/debating/signing certain players. The eyeball test isn't going away, nor should it.
What's wrong with meshing both quantitative data and what our eyes tell us?
More important, this to extends to us fans. The great thing about baseball, maybe more than any other sport, is that there are 434,823,043 different ways to watch and follow baseball. If you choose to never look at even the most rudimentary statistics, it doesn't make you any less of a fan. If you choose to watch the games while your nose is buried in your calculator between pitches, you might be incredible boring to hang out it, but that doesn't make you any less appreciative of baseball's aesthetic, and subjective, appeal.
There's no right or wrong way to be a fan - unless you're one of those people who constantly gets up and walks in front of my while the game is going on - the awesome thing about baseball right now is that there are thousands of ways to be as informed about the sport and its teams as possible, but none of them are mandatory for our enjoyment of the game.
4) The last time I went to Indy for a Knicks/Pacers playoff game in 1999, a woman in her 70s called me a "c********r." I really hope I run into her tonight at Banker's Life Fieldhouse. I'm sure I will have fewer nice things to say tomorrow after getting yelled at by Pacers fans tonight, but Banker's Life is one of my favorite sports venues. And Indy is one of my favorite cities.
I'd like to think that it's impossible for the Knicks to play worse than they did on Saturday, when they scored 71 points in game three. But the thing is, the Pacers were pretty awful too. Aside from Roy Hibbert, whom the Knicks have idea how to defend, no one played well for Indiana.
That's the scary thing.
As the Knicks continue to have the kind of chemistry that makes Sergio and Tiger look friendly (thanks, Dale Pontz), you've gotta think that at home, that despite being far from an offensive powerhouse all season, the Pacers will shoot better tonight from both the field and the free throw line. They'll continue to hammer New York on the glass, and they're still too good defensively for the Knicks to get anything easy on offense.
The Knicks might play better. Logic says that they will. Unfortunately, it also says that the Pacers will improve from game three to game four as well. They've been the better team for about 130 of a possible 144 minutes so far this series. As much as I want to drive home late tonight giddy about the series being tied, and as much as I hate going into a game I've very excited about seeing in person with such little optimism, I don't like the orange and blue's chances tonight.
5) Andrew Wiggins is going to choose a school today. I beg you, as an adult, that if he doesn't choose to attend the college that you hope he does, not to bother him or assassinate his character. Please. Thank you.
-There's More....
-Wanna watch a Russian youth hockey fight? Of course you do.
More from Hardball Talk, on Melky Cabera getting his (deserved) World Series ring from the Giants...
I’m sure someone will be outraged by this because that’s what people do when a PED-connected player is mentioned. But Melky did the crime and the time. More than the time, actually, as he was basically pressured/shamed into abdicating his 2012 batting title because of his positive PED test. Which wasn’t provided for by any rule and made little sense since a batting title is merely a function of mathematics, not a judgment of a players’ moral or even overall baseball worth. But that’s just how we roll as a society now.
First columnist to write how Melky should donate his World Series ring to an animal shelter or something wins the tournament.
-The Philadelphia Eagles had "Taco Tuesdays" and "Fast-food Fridays" when Andy Reid was there. Of course they did.
-It's called Karma.
-Part of me expects Major League Baseball to have this guy on staff by the middle of the summer. From somewhere in Iowa....
An umpire at of a Stark County High School baseball game was arrested on the field after allegedly passing out and attacking the first responders that tried to help.
Daryl Jacobson, 49 of Kewanee, is being charged with two counts of aggravated battery and two counts of resisting a peace officer and is in custody at the Stark County jail. Jacobson was working as the infield umpire when Stark County hosted United High School in a varsity baseball Friday, May 10th.
According to witnesses, Jacobson passed out on the field and when he was being assisted, he attacked the first responders that tried to help. He was then tased two times while being arrested.
“I heard from my friends that the guy was resisting arrest and he said a few things he shouldn’t have said,” Stark County High School Student Noel Ellis tells us. “They tased him twice.”
Witnesses also say the umpire was visibly under the influence at the time.
-Not the first time I've asked this question: Remember when NBA players dressed like men?
-The internet needs more pictures of attractive women pushing lawn mowers. It would help me bring attention to our "Mo Your Lawn" contest, where we're giving away season lawn tickets to Riverbend, a new mower from West Chester Lawn and Garden, and ONE chance for me to mow your lawn for you. Enter here. I'm off to Indy. Here's the same 'ol picture of Marisa Miller.
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