If you're gonna name your team after real people, at least do it right

We live in a world with NFL teams like the Washingtons* and MLB teams like the Clevelands*, that celebrate a tradition of white settler racism. A world where most sports fans lie somewhere on a spectrum from oblivious to indignant, mascots are unrepentantly racist, and owners have dug in their heels in defense of horribly offensive "traditions".

[* That's right. I refuse to use their chosen names. More on that below.]

That being the case, it seems important to celebrate the teams that do it right. Teams like the Spokane Indians. From Rodney Harwood of the Indian Country Today Media Network:

"In 2006, the baseball team’s front office and the tribe collaborated to come up with a team logo not only saying Spokane Indians in English, but developed a team logo printed in the Salish language, which was depicted on the sleeve of its uniforms.

"The Spokane Indians baseball team will take that collaboration one step further, making the logo in the Salish language the main logo on the front of its home uniforms for the 2014 season."

A Salish-language logo? And it's also their primary logo? That's pretty damn cool. It also addresses the obvious concern that this is a team called "the Indians". This is a word that was applied to the Aboriginal people of North America by white settlers, who misidentified them as Asian - and then didn't bother to correct themselves. It's inherently racist.

Impressively, the team is aware of this and shares those concerns - they don't use mascots, they don't have chants, none of that cartoonish crap that the Washingtons or Clevelands use. Says team co-owner Andy Billig, “We have a very positive relationship with the local tribes. We would talk with them from time-to-time to check in and say, ‘How are we doing?’ Even if we weren’t using any imagery, the name of the team was still the Spokane Indians and we knew that could potentially be sensitive. We believe that we are still the only professional sports team to collaborate with local tribes in this way.” 

The difference, with this Spokane team, is all in the collaboration and the new/old language. In making the Salish name the one that goes on their logo, with the help of the Spokane Nation, the name is effectively reclaimed - "Indians" becomes, at best, an English translation of the actual name. And an officially sanctioned nickname for the specific people that they represent. And it will surely decline in use as people familiarize themselves with the pronunciation of the Salish name.

This, by the way, is what that logo looks like:

In the past, I've always come down squarely against every iteration of the people-as-team-mascot kind of sports team. But this one, one that Spokane elders themselves say shows them respect and bring them pride? This is one that I feel pretty good about.

What would happen if baseball writers voted the way they claimed to vote?

This is a comment from a reader of Joe Posnanski's blog, though it could come from any number of sports writers and "traditionalist" fans: 

While a player on a losing team certainly can be MVP, that is a black mark on that player’s record. The point is to win games. While the Angels certainly won more games this year because they had Mike Trout, that value is diminished because the Angels were so bad. A lot of that is beyond Trout’s control, and certainly the play of the rest of the team does not diminish his contribution, it does diminish that contribution’s value. If Trout plays for the Astros is he MVP? If Miguel Cabrera’s performance is slightly below Trout’s, but he helps push the Tigers into the playoffs, isn’t that more valuable?

So, now that you've considered the situation as a hypothetical, I can fill-in the specifics that were probably obvious to everyone who's a baseball fan. Excellent Player and Mediocre Team are Mike Trout and the Angels, while Incredible Player and Good Team are Miguel Cabrera and the Tigers.

Now, I'm copy-and-pasting this not to rehash the same discussion that happens every year, among everyone who writes about baseball. Because that would be really, really tedious. Instead, I want to a somewhat different approach.

The logic expressed in that quote goes something like this: you can't be MVP unless your team made the playoffs. Rather than argue the point, I'm going to accept it. Because, hey, your criteria is your own. You want to constraint the meaning of "value" such that it can only refer to players on playoff teams? Sure.

Here's the thing, though. Whatever definition you use, you have to be totally consistent in its application. Display some integrity. Establish your criteria, and then follow it.

That doesn't sound all that hard, does it? The thing is, in practice, the folks who add this playoff stipulation are rarely consistent. Writes baseball blogger Murray Chass,

When I voted for m.v.p., I didn’t look for any definitions because there aren’t any. Each voter has the freedom to decide for himself what “most valuable” means. To me, it means the player without whom his team couldn’t have done what it did. I always felt that the greater number of outstanding players a team had the less valuable each of those players was.
If I were voting this year, I’d find it hard to ignore Cabrera. He led the league in batting, on-base and slugging percentages, the combination of the two and batting with runners in scoring position. He was second in home runs, total bases and runs batted in, tied for second in runs scored and third in hits and walks. And don’t forget, he led his team to a division title. Would the Tigers have won it without him? No.

Chass' first criteria is that the "team couldn't have done what it did" without that player. It's badly expressed, but I take that to mean "a player without whom the team wouldn't have made the playoffs". That seems more or less confirmed by his subsequent argument in favor of Miguel Cabrera. And, sure, his selection of Cabrera for American League MVP totally fits with that logic. The Tigers won the division by a single game, and Cabrera was inarguably the best player on the team. Good job.

But there's a problem, and it arises when Chass starts talking about the other league's MVP:

In this instance, I think I would be tempted to vote for Goldschmidt, but the only race his team, Arizona, was involved in after June was a race for .500. With McCutchen providing the spark, Pittsburgh was in the division race to the end and maintained its wild-card lead.

Say, what? Inexplicably, right after explaining his criteria, Chass does the exact opposite of what he said he would do. Yowza. (Unless he sincerely meant that he could define "did what they did" in totally arbitrary ways, like "finish around .500". Which I can't believe he actually meant.)

Now, obviously, human beings often don't make sense. They set one standard, then vote according to another. This probably shouldn't be surprising, but it'd be nice if these voters - who are paid to do work like this, even if only indirectly, because a) they get to vote because they're sports writers, and b) they subsequently get to write about this news, which they themselves have made - were consistent in some way, right? And if they were, what would actually happen? Well, let's play pretend.

First, any NL MVP discussion would have to immediately exclude players from non-playoff teams. Legitimate MVP contenders from non-playoff teams, guys like Paul Goldschmidt, Carlos Gomez, or Troy Tulowitzki? Sorry, Chass, they're all out.

Second, and maybe more controversially, you also have to exclude every player who comes from a team that would have won their division/wildcard without that player. Atlanta and LA, for example, both won their divisions by ten or more games - no single player comes close to making an individual contribution that could account for that gap, so Clayton Kershaw and Freddie Freeman (among others) are also out. Kershaw's a favorite for MVP, so that one especially hurts.

Following this logic, then, an AL MVP ballot looks something like this: Cabrera, Donaldson, Scherzer, Sanchez, Longoria, Ellsbury, Victorino, Zobrist, Beltre, Verlander. (The arrangement might vary, but the players should be largely the same.) 

You might notice a few auspicious absences. Dustin Pedroia, like Kershaw, is excluded not because he's not one of the ten best, but because the Sox probably make the playoffs without him. So, not an MVP candidate. Trout, Robinson Cano, Chris Davis, and Felix Hernandez are all disqualified because their teams miss the playoffs with or without him. No one actually wants to see a ballot like that - you're excluding way too many of the league's best player - but that's the price of being consistent, right? Right. Good work, everyone.

The odds that we'll ever see a ballot like that, though? Well, it's not zero. But it's somewhere close to it.

Because here's the thing. The guys like Chass, who say that you should need to be on a playoff team? Mike Trout is probably their second or third choice. Davis is somewhere in their top five, too. And Cano isn't far behind. I don't even have to ask Chass and company if I'm right about this - I know I am. And these guys should be up for consideration, because they deserve it.
 
TL;DR: No one who espouses that whole valuable=playoffs thing actually adheres to it, because it would produce terrible results. And from that I can only conclude that they don't actually believe it, either.

The sad case of Ryan Freel, and what players like Brett Lawrie should learn from it

When I wrote about the Toronto Blue Jays' Brett Lawrie last summer - suggesting that, in cases like his, 'playing hard' could easily be a bad thing - I compared him to Eric Byrnes, a late-peaking player who burned bright for a few years (the 67th most valuable hitter from 2004-2007) before suddenly fizzling. But I might have just as easily compared Lawrie to Ryan Freel.

The 36 year-old Freel, who hadn't played Major League Baseball since 2009, died last week, after shooting himself in the head. According to his family, baseball-related concussions - he suffered somewhere between 10 and 20 of them - were almost certainly to blame. According to his ex-wife,

“I don’t know how many times he would talk about sliding into second or third base and blacking out or seeing stars. I cringed that that’s who he was – all-out, full throttle. It was very hard to watch.”

I've actually known about Ryan Freel since he debuted, given that he came up with the Blue Jays in 2001. It's a somewhat vague memory, at this point, but I remember really liking him - he was small and overly serious. He was also quite good, and Freel's career and performance (the 62nd most valuable hitter from 2004-2006) was shockingly similar to that of Byrnes. And, like Byrnes, a lot of that value came from doing the little things that aren't easily appreciated - running the bases well, stealing bases, playing strong defense.

Freel was not highly-valued or considered to be incredibly talented (unlike Lawrie, in this regard) but was considered hard-nosed and gutsy, sacrificing his body at every turn and chasing after every ball within a couple hundred feet of him. And, like Byrnes, in his early 30s he quickly went from being a tremendously useful, and above-average, everyday player to a poor-hitting scrub. Again, like Byrnes, the injuries eventually became too much to play through, too much of an impediment and detriment.

Freel and Byrne were only useful so long as they could run hard and crash hard - be it into walls, into the stands, into opposing players, or even, occasionally, their own teammates. (A collision with a teammate is often cited as the concussion that finally ended Freel's career.) And when they could no longer do those things, their below-average skills couldn't keep them employed.

Lawrie is a better athlete, and probably a better player, than either Freel or Byrne. But one would hope that players like these can take something away from Freel's story.

Baseball follow-up: and sometimes, it's all love

I blogged yesterday about the ambivalence that I feel for pro sports. But today, I read a story that reminds me that, sometimes, I don't have to feel ambivalent. Sometimes, it's all good.

This is Ichiro, inarguably one of the world's most famous ballplayers:

For the first ten years of his career, he was also one of the world's best ballplayers - he collected the 4th-most Wins Above Replacement from 2001-10, during which he also broke the record for hits in a single-season.

Just as importantly, he's earned a reputation for being a really nice guy. How nice? This is the letter that he wrote to a fan in Seattle, how kept a running tally of how many hits Ichiro recorded every season on her Ichimeter: (apologies to Yahoo for so shamelessly stealing their image and story)

And, sure enough, Ichiro included a pair of shoes and a bat, all autographed. Pretty awesome stuff.

Love, hate, and baseball

Last week, the Toronto Blue Jays - the only sports team that has earned entirely uncritical, and unrepentant, love from me - made an insanely aggressive trade. It's not an exaggeration to say that it's probably the most exciting move that the team has made since they signed Roger Clemens, if not Rickey Henderson. And the latter happened almost 20 years ago.

But just as the trade reminds me why I love sports, it's equally capable of reminding me why I hate sports.

The Miami Marlins, with whom the Jays completed the trade, have now divested themselves of the large majority of their payroll. Last season, they started the year with (if I'm remembering correctly) ten players making over $2m, several of whom were also making north of $10m. Now, they have two, the highest-paid player making "only" $6m. In total, their payroll is now hovering somewhere around $20m.

So, why is this hate-worthy? Because the Marlins are infamous for exploiting baseball's revenue-sharing system. Designed to help poorer franchises compete with the likes of the Yankees and Red Sox, teams like the Marlins instead use the money to increase their profit. From 2002 to 2010 - that is, since current owner Jeffrey Loria bought the team - the perennially-cheap Marlins averaged a total player payroll of about $55m and a pre-sharing profit of something like $15m. After revenue sharing? Most like $45m - or about 80% of their total player costs. That's not a sports team that's being run out there to actually win. That's a team that's designed to lose, and, perversely*, make money doing it.

And a year after appearing to reverse course and doing badly - having to reverse course, because they had convinced the city and its politicians that they would build a good team if the public built them a $600m stadium - the Marlins have decided to return to the reliably profitable method of tanking on the cheap. And, honestly, who can blame them? There's a lot of chance and random variation that gets in the way of turning a profit with a winning-team; but there's a formula that guarantees monetary success if you do badly enough. Given those options, it's not surprising that one or more teams would take the good-for-business, bad-for-baseball approach. It makes more than a little bit of sense.

But, fuck, it really makes me hate pro baseball.
 

*I say "perversely" as if capitalism doesn't routinely reward failure. It does, of course. But it's still a fair description.

Miguel Cabrera didn't win the Triple Crown

1.

In the NHL's 2010-2011 season, Daniel Sedin - a player in the Western Conference - led the league with 104 points and won the Art Ross Trophy as the leading scorer. The Eastern Conference's Martin St. Louis scored 99 points, second-best in the NHL, and was awarded nothing. Corey Perry - another Western Conference player - led the league with 50 goals and was awarded the Maurice Richard Trophy as top goal-scorer. Martin St. Louis's teammate, Steven Stamkos, scored 45 to lead the Eastern Conference, but nobody noticed or cared.

2.

One of the oft-repeated arguments in favor of pitcher Jack Morris's election to the baseball Hall of Fame is that he led baseball in Pitcher Wins during the 1980s, with 162, and every other pitcher who led a particular decade in Pitcher Wins is in the Hall of Fame. Let's ignore, for the moment, that this is actually a pretty meaningless stat - that Pitcher Wins are heavily dependent on the quality of the pitcher's team, as well as dependent on having a lot of opportunities to start, and that we have much better stats available - and see whether that's actually true.

From 1977-1986 - a full decade - Ron Guidry led baseball with 163 Pitcher Wins. (Morris had 144 over the same time-frame.) Ron Guidry is not in the Hall of Fame. From 1984-1993, Frank Viola and Roger Clemens tied for the most Pitcher Wins, again with 1963. Frank Viola is also not in the Hall of Fame, and Clemens will be hard-pressed to shake the steroid-user label and qualify for the Hall, at least for the first few years.

So, even if I limit myself to the years where Morris was also active, it's pretty clear that the argument falls apart unless it's hilariously constrained. It's all about the easy and ready-made reference points, apparently.

3.

Rogers Hornsby was arguably one of the five or ten greatest baseball players, ever. He has the second-highest career batting average, ever. He had six seasons where he posted at least 10 Wins Above Replacement, equaling Barry Bonds and one fewer than Willie Mays. (On the high-end, Babe Ruth had ten; Hank Aaron, though, had none.)

In 1922, Hornsby won the first of his Triple Crowns, meaning that he led the National League - all 8 teams - in batting average (AVG), home runs (HR), and runs batted in (RBI). In 1925, he did it again, but did it even better. This time, he led all of Major League Baseball in average, homers, and batted in.

4.

This season, Miguel Cabrera led the American League in that baseball traditionalist's favorite fetishistic triumvirate of stats: AVG, HR, RBI. (It's actually eminently reasonable to fetishize HR, because there's no better indicator of raw power. But AVG is demonstrably inferior to on-base percentage at demonstrating what it's supposed to demonstrate, and RBI is almost useless - it's an opportunity stat, and not particularly reflective of ability. Plenty of awful players have driven in 100 RBI, provided that they hit in the middle of the order and get to play every game.)

But the American League, like the Eastern Conference, is just a subset of half the teams in the whole of Major League Baseball. Cabrera led all of baseball in HR and RBI, but came second (or third, arguably) league-wide in AVG, behind the National League's Buster Posey. Actually, he didn't even lead all Cabreras in AVG - the NL's Melky Cabrera was more than ten points higher, though he was one plate appearance short of "qualifying" for the batting title. (Although, that said, baseball has a rule that allows him to qualify by adding an extra "out" to his season line. Melky Cabrera requested that they not that, and they complied, but we don't have to also indulge him.)

5.

Last season, Matt Kemp hit .324 with 39 HR and 126 RBI - a season very similar to the one that Miguel Cabrera just put up this year. But Kemp didn't win the Triple Crown and didn't win the MVP. (Although he probably should have. Even if we concede that he and MVP Ryan Braun were nearly identical as hitters, Kemp is a substantially better fielder at a much harder position.) Kemp led the National league is HR and RBI, and finished third in AVG. He also led all of baseball in RBI, was 3rd in HR, and 7th in AVG.

But let's be playful, for a moment, and try to imagine how Kemp could have won the Triple Crown.

Among National Leaguers, players on only the Brewers and Mets beat Kemp's batting average. Among American Leaguers, players on only the Yankees, Red Sox, Rangers, Tigers, and Blue Jays beat Kemp's AVG or HR. That means that Kemp's Triple Crown numbers were better than those posted by any player on the other 23 teams. Substitute the Brewers and Mets with any of the other 9 American League teams, and suddenly Matt Kemp has won a Triple Crown.

Actually, it's even easier than that. There are 14 teams in the AL and 16 in the NL. Miguel Cabrera had the best Triple Crown numbers among the players from 14 teams. Matt Kemp also had the best numbers among a group of 14 teams, but had the misfortune of playing in the larger League. If you drop the Brewers and Mets, you're left with 14 teams - the exact same number of teams and players that Cabrera was in competition with.

5.

Getting to the point: The MVPs of baseball's two Leagues will be announced on Thursday, and the American League's MVP Trout vs. Cabrera race is being figured as something much bigger than the two players themselves: advanced stats vs. traditional ones, Wins Above Replacement (WAR) vs. the Triple Crown. But I'm going to suggest that this framing of the competition begs the question: because before we can ask whether it's more important to lead the league in WAR or in Triple Crown stats, we should probably confirm that Miguel Cabrera actually won the Triple Crown.

Baseball fans are probably perplexed, at this point - because Cabrera did win the Triple Crown, didn't he? Major League Baseball even created a trophy for it:

Obnoxious trophies aside, I'm gonna say it: Cabrera won squat. If Stamkos wasn't the Eastern Conference's Richard Trophy winner, if Kemp didn't also win a Triple Crown, then it makes zero sense for Cabrera to be the American League's Triple Crown winner. It's based on an arbitrary assignment of 14 teams to one League and 16 to another. It's misleading, at least insofar as people routinely refer to the Triple Crown as "baseball's Triple Crown". It's not a real Triple Crown.

Rogers Hornsby in 1925, leading all of baseball in the Triple Crown stats? That's a real Triple Crown, just like Corey Perry's 50 goals earned him a real Maurice Richard Trophy. Cabrera's impressive but nonetheless second-(or third-)best batting average? Second-best won Stamkos zero Richard trophies, which is precisely the number of Triple Crowns (and MVP awards) that Cabrera deserves.

6.

Additionally hilarious thought: I'm willing to bet that the same people who would give Cabrera the MVP over Trout because the former won the AL Triple Crown would see things differently if there was only one MVP and not one for each league - you know, just like every other pro sports league. Because then we definitely wouldn't be talking about this Triple Crown thing - and without that traditionalist fetish symbol obscuring the view, Trout's superior numbers and performance are a whole lot easier to see.

Here's the thing, and the whole point of how hilariously inappropriate and deceptive the Triple Crown award actually is: if a player is the MVP of his league, then he should be the MVP regardless of (ostensibly) irrelevant alternatives. If Cabrera > Trout, then that should hold true whether we're considering him for AL MVP or the MVP of all baseball. But that's not actually true. Because Cabrera's argument hinges so totally on his Triple Crown. If we consider all of baseball - AL and NL - including Buster Posey (or Melky Cabrera) and his higher batting average, then Cabrera loses the Triple Crown and suddenly Trout > Cabrera. That's absurd. And, yet, that's how baseball traditionalists think.

A knock on the defense offered for Yunel Escobar

A brief update on the ongoing Yunel Escobar and the "tu ere maricon" controversy, which I first blogged about here and here.

The common defense that's being used, in the hours and days following the press conference, is that the possible negative connotation of the word is being overblown. Latin American players and reporters have been quick to say that there's a translation problem - both linguistically and culturally speaking - and that it really wasn't a big deal. "Maricon" means a lot of things, they say, and lots of people use it everyday and in casual conversation with friends and family. So, no problem, right?

Well, I don't really buy it. In fact, the culture-gap/culture-clash defense strikes me as pretty weak. Worse, it strikes me as, at best, a bit clueless and, at worst, indicative of a much larger problem with homophobia and a misunderstanding of how it operates and perpetuates. (And I'm not even gonna go anywhere near the "boys will be boys" type of defense that's been offered by Dirk Hayhurst and others. Honestly, if I need to explain why that one is unbelievably fucking problematic, you're probably not going to understand anything that follows, anyway.)

Players and coaches like Omar Vizquel and Ozzie Guillen quickly defended Escobar by saying that Latin Americans use the word in casual conversation with their friends all the time, to show them affection, to tease them, and/or to emasculate them. 

• Vizquel: "We say that word very often, and to us, it doesn’t really mean that we are decreasing anybody or talking down to people or anything like that. It’s just a word we use on an everyday basis. I don’t know why people are taking this so hard and so out of place or out of proportion."
• Guillen: "In my house, we call (each other) that word every 20 seconds. I've got three kids," Guillen added.  "For us, it's like 'What's up, bro? What's up, dude?' It's how you say it and to who you say it. But that's our country.

Now, admittedly, I'm no expert or cultural anthopologist with expertise with respect to the Caribbean. But I am keenly aware of just how much more dangerous it is to be an LGBTQ person in Central America than it is in Canada. And that difference, that danger? I'm going to suggest that it has a lot to do with the ease with which people like Vizquel and Guillen can brush aside Escobar's words. (Just a quick note: I am not so naive as to think that race isn't playing a factor in the way that the Toronto media has taken up the story. But that's another story for another day.)

Because this defense sounds an awful lot like "when we say 'fag', we mean you're too sensitive. we don't mean you're gay or anything'." This sounds an awful lot like "when i say he's a 'pussy', i mean he's weak. it doesn't have anything to do with women, so it can't be sexist". It sounds like they don't recognize the implied equivalence - that if, say, "pussy" means "weak" but it also means "woman", then a connection is implied between "weak" and "woman". It sounds like they're pretending - or are genuinely oblivious to - the power that words carry, the things that they say in excess of what we intend for them to say all the time.

And that power? It doesn't go away if we stop acknowledging it - it just becomes invisible. As Irene Monroe puts it, in her coverage of this story, "if the phrase 'TU ERE MARICON' goes unchecked or is not challenged, it allows people within their culture to become unconscious and numb to the use and abuse of the power and currency of this homophobic epithet -- and the power it still has to thwart the daily struggles of many of us to ameliorate LGBTQ relations." Being unconscious or numb to the word's connotations through overuse isn't a good excuse - like I said before, it's indicative of the larger, systemic problem.

The response of people like Guillen and Vizquel is also a remarkably unempathetic. Every one of these responses has, from what I can tell, been offered by straight Latin American men who use it in conversation with other straight Latin American men and note that other straight Latin American men don't find it all shocking. WHAT A SURPRISE. But what about all of the gay men that they talk to? (I mean, in addition to the men that Escobar employs.) Or that don't talk to them because the language makes them feel unsafe? Or, worse yet, who join in the discourse because they would feel more unsafe if they didn't play along? Because - guess what? - that happens all the time. They don't exist, I guess. In fact, if the media-response outside a couple papers in Toronto is any indication, the whole queer community doesn't exist! Or, you know, you could look for them, because you would find them.

*     *     *

As a totally unrelated aside, I can recall the comic book creator John Byrne explaining that, when he was a kid growing up in England during the 50s, it was not uncommon for the English to use the word "nigger" in everyday conversation. He said that it was even relatively common, at least where he grew up, to give the name "Nigger" to cats and dogs. And, he adds, it wasn't racist at all! But how's that possible, you ask? Because the white people who used it didn't think it was racist.

That makes sense, right? A bunch of white people casually use a derogatory word for non-white people, and they apply it endearingly to animals and, of course, without malice or intent to harm - so that's totally cool, right? Because who could be offended by a word loaded with painful historical baggage? Who could be offended if that word's given as a name to a dog? End of story.

And if that logic strikes you as totally fucked up... then maybe you can see that I was lying when I said it was a totally unrelated aside.

The Yunel Escobar press conference: well, that was a complete disaster

If I'm being charitable, there are two things that went right with the 30-minute press conference that ended less than a half-hour ago, where Yunel Escobar and the Blue Jays were asked to explain why he wrote, in Spanish, "you're a faggot/pussy" under his eyes. (You can find the picture in a blog I wrote yesterday, found here.)

1. He apologized and said it won't happen again.
2. The Blue Jays will donate money to You Can Play, a Toronto-based charity that combats homophobia in sports.

        

And that's it. And that covers two or three minutes of the content of the press conference. So, what went wrong? All of it, pretty much:

•  Escobar said the words "didn't mean anything", that he didn't "intend to offend anyone", and it was "misinterpreted". As far as apologies go, this veers dangerously close to victim-blaming. That is, he implied nothing, which means it's our fault for inferring something hurtful. And that's bullshit.
• Escobar - and his teammate Edwin Encarnacion, via reporter Shi Davidi - said that the slur isn't necessarily a slur, depending on the "context" (Escobar's word, via a translator). Encarnacion said it was a "joke". Right. Just like when someone, for instance, uses "gay" but actually means 'ugly' or 'stupid'? That's a joke too. In no way are they implying an equivalence between "gay" and "stupid". No, not at all. It's just a joke. 
• And what of "context", anyway? Escobar said it wasn't meant to be read by anyone. (Which is curious, since the manager, John Farrell, said that he often writes words under his eyes, and they're usually inspirational. Which suggests that they can and are meant to be read. But that's not the most egregious failure of communication between staff and players. More on that in a bit...) I don't know whether he's being disingenuous or he's actually that stupid, but there's no explanation that makes sense except to assume that he was directing it at the Boston Red Sox - the team the Jays were playing that day. And if he's directing it at the opposition? Well, that context lends itself to the interpretation that he did mean to call them "fags" or "pussies", and that he did mean it pejoratively. No other conclusion makes sense.
• That other moment where Farrell wasn't quite credible? It took forever, but one of the reporters eventually asked whether homophobia is a problem in baseball locker rooms. (A classic response to this kind of incident is to frame it as an isolated incident - to invoke the "one rotten apple" fallacy.) And Farrell completely blew it. He said it isn't a problem, but any of us who have played sports at any level know that he's hilariously wrong. As Dirk Hayhurst, the former Blue Jay, wrote yesterday, "Crude, offensive humor is a part of the lexicon of the clubhouse. Always has been, probably always will be." So, let's be honest, at least. Because telling such a transparent lie just totally destroys your believability.
• And Farrell dropped the ball at least one more time, too. When asked why he didn't notice the words, he said that doesn't pay attention to them, and that no one really does. And he didn't admit that he should be looking - in fact, he took no responsibility at all. That's a catastrophic failure of leadership. The first words out of Farrell's mouth should have been an admission of fault - an admission that he didn't look, but he should have. While, sure, Escobar deserves blame for hilariously poor judgement, Farrell is the guy letting him write on his face and failing to vet those same words. And, plain and simple, he's the boss. A huge part of the manager's job in baseball is to take pressure off of his players, to mediate between players and umpires, players and management, players and media, players and players... But Farrell just threw Escobar to the wolves.
• This next criticism applies to everyone who was sitting on the panel. Until a reporter said the word "homophobia", not one of them used the word. Escobar and his translator said "gay", (as in, embarrassingly, "my hairdresser is gay") but no one addressed the elephant in the room directly. What they did do was admit that there was a "problem". Repeatedly, Farrell and the GM, Alex Anthopolous, referred to homophobia as "the problem". A problem so serious, evidently, that we can't even refer to it by name. For fuck's sake, guys. Couldn't you have spoken to a subject matter expert or PR consultant before doing this? Couldn't you at least bring a diversity or sensitivity trainer in to coach you? Which leads me to my final point...
• ...which is that, aside from throwing $90k or so to charity, it felt like the Jays came into this press conference with no plan at all. No talking-points that made sense, no idea of how to talk about the issue, no clear indication that they had received advice or vocabulary (much less some quick mediation or counselling) from a gay rights or equity or anti-oppressive educator. (Hey, Blue Jays! I can even recommend my friend to you!) They. Looked. Totally. Lost. And what might the Jays or Escobar do after the money is donated? I have absolutely no idea. Hope that everyone forgets, maybe? Yeah, that sounds about right.

Yunel Escobar wrote what on his face, now?

In one of life's great mysteries, my typical orientation to sport is the total opposite of how I just generally read life. Niney-nine percent of the time, I'm all about the qualitative analysis and teasing out the nuance that numbers miss; when I'm talking games, though, I'm usually discussing data and metrics.

So, when people say that a ballplayer is "a winner", I mock them for seizing a quality that's hilarious undefinable. And when they say someone has a "bad attitude", I ask for the proof that it affects performance. Thus, when the Blue Jays traded for - and extended the contract of - Yunel Escobar, a player infamous for being surly and supposedly a bad teammate, I was thrilled. Here's a guy who's undervalued and underpaid for reasons that have nothing to do with his numbers. So long as he's performing above his pay-grade, he's a good thing.

And then, this happened.

Strangely enough, I learned about the existence and meaning of "tu ere maricon" only a couple weeks ago - at a World Cup qualifying game between the Canadian men's team and Panama. It's a homophobic slur, most commonly translated as "you're a faggot". And it's just fucking awful to see it scrawled across any athlete's face. If there's a way to cut or suspend him without paying him - and I'm pretty certain that there isn't, unfortunately - I am all for it. Just get rid of him. Find a bottomless pit and drop him in it.

It gets worse, though. Because fans are already doing cartwheels in an attempt to defend or dismiss his actions. For instance, from the page where the photograph was first posted:

• "Let's not make such a big deal about this....you mind your business and he will mind his business."
• "relax. its not big deal"
•  "Ho hum - obviously he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer"
• "what ever happened to free speech? dont get me wrong i dont hate gays but its just a name!!! get over it, soft people"

 Sometimes, people are just awful. And no number can justify that.

When 'giving it your all' is giving too much

In an all too predictable scene from last night's Blue Jays game, Brett Lawrie leaped over a guard-rail, Superman-like, to catch a fly ball in Yankee stadium, banging his leg on a smaller railing as he came crashing back to the Earth. (Not that it really matters, but he didn't make the catch.) It doesn't look particularly ugly at first. And then it does with the benefit of a slowed replay and a better angle:


 


To quote the YES network commentators, Lawrie is one of those guys who "gives it their all". And according to Kevin Kaduk with Yahoo Sports, Lawrie "came away with...the respect of those who happened to be watching". But from all the comments I've read, Dirk Hayhurst comes closest to hitting the nail on the head...:

If there is a phone call it will probably be to Gomes. Maybe Hachavarria. Lawrie is a victim of his own intense, all-out play, god bless him.
— Dirk Hayhurst (@TheGarfoose) July 18, 2012

Let's make sure that this is perfectly clear: it isn't a coincidence that Lawrie is both a guy who 'gives it his all' and that he hurt himself, nor should we bemoan how unfortunate it is that such an accident and injury would befall someone who plays so recklessly. (Much less pay him respect for doing so.) It is, in fact, entirely foreseeable, and the injury is the direct result of his overly-intense style of play. And it shouldn't be encouraged.

Because it was also entirely avoidable. What's lacking from the discourse surrounding the injury is any discussion of, frankly, Lawrie's stupidity. Jumping into a concrete camera bay - a concrete camera pit, no less, because it looks like it's recessed from field-level by about 2 feet - is an undeniably stupid thing to do. And we shouldn't lament his accident, praise his vigour, or give him our "respect" when he does things that are unnecessarily dangerous. Instead, we need to hold him accountable, because in hurting himself he also hurts his teammates.

I'll admit that this looks cool, but, seriously,
it's also just completely unnecessary. Photo by the AP.

It's customary, when players are accused of the opposite problem - of playing too lackadaisically, of not running-out a ground ball, not playing hard when the game isn't close - to bench them. (Sometimes, this strategy is misused - like when a player fails to run on a play that's an automatic-out 99% of the time in an 8-0 game. But, sometimes, it makes a lot of sense.) And Lawrie, as a result of his own carelessness, is very likely to miss a game or two. That's maybe something, a de facto suspension, if you will.

But I'm not sure that's good enough. Players get benched for hurting the team because they don't try hard enough - why not bench Lawrie because he hurt the team by trying too hard? (No, seriously.) For his own good, even. Because if someone isn't able to convince him that, occasionally, it's just fine to ease up, he's not going to be long for this sport. And that's bad news for anyone and everyone who's associated with or simply likes the Toronto Blue Jays

Irreverant sports blogging at its best

Over on Tom Tango's The Book blog, he recently posted a couple of links to the mid-season report cards at Lookout Landing, a Seattle Mariners blog. And he did this not because mid-season report cards are particularly informative or interesting - most of them are boring, unnecessary, and usually both - but because these specific report cards are. fucking. hilarious. Tango describes his writing thusly: "His takedowns are done in a good-natured way, not in a mean way.  He’s the baseball equivalent of Larry David.  And that’s a compliment to Larry David."

And he's right - this is amazing sports writing. So amazing, in fact, that I think even a non-fan can appreciate that this stuff is comic gold. Any of us who write about sports and are even occasionally clever or ironic - or just aspire to appearing to be clever - should probably take notes:

"The grades are also subjective, and I came up with them in two minutes, and if you disagree with any of them, you might consider paying less attention to these grades and more attention to your personal relationships which I can only imagine are actively deteriorating."

"[Franklin] Gutierrez came back from a long time off and was pretty good and then he got hit in the head by a pickoff throw that got by one of the most sure-handed first basemen in baseball. I'm not a believer in luck. Not at all, to the point where it actually irritates me when people act as if luck exists, and they either do or don't have it. It's nonsense and I can't stand ever setting foot within a casino. But if I had tickets to watch an archery competition, and I got to my seat, and I noticed Franklin Gutierrez was sitting one seat over, I would probably go home." [Neil: I actually laughed out loud at this one, which is always just a little bit embarrassing.]

"Strictly from a performance perspective, 71 pitchers have batted at least 20 times so far this year, and 20 of them have posted a higher slugging percentage than Munenori Kawasaki. Remember that extra-base hit that he lined? That was the one."

"Iwakuma's nickname is 'Kuma', or 'bear', and like a bear, he spent much of the previous few months hibernating. On the rare occasion he was awoken, he pitched like he was groggy and irritated. It's like the Mariners don't have the first idea how to handle a bear. They learned how to handle a moose."

"When healthy, [Shawn] Kelley's a guy who posts dominant ratios without ever feeling like a dominant pitcher, and for that reason he's probably doomed to a life of being under-appreciated. And a reliever in the major leagues bringing home piles and piles of money. I mean I guess he won't have the worst life."

Why I boo

At the risk of sounding totally miserable, I wanted to write a few notes about why I choose to boo some teams and athletes. I'm not sure that they're all good reasons, but I'm also not sure that they need to be.

Obnoxious Fans

Yankee fans! I have no idea where this picture is originally from...

For good or ill, this might actually be the number one factor that determines whether I come to hate a sports team. For instance, I can't stand the Yankees largely because of the fans they attract - people who think the team is entitled to a spot in the playoffs, to the best player available at the trade deadline, to the best free agents. And who pretend that the Yankees' ability to do these things with regularity is totally disconnected from political economy, and that it isn't a result of the team's absurd financial privilege. Similarly, I can't stand the teams that tend to attract fair-weather fans, even if it's really through no fault of their own. During the Euro Cup in Toronto, Italy and Portugal attracted droves of obnoxious, drunken jerks for no other reason than the 5 million bars and clubs that have moved into Little Italy and Little Portugal. But do I hold that behaviour against the teams? I sure do.

Favourites

Sad Tiger. Photo from Getty Images.

When I don't particularly care about a sport, I may actually have an interest in seeing the favourite play - if I'm going to watch something that I don't follow, it makes sense to see it played at the highest-level possible. But in most cases, I like to see favourite get bounced in favour of someone that's totally unheralded and/or unexpected. (Okay, so this has just as much to do with my love for the underdog. It still holds, though.) Also? I'm a big fan of watching hubris play out on the faces of professional athletes. (See: Woods, Tiger.)

Bad Owners/Stakeholders

Marlins' owner Jeffrey Loria, perhaps the most reviled man
in Montreal Expos' history. Photo by the Miami Marlins.

It's tough to like the Blue Jays when they're owned by the richest owners in baseball. And it's easy to hate teams when their owners, say, defend the use of Chief Wahoo (The Cleveland "Indians"), blame the fans for the team's lack of success (The Tampa Bay Rays), or manipulate the system and the local government in order to extract the most profit possible, with absolutely no intention of building a good team (The formerly Florida Marlins). Look: it's impossible to enjoy professional sport unless you're willing to accept that a bunch of old guys are becoming absurdly wealthy as a result. But the least we can ask is that they be honest and non-exploitative (well, less exploitative) about it, right?

Religious Right-wingers

Screen shot from C-SPAN, via Esquire.

A lot of people felt sorry for Albert Pujols when he got off to a terrible start this season. Not me. After learning that Pujols and Tony LaRussa attended a rally organized by Glenn Beck in 2010, I actually found myself hoping that his career would meet a swift end. (Of course, Pujols subsequently "explained" that he didn't know anything about the politics that were involved. Right.) Similarly, I instantly dislike anyone who insists that their performance has something to do with God's will, and isn't mostly random. (Because it is mostly random - that's why the L.A. Kings won the Stanley Cup.) And I dislike these sorts of athletes especially because they apply the standard so inconsistently - if, when they win, God wanted them to win, why is it that, when they lose, God never wanted them to lose? If winning is somehow proof that God approves of them, why is it that losing isn't taken to be proof of the opposite - that if God chose to make them losers, then he just doesn't like them very much?

Errors in baseball: fix them, or just end them

We're in the fourth inning of today's Blue Jays game, and already there have been four difficult scoring-decisions that have perhaps all been called incorrectly:

1. 2nd inning: A fly ball to CF is misplayed by a lightly-jogging Colby Rasmus, landing in front and slightly behind him. But he doesn't touch it until after it bounces once. It's called a hit.
2. 3rd inning: A short-hopping line-drive - an absolute screamer- is hit directly at shortstop Mike Aviles. He misplays it and it hits his throwing hand. He recovers in time to make a throw to 2B, but it's too late to get the runner. It's called an error.
3. 4th inning: A fliner is hit off the wall in RF. Jose Bautista plays it on the rebound, quickly double-pumps and throws to 2B. The throw isn't in time and the ball lands directly in front of Yunel Escobar, who misses it completely. Neither the 3B, Brett Lawrie, or the P, Kyle Drabek, is correctly positioned to back-up the throw and it goes past both of them, allowing the batter to advance to 3B. The throw is called an error, which means that the error is given to Bautista.
4. 4th inning: A bouncing come-backer is hit to the pitcher. He jumps and knocks it down with his glove, causing it to bounce directly in front of him. He reaches out to bare-hand the ball after the first bounce, but this time it bounces off of his hand and rolls away. It's called an error.

Of the three calls, the only one that I would have definitely made myself is #2. It doesn't matter how hard the ball is hit or if it skips slightly to one side or another off the short-hop - if it's hit directly at you, then the expectation is that you must field it. [Update: Ha! In the 5th inning, they changed the ruling on this one to a base-hit. Hilarious that they would change the only one that I was confident they had gotten right.]

I can't make a call on #4 without seeing where the other fielders were positioned. If the shortstop is in position to field the ball, provided that the pitcher doesn't touch it, then it's an error; if it was likely to go up the middle, then the leaping pitcher probably shouldn't be given an error.

#3 is a bit of a strange one. The throw wasn't ideal, but Escobar erred in staying on the bag when the batter was going to be safe. He probably should have conceded the base and taken two steps forward to play the throw in the air. Likewise, the advance to 3B doesn't happen if either Lawrie or Drabek are covering the throw, so they've also erred. (Amazingly, then, the error was given to the one player who did the best job on the play.) There's an argument to be made, here, for one of two things: breaking with convention and somehow giving an error to all three of Escobar, Lawrie, and Drabek, or giving an error to the team but not to a particular player.

#1 is just dumb. The convention, again, is that it's not an error if an outfielder misses a fly ball, provided that he doesn't touch it until after it bounces. Regardless of why, though, Rasmus overran the ball and needs to be penalized for that. (Again, hilariously, he would've received an error if he had overrun it by a smaller margin and managed to just touch a small part of the ball. Like I said, dumb.)

An old photo of Rasmus dropping the ball for the Cardinals. Timeless.
Photoshopped by (or, at least, posted to) StL Cardinal Baseball.

But back to example #3. I've seen the team error suggested before, and it makes perfect sense, here, where the fault lies with at least three players, maybe four, and the error doesn't happen if only one of them does his job properly. The rules don't allow for that recognition, which is a shame - but it's also something that could be easily corrected, if anyone cared.

Or, conversely, they could just do away with the errors, and these attendant headaches, altogether. All there really good for is determining which runs are earned or not, anyway, and entire articles have been written about why ERA is misleading (because it even deems some HR unearned, which is madness and because ERA makes groundball pitchers look better than they are, to name just two reasons) and Reached-On-Error isn't random, but a repeatable skill at inducing errors by fielders (as demonstrated by the career-ROE leaders, whom tend to hit groundballs and are really fast runners).

Not that I expect either of those things to happen, of course.

Joey Bats follow-up: It looks like the time to worry is over

A month ago, I blogged about Jose Bautista's awful April, and asked what went wrong and whether it was reasonable to expect a rebound. You can click on the link for the full details, but I concluded with this reasonably optimistic sentence: "For what it's worth, this looks to me like a problem with discipline and patience - something that Bautista has been shown to have in spades."

May Bautista will smash April Bautista. Or wants to fly like an eagle.
Photo by Jim Mone/AP

It's probably a bit unfair and not entirely telling to compare April and May in order to see whether I was right - I'm comparing one rather small sample to another, after all - but let's look anyway. So, how did Bautista fare in May as compared to April?

	Month	PA	AVG	OBP	SLG	ISO	BABIP	BB%	K%	wOBA	wRC+
2011	---	655	0.302	0.447	0.608	0.306	0.309	20.2%	16.9%	0.441	181
2012	April	103	0.181	0.320	0.313	0.133	0.171	15.5%	11.7%	0.288	78
2012	May	120	0.257	0.342	0.552	0.295	0.247	10.8%	20.0%	0.382	143

It's not even close, actually. In April, Bautista was a replacement-level hitter; in May, he was a star. His 143 wRC+ makes him the 35th best hitter in MLB over the course of that month, and on the season he's a respectable 60th out of 160 qualified batters. Interestingly, too, his numbers in May are right around what was being predicted for him by the major forecasting systems in 2011, following his first monster year in 2010.

So, the power has come back - Bautista belted 9 homers in May, tying him with Edwin Encarnacion for 8th most - as you can see from his Isolated Power number being almost exactly what it was in 2011. And his BABIP is much closer to what it was in 2010, which accounts for why the batting average is around his career mark and not his 2011 number.

There are still two worrisome numbers, though - his walk-rate, while still good, has absolutely cratered. But Bautista hasn't walked as little as he did in May since his second season in MLB, which makes me think it's a bit of a fluke. And his K-rate has risen to above career-average territory, which is all the more surprising because it has been around 17% for the last two years. But, really, that's only a difference of 4 strike-outs over the course of a month.

	Month	PA	GB/FB	LD%	GB%	FB%	IFFB%	HR%
2011	---	655	0.79	16.0%	36.9%	47.0%	15.2%	22.5%
2012	April	103	0.88	15.1%	39.7%	45.2%	21.2%	9.1%
2012	May	120	0.76	18.3%	35.4%	46.3%	21.1%	23.7%

The higher May BABIP seems to be a result of more line-drives; the fact that it's still rather low, though, would seem to be explained by the fact that he's still hitting infield flies at an alarming rate. Last time, I suggested that the problem, here, might be that he's not quite getting around fast enough on high fastballs. That might still be a problem - though less of one, obviously, because the home run-rate is back to last year's level.

	Month	PA	FB	SL	CB	wFB
2011	---	655	50.3%	17.6%	11.3%	30.7
2012	April	103	59.6%	15.5%	6.9%	-0.7
2012	May	120	49.2%	15.3%	10.1%	3.4

Here's where we start to find an explanation for these numbers, too. Bautista is seeing fewer fastballs, but hitting them much better than he was before. (Not nearly as well as the last two years, mind you, but back into 'excellent fastball hitter' territory.) He's also seeing more curveballs, cutters, and change-ups. This has me wondering if the pitch-selection in April suffered from some sort of selection-bias - if the Jays were simply seeing a lot of pitchers who through a lot of fastballs. Because you would think that Bautista's struggles in April, and the recent development of batting Encarnacion behind him, would lead to more fastballs, not fewer.

	Month	PA	Con%	Zone%	O-Sw%	Z-Sw%	Swing%	O-Con%	Z-Con%
2011	---	655	79.3%	44.4%	21.2%	57.9%	37.5%	64.2%	86.3%
2012	April	103	80.4%	47.4%	25.3%	54.7%	39.3%	77.2%	82.0%
2012	May	120	83.2%	39.8%	26.0%	55.6%	37.8%	71.6%	90.5%

And now we're back to the zone and contact numbers - which, I'll remind everyone, stabilize a lot faster than any of the other stats we've looked at.

Amazingly, while Bautista is striking out twice as much and walking much less than in April, he's also seeing fewer pitches in the strike-zone and swinging less often - he's back near his norm from the last two years, actually. And his contact rate has actually gone up. Those are really strange numbers to see in combination, and I can only assume that he's seen a really abnormal number of called third-strikes.

The O-Swing number have, unfortunately, not changed a bit. And the Z-Swing number has barely changed. So, while pitchers have clearly approached him differently in May, Bautista hasn't actually changed his approach. The difference, though, seems to be in his contact-rates - he's missing more often on outside pitches (which is a good thing) and making contact more often on strikes (which is also a good thing). What's unclear, though, is whether those contact rates are the result of April's bad luck regressing to the mean or the result of Bautista doing something differently.

So, the end result is this: in May, pitchers returned to pitching Bautista like they did last year, and they've paid for it. Bautista continues to swing much like he did in April, but both his O- and Z-Contact rates have swung dramatically in his favour.

On the plus-side: Given his history - and the fact that May aligns far better with his 2010-11 numbers than does April - it would seem to me that the May Bautista is the one we'd expect to see the rest of the way.

On the minus-side: His swing and contact profile, while improved, still look markedly different from 2010-11. (Well, they look somewhat like 2010, but not much like 2011.) It's looking increasingly likely that that Bautista won't re-emerge.

"The Catch", 2012 edition

Some moments in sport defy description and render analysis redundant, if not totally unnecessary. For instance, this.

100% not photoshopped. Photo by Bill Wanger/The Daily News

If you want to see the video, which is equally impressive, you can find it at the end of this article.

Live-Blogging the Blue Jays Broadcast: Game 42

[I'm starting this one a bit late, and missed most of the first inning!]

 
1st inning

Pat: "Batters are hitting over .500 against [Dillon Gee] when they swing at the first pitch."

There are all sorts of problems with this statement. First, Pat means to say that they're hitting over .500 when they put it play or hit it out of the park. That number doesn't account for instances where the batter misses or fouls the ball off. Also, only 15 at bats vs. Gee have been resolved on the first pitch. That's hardly evidence of, well, anything.


2nd inning

Buck: "The Mets, by starting the runner, stay out of the double-play."

One of my pet peeves about Buck and Pat is how they never critique the decision to hit-and-run. The problem with hit-and-run is that it's often a bad idea - it forces the batter to swing at pitches that he wouldn't otherwise swing at, and to take slapping contact-swings rather than full, proper ones. (It's tough to prove, mind you, but the general consensus is that it's a toss-up, at best. And that the degree to which it is a good idea depends, substantially, on the quality of the base-runner.)

Buck: "[Henderson Alvarez]'s a little rushed. He's always quick to the plate."

Alvarez has been averaging more than 20 seconds between pitches this year. That's above average, but only by a second or two. (Among starting pitchers, he's almost exactly average.)

Buck: "I think there are more good teams in the American League than in the National League right now."

I'm not sure that's an "I think" situation - you can pretty easily prove it. Buck went on to talk about win-loss records, which makes no sense - prior to Interleague play, which began on Friday, the leagues had only played amongst themselves, so the overall record in each league would be .500.

Buck: [after Gee throws a first-pitch breaking ball] "Gee picked up that the Blue Jays are looking to ambush on the first pitch."

That's probably a good read. He just watched a rookie hit a liner off a first-pitch fastball, so it's reasonable for him to assume that they're looking for it. (Also, his fastball is terrible. So, the Jays should look for it.)


3rd inning

Buck: [in reference to a chart that shows the Blue Jays have the best starters' ERA in the AL] "We mentioned how well the starting pitching has been playing. ... The Blue Jays also have 19 starter wins. They're tied with Texas for second."

The weird thing, first, is that they're graphic shows a 3.33 ERA for starters, while Fangraphs says 3.16. Dunno what accounts for that difference. 

But this is an interesting topic, because those same pitchers - who have the best ERA in the AL and 4th best in the Majors - have posted a very bad FIP: at 4.49, it's 11th in the AL 26th overall. (SIERA says 24th; tERA says 25th/) So, that's a huge disagreement between ERA and the advanced metrics. Usually, the numbers are quite close - only one other team has a 1.00 difference, and the numbers are quite close for most teams - which implies that the Jays' fielding has been exceptional (which is another interesting argument), that their pitchers are amazing with runners on base (which has been shown to be very rare for individual pitchers, much less a whole team), or that they've been very, very lucky. My guess? When all the metrics say this starting staff if below-average and should have an ERA over 4.00, we're probably going to see a regression to that range over the rest of the season.


4th inning

Buck: "Nick Markakis and Adam Jones have been doing a great job."

Markakis - .258/.335/.440, for a 118 wRC+ - has been better than I thought, though not especially "great". That's basically how he's compared to league-average through his entire career, which is "good" but nothing amazing. (Considering, especially, that the most common assessment of Markakis is that he's failed to live up to his potential.) Impossible to argue with his observation about Adam Jones, though.

Buck: "[Kelly Johnson]'s predominately a pull-hitter."

But the graphic they showed seemed to be saying the opposite - less than 40% of his balls-in-play were pulled, which is equal to the number of hits to center. Actually, I have no idea what that graphic was actually showing - it showed 36 balls in play, but Johnson has put more than 100 balls in play. Weird. I can only guess that it was actually fly balls plus non-fly home runs. (Assuming that three of those homers were classified as line-drive and not flies.) That actually makes it seem like he's even less of a pull-hitter, then, since hitters tend to pull in the air and put balls on the ground when they push.


5th inning

Buck: "What makes Wright such a good hitter?"
Pat: "...A good RBI-man."

Good RBI-man means that he always hits 3rd in the line-up, where even an average hitter is virtually a lock for 90 RBI if he plays every day. That said, Wright fell well short of 90 in 2009, and would have only had roughly that many RBI last year, if your project to fill the time he was injured. (To be fair, though, the Mets were absolutely terrible on offense in 2009. But Buck and Pat don't talk about how important "opportunity" is to racking up RBI. As everyone who reads about RBI would know, RBI are almost entirely a product of a) the quality of the hitter, regardless, and b) how many base-runners you have.)


Hmm... Buck and Pat just don't seem to be saying anything, anymore. Probably, in part, this is because the Jays are losing 6-2 and don't seem to be doing much on offense. I may just graciously bow-out right now and promise to stick with it next time...

The logic of baseball suspension length, or lack thereof

First, a disclaimer: This blog is not going to turn into the Brett Lawrie Blog, Sometimes Covering Other Topics. (Even though, right now, it might seem that is!)

Second, an additional disclaimer: I have been harshly critical of Lawrie in the two posts that I've devoted almost entirely to him. I'm not certain that I would like him much in conversation, but I actually do really enjoy watching him play. He's exciting to watch, in part because he's already a good player and in part because he's always putting in maximum effort. The enthusiasm he displays in every moment is, I think, unparalleled in baseball, and you can feel it rubbing off on the rest of the team. And the series of handshakes that he's designed with each of his teammates are ridiculous, but in a good way.

But, the guy who seems to pull off something like every second game...

...is the same guy who did this a couple days ago.

Understandably, he was suspended. Because as much as we all want, to put it euphemistically, to lose our shit when a call doesn't go our way - and, in fact, it was two consecutive blown calls that led to Lawrie's "Hulk Smash!" explosion - it was a terrible idea. (I know that the Pitch F/X data that's been circulating suggests that the pitch barely missed an inch high, but their range makes no sense. I can't imagine any umpire calling a pitch that's more than 3 and a half feet high a strike, much less against a 6 foot tall hitter who's a half foot shorter in his stance.)

The culture of the game is to blame, too, of course. Players and umpires are all but encouraged to get in each other's faces and scream. The system by which umpires are evaluated and made accountable for their mistakes are entirely opaque. And it should be very easy to develop a program that can call balls and strikes with better accuracy. Baseball has made no effort to address any of those things.

So, what I wanted to look at is where the punishment - four games - fits in relation to other suspensions, across various sports. In part, I want to see whether there's a consistent logic applied within baseball and across various sports; in part, and assuming that there is some consistency, I want to see if Lawrie's punishment fits it. Following from this starting point, then, I pulled together this list.

• 1 game (<1% of season) - Bobby Bonilla, 2001 (slapping another player)
• 2 games (1%) - Milton Bradley, 2009 (bumping an umpire)
• 2 games (1%) - Marlon Anderson, 2007 (throwing helmet toward home plate)
• 2 games (1%) - Lance Berkamn, 2007 (throwing equipment on field)
• 2 games (1%) - Roberto Alomar, 2005 (throwing glove in direction of umpire)
• 3 games (2%) - Jonathan Papelbon, 2011 (bumping an umpire)
• 3 games (2%) - Burke Badenhop, 2009 (hitting Orlando Hudson with a pitch, after a warning)
• 3 games (2%) - Albert Belle, 1993 (charging the mound after being hit by pitch)
• 4 games (2.5%) - Brett Lawrie, 2012
• 4 games (2.5%) - Moises Alou, 1995 (participating in bench-clearing brawl)
• 5 games (3%) - Cole Hamels, 2012 (hitting Bryce Harper with a pitch)
• 5 games (3%) - Yadier Molina, 2011 (bumping an umpire, with incidental spit)
• 5 games (3%) - Josh Beckett, 2009 (intentionally throwing near Bobby Abreu's head)
• 5 games (3% ) - Roberto Alomar, 1996 (intentionally spitting on umpire) 
• 50 games (35%) - Delmon Young [International League], 2006 (throwing bat at umpire)
• Banned for life - Jose Offerman [Dominican Winter League], 2010 (punching umpire in face)

The first thing that's made clear, here, is that baseball treats violence (and the threat of violence) against players and umpires differently. Charging the mound with your fist cocked is given the same punishment as bumping the beak of your hat against the umpires forehead. The distinction makes sense, though; you need to allow for the possibility that things will get heated between opponents, but you can't allow players to think they can intimidate the officials. (I've also heard the legal argument - of "assumed risk" - that says baseball players concede implicitly that the job is potentially violent and injurious, while umpires do not.)

Jose Offerman charging the mound in a AAA game. He hit the catcher
in the head and give him a career-ending concussion. Is that "assumed risk"?
No photo credit available.

Second, baseball has been all over the place with the lengths of its suspensions. There are three different suspension lengths for three different umpire-bumping incidents, and Yadier Molina's bump-and-spit combo (where I'm probably being generous with "incidental" spit) got the exact same length as Alomar's unmistakably intentional spit 15 years ago. There should probably be some sort of standard here, but there clearly isn't. About the only thing that they can agree on is that pitchers should get about five games if they admit, or are proven, to have hit a batter intentionally. But this has less to do with how the infraction compares to other forms of violence than it does to the fact that starting pitchers only play once every five days.

And here are the comparisons to some recent rulings in other sports leagues.

• 20 games (24% of the season) - rulebook suspension for intentionally tripping a referee [NHL]
• 25 games (30% of the season*) - Raffi Torres [NHL], 2012 (blindside check to Marian Hossa w/head contact)
• 15 games (39% of the season) - Dani Benitez [La Liga], 2012 (throwing water bottle at referee)

* the NHL's playoffs, like the NBA's, are so long and include so many teams that it's probably not fair to assign a percentage

The soccer suspension is completely out of whack with anything else that I've ever seen. It's actually maybe the nearest to the Lawrie incident, insofar as both throws seemed to be expressive of frustration and not an intent to injure. On the other hand, Benitez was trying to hit a referee, while Lawrie threw his helmet with such force that the possibility of accidental injury was greater (though still small). But that length is just nutty. And I've included the Raffi Torres incident in order to illustrate, again, the difference in punishments when we're talking players vs. officials. And while the NHL isn't anywhere near La Liga, when it comes to punishing players who lash out at referees, I think it's fair to say that they both take is a lot more serious than baseball does.

I don't have any solid conclusion to end with. Even though baseball's punishments appear to have no strict system of application, they're all so short (mostly between two and five games) that it's difficult to argue that Lawrie's suspension is surprising or inconsistent with past practice. The real question, though, might be whether baseball's practice is a good one, because Lawrie's actions would certainly earn him a longer suspension in either the NHL or La Liga. But that's something that all of baseball would need to start thinking about.