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Jan-26-12
 | | WannaBe: Super Bowl Props:
http://espn.go.com/espn/page2/story... |
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Jan-26-12
 | | Phony Benoni: And that's why they play the game. Thank Whomever we have the Republican presidential candidates to drown out some of the Super Bowl hype. <JB> Word from manager Leyland is that Miguel Cabrera is moving to third base "from the first day of spring training", and Prince Fielder is the starting first baseman. GM says he even talked to Cabrera about doing this before pursuing Fielder. Which is fine with me. Don't mess with the Big Guy. Maybe when the Tigers beat the Cubs in the World Series this year I'll admit it was a good deal. At least for this year. But I remember the Juan Gonzalez fiasco too. |
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| Jan-26-12 | | King Death: <Phony Benoni> Not to rain on your parade, but the Tigers will need everything they get from Cabrera's bat when he plays 3rd I think because I doubt his glove will help them. |
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Jan-26-12
| | Phony Benoni: <King Death> My thoughts exactly. I doubt he'll be out there much in the ninth inning. |
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| Jan-27-12 | | Jim Bartle: The DH forced the creation of rules which don't follow the logic of the rest of the game, and I've never learned them. Can a player on the field switch to DH? Can the DH take a position on the field? I'm sure the Tigers and other teams would like to be able to move a hard-hitting weak-fielding guy like Fielder to DH, but I don't think that's allowed. |
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Jan-27-12
| | Phony Benoni: <JB> You cannot use a fielder already in the game to replace the DH. If a DH goes into the field. In the latter case, the pitcher has to bat. Now, I'm not sure what happens if a DH comes in to pitch. Would have made things interesting in Babe Ruth's day. I suppose that would be allowed, but any subsequent pitcher would also have to bat. I dislike the DH, but it means more scoring and supposedly more excitement, so it probably won't get dropped and let everyone get back to playing <real> baseball. |
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| Jan-27-12 | | Jim Bartle: OK, so a guy at DH can take a position in the field, but then the team simply loses the DH and it's NL rules, pitcher bats. Interesting that you can't move one of your poor fielders/good hitters to the DH spot late in the game. Makes sense, though. One more question: You can replace your DH with another DH, right? One of the things people rarely mention when discussing the DH is that it really involves two changes: the weak-hitting pitcher doesn't hit, and a batter gets to hit without playing the field. Either of those could have been done wihtout the other:
1. Just not have the pitcher bat, without replacing him with another batter;
2. Add a tenth spot in the order for a player who doesn't play in the field. |
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| Jan-27-12 | | Jim Bartle: OK, looked it up:
"Pinch hitters for a Designated Hitter may be used. Any substitute hitter for a Designated Hitter becomes the Designated Hitter." Some really odd stuff in the Designated Hitter rules, such as the DH cannot be used in a double switch, and if a pitcher moves to another position the DH is eliminated, and if a player has entered a pinch-hitter and then comes in to pitch, the DH is eliminated as well. |
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| Jan-27-12 | | playground player: <Phony Benoni> Well, you saw more of both Lolich and Morris than I did (although I saw as much as I could), so I respect your opinion. And BTW, thanks for bringing up Wilbur Wood. He's been pretty much forgotten, but for a while there in the early 1970s, he was a star among stars of American League pitchers. That was some era for pitching! Vida Blue and Catfish Hunter, Jim Palmer and Mike Cuellar, Wilbur Wood, Mickey Lolich, Jim Kaat and Bert Blyleven... and in that other league, Steve Carlton and Bob Gibson, Tom Seaver, Phil Niekro, Juan Marichal and Gaylord Perry, Fergie Jenkins and Bill Hands...
Some of those guys pitched more than 300 innings per season for several consecutive seasons--without their arms falling off! Nowadays they coddle starting pitchers and turn them into girly-men. |
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| Jan-27-12 | | Jim Bartle: Well, I saw all of Lolich once and that was plenty!
Bill James once wrote an article wondering whether knuckleball pitchers like Wilbur Wood and the Niekros got their due in Cy Young voting. He gave some examples where their records were comparable to the winners, but they got considerably fewer votes. Wood was a real workhorse for a couple of years, starting more than 40 games a year for five straight years, including 49 and 48 in 1972 and 1973. He "tossed" over 350 innings both years. Unfortunately he had a couple of years with 20 losses. |
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| Jan-27-12 | | King Death: <Jim Bartle> Was that Bill James article the same one where he discussed knuckleballers as a group with one of them being the right handed Dutch Leonard? http://www.baseball-reference.com/p... Among other things this Leonard went 20-8 with the 1939 Senators that were 45-79 when he didn't get the decision. |
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| Jan-27-12 | | Jim Bartle: Sorry, don't remember. He just showed a number of years that the Phil Niekro, Wood, Wilhelm and others had outstanding seasons but didn't get much consideration in the Cy Young voting. |
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| Jan-27-12 | | King Death: <playground player> One of the pitchers you mentioned was Steve Carlton and I was surprised to see that for his career his ERA+ was 115. That gets him a whopping tie for 196th all time and nobody will argue that he belongs in the Hall. While I have more faith in the new stats OPS+ and ERA+ than many it makes me wonder if there isn't an anomaly here. For those that follow the NFL, you have the quarterback ratings which I think are a bunch of hokum. |
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| Jan-27-12 | | Jim Bartle: I think with Carlton you have to take into consideration he pitched for quite a while past his prime which raised his ERA. Plus after his great 1972 season he had several not-so-good years before becocming the pitcher we remember around 76 or 77. |
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| Jan-27-12 | | King Death: <Jim Bartle> That's true and I took it into account because even as late as 1983 when Carlton was 15-16 with a 3.11 ERA and led the NL in IP at 38, his ERA+ was 116. His last 2+ seasons he was way below average but that was less than 7% of his career innings. Also in 1973 his ERA+ was 97, the only time he went below 100 from 1969 to 1985. |
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| Jan-27-12 | | Jim Bartle: I remember watching Carlton pitch against the Giants once in 1982 and wondering how anybody ever scored a run off the guy, and he was 38 years old. |
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Jan-27-12
| | WannaBe: http://espn.go.com/espn/page2/story... Funny, funny, funny. |
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| Jan-28-12 | | King Death: <WannaBe> The only thing I remember about the Pro Bowl is the year that some kid who was there as a running back for the Patriots was out playing beach volleyball and blew out his knee. Goodbye career and I don't even remember his name. |
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Jan-28-12
| | Phony Benoni: <King Death> Here you go: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert...(running_back) Not a very distinctive name, and apparently he was injury-prone dating back to his college days. |
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| Jan-28-12 | | King Death: <Phony Benoni> Thanks! This is something I couldn't resist from that article, not that it's sourced or anything: <"Throughout his college career Edwards was very injury prone. He never finished a full season in college due to knee problems and one year due to a broken hand which allowed him to earn an injury redshirt for that season. Though he was very successful when healthy it is very possible that his draft stock dropped due to his constant injury status. This did not do as much damage to his future in the Draft but it would come back to hurt him once he entered the league."> "Very possible that his...stock dropped"? It's very possible that when you die, you aren't breathing anymore either. It's no wonder some folks look down their noses at Wikipedia though I don't agree with this. |
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Jan-28-12
| | Phony Benoni: The quality and objectivity of Wikipedia varies widely. I think of it as the difference between the articles on "Jerry Seinfeld (Comedian)" and "Jerry Seinfeld (Sitcom character)". Guess which one is objective and which one is not. |
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| Jan-28-12 | | King Death: <Phony Benoni> You're right of course, some are actually well researched (this guy that calls himself <Krakatoa> has done a few things like that) and on others you can throw the idea of objectivity out the window. |
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| Jan-28-12 | | playground player: <Esteemed Colleagues> What is "ERA+"? I'm afraid it's one of those new statistics that has slipped past me. I stopped paying attention to those when they came up with "quality starts," which struck me as a way of trying to impart self-esteem to a crummy pitcher who couldn't make it into the seventh inning. |
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| Jan-28-12 | | Jim Bartle: I think ERA+ means how much better the pitcher's ERA is compared to the league average, which is staked at 100. So if a guy's ERA is 3.00 and the league average is 4.00, he would be 33% better and therefore his ERA+ would be 133. Right? I have to say it's odd to see a higher ERA number be better, rather than a lower one. |
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| Jan-28-12 | | Jim Bartle: I don't mind quality start as a stat, even though you could theoretically have all quality starts and still have an ERA of 4.50. A pitcher makes it through six full innings, which isn't that easy, without getting hammered, and presumably keeps his team in the game if he's given up three runs or fewer (unless it's the 2011 Giants, that is). |
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