Tag: baseball

Contract the Nationals!

Leave the stadium, though. It’s pretty nice. The wife and I went to the game last night. On the positive side, you have the stadium, Ben’s Chili Bowl, an organized and efficient Metro ride, my love of baseball, and an enjoyable evening with the wife. On the negative side, you have the weather, the game itself (And the six unearned runs the Nationals allowed), and the announced crowd of 20,400. First, the positives. The scoreboard is amazing The stadium is gorgeous. We sat in the first row of one of the 400 sections. It was roomy, with a pretty good view. The giant scoreboard in right center is amazing. I’ve never seen anything like it. It wasn’t working for the first half inning, but they’ll probably work that out as the season goes on. But the picture is incredible. When they’re showing replays, it looks like you’re actually seeing the players, not a video. Interestingly, there is no clock visible from where we sat. Maybe no clock in the whole stadium. Ben’s Chili Bowl was awesome, as expected. The line was long, but it moved quickly. My veggie chili cheese fries were cold before I finished them, but that was hardly their fault. They were still good. Metro took us 20 minutes to get in from Columbia Heights, and barely longer to get out. Might have been worse if there was actually a capacity crowd, but I can only judge my experience. There were a ton of Metro employees directing people. They’ve made a lane from the Metro directly to the stadium (Please, Nationals fans, DO NOT experience Southeast UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES until we can put on a fresh coat of paint). It actually reminded me a little bit of walking in to Fenway Park, although DC will need to do some work to build up the collection of businesses that surround Fenway. DSC_8476 Of course you know I’m a big baseball fan, as it’s all I’ve posted about since the season started. Don’t worry, I’ll get back to politics soon, and I’m sure I’ll have some new complaints once I start working again next week. Plus we have a vacation coming up that should be interesting. And of course I enjoyed my wife’s company, as usual. She was somewhat annoyed that she couldn’t have a beer at the ballpark due to that pesky baby she’s carrying, but $7.50 Bud Lights go a long way towards discouraging her. That, and the health of our unborn child. Although, as she said (joked?), you can probably drink a couple of Bud Lights before the baby even notices. Then there are the negatives. I won’t blame the team for the weather. They couldn’t help that it was cold. Allowing six unearned runs and three home runs (one of them to a backup shortstop I’ve never heard of. Robert Andino? He has 86 career at bats. Although he does have two bombs in 5 at bats this year off the bench, that’s pretty nice for him) isn’t cool, though. Stranding 11 runners is not a good technique for winning games. But you can’t win all 162, so I guess I can forgive them. Empty seats in the sixth inning What’s really bad, though, is that the second game in the history of the stadium drew 20,400 fans. I don’t know what capacity is, but it’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 40,000. I know it was a cold Monday night when the NCAA basketball finals were on (Although we made it home for overtime), but the stadium was empty. Even the clowns right behind home plate, the ones with the $100+ tickets, didn’t bother showing up. And the fans that were there seemed pretty disinterested. Maybe they were into it and I just couldn’t hear them. But I’m used to going to sellouts at Camden Yards (Before Orioles fans were so beaten down by The Angelos Years that they stopped caring), and this was a far cry from a sellout. I don’t know what the city can do about this. Maybe it’s too early to worry and things will be fine when the weather warms up, but if I had a big financial stake in this team, I don’t think I would have slept last night. Anyway, I’ll definitely be back for more games. The upper deck is a fine place to watch the game, and for $10, that’s worth it for me. And I’m curious to see what businesses and attractions pop up around the stadium. They had ads up that we didn’t stop to look at, but there are clearly big plans for the area. Should be interesting.

The wife will think I’m crazy

She’ll think I’m crazy, but that’s just because she’s not as big of a nerd as I am. Anyway, you may notice that, when I talk about a baseball player, I usually link to his career stats at Baseball Reference. It’s a great site for the stat nerd. And they support themselves through sponsorships. Yesterday, I decided to sponsor two pages in the name of Complaint Hub. The first is Chad Bradford, one of the stars of Moneyball and now an Oriole. As you can see from his stat page, Billy Beane and the A’s got four years out of him for about what the Orioles are paying him this year. But that’s okay. The second is Mark Knudson. When I was little, I had a little handheld baseball game, Tomy Pocket Baseball. You pulled the lever and a ball dropped, and then you released the lever to swing the bat and try to hit the ball into one of the holes for a hit. It was awesome. I had my own league. I used real players, their names painstakingly copied from baseball cards. Mark Knudson was the all-time leader in wins. He retired with a record of 48-5 and a 0.59 ARPI. I used Average Runs Per Inning because my games tended to be higher scoring than real baseball games, and not multiplying by the number of innings in a game made a good ARPI look more like a good ERA. These were four inning games, so his ERA would have been 2.37, which would have been fine. But he was the greatest of all-time, and the average pitcher would have had a much higher ERA. Anyway, I have no idea if these sponsorships will drive any traffic here. But I get a lot of enjoyment from Baseball Reference, and now I’ve given something back.

Now the wife loves FireJoeMorgan.com

After watching a batter and a half of the Tigers and White Sox game, the wife now knows why Fire Joe Morgan exists (She’s a Tigers fan, as a Michigan native). I can’t reproduce the quote verbatim, but I can give you the gist. Morgan is talking about Miguel Cabrera, and how the guy is a total failure because he only has two hits, one a home run, in his first 14 at bats of the season. I mean, plainly the guy is done. We should probably take him out back and shoot him. No 25-year-old with 139 career home runs and a 143 OPS+ should be allowed to exist if he only gets two hits in his first 14 at bats of the year. So Morgan is telling us how terrible Cabrera is. He says some ridiculous things that don’t mean anything, and then he says:

[Cabrera] is confused on the count, he thinks it’s 3-1 instead of 3-2. Since it was 2-2, he had to [do something that one would do on 2-2 and not 3-1. I don’t even know.]

Seriously. He barely took a breath in between “it’s 3-2” and “it’s 2-2”. This is not something that one might need to think hard about. The number of balls and strikes is displayed prominently all over the stadium. There is no doubt that there is a screen in front of Morgan’s face that tells him the count. I feel like this is my repayment to the wife – she’s gotten me into Celtics basketball, and I’ve gotten her to appreciate the wonders of Joe Morgan. This is her reaction after literally FOUR batters of Morgan’s commentary.

I don’t even listen to him anymore. I can’t. I don’t understand what he’s saying.

Orioles win again, and the hold is even stupider than the save

Holy cow, the Orioles won again! That puts them at 4-1, in first place. I know it doesn’t mean much at this point, but I bet that most analysts wouldn’t have expected them to be three games over .500 at any point in the season, so this is encouraging. And they did this one with a two out, ninth inning rally to turn a 2-0 deficit into a 3-2 win. Here’s where the stats get ridiculous. ESPN reports a stat called a hold. It’s basically given to a pitcher who enters the game in a save situation and leaves without relinquishing the lead. It’s utterly absurd, and this game is a perfect example. Eric O’Flaherty entered the game to pitch for the Mariners in the bottom of the ninth, when they led, 2-0. He allows a double to the first batter, who then advanced to third on a groundout and scores on another groundout. A single then ends O’Flaherty’s night. He gets a hold because it was a save situation, and he left with his team still winning, 2-1. Mark Lowe comes in and gives up a single and a walk to load the bases. A wild pitch and a single later, and the game is over, a 3-2 Orioles win. O’Flaherty is charged with 2 runs in 2/3 of an inning, but because the tying run didn’t score until he left the game, even though it was charged to him, he gets the hold. Lowe gets the loss because it was his baserunner who eventually scored the winning run. Too bad for Mariners’ starter Felix Hernandez, who pitched a fantastic eight innings of shutout ball. He, of course, gets nothing for his trouble.

Barry Bonds – collusion or just not worth it?

I know, this is becoming a baseball blog, but no one is complaining, and I don’t have anything else I feel like writing about. Many sportswriters are up in arms over Barry Bonds not being on anyone’s roster. Many people argue that he had a very productive offensive season last year, and would surely help someone this year, especially an AL team in need of a designated hitter. Many go on to accuse baseball of colluding to not sign Bonds. Oh, they say. It’s not possible that no one could overlook the off-field problems and sign him. I think this is absurd. If you only evaluate the cost/benefit of Bonds’ bat in your lineup, then certainly he is valuable to many teams. This would suggest that teams are colluding, although it certainly wouldn’t prove it. But what about the rest of it? What if he goes to jail? How will the fans react? I would rather the Orioles not win another game this year than sign Bonds. You can’t measure his impact on the team by only looking at his bat. And most of the other things he brings to the table are really, really bad. He does seem to boost attendance, which saddens me. I’ve never seen him play, and I’m glad. I realize that my opinions here are influenced by the fact that I hate Barry Bonds and the impact he’s had on baseball. I know he takes probably more than his fair share of the heat for the steroid problem, but he’s brought a lot of it on himself with his attitude. I don’t want him to set foot on a baseball field ever again. I don’t want to read articles about him. I don’t want him in the Hall of Fame. If it does turn out that the owners are colluding to keep him out of the game, fine. Punish them appropriately. But to ignore the mountains of negative baggage he brings with him when imagining why a team might not sign him is irresponsible.

I complained too soon

Box Score The Orioles came back to win last night! Despite Cabrera allowing two runs and then leaving the bases loaded with no outs in the fifth, my new hero Randor Bierd got them out of the jam. He allowed an inherited runner to score on a double play ball, and then got out of the inning. Then Aubrey Huff came through with a home run in the sixth and a go-ahead two run double in the bottom of the eighth for a 9-6 Orioles win! Wow! I might have watched the game, but the Celtics were on TV (Winning their 60th game), and I wouldn’t think of denying the wife her Celtics. Meanwhile, if the season were only two games long, I would be totally wrong on Brian Roberts having an off year. You can’t ask for much more than a .600 batting average and 1.950 OPS (I know, small sample size, I don’t care). Anyway, nice to see the Orioles get a win. In other baseball news, if you read Fire Joe Morgan, you have probably heard their views on David Eckstein. If you don’t, you can read them here. I hope to see an article from them today about how Eckstein managed to score using nothing but grittiness and his monstrous, monstrous heart. Eckstein has nine at bats this season. In eight of them, using his bat, he has managed to get zero hits, one strikeout, and hit into two double plays. But in his first at bat last night, he used his “intangibles” and made Jason Giambi commit an error, allowing Eckstein to reach first base! I didn’t watch the game, and the ESPN box score doesn’t specify, but I suspect that Giambi was mesmerized by the dirt on Eckstein’s uniform, despite the fact that he was the first batter of the game. He was so mesmerized that, when Eck weakly hit the ball towards him, Giambi just didn’t pick it up. Now safely on first, Eck really began to shine. It doesn’t show up in any “numbers” or “sabermetrics”, but it was really Eckstein’s heart that allowed him to advance to second base on Shannon Stewart’s single, and his keen baseball sense that sent him around to score on Alex Rios’ single. The other two batters had little to do with it. Edited to add: They posted about Eck, but not about his gritty grittiness grittying a run.

Fire Daniel Cabrera

There is NO EXCUSE for five walks in four innings. Looking at Daniel Cabrera’s career stats is an exercise in frustration. In 2006, for example, he struck out 157 in 148 innings. But he led the league in walks allowed and wild pitches. In 2007, he repeated as the league leader in walks. He capped it off by also leading the league in runs allowed and losses. A friend of mine who plays baseball (amateur, but competitive) says Cabrera has the best stuff he’s ever seen. If you pick through his individual outings, you’ll find some games where he was absolutely unhittable (here, here, here) and some games where no one had to hit him, they could just wait for the walk (here, here, and shudder here). He is obviously an immensely talented pitcher, but at nearly 27, he’s probably not going to suddenly learn control. Unfortunately for the Orioles, the rest of the league knows that, too.

Oh, great, another infielder who can’t hit

This article caught my eye because Alex Cintron was my shortstop in MLB 2005 for the Gamecube after I dumped Tejada – the game decided his skills were declining, and he cost too much money. And now the real Orioles have signed him. Well, great. At age 24, this kid looked like an up-and-coming star. He hit .317 with a 112 OPS+, which are pretty nice numbers for a middle infielder. Unfortunately, he’ll be 30 this year, and his numbers haven’t even approached average since that season. I suppose he’s only expected to back up one of the two kids (Fahey and Hernandez, neither of whom can hit, either), but it seems to me that Cintron doesn’t have the ability to be a good backup, or the experience to be a good mentor.