The View From Wisconsin

It's a day later, and I still do not understand why the heck Carlo$ Beltran took strike three.

There are a lot of unwritten rules in baseball - don't make the third out at third base, don't steal when you're up by more than four runs late, don't showboat around the bases after you hit one out.

But you would think that the situation would demand that you at least swing at the next pitch. Consider:

• Game seven of the playoffs,
  
• bottom of the ninth,
• two outs
  
• down by three runs,
• the bases are loaded,
• the umpire has been giving opposing pitchers the black of the plate (and, some would argue, both dugouts) for the strike zone

Your job, with two outs and two strikes, is to protect the plate. You learn that all the way back in little league baseball, for cryin' out loud.

I hope that Willie Randolph dressed him down in private, either last night or this morning. He can have high batting averages, he can have gaudy HR and RBI numbers... but this is just downright DUMB.

Labels: carlos beltran new york mets swing strike three

This one goes down under "Cheap Potshot of the Year" - though it could also go under "Bite The Hand That Feeds You" department:

NHL Still Isn't Must-See TV (Ian O'Connor, Fox Sports).

The people at FOX must have this huge chip on their shoulder for the NHL since their lovely "glowing puck" went over like a lead balloon. It's bad enough that ESPN poo-poohs the NHL at any chance they can get, but this is even worse - considering that FSN's various regional entities cover NHL hockey on a regular basis.

I'm not going to dissemble this thing here, since Eklund has already done a great job on his blog. But boy, talk about ignorance meeting apathy.

Well.

I am now Jack Benny's age.

Funny thing about birthdays: most people dread them as a sign of getting older. However, because of how my mom treated my birthday, I've always had this look of anticipation for today.

Of course, when doctors tell you you might not live to see your next birthday, as they did in her case, I would reckon that they're important reminders to you of how well off you have it.

I always like the little things about birthdays - the cards, the cake, the occasional gifts, the people who acknowledge that it's your birthday. Those are great.

Of course, not everyone gets with the program on your birthday. I mean, most people think of today as the day that Anwar Sadat was assassinated.

Or, at the very least, a day after my beloved hockey team took a dump on the ice... to the Blackhawks.

That's rule two of life: not everything turns out the way you want.

Well, hockey's back and better than ever.

Versus' first game with the Canes and Buffaslugs (those jerseys make me look twice - I thought I was watching a Preds game there for a second) was a quality production. They still have the Blinking Screen of Annoyance (BSoA) going on there at the end, but on the whole the channel has a more "sporty" feel to it - definitely a great transition for the old OLN-TV.

Tonight's the big night in the 'Ville, of course, and Saturday is game one for us in the AHL. I guess, hearing Andrews talk this afternoon, that it's all but certain that Windsor will have an AHL franchise in '08-09. I find that somewhat funny, since that is where the IHL was born.

The Standardized Runs totals are now in for 2006 for MLB. The SR formula, for those of you just joining us, is a slightly easier-to-understand version of the Runs Created formula, with an adjustment similar to Batting Runs so that the SR total for a league for a given year is always equal to the actual number of runs scored by league teams.

The SR formula is, simply: OBP * [TB + .55 (SB – CS)] / League Factor; where the league factor is: League OBP * [League TB + .55 (League SB – League CS)] / League RS. The AL had a League Factor of 1.046, while the NL had a factor of 1.042.

The second number in the stat lines for the players is Standard Fibonacci Wins. Using the Jamesian method of determining Offensive Winning Percentage (Simplified runs per 27 outs squared, divided by the sum of simplified runs per 27 outs squared plus offensive context squared), you then determine offensive wins and losses (using outs/27 as the assigned number of games), and plug these three things into his Fibonacci Wins formula (wins times winning percentage, plus wins minus losses).

On to the All-Star teams:

AMERICAN LEAGUE

• 1B – Justin Morneau, Minnesota (118.7 SR, 15.6 SFIB). He's my outside shot at MVP for the AL.
• 2B – Robinson Cano, NY Yankees (88.8, 8.8). Good year in a good lineup.
• 3B – Alex Rodriguez, NY Yankees (114.2, 11.4). Why are they booing him, again?
• SS – Derek Jeter, NY Yankees (126.2, 13.8). Oh, now I remember.
• OF – Grady Sizemore, Cleveland (128.1, 13.9). Surprisingly good season.
• OF – Vlad Guerrero, LA Angels (124.3, 16.4). Quietly had a huge year. Too bad it wasn't enough to get him to October.
• OF – Jermaine Dye, White Sox (124.0, 14.6). No, the World Series wasn't a fluke.
• C – Joe Mauer, Minnesota (109.5, 14.6). Another cog in a very strong Twins team.
• DH – David Ortiz, Boston (140.2, 17.1). Without Big Papi, the BoSox are in the basement of the AL East.
• PI – Josh Beckett, Boston (2.5, 0.2). Okay, okay, a bit of a joke, but not bad for only seven plate appearances.

National League:

• 1B – Ryan Howard, Philadelphia (156.2, 18.7). Pujols had a better SFIG (19.1), but is second in SR (149.5) because of Ryan's 58 dingers.
• 2B – Chase Utley, Philadelphia (128.4, 13.7). Boy, can you imagine what would have happened if Philly would have actually had a pitching staff?
• 3B – Miguel Cabrera, Florida (135.8, 17.9). He should get a nod or two for MVP votes, but not with Howard's year.
• SS – Jose Reyes, NY Mets (115.8, 12.6). The MVP of the Mets. Any other year, he gets MVP nods.
• OF – Matt Holliday, Colorado (132.1, 15.9). Good player, crappy team.
• OF – Alfonso Soriano, Washington (126.5, 13.7). See above.
• OF – Jason Bay, Pittsburgh (117.1, 15.2). See above.
• C – Brian McCann, Atlanta (94.7, 11.1). Good, quality backstop... on a crappy team.
• PI – Dontrelle Willis, Florida (5.1, -1.2). This falls under the "you gotta do it yourself" category.

2006 CY YOUNG POINTS LEAGUE LEADERS

Cy Young Points are a method used by me (see elsewhere in this blog for the formula details) of determining what pitchers are the most deserving of consideration for the Cy Young Award.

AMERICAN LEAGUE TOP THREE:

SP: Johan Santana, Minnesota (35.2), Chien-Ming Wang, Yankees (27.8), and Roy Halladay, Toronto (26.4).

RP: Joe Nathan, Minnesota (35.8), Justin Papelbon, Boston (27.4) and J.J. Putz, Seattle (17.4).

NATIONAL LEAGUE TOP THREE:

SP: Brandon Webb, Arizona (20.5), Carlos Zambrano, Cubs (19.7), and Chris Carpenter, Saint Louis (18.2).

RP: Takashi Saito, Los Angeles (16.8), Cla Meredith, San Diego (13.9), and Billy Wagner, Mets (13.3).

Labels: Baseball sabermetrics standardized estimated runs formula