Beatdown in the Bronx
I know we get all analytical here from time to time and don’t seem like we’re having that much fun with the game but we’re fans too and love our Sox! Here’s to laying one on the bad guys!
I am sure Mullet or Jeff will come correct with something more in depth than than but I just wanted to chime in quickly. That was some good fun.
May 10th, 2006 at 1:27 pm
Willie Harris starting in CF tonight?!?!?!?
May 11th, 2006 at 1:29 pm
Recently I was made aware of Dewey’s House and I have been reading this blog since. I don’t read it because of it’s excellence, but because of the blind and intellectual dishonesty of the blogger known as Sully. I also want to point out that I have never seen a more poorly structured argement than the one below. In fact, I’m going to point out it’s flaws one by one. Every argument you make screams “Sox are the best” from beginning to end. Anyway, here we go:
_________
2) The Yankees cannot play any better than they have while the Red Sox figure to improve.
YOU: OK so maybe this is not an “incontrivertible truth” but it sure as hell is demonstrably likely.
ME: How about just saying, “OK, so maybe this isn’t a certainly, but it is quite likely.” If you are going to use big words, use the words properly and spare yourself the self-parody of everyone reading your blogs are laughing at your fake intellectuallism.
YOU: So the way I look at it is that while the Red Sox have played well short of their potential, they have staked themselves to a one-game lead in the AL East. Simultaneously, while the Yankees have played about as well as they can, they haven’t accumulated the wins commensurate with their stellar play.
ME: You’re right. They haven’t accumulated the commensurate wins in line with their high quality play. Since you staunchly and always argue that “the numbers have near perfect predictive power,” shouldn’t the law of averages kick in, meaning that the Yankees win percentage will go up? I mean, isn’t it highly suspect that the Yankees superior play hasn’t netted more wins? In any case, you are making a correct observation that the Yanks are playing better. However, you are NOT noting that the incongruity in the standings could also mean the Yanks are better and should open up a bit of a lead on the Sox in the coming month.
YOU: This may well cost them in the end. Have a look at some of the early-season performances from the Yankees:
Jason Giambi: .328/.542/.813
Derek Jeter: .396/.505/.637
Mike Mussina: 1.08 WHIP, 8.54 K/9, 4.63 K/BB
Meanwhile, the Yanks have also received mild out-performance from Johnny Damon, Gary Sheffield, Robinson Cano and Jorge Posada while only A-Rod and Hideki Matsui have slightly under-performed. In fairness, Randy Johnson ought to be a good bit better, and Andy Phillips and Bernie Williams are not as God-awful as they have looked.
ME: A-Rod and Randy ought to be A LOT better. Demonstrably and incontrovertibly better. And how has Sheffield mildly outperformed? He’s been injured.
YOU: For their part, the Red Sox have had virtually nobody significantly exceed expectations (no, 15 great innings from Jonathan Papelbon does not qualify as significantly exceeding).
ME: Yes it does. Who expected this from Papelbon except your average Sox homer fan? Besides, did any of you statistical gurus predict Papelbon would be a top closer in all of baseball? No way. Did you draft him early in your fantasy drafts?
YOU: David Ortiz has come as advertised, Mike Lowell has shown his pre-2005 form and Curt Schilling has been excellent but other than that, almost across the board, the Red Sox have fallen short of expectations.
ME: You don’t think Schilling has SIGNIFICANTLY outperformed what was expected? Jeez…
YOU: Have a look at the two clearest Red Sox candidates to improve…
Mark Loretta: .217/.278/.292
Jaon Varitek: .250/.345/.375
ME: Yeah, compare that to A-Rod, Sheffield and Randy Johnson… not to mention Rivera by a bit too.
YOU: Also, Coco Crisp’s injury has badly hampered the offense’s ability to function as it should. Here are the center fielder’s numbers that have filled in (note that these numbers are only when they played CF):
Dustan Mohr: .192/.250/.462
Adam Stern: .150/.150/.200
Wily Mo Pena: .278/.278/.333
Willie Harris: .077/.294/.077
Coco Crisp (pre-injury): .333/.385/.458
Crisp’s return will help immensely.
ME: OK, obviously. Even you couldn’t butcher that analysis.
YOU: Alex Gonzalez has also been terrible, worse than he ever has been. One way or another the Red Sox will get improved production from shortstop, either by improvement from Gonzalez, improvement from Alex Cora or help in the form of Dustin Pedroia.
ME: Did a single human being expect anything from Boston’s shortstops? I didn’t. The position is a wasteland until a real shortstop is traded for or Pedroia is ready. You should be assigning zero incremental value to the Sox for improvement at SS. Even an improvement won’t net you much in wins because the current quality level is so low.
YOU: On the pitching side for the Sox, both Josh Beckett and Matt Clement will have better looking numbers in time.
ME: Oh, and NO WAY they get injured, right? Neither are proven innings eaters or certainties to stay healthy… to say the least.
YOU: As for the 5th starter position, if Lenny DiNardo does not get it together quickly, Matt Ginter or Jon Lester would make capable replacements.
ME: Whatever. Unimportant.
YOU: So there is bad news and good news. The bad news is that the Sox have played really poorly thus far and the Yanks have played about as well as a baseball team can play. The good news is despite that, the Sox have a one-game cushion on the Yanks and only figure to improve while the Yanks have nowhere to go but down.
ME: This is extremely contrived reasoning. Just terrible. Are you saying the Sox are better all things being equal? I mean, a Yankees fan could just as easily say, “Hey, we’re hugely outplaying the Sox right now. The win / loss record will reflect that over time. This is just a fluke! The performance stats show that we are playing significantly better, and EVEN WITH REGRESSION, we are still probably the better team.” Seriously, you should be more open and honest with your analysis. You should be embarrassed by your blind Sox bias.
May 11th, 2006 at 10:52 pm
Wow, what an empty, non-sensical bit of mean-spiritedness.
My point was simple. The good news was that the Sox had a one-game lead at the time. The bad news was that they were not playing very well and the Yanks had looked like a much better team. And yet, in the end I thought it was good news because the Sox have more in the form of improvement candidates while the Yanks have gotten some off-the-charts early-season performances that I think are likely to regress a bit.
Anyway, you tipped your hand a bit in the SS analysis. Not good, Guru, not good. At the time I wrote the bit, Alex Gonzalez was sporting about a .500 OPS. He is much better than that. Not good, but better than he had been playing. And wouldn’t you know it, the guy’s hitting at a .333/.429/.556 clip over the last 7 games.
Meanwhile, Jeter is coming back to earth, Sheff and Matsui, two oldish players, are hurt and Mark Loretta collected four hits tonight as the Sox took their third game in four tries against the Yanks so far in 2006. Oh and Crisp is getting better too.
Too bad the Yanks didn’t collect more wins when they were playing so well.
May 12th, 2006 at 7:24 am
Let’s just make this simple. The Sox went into the Yankees’ house and spanked them. Sure, they were missing Sheff, but the Sox have been without Crisp since game 6 of the season (not to mention David Wells) and have significant holes in their order namely, Varitek and AGon.
Despite that, they played well (except for the number of RISP LOB) and could quite easily have swept had Schilling made a few more pitches.
May 12th, 2006 at 11:56 am
hey guru, eat it.
May 12th, 2006 at 12:00 pm
I think Guru’s feelings were hurt because someone actually put together a logical arguement supporting the Red Sox despite their weak peripherals.
Guru, “you should be embarrassed by your blind Yankees bliss!” Not to mention, you need to relax with some of your critical comments. “Intellectual dishonesty,” and “fake intellectualism.” Stop being such a poser.
May 12th, 2006 at 5:28 pm
Give me a break. I’m no Yankees fan. I’m a White Sox fan from Chicago. The point is that some of the things that are said on this site are utterly ridiculous. I never thought anyone would be such a clown as to refer to a Boston evening as the “delightful Boston dusk.” (I mean, aren’t you by definition a clown if you use the words “incontrovertible” and “demonstrable” in the same sentence? Or at all for that matter?) Come on… the level of unintentional humor in Blogger Sully’s comments are off the richter scale to a non-Red Sox fan. Put it this way… I read Aaron Gleeman who covers the Twins (and I hate the fucking Twins by the way), but he’s worth reading because his analysis is both sound and good. Sully’s analysis has more holes than Swiss cheese and the intellectual heft and consistancy of something put out by a child. I wouldn’t even comment though if not for the big words he so horribly misuses or that mind blowing bias he exhibits in his analysis of the Sox or their arch enemy, the Yankees. Sully do yourself a favor… put away the thesaurus - you are clearly not articulate enough to slip big words into your sentences effortlessly. Also, start your analysis with a blank slate and open mind - not everything in your blogs has to be so blatantly biased towards Boston.
May 13th, 2006 at 1:23 pm
“Aren’t you, by definition, a clown if you” find entertainment in this form, Guru?
May 15th, 2006 at 6:26 pm
From my time in Chicago, I can say that except for the bleacher creatures, Chicago has the worst fans in the country.
So, take this guy’s BS with a grain of salt, he’s probably just one of the drunken bandwagoners who pollute US Cell.
Hey Guru, move out of your parents’ basement and start your own blog, then judge others. Or, just stick with your own team, and only read their garbage of how last year was totally not a fluke occurence.
May 15th, 2006 at 11:24 pm
The only thing I have to say is that Randy Johnson has not underperformed. He’s a 42 year old pitcher with no cartilige in his knees. There’s no ‘ought’ there. Maybe he ‘ought’ to be pichting better, but nothing says that he ‘ought not’ to finally have his injuries affect his mechanics sufficently to produce the Randy Johnson of his last several starts.
That’s the problem with building your team around decline phase veterans with injury issues, such as Sheffield, Johnson, Mussina, Giambi, Matsui (despite the freak nature of his injury and his consecutive games streak, dude is 32), Damon, etc, etc, etc. If everything comes together, as it has fairly often until very recently, for the Yankees, you win big and often. If your players decline and/or fall apart in any sort of conjunction… you have a long way to fall from your on-paper expectations to what you’ll be able to achieve on a splinted wing and a prayer.
May 16th, 2006 at 7:15 am
Guys, no worries. Not everyone is going to like my writing style. No need to troll like Guru is but trust me, I’ll be ok.
I wrote the Sox-Yanks piece on May 2. When I return to Boston and have some time, I will be back on schedule. In the interim, have a look at four players’ numbers for the month of May, all of whom were mentioned in the May 2 post:
Jason Giambi: .163/.357/.372
Derek Jeter: .224/.296/.286
Alex Gonzalez: .300/.361/.467
Mark Loretta: .400/.423/.480
May 18th, 2006 at 8:48 pm
At least our boy Guru has a healthy respect for irony.