By any team measure, the Boston Red Sox have been one of professional sports’ most successful teams since 2003, the beginning of GM Theo Epstein’s tenure. With two World Series titles and playoff appearances in six out of seven seasons, Epstein has made it difficult to criticize his acquisitions in Boston.

Still, despite their success, Red Sox fans have found a few moves to complain about. One of the more notable is Boston’s acquisition of J.D. Drew prior to the 2007 season, which has once again surfaced in the Boston media now that the Red Sox season is over. According to Cot’s Contracts, the deal was a five year deal for 70 million dollars. Entering 2007, Drew was a premier talent. In the four years prior to 2007, Drew compiled a wOBA of exactly .400 and a +23 UZR. Over these four years, Drew put up 18 WAR, good for 4.5 WAR per year. Drew was performing at an all-star level.

At the time, 4.5 WAR per year translated to roughly $17 million per year on the free agent market. Given the length of the deal, $70 million over five years seemed like a perfectly reasonable contract for the Red Sox to offer given their position on the revenue curve.

However, Drew only averaged 470 plate appearances per season dating back through 2003, and had a similar career average. He sustained DL stints every year of his career in St. Louis (1999-2003), and then was sent to the DL again by a hit-by-pitch in 2005.

Injury issues in 2007 limited Drew to 1.3 wins. Although he played in 140 games, he did spend time on the DL and it can easily be argued that his limited offensive and defensive production were due to the hamstring injury, an injury that can linger. That argument is only supported by Drew’s production in 2008 and 2009. Although he didn’t reach 550 PAs in either season, he played fantastic baseball when he was in the lineup, with wOBAs of .400 and .389 respectively and a total UZR of +16 in RF, combining for 8.7 WAR.

The Red Sox have paid Drew 42 million dollars in salary so far. It did indeed look bleak after Drew accrued only $5.5 million in value in 2007, but his fantastic years in 2008 and 2009 have been worth $39.3 million dollars. Right now, we have Drew as being worth slightly more than his contract, echoing Epstein’s response, “he’s actually come out to a tick more than $14 million per year.”

What needs to be understood here is how valuable 450 or 500 plate appearances of J.D. Drew really are. When healthy, Drew excels both at the plate and in the field. As such, even when limited to 2/3 of a season, he comes out more valuable than players that stay healthy. Take, as an example, Michael Young. Young’s misadventures in the field have been well documented, and as a result, despite averaging nearly 700 plate appearances per season since 2002, he’s only accrued 20.5 wins, due to a staggering UZR of -88.4, compared to Drew’s 29.8 in nearly 1600 fewer PAs.

Especially given the ability of the Red Sox to replace Drew with players like Rocco Baldelli, Drew’s play is invaluable. With his all-star skill set, Drew looks set to produce for the Red Sox through the remainder of his contract. The injuries will happen. The Red Sox are a good enough team to deal with them, and Drew is a championship-quality player while healthy.

Brandon League has always looked the role of a shutdown reliever. He throws a high-powered fastball that smacks the mitt with authority and had thrown a slider to complement the pitch. This year, however, League flashed a curveball and a change-up.

League began throwing the latter pitch more and more after using it a little more than a tenth of the time in April. Per Baseball Info Solutions Data, that figure rose to nearly 30% in May and continued moving up the charts. 36% in June was followed by 46% in July before sliding back down to 39.7% in August. League threw 30% change-ups in September and October, causing his usage curve to look a bit like a bell curve. The numbers are a bit skewed because of the pitch totals varying in totals; however, the pitch was an accurate assassin throughout.

Take his 11 appearances in August during which League threw 234 pitches (44 change-ups, 34 curves, 128 four-seam fastballs, and 14 sliders). Batters swung and missed on 32 of those pitches for a rate of 13.7%. On individual pitches, League saw 27% whiffs on his change, 32% on his curve, 21% on his slider, and only 4% on his fastballs. This is only 21% of League’s total pitches on the season, so small sample size does apply. Still, League’s seasonal numbers bare out improvement in provoking contact-less swings, as his 71% contact rate was a career low by more than 10 percentage points.

Most of League’s issues with the run average metrics come from a high home run rate. His fastball has the tendency to stay flat and crushed into the seats on a handful of occasions per season. He still possesses the upside you desire. Toronto doesn’t seem likely to ditch League (entering his second year of arbitration as a super-two member) but if some team can yank him away, they could be getting more than anticipated.

A couple days ago, Dave Cameron suggested that, on account of some of the moves Joe Girardi was making, that he (Girardi, not Cameron) might be nuts.

Here’s a question: Is it possible that Mike Scioscia is nutsier? Some of his moves involving Mike Napoli in Game Six of the ALCS suggest that it’s possible. Regard:

SORTA NUTS: Scioscia starts Jeff Mathis over Napoli.
You know the drill here: Napoli is the superior hitter; Mathis, the superior defender. Does Mathis’s D make up for Napoli’s O? The numbers are inconclusive. My gut says no. That said, my gut does a lot of disgusting things for which I’m incredibly ashamed.

Yeah, Mathis had allofasudden become a doubles-hitting maching in the ALCS, but Napoli was more or less Saunders’ personal catcher during the regular season, having caught over two-thirds of the lefty’s starts. Here are this year’s splits (courtesy of Baseball Reference, with basic stolen base numbers):

Catcher		G	PA	SB 	CS 
Jeff Mathis    	9 	253 	5  	1
Mike Napoli   	22 	552 	13  	6

Moreover, Napoli had started both of Saunders’ postseason starts — including Game Three of the ALDS, during which Napoli went 3-for-5 with two dongers and a HBP.

GENUINELY NUTS: Scioscia pinch hits for Mathis with Maicer Izturis.
This is only Sorta Nuts until you consider the fact that, after Izturis grounded out 6-4, Napoli replaced Mathis at catcher. To consider this a reasonable move, you have to believe three things:

1. That Izturis has a better chance of producing versus Mariano Rivera than Mathis.

2. That Izturis has a better chance of producing versus Rivera than Napoli.

3. That Izturis — the only middle infielder on the bench — will very probably not be needed later on.

Given the numbers, the first of these propositions is credible. Basically anyone, including Scioscia himself, would be a good bet in Mathis’s stead. The second, on the other hand, is hard to believe. Not only is Napoli both a more significant power and on-base threat overall, he also probably stood a better chance than Izturis simply by batting from the right side. As you may very well know, One Pitch Wonder Mariano Rivera has been more effective against lefties over his career. Regard:

Split   PA	BA  	OBP  	SLG  
vs RHB 	2085 	.218 	.272 	.326 
vs LHB 	2266 	.206 	.256 	.261

As for number three, it’s not a huge deal. Still, it’s enough of a reason that, if you think Napoli is anywhere near the batter Izturis is, you should leave Izturis on the bench.

SUPER NUTS: Scioscia pinch hits for Napoli with Gary Matthews, Jr.
There’s barely even anything to say about this. Dave Cameron covered almost the same exact scenario earlier in the series, writing:

I don’t even really know what to say. Matthews is a bad hitter. Napoli is a good hitter. Add in the pinch hitting penalty (players perform below their true talent level when coming off the bench to hit), and the gap just grows to a point where it’s unfathomable to think that Scioscia really believed that Matthews was the better choice to hit in that situation.

But wait, there’s more! Remember how Dave wrote this?

As a bonus, by removing Napoli in a tie game, you were then forced to go with Jeff Mathis as the catcher if the game went to extra innings (which, of course, it did). Mathis’ career wOBA is .263. He’s got all the offensive punch of Rey Ordonez, yet because of the decision to hit for Napoli in the 8th, he’d have to finish the game behind the dish.

Well, in this case, instead of finishing the game with the punchless Jeff Mathis as catcher, the Angels (had they tied, or gone ahead) would’ve had to finish off the game with [cue drum roll] Bobby Wilson. It’s hard to say exactly how punchy Wilson is on account of he’s the owner of only 13 career plate appearances. I mean, his minor league numbers are fine (.271/.316/.398 this year at Triple-A Salt Lake, with some other, better Triple-A seasons in his past), but it’s certainly not an ideal circumstance under which to give a rookie his first taste of postseason baseball.

A sidenote: Because I care about these things, I looked around the interweb to see if maybe Scioscia hated Napoli on account of some simmering blood feud going back to the Old Country. No luck on that front, unfortunately. What I did find, however, was this (courtesy of Wikipedia, which is never wrong):

When I made Mike the No. 1 catcher, the writers came to me and said, “[Competing catcher] Steve Yeager said you made Scioscia the No. 1 catcher because he’s Italian.” I said, “That’s a lie. I made him the No. 1 catcher because I’m Italian.”
—Tommy Lasorda

Need an example of how quickly someone’s post-season reputation can change? Look no further than a certain player on the New York Yankees. No, not Alex Rodriguez; at least he enjoyed some success in the post-season since 2002. Instead, the player is CC Sabathia.

In 2007, Sabathia had seen elimination and failure come in very personal manner as he allowed 15 runs in 15 innings. A year ago Sabathia’ Milwaukee Brewers were eliminated by the Philadelphia Phillies in the Divisional Series. The tall lefty with an appetite for outs would make a single start in the series, pitching three and two-thirds innings of un-Sabathian ball: four walks, five strikeouts, and five earned runs. The last time Sabathia pitched well in the post-season was 2001 against the historic Seattle Mariners. The (then) 20-year-old appeared in one game, going six while walking as many as he struck out against a team that won 116 regular season games.

Sabathia has started three games for the Yankees this October, winning each start and allowing a total of three earned runs. In the matter of a month he’s won more post-season games than he had in his entire career. Nifty, right? Here are his post-season stat lines for easier comparison:

Era	GS	IP	SO%	uBB%	ERA
Pre	5	25	9.8	14.3	7.92
NYY	3	22.7	23	3.4	1.19

For further perspective, Sabathia’s post-season FIP are as follows: 3.88, 7.09, 7.22, and 2.44. That’s a drastic change and one that has wiped away any grumblings of Sabathia not being a big-game pitcher or one afraid of the bright lights of the post-season. Not that anyone – minus Twins or Angels fans – should be complaining about this development. If nothing else, it saves the rest of us time from defending Sabathia much like we have that previously mentioned Rodriguez fella over the past few years.

Primum non nocere – the Latin phrase meaning “First, do no harm.” That sentiment is drilled into physicians from the beginning of medical school, but perhaps it should be emblazoned on every dugout wall in baseball as well. In the ALCS, we saw two managers over-analyze situations, causing harm to their own team time and time again, and now it appears that Charlie Manuel may be on the verge of following in their footsteps.

Manuel will send Cliff Lee to the hill on Wednesday for Game One of the series, as he should. However, he has not been willing to disclose the rest of his playoff rotation, and reports are surfacing that he may go with Pedro Martinez in the second game in lieu of Cole Hamels. The rationale appears to be based on recent performance – Hamels has struggled in the first two rounds of the playoffs, while Martinez was able to hold down the Dodgers in his NLCS appearance.

However, at some point, you have to step back and realize that recent performance simply cannot overcome what we know about the respective abilities of the two pitchers. Hamels is the better pitcher by a significant margin. It’s not even close.

The appearance of Hamels’ struggles this year are mostly just noise. His 2009 FIP of 3.72 is exactly equal to his 2008 FIP, as his walk, strikeout, and home run rates are nearly identical. The ERA jumped by over a run per game due to a 55 point increase in his batting average on balls in play. He was a bit lucky last year and a bit unlucky this year. Overall, he’s the same guy he was a year ago when he led the Phillies to a World Series title and was being crowned the new young ace of the National League.

Martinez simply isn’t in that league anymore. He did a nice job down the stretch for the Phillies, but even in a limited sample of nine starts, he wasn’t as good as Hamels. He pounded the strike zone and missed some bats, but his fringe fastball up in the zone led to a ridiculously low 29.5 percent ground ball rate. Not surprisingly, he gave up a bunch of home runs, which is consistent with his performances over the last several years. He throws enough strikes and has a good enough change-up to be effective, but he’s prone to throwing a couple of meatballs each game.

To decide to go with Martinez over Hamels, you have to significantly undervalue the gap in talent and overvalue everything else. Pedro may have a history with old Yankee stadium, and you might prefer a guy with his personality on the mound, but that stuff doesn’t make up for the fact that Cole Hamels is a far superior pitcher to Pedro Martinez right now. Mike Scioscia made a similar mistake by going with Joe Saunders due to non-talent reasons. It’s not a good idea.

The Yankees have it right – throw your best pitchers as often as possible. Hamels is the second best pitcher on the staff. He should start game two. It doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that.

Andy Pettitte pitched a solid game last night, giving up just one run over 6.1 innings, and helping to send the Yankees to the World Series. Pettitte had a good, but not great, year. Actually, his peripherals were quite poor compared to his recent past. His walk rate was at its highest since 2000:

And his GB and FB numbers were the worst they have been in years:

On the other hand, his K/9 rate was in line with his recent past.

On a per pitch basis, the culprit for these changes seems to me to be his four-seam fastball (he throws a four-seam fastball, a two-seam fastball, a cut fastball, a changeup and curve). It went from being in the zone 53% of the time (pre-2009 pitchf/x era) to just 50% of the time this year. And the ground ball rate on it went from an amazing 49% (very good for a four-seam fastball) to just 36% this year.

Pettitte throws all three of his fastballs to both LHBs and RHBs (about 75% of his pitches to both RHBs and LHBs are fastballs), and the variation in their movement and location is a major weapon for him. I used the FanGraphs pitchf/x section color scheme to display their locations below: green for four-seam fastballs, dark blue for two-seam and light blue for cutters.


The two-seam is thrown to his arm-side (away to RHBs and in to LHBs) and the cut fastball down and to his glove-side (in to RHBs and away to LHBs), while his four-seam thrown in a larger area within the zone, but generally up and to his arm-side. This ability to throw all three fastballs to both RHBs and LHBs is a solid skill. His cutter is his best pitch by our valuations. It gets lots of out of zone swings and whiffs.

Even with the poor BB and GB peripherals his bottom line did not change much, as his numbers were buoyed by a BABIP and HR/FB both lower than his career averages. As a result, he provided solid value to the Yankees this year, 15 millions dollars worth. This past off-season saw him sign a 5.5 million dollar deal with which he was not entirely happy, but with bonuses it was worth $10 million. It will be interesting to see what Pettitte does this off-season. Even if his BABIP and HR/FB regress to career levels and his BB/9 and GB stay as poor as they were this year, he is still a good enough pitcher to provide a solid 10ish million dollars worth of value in 2010.

Last night was a continuation of the themes presented throughout the ALCS: Angel blunders in the field and on the basepaths, odd decisions on who should be pitching at certain times, Gary Matthews pinch-hitting for Mike Napoli, and the Yankees being carried by a few pitchers. Last night, it was Pettitte and Rivera doing the bulk of the work in shutting down the Angel offense, as the Yankees continued to lean on a very small core of trusted arms to get them to the World Series.

Over the six games played in the series, Yankee pitchers took the hill for 59 innings. 48 of those 59 innings were thrown by CC Sabathia, AJ Burnett, Andy Pettitte, and Mariano Rivera. The other seven pitchers used by New York combined to throw a total of 10 2/3 innings. 81.4 percent of the series featured one of the Yankees three starters or their relief ace on the hill, a staggeringly high total.

During the regular season, these four combined for 48 percent of all Yankee innings pitched. However, with the advantageous schedule of the ALCS (thanks Fox!), Girardi made the right choice to go with a three man rotation, and the frequent off-days allowed Rivera to pitch any time he was needed. By consolidating the innings into four high quality pitchers, the Yankees went from being a really good team to a juggernaut. The Angels hitters struggled, but given who they were facing 80 percent of the time, it’s surprising that they got any hits at all.

Girardi will have a decision to make regarding whether to try to repeat this strategy against the Phillies. The World Series doesn’t have the same quirky off day between Games Four and Five, so he’d have to be willing to use starters on three days rest in each of Games Four through Seven. He’s almost certainly comfortable with Sabathia pitching on short rest given how well he performed in the ALCS, but will he be willing to take the same risk with Burnett and Pettitte?

I think he should. The upside is really high, while the risk isn’t that significant – if Burnett or Pettitte struggle, you’ll have Chamberlain/Gaudin available out of the pen early, which isn’t that different from just starting them outright.

The three man rotation is a huge boost to the Yankees. It was one of the main reasons they’ve been able to roll through the first two rounds of the playoffs. It won’t be as easy to pull off in the World Series, but it’s still worth trying.

The Cleveland Indians’ managerial hunt ended on Sunday, as they hired former Washington Nationals skipper Manny Acta. Acta will replace Eric Wedge, who in six seasons as manager of the Indians compiled a .495 winning percentage and reached the playoffs once (in 2007).

Acta managed for two and a half years in Washington, managing teams with very little in terms of talent. Over his tenure, the Nationals played putrid .385 ball, including a 59 win season in 2008 and a 26-61 record at the time of his firing in 2009. Despite his poor record, Acta has a fantastic reputation around the game with young players. As Cleveland enters the Manny Acta era, they will need these talents as they attempt to build around established players like Grady Sizemore and Shin-Soo Choo with prospects like Matt LaPorta and Carlos Carrasco.

Other candidates for the job included former Mets and Chiba Lotte Marines manager Bobby Valentine, Indians AAA manager Torey Lovullo, and Dodgers hitting coach Don Mattingly. Valentine is the only other candidate with ML managerial experience (Mattingly has never managed a professional team). Valentine reached one World Series with the Mets in 2000 but has an otherwise unimpressive record, with a .510 career winning percentage, and was ousted as part of the Steve Phillips era in New York. With Cleveland in the middle of a rebuilding period, he may not have fit well with their current personnel.

The most interesting thing about Acta besides his reputation with young players is his affinity for statistical analysis. In an interview with Squawking Baseball after the 2007 season, Acta told of his disdain for the sacrifice bunt early in games, and how Baseball Prospectus was among his favorite baseball reading.

More importantly, though, Acta’s openness towards statistics will not lead to tension between the manager and the front office. Mark Shapiro and his staff certainly are not stuck in the dark ages with regards to new forms of analysis. Would a manager like Bobby Valentine or Don Mattingly have conflicted with the front office in terms of player acquisitions, or perhaps on in-game strategies? It’s hard to say for sure. Acta, however, seems to have the perfect profile for a team looking to rebuild and willing to use advanced analyses.

Although Cleveland has pieces to build around, they do not appear to have the talent of a competing team as of yet. With the hiring of Manny Acta, the Indians have somebody who has both a great reputation among baseball men and an appreciation for the analytical part of the game that has created winners in Oakland and Boston, and is currently turning a franchise around in Seattle. Acta won’t bring the Indians to contention by himself, but he’s the right man to guide the ship.

A few things are held true throughout baseball fandom. One of them is Barry Zito’s contract being described as a general manager’s worst nightmare. It’s been a while since someone quantified just how horrendous it is though.

In December 2006, Brian Sabean and the Giants outbid Bill Bavasi and the Mariners in order to land the overrated southpaw billed as an ace. As Nate Silver, amongst others, noted at the time, the deal was perfectly reasonable if you believed Zito could replicate his ERA. Unfortunately for the Giants, Zito’s ERA was a confluence of a spacious ballpark and a bloated amount of stranded baserunners. The contract – or, perhaps, The Contract to Giants fans – held a length of seven years (with a club option) and $126 million (given a $7M buyout for 2014 the contract is actually worth at least $133 million and has the chance to be worth more than $151 million).

To date, the Giants have paid Zito roughly $43M. He has posted FIP of 4.82, 4.72, and 4.31 in innings totals of 196.2, 180, and 192. After park and league adjustments that works out to WAR of 1.7, 1.4, and 2.2 or in dollar terms: $6.9M , $6.4M, and $10M; a sum of $23.3M. Quick subtraction shows the Giants losing about $20 million on the deal so far, and, as mentioned, there are still four years and $90 million left.

The somewhat good news that arrives is Zito had his best season (as told by WAR) since 2005 last year. His fastball went faster, as he used it less than before, and he relied heavily on an upper-70s slider. Maybe he can at least replicate that success heading forward, although it still won’t prevent him from being a punch line.

Were you to comb the annals of world literature in search of little nancy boys, you’d probably be hard-pressed to find anyone nancier than the very nancy Marcel Proust. In the first part of his Swann’s Way (itself only the first of the seven volume Remembrance of Things Past), we see little Prousty: crying at length for his mommy, describing breathlessly the winding paths about his family’s summer home, and (if memory serves) sending away for any number of American Girl dolls. Nancy, indeed.

Having said that, it’s in the same text that Proust also provides us with one of the more important moments of literature. Sitting down to tea one afternoon, Proust (or the character who resembles him in almost every way) dips one of his madeleine cookies in the aforementioned beverage. Then this happens:

And soon, mechanically, dispirited after a dreary day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory – this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me it was me. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, contingent, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I sensed that it was connected with the taste of the tea and the cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could, no, indeed, be of the same nature. Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it?

The passage has become famous for a lot of reasons, probably, but most notably as an early illustration of modern psychology in literature. Much is made of Proust’s description/exploration of the “involuntary memory” — the manner in which the senses are able to prompt a strong and, yes, involuntary reaction in the brain. [For info on this and more, see Jonah Lehrer’s Proust Was a Neuroscientist.]

Well, during the first inning of Thursday night’s Angels-Yankees game, I had a bit of a madeleine cookie moment — not with Proust’s attendant “shudders,” but the same experience of involuntary memory.

I don’t know that you’d agree with me, but, watching the bottom of the first inning of last night’s Angels-Yankees game, I couldn’t help but notice how hard the Angels were hitting the ball off New York starter A.J. Burnett. Like, real hard. Like, superhero hard.

To refresh your memory, here’s what that inning looked like:

Chone Figgins walked.
Bobby Abreu doubled to center (Liner). Chone Figgins advanced to 3B.
Torii Hunter singled to center (Grounder). Chone Figgins scored. Bobby Abreu scored.
Vladimir Guerrero doubled to center (Fliner (Liner)). Torii Hunter scored.
Kendry Morales singled to left (Liner). Vladimir Guerrero scored.
Maicer Izturis flied out to right (Fliner (Fly)).
Juan Rivera grounded into a double play to third (Grounder). Kendry Morales out at second.

Obviously, I’m not talking about Figgins; he walked. Nor was Rivera’s grounder to third particularly well-struck. Ditto for Hunter’s single (although it wasn’t some sort of nancy BS, either). But the other four batters in the inning — Abreu, Guerrero, Morales, even Izturis — all appeared to hit the ball as hard as each of them is respectively able to.

Hit f/x data isn’t available yet for public consumption. Were it, I’d include it so hard right [here]. In any case, our play-by-play data bears out the Angels’ onslaught: Abreu’s double is classified as a liner; Vlad’s double as a fliner; Morales’s single, a liner; Izturis’s fly-out, a fliner. That’s four out of five consecutive batters squaring up offerings from an above-average pitcher. Not impossible, sure; but unlikely. And probably more striking as it was the first inning of an important playoff game.

And just like that, having said to myself the word “line drive,” I was immediately brought back to the following. Remember this? [Thanks to Awful Announcing for the transcript.]

Joe Morgan: Jon, I gotta ask you a trivia question. I was fishing with Matt Franco, used to play for the Mets. I was fishing with him on a boat, and Matt Franco asked me this trivia question. He said he had talked to players past and present. He asked me, Which guy hit the hardest line drives most consistently of all I’d ever seen. Hardest line drives.

Jon Miller: That’s a trivia question?

Joe: Well, it was for me and him. We were playing trivia on the fishing boat.

Jon: Where would I look up the answer to that?

Joe: Well, you should know the answer!

Jon: Give me the question one more time.

Joe: All right. Who hits the hardest line drives of any player you ever saw on a consistent basis?

Jon: Dave Winfield.

Joe: All right, keep going. That’s one. That’s “A”. “A” wasn’t right.

Jon: [Loud Laughs] “Yes it was right! I beg to differ!

Joe: I’m gonna give you, uhh … I’m gonna give … I’m gonna give you a hint. You even broadcast games for him.

Jon: [Long Pause] “I broadcast Dave Winfield’s games.

Joe: No … for the answer, I’m talking about. I’m telling you, he asked all the other players. I’m not saying—

Jon: Well, I’m saying, this is a question for which there is no correct answer.

Joe: Yeah, there’s a correct answer.

Jon: Well, what did you say? What was your answer? Did you get it right?

Joe: Yes. [pause] Al Oliver.

Jon: Oh, Al Oliver. He was—

Joe: See!

Jon: He was a very good line drive hitter.

Joe: I knew you would say that. See, I knew that you’d eventually come up with the answer.

You’ll probably remember that little dialogue between Morgan and Miller. A lot of sites picked it up. And for good reason: it’s like Ionesco-level absurd.

But wait, there’s more!

It wasn’t long after Joe Morgan’s little trivia fest that, poring through the excellent Troubadour Books in Hatfield, MA, I found and purchased some of the old Bill James Baseball Books. They’re awesome, in case you haven’t read them. But what made buying them even awesomer — and relevant to the present discussion — is James’s capsule review of Rafael Palmeiro in the Player Ratings section of The Baseball Book 1992 (p 238, for those following along at home).

According to James, Frank Thomas is tops among AL first basemen. Palmeiro is second. Here’re the first two sentences about him:

An awesome hitter, too, Al Oliver-type hitter. Hard line drives three times a game.

Bizam! Line drives! Al Oliver! Madeleine cookies!

The irony of all this, obviously, is that Bill James and Joe Morgan both consider the name Al Oliver synonymous with the words “line drive” — even though Morgan hates-slash-hasn’t-read James’s famous book Moneyball.