Episode Twenty-Nine
In which the panel is getting intimate.
Headlines
Trey Hillman Departs
Ken Griffey Nods Off
Understanding Media (or Something Like That)
… and other askance looks!
Featuring
Matt Klaassen, Philosophizer
Finally, you can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.
Audio on the flip-flop.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Last week, I introduced to the wide readership a line of inquiry down which the very famous Jonah Keri had gotten me started. The line of inquiry concerns those bloggers who, despite almost no promise of financial compensation or notoriety, have persisted in their craft.
The question I posed — after having considered Will Leitch’s suggestion from his Costas Now episode that blogging is a really hard work — the question I posed goes like this:
Why do it? If, as Leitch suggests, it’s hard work, why do it? If, as I can tell you personally, it provides very little in the way of fame and/or cash money, why do it?
I’ve posed this same series of questions — or at least ones very similar to them — to some of the interweb’s more thoughtful baseball writers. This (and maybe next) week, I’ll be sharing their responses in these electronic pages.
Today’s willing participant is actually Mr. Leitch himself. Besides serving as the founding editor of Deadspin and a current contributing editor to New York Magazine, and besides authoring a number of real-live books (including the very recent Are We Winning?, available wherever the internet is present), Will Leitch is also one of the few living humans capable of expressing seven emotions at once, as this photographic evidence suggests:
Leitch: I’m not sure I’m the ideal person for this, because I’d been starving as a writer for nearly a decade before Deadspin finally launched. I started writing on the Web, back at The Black Table and, before that, with Life As A Loser, because I wanted to get better, because the Web was the perfect place to hone your craft out in public, in real time, with people letting you know what was working and what wasn’t. It also allowed me to do all this for free, and I mean “allowed”: I would have never been able to develop a voice had I been having to sing for my supper. It was an advantage to work it all out with nobody paying and few people reading. I did it because I have no idea how to do anything else. I wrote about a subject I know and care about and, with any luck, I’ll get to keep doing it forever.
Last week, I introduced to the wide readership a line of inquiry down which the very famous Jonah Keri had gotten me started. The line of inquiry concerns those bloggers who, despite almost no promise of financial compensation or notoriety, have persisted in their craft.
The question I posed — after having considered Will Leitch’s suggestion from his Costas Now episode that blogging is a really hard work — the question I posed goes like this:
Why do it? If, as Leitch suggests, it’s hard work, why do it? If, as I can tell you personally, it provides very little in the way of fame and/or cash money, why do it?
I’ve posed this same series of questions — or at least ones very similar to them — to some of the interweb’s more thoughtful baseball writers. This (and maybe next) week, I’ll be sharing their responses in these electronic pages.
Today’s willing participant is Mr. Tommy Bennett. Because you’re the sort of reader who demands quality in his baseballing analysis, you’re undoubtedly aware that, after having risen to the top of the charts with Beyond the Boxscore, Bennett currently wrecks the mic right for Baseball Prospectus.
Please note that this installment of the series is packaged in two unsullied parts: Bennett’s initial response and then his answers to my follow-up questions.
I write because I consider it to be the noblest of daily habits, because writing stimulates critical and literary thinking in a way that no other activity can. Just as writing that is ungirded by structured thought tends to be uninteresting, I find it hard to construct my thoughts without writing them down. Because baseball is such an emotional pursuit, even for spectators, this is doubly so when I try to think about baseball. When I go to write an essay, I am forced to give justifications, reasons, and evidence for my arguments. Certainly, non-written arguments can be structured and not all writing is well-constructed, but at least when I write I am most conscious of those requirements.
Let me give you an example. I grew up rooting for the Phillies, and the single most severe emotional response baseball has elicited from me came in 1993, when Joe Carter hit a walk-off home run in Game Six of the World Series. It happened, that evening, to be my ninth birthday party, and all my friends were there. I was crushed. For years, I hated Joe Carter in a way that led me to drastically overstate how good he really was. Like many commentators, I focused too much on home runs and RBI, and not enough on other aspects of offensive production. By the time I read Jonah Keri’s essay on RBI in Baseball Between the Numbers (“What’s the Matter With RBI?”), I had completed my transformation from young boy whose baseball enemies took on outsized greatness to thinking baseball fan who realized Carter was a beneficiary of a friendly batting order position that was essentially as valuable as Dave Kingman.
This past Saturday, the city of Portland, Oregon, USA, was treated to the most absolutely fantastic weather conditions that either God or resident billionaire/computer nerd Paul Allen — either one of them — could possibly produce. I mean, I can’t say for sure what it was like in the Garden before Eve partook of the fruit, but I’m guessing it couldn’t have been much nicer than the Rose City was on the most recent of Sabbaths.
Also, Portland has way more breweries than Eden seem to’ve had, so we’ve got that going for us, too.
Of course, as I write this on Monday evening, we in Portland and Vicinity are no longer basking in the sunshine. No, instead it’s showering lightly and about 15-20 degrees cooler. Nor should such weather come as a surprise: summer doesn’t truly descend upon the Pacific Northwest until after July Fourth. The change in weather isn’t ideal, but it has presented the raw material for a sweet analogy I’m about to make in re a kinda anonymous back-of-the-rotation starter.
Allow me to explain.
Last week, I was cordially invited to join the thoughtful gentlemen of Pitchers and Poets on their eponymous podcast. Among other sundry topics, we discussed Seattle Mariner Doug Fister and his season to date. Messrs Walker and Nusbaum — who, against all odds, are not the owners of a New York-style delicatessen — had a question about Fister’s place in the hearts and minds of Seattleites. They wondered, in concert, “Why is it that the more sabermetrically oriented of Mariner fans — why is it that rather than enjoying the run of success that Fister has experienced to date, that they must instead quickly remind any- and everyone who’ll listen that Fister is unlikely to continue such success.”
For those readers who aren’t hanging on every single one of Doug Fister’s sweet changepieces, here’s what you need to know about him: he doesn’t have overpowering stuff, but he’s got an excellent ERA (1.72), but he’s got a less excellent xFIP (4.25), but he’s also young enough (26) to be an interesting piece in Seattle’s rotation.
As to why certain Mariner fans might hasten to express reservations about Fister’s future, I think I might know why. And I think the recent brush with paradise here in Portland can help us understand.
Under the influence of such meteorological perfection as we here in Portland experienced this past Saturday — and with full knowledge that such weather is unlikely to last more than a day or two — a man has two choices: he can either (a) just enjoy the sunshine for what it is, or (b) eye the nice weather suspiciously, fully aware that it’ll be gone just as quickly as it came.
The first reaction is one native to a sort of person whom, for the purposes of the present work, we’ll call a Good Times Charlie (GTC). The GTC is the kind of man, woman, and/or child who, as Thich Nhat Hanh might say, is fully present in the moment. The latter behavior is typical of another sort, one we’ll call a Nervous Ned (NN). The NN, for better or worse, is unable to enjoy present conditions unless he’s pretty sure they’ll continue into the future.
Neither type — the Charlie or the Ned — is inherently good/bad. But recognizing such types can help us understand why certain fans might have reservations about Fister, irrespective of his success to date.
My guess is that the majority of real-live sabermetricians are of the Nervous Ned variety. This isn’t to say that sabermetricians can’t have a good time, but inasmuch as sabermetrics is the scientific method applied to baseball, those who practice it have trained themselves to possess a healthy skepticism. On account of Fister possesses such a considerable split between his ERA and xFIP, on account of he’s got a 2.1% HR/FB, on account of he sports an 88 mph fastball, and on account of said fastball features a pretty bogus 2.2% whiff rate (= not so good) — well, there’re reasons for skepticism.
In his defense, a true Nervous Ned is also a friend of those players — your Jay Bruces, your Derek Hollands — who’ve been disastrously unlucky. While the Charlie might only see Bruce’s .223 batting average from last year or Holland’s 6.12 ERA, the Ned recognizes the role of (bad) luck in those numbers.
The only real problem type is the heretofore unmentioned Jerky Jed. The Jerky Jed is the sort of fan who’ll sing the praises neither of Fister nor Bruce/Holland. The Jerky Jed is — not for nothing — a jerk. Don’t hang out with that guy.
Last week, I introduced to the wide readership a line of inquiry down which the very famous Jonah Keri had gotten me started. The line of inquiry concerns those bloggers who, despite almost no promise of financial compensation or notoriety, have persisted in their craft.
The question I posed — after having considered Will Leitch’s suggestion from his Costas Now episode that blogging is a really hard work — the question I posed goes like this:
Why do it? If, as Leitch suggests, it’s hard work, why do it? If, as I can tell you personally, it provides very little in the way of fame and/or cash money, why do it?
I’ve posed this same series of questions — or at least ones very similar to them — to some of the interweb’s more thoughtful baseball writers. Over the next week-plus, I’ll be sharing their responses in these electronic pages.
What follows is the product of a lightly edited email correspondence with Craig Calcaterra. Calcaterra, in case you don’t know, made his name by way of his ShysterBall — which blog eventually earned Calcaterra his own damn corner of Hardball Times. Last November, Calcaterra moved over to NBC’s HardballTalk, from which site he quietly manipulates the mind of the common man. (In a good way.)
Calcaterra: It’s all about the women, really.
Wait, that’s not true.
In all honesty, it began as escapism — I hated what I was doing as a lawyer day-to-day, and baseball was a nice way to think about things other than rich people suing other rich people for a little while. I couldn’t really watch games in the office, and I couldn’t sort baseball cards on my desk, but writing about it (a) scratched the itch and (b) made it look like I was working on real stuff, so no one bugged me about it. I wish for my legal career’s sake I was lying about it, but that’s the truth.
As I really got into it, the motivation to keep doing it became less of a reaction and more of a desire. I realized I was pretty good at it and people liked what I was writing. I got the notion in my head some time in late 2008 that maybe, just maybe, I could get a job doing it, and it was around that time — just before I moved the blog over to The Hardball Times, actually — that I began a conscious effort to make baseball writing a career.
Episode Twenty-Eight
In which the panel mixes its pitchers
Headlines
Pitching Mixes and You
The Rangers’ New Dutch Boy
Proposals: The Trade Kind and Other Kinds
… and other cockamamie excuses!
Featuring
Zach Sanders, Northwesterner
Eno Sarris, Workingman
Finally, you can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.
Audio on the flip-flop.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Yesterday, I introduced to the wide readership a line of inquiry down which the very famous Jonah Keri had gotten me started. The line of inquiry concerns those bloggers who, despite almost no promise of financial compensation or notoriety, have persisted in their craft.
The question I posed — after having considered Will Leitch’s suggestion from his Costas Now episode that blogging is a really hard work — the question I posed goes like this:
Why do it? If, as Leitch suggests, it’s hard work, why do it? If, as I can tell you personally, it provides very little in the way of fame and/or cash money, why do it?
I’ve posed this same series of questions — or at least ones very similar to them — to some of the interweb’s more thoughtful baseball writers. Over the next week-plus, I’ll be sharing their responses in these electronic pages.
What follows is the product of a lightly edited email correspondence with Bryan Smith. In addition to being a bona fide prospect maven, Smith is also a real-live thoughtful person. And if you haven’t read it, his Staring Down the Sinkerballers series is like woah.
Smith: I started blogging when I was 15 or so, almost eight years ago now. So, I think I have sort of run the gamut as far as “base motivations” are concerned. Originally, and for probably the first 4-5 years, I think the predominant reason was a practical one — I thought that blogging would help me learn about baseball (I didn’t know sabermetrics at all, then), and in turn, would help my teenage dream to work inside the game.
In college, that began to change a little bit, particularly around when I started Baseball Analysts with Rich. I began to find that the writing process was as fun as the baseball element — we had a guest section called the Designated Hitter and got some great writers to pen some great, inspiring pieces. Being on the Internet, and writing so often, led me to the Journalism/English major that I chose. I think I continued through college for another practical reason: money. I didn’t have to wait tables or haul boxes or anything, my job was to write an article 1-2 times a week that ten thousand people read. Which leads to another reason: self-importance. I loved creative non-fiction writing more than anything, but baseball was the outlet that allowed the biggest audience and the only money.
While I’ve never met Will Leitch in person — and have certainly never posed with him like in those disgusting, poorly Photoshop-ed pictures of us floating around the internet — there’s a debt of gratitude I’ll always owe him for his performance on a certain, now pretty famous, episode of Costas Now.
It’s not the way his presence there turned Buzz Bissinger into a rabid, frothing mess — although I certainly have no problem with that. Rather, it’s the way he (i.e. Leitch) was able to articulate, more or less on the fly, the merits of sportswriting in the electronic age.
For it’s during that discussion that Leitch says:
One of the nice things about the web is [that] it’s a meritocracy. Sure, anyone can start a blog, but to get a readership you have to be serious, you have to be consistent — it’s hard goddamn work doing a blog.
As an unabashed classist, democracy is something about which I’m inherently skeptical. When left to their own devices, the teeming masses rarely seem to make good decisions. (I mean, seriously, the Toronto Raptors?)
The thing is, it works on the internet — or, at least with baseballing analysis it seems to. Craig Calcaterra, Dave Cameron, Rob Neyer: these guys are, by and large, products of the internet. Without the benefit of electronic print, there’s a good chance that we, as readers, are never introduced to their voices. Even Joe Posnanski, though he wrote for the Kansas City Star — well, he wrote for a paper in Kansas City.
I invoke that Leitch thing here, because, a couple days ago, I was corresponding via something called “G-Chat” with MC Jonah Keri. After performing the secret handsake of the Mutual Admiration Society (yes, you can do it over the internet), we somehow got to wondering: What is it that motivates the sporting blogger? Fame? Cash money? All the Cristal a man can drink?
Mind you, it’s not just the big guns we’re talking about, either. The “we” in the title of this post refers to anyone who says to him- or herself, “I’mma write me some words.”
The question is: Why do it? If, as Leitch suggests, it’s hard work, why do it? If, as I can tell you personally, it provides very little in the way of fame and/or cash money, why do it?
Well, you shouldn’t expect to find the answer here, today. But it’s my intention, over the course of some posts that’ll be coming out over the next couple days, week, whatever, to harass some smart guys — some guys who’re articulate enough to express their feelings on the topic — and approach some answers.
Before I bring the current post to a conclusion, it’s only right to share some of Jonah’s own thoughts. Here they are, however incomplete, in their original G-Chatty form:
10:11 AM me: Do you have any one-line answers as to why you, in fact, write?
10:11 AM Jonah: I can tell you why (and you can note it publicly, or not, up to you) but it’d be slightly longer than one line)
10:12 AM I write because I have no other discernable skills
I write because I like creating
I write because I’m a social animal and producing something tangible and public engages others to come talk to me about it
10:13 AM I write because as a kid, I thought Ring Lardner and W.P. Kinsella and Bill James and the Sports Illustrated crew were really cool.
10:14 AM I write because I love sports, and realized by age 12 I’d never be good enough to play in the NBA
I write because the Expos roped me in, and I became so attached to them that I had to tell people
Tomorrow: why Bryan Smith writes.
Episode Twenty-Seven
In which the panel records a meltdown.
Headlines
Starlin Castro in the Chicago Sky
Demoted: Alex Gordon
N’doy: The Tampa Bay Rays Are Good
Speaking of Meltdowns
… and other populist declarations!
Featuring
Dave Cameron, Full-Time Employee
Matt Klaassen, Study Carrel-er
Bryan Smith, Resident Prospect Maven
Finally, you can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.
Audio on the flip-flop.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
I don’t know what it is about envelopes, but ever since my earliest days, I’ve been pushing the hell out of them.
That trend continues today, as this electronic space serves to preview not just one game, but an entire flipping series.
Is it crazy? Yes. Is it possible? Just wait and see.
St. Louis at Pittsburgh | Friday, May 07 | 7:05 pm ET
St. Louis at Pittsburgh | Saturday, May 08 | 7:05 pm ET
St. Louis at Pittsburgh | Sunday, May 09 | 1:35 pm ET
Starting Pitchers
The careful reader will note that the following pitchers are all Cardinals. This has everything to do with the fact that the Pirate pitching staff is largely underwhelming, and — with regard to the present series, at least — of little concern to the baseballing enthusiast.
The careful reader will also note that the following pitchers are all really flipping good.
Friday: Chris Carpenter
38.0 IP, 9.24 K/9, 3.08 BB/9, .244 BABIP, 49.5% GB, 16.1% HR/FB, 3.32 xFIP
Projected FIP: 3.23 (FAN) 3.18 (CHONE) 3.53 (ZiPS)
Saturday: Jaime Garcia
32.0 IP, 6.47 K/9, 3.66 BB/9, .220 BABIP, 65.1% GB, 0.0% HR/FB, 3.72 xFIP
Projected FIP: N/A (FAN) 4.69 (CHONE) 4.59 (ZiPS)
Sunday: Adam Wainwright
46.0 IP, 7.04 K/9, 1.96 BB/9, .236 BABIP, 50.0% GB, 2.6% HR/FB, 3.51 xFIP
Projected FIP: 3.31 (FAN) 3.40 (CHONE) 3.16 (ZiPS)
On The Pirates Offense
Wednesday night, at an unspecified Portland-area watering hole, I found myself watching the Chicago/Pittsburgh contest at PNC Park. As I tuned in, the game was just entering the bottom of third, and, almost without pause, I was treated to these four at-bats in succession (play-by-play courtesy of FanGraphs play log):
Andy LaRoche doubled to left (Grounder).
Andrew McCutchen doubled to left (Fliner (Liner)). Andy LaRoche scored.
Garrett Jones doubled to right (Fliner (Liner)). Andrew McCutchen scored.
Ryan Doumit lined out to third (Liner).
LaRoche’s hit was — technically, I guess — a grounder, but it was well struck and right down the third base line: a no-doubt double, in other words. McCutchen’s double was to left-center, almost netted him a triple, and looked exactly like this. Jones’s double was even more forcefully struck, this time down the right field line (as you can see right here). Finally, though it didn’t get him aboard, Ryan Doumit’s liner to Aramis Ramirez was hit a ton, too.
It was a striking sequence, this. All four Pirates absolutely sqaured up balls against a pitcher who, despite some minor struggles in his return from injury, is generally recognized as one of the National League’s more capable specimens.
Thus it was, under the influence of this hitting display, that I noted the score of last night’s game between Chicago and Pittsburgh: 11-1 in favor of the home team. Randy Wells entered Thursday night’s game ranked eighth out of 115 qualified Major League pitchers with an xFIP of 3.19. After the first inning, he sported a decidedly higher mark.
If you tuned in late, here’s what you missed in the bottom of said inning (most of which you can watch here):
Akinori Iwamura walked.
Andy LaRoche walked. Akinori Iwamura advanced to 2B.
Andrew McCutchen singled to left (Grounder). Akinori Iwamura scored. Andy LaRoche advanced to 2B.
Garrett Jones singled to left (Fliner (Liner)). Andy LaRoche scored. Andrew McCutchen advanced to 2B.
Ryan Doumit doubled to right (Fliner (Liner)). Andrew McCutchen scored. Garrett Jones advanced to 3B.
Ryan Church struck out swinging.
Lastings Milledge doubled to left (Fliner (Liner)). Garrett Jones scored. Ryan Doumit scored.
Ronny Cedeno flied out to left (Fly).
Brian Burres grounded out to second (Grounder).
Pittsburgh’s win expectancy at beginning of the inning was 54.8%. By the end of it, that number had climbed to 89.7%. Nor did it drop below 89.0% at any point afterwards, as you can see by this invincible graph:
That’s a pretty good way to win a baseball game.
Very clearly, the Pirates aren’t the top of the offensive heap. In fact, they’re 25th in park-adjusted runs scored compared to average, with a mark of -15.8. But there are some signs of life here that oughtn’t be ignored. Second baseman Aki Iwamura has posted a slash line of only .202/.303/.298 — but with a BABIP (.233) over a hundred points below his career mark. Normalize his batted-ball figure, and he’s wOBA-ing around .365 or so. Garret Jones has also been a victim of batted-ball luck (.250 BABIP), but has managed to post a 119 wRC+, anyway. Andy LaRoche appears to be delivering on his early promise, showing the same plate discipline as always, but with an elevated line-drive rate that could be the product of physical maturity. Ryan Doumit is on pace for another above-average offensive season from the catcher spot. And Andrew McCutchen — well Andrew McCutchen is actually just good.
Even Jeff Clement, Lastings Milledge, Steve Pearce: none of them are world-beaters, but each affordable and all with the pedigree to suggest something like upside.
If I Had My Druthers
• Andy LaRoche would finally climb out of the shadow of his older brother, Arizona first baseman Adam.
• Bobby Crosby would finally climb out of the shadow of his older brother, American comedian Bill.
