The Minimalist's Thirty-Million-Dollar House

Near the end of May 2013 it was reported that New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez’s Miami home had sold to an unnamed buyer for $30 million, making it one of the most expensive home sales in the city’s history.

Rodriguez bought the property for $7.4 million in 2010, and spent roughly the same amount on building the house, which was finished about a year later. Less than four years after starting construction, Rodriguez was able to sell the house for a profit of somewhere near $15 million.

Now, we don’t object to making a profit—in fact, if we someday sell our own home for an extra fifteen million dollars, then so be it. That bothers us even less than it bothers us for ESPN.com to describe a 20,000-square-foot house—one with nine bedrooms, eleven bathrooms, home theater, and an outdoor kitchen (as well as the more mundane indoor gourmet kitchen)—as “minimalist.”

See if you can guess which of these houses is the quaint,
minimalist bungalow formerly owned by Alex Rodriguez.

We do admit, however, to being a little puzzled. In one of the worst housing markets and worst overall economies most living Americans have seen—or at least can remember clearly—this house was sold after less than four years for twice its previous price. What kind of luck is that?

Honestly, who on Earth gets paid tens of millions of dollars in order to get something that’s just going to sit there, inert, doing nothing but getting older and more and more run-down, and may well have been built using illegal materials in the first place? 

What?

 Hey—

  
Oh wait—

Yeah, we remember who now. Alex Rodriguez.

Ubaldo Expedition Concludes Two-Year Expedition to Locate Elusive "Strike Zone"

“Nice pitch, man! But where did you mean to throw it?”

George Mallory and Sir Edmund Hillary had Mount Everest. Robert Falcon Scott had the Antarctic. Rear Admiral Sir John Franklin had the Northwest Passage. Robert Kenneth Wilson had the Loch Ness Monster. Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin had Bigfoot.

And for the past twenty-one months, Ubaldo Jiménez of the Cleveland Indians has pursued an obsession as wily and elusive as any of those: the Strike Zone.

Jiménez leapt into the national consciousness in 2010, starting off the year for the Colorado Rockies with a 15-1 record and a sparkling earned-run average of only 2.20, a performance that earned him a starting spot in major league baseball’s 2010 All-Star Game.

After that game, however, his performance fell to Earth, and then swiftly began to dig: He went 10-16 in his next thirty-six games with the Rockies, struggling with his command, velocity, and (according to some) motivation. He was traded to the Cleveland Indians on July 21, 2011, and finished that season with a 10-13 record and a 4.68 ERA.

Baseball analysts suspect that Jiménez’s problems stemmed not from mechanical issues, a shortened 2011 Spring Training, or cuticle problems on his pitching hand, but rather from his obsessive, Ahab-like pursuit of something that—at least for him—may not exist at all: the Strike Zone.

The Strike Zone—artist’s conception.

“I’ve been searching for the Strike Zone for almost two years now,” says Jiménez.“People don’t believe me, but I know I can find it if I keep at it. I’ve looked high and low for it. High and tight, lately, but low and away, too. Low and way away, even.”

Each red point on this map indicates an attempt by the 
July 2010-September 2011 Ubaldo Expedition to locate the Strike Zone.

The Ubaldo Expedition traveled to dozens of American cities from mid-2010 through spring 2012, desperately trying to find the mysterious Strike Zone. What does Jiménez remember from those trying times?

“Walking. Lots and lots of walking. Seems like it was nothing but walks sometimes—it’s enough to make you a little wild once in a while.”

“Sometimes I wondered if this Strike Zone thing was totally made up, arbitrary. It made me wonder if I was just throwing everything away.”

Things reached their worst for the Expedition in August 2011, when the pitcher began casting his eyes toward the sea.

 

“I even thought about searching the ocean for the Strike Zone, since I couldn’t find a trace of it anywhere else,” says Jiménez. “But then in Detroit my catcher told me that I couldn’t hit water if I fell out of a boat, so I guess I wouldn’t have been able to try it. That was nice of him to save me all that time.” 

Jiménez’s optimistic outlook is refreshing, but the arduous twenty-one-month trek has clearly left him physically drained and mentally fragile. Psychologists note that Ubaldo recently compared being in Cleveland to being in heaven, and while they hesitate to use the word “delusion,” the evidence is hard to ignore.

It’s not heaven. It’s not even Iowa.

 

The Ubaldo Expedition’s Spring 2012 campaign hadn’t started off any better than 2011’s had ended—with a 1-4 record and an ERA above 7.00 through the end of March—until Jiménez, much to everyone’s surprise, suddenly located the Strike Zone right inside Rockies star Troy Tulowitzki’s rib cage.

The Ubaldo Expedition’s Strike Zone map, spring 2012.

 “It’s funny—inside Tulowitzki is always the last place you look for stuff,” he says with a shrug. “But I’m excited about looking for it there again and again, as soon as I get another chance.”

That chance may not arrive for a while, however. Authorities in charge of the Ubaldo Expedition have decided to give him a five-day break from his job as a reward for his efforts, and with the Indians playing in the American League rather than the Rockies’ National League, there’s a chance that Jiménez may not encounter the Strike Zone again for several more years.

Randy Johnson Survives Rogaine Overdose, Attempts Major League Comeback

 

We suggest a new strategy for opposing teams: Let the wookiee win.

  

Manny Being Manny . . . Being Kind of Stupid

Manny Ramirez’s expensive and turbulent tenure with the Los Angeles Dodgers came to an end in rather embarrassing fashion on August 29, 2010, as he was thrown out of the game for arguing balls and strikes with the home plate umpire.

This is not, in itself, particularly unusual—rarely does a week go past without some player or another objecting a bit too loudly or too creatively about a third-strike call, and ending up getting tossed out of the game. What makes Ramirez’s last at-bat in Dodger blue odd is that he was thrown out for arguing about the first pitch.

Ramirez—for several years rivaled only by Adam Sandler as the nation’s favorite man-child—entered the game as a pinch hitter in the sixth inning, with one out and the bases loaded, down 8 to 2 against the Colorado Rockies, with both teams desperate for a win to stay relevant in the National League wild-card chase. Bernard Malamud could hardly have written a more perfectly crafted clutch situation for a potential Hall of Fame hitter, and the partisan Coors Field crowd, despite booing enthusiastically, recognized the moment as one on which the game may well have turned inevitably to the Dodgers’ favor.

Instead, approximately thirteen nanoseconds later, Manny “ManRam” Ramirez—one of the most respected hitters of the past fifteen years—was out of the game and replaced by Reed “Who the Fuck?” Johnson, who grounded into an inning-ending double play.¹

Ramirez has earned a reputation both for being a prima donna and for lacking mental focus on anything but baseball (or, perhaps more accurately, anything but hitting). Some of his career highlights:

• Remarked, upon learning that he had been claimed off of waivers by the White Sox, that he looked forward to playing with Big Papi again.
• In 2009, was suspended for 50 games for violation of major league baseball’s drug policy, reportedly for taking human chorionic gonadotropin, a women’s fertility drug. He has consistently refused to disclose to the media the name of the father.
• Considers peanut butter to be a mortal enemy.
• On his first day with the Boston Red Sox, decided to walk to the ballpark to familiarize himself with the city; made it nearly three quarters of a mile out to sea before being informed by the Coast Guard that his map was upside-down.
• Doesn’t finish his vegetables.
• In 1999, after seven seasons and more than 800 games with Cleveland, announces to the press that he wished he’d played for the Indians. 
• Once played an entire thirteen-game homestand with his head stuck in a plastic jar.²

Ramirez’s ejection from a single regular-season game is far from a career-defining moment, especially for a hitter as accomplished, mercurial, and downright odd as Manny Ramirez. However, coming as it does at the very end of his Dodger days, it does provide a nifty summary of the end of his time there (and perhaps the end of his time in Boston as well)—as a tremendously gifted hitter who’s worn out his welcome; a guy selfish, spaced out, or indifferent enough to shoot his team in the foot on his way out of town.

NOTES

1. By my calculations, Ramirez made $111,111 for roughly five minutes’ worth of standing around. Good work if you can get it.
2. In his defense, on that homestand Ramirez batted .363 with 6 home runs, 8 doubles, and 22 runs batted in.

Keep Coors Field Purple, Sort of!

 

On Wednesday, June 23, 2010, the Colorado Rockies staged a dramatic ninth-inning comeback victory against the American League’s Boston Red Sox, a perennial powerhouse that has recently begun surging back into contention after a slow start.

The Rockies’ obscenely gifted Ubaldo Jimenez (13-1, 1.60 ERA) struggled for the first time this season, allowing 6 earned runs in only 5 and 2/3 innings, and when he gave way to the bullpen, he was on the hook for what would have been his second loss of the season.

Boston’s four-time All-Star closer, Jonathan Papelbon, had a 6–5 lead when he took the mound in the bottom of the ninth but, instead of throwing a handful of zippy little pitches that nobody hits and then going home happy, like he usually does, he blew the save. Please allow me a moment to explain how unlikely this was:

1. Papelbon, despite the impression you might get from this picture (right), is actually quite good. He’s Boston’s all-time saves leader, having converted 167 of 187 save opportunities in his five-plus seasons with the team, and holds his opponents to a .200 batting average.
2. Ian Stewart is batting barely over .250, and hadn’t had a single home run in his first 35 games at Coors Field.
3. Clint Barmes is hitting barely over .220, which, by my precise calculations, is shitty.
4. Going into Wednesday’s game, pinch-hitter Jason Giambi, the Rockies’ heavily mustachioed but recently light-hitting pinch-hitter, was batting just .194 with two home runs and 11 RBI on the year.¹

Despite the high odds of an uneventful ninth, Papelbon gave up a solo home run to Stewart, allowed Barmes to reach base on a swing that for all we know was intentional, and then served up a big fat beefy mistake that Giambi—granting fervent fans’ wishes—hammered out into what would have been, in most parks on most nights, the cheap seats. Rockies win.

Down to their last two outs against a strong opponent and a dominant closer, the Rockies pulled out a thrilling 8-to-6 win—the kind of win that has the potential to pull struggling hitters out of slumps, motivate middling teams to win streaks, and drive a ballpark full of happy hometown fans to mild or even moderate hysterics.

A normal hometown crowd, that is. Thanks in part, however, to a Colorado Rockies ticket policy that can best be described as “stupid,” half of Wednesday night’s Coors Field crowd left disappointed, because they were Red Sox fans. You see, the Colorado Rockies, in addition to pricing seats based on their proximity to the action (like every athletic club has done ever since people first started paying to watch), have separate price schedules for different types of games. Two different schedules, you ask? No, not two. Five.

Five different price schedules: Opening Day, Classic, Premium, Value, and Boston.² Yes, that’s right, the Boston Red Sox get their own individual pricing. A seat that would cost you $50 against a mere mortal opponent would cost you $100 for the Red Sox series. Paying $40 to see the Red Sox would get you a ticket that normally costs $26; a $35 ticket to watch Boston would otherwise cost $22.

Now, this is really none of my business—if fans are willing to buy tickets at these prices, it’s a free country and I’m not going to stop them. And if the Rockies think that scalping their own customers is good business practice and a sensible way to build a fan base, that’s entirely up to them. But the team should consider that, by pricing their own fans out of those games, they’re essentially giving away their home-field advantage in one of their most nationally-visible series of the year, the kind of series where folks on the east coast are actually, at long last, paying attention to and possibly becoming fans of our little neglected mountain team.

Think about it this way. Colorado-based Red Sox fans are clearly willing to jump at the chance to watch their team play in Denver, regardless of price. On top of that, Red Sox fans from outside Colorado, if they’ve decided to make the trip to Denver just to watch baseball, won’t be dissuaded by an extra $30 or $50 apiece, because they’re already spending a few hundred just to get into town.

A local Rockies fan, on the other hand, is much more likely to look at a 100% increase in ticket prices and decide he’s better off watching two $50 games against a relevant opponent—like, say, the San Diego Padres (who have somehow convinced everyone they play that they’re good) or Los Angeles Dodgers.

This showed in Wednesday night’s game, where the crowd could politely have described as bipartisan at best.³ David Ortiz was roundly cheered despite going 0-for-5 and leaving three men on base; at several points the crowd spontaneously burst into a chorus of “Let’s Go, Red Sox”;⁴ and several Rockies diehards found it particularly galling when the skinny kid in front of them waved his six-foot American flag each time Boston crossed home plate, as if to suggest that each run for the Red Sox is a victory for freedom, while other teams’ scoring means the terrorists win.

I’ll admit that I took perhaps an unhealthy amount of pleasure in watching twenty thousand Boston fans slump a bit in their seats after Giambi’s game-winning home run. I don’t actually dislike Bostonians in general or Red Sox fans in particular, although I’ll admit that they can, on occasion, annoy the crap out of me. What annoys me more, though, is that the Rockies seem more interested in fleecing Bostonians and bandwagoneers for a few extra bucks than they are of enticing a home-field crowd at three of the biggest games of the year.

Come on, Rockies, keep Coors Field purple.

. . . the parts that are already purple, I mean. You can leave the green parts just the way they are.

NOTES

1. Of course, when your batting average is only .194, having a pitcher who allows a .200 batting average actually serves as an advantage. I bet Papelbon didn’t think of that!

2. Rumor has it that the team is considering a sixth payment schedule, “Pirates,” in which tickets are handed out for free to whatever poor bastards actually make the slow drive into Lower Downtown to see how the Rockies stack up against AAA baseball.

3. I’m not polite, fortunately. The ballpark was stuffed to the rafters with Massholes, even though Coors Field, technically speaking, doesn't have rafters.

4. Rockies fans immediately rose to counteract the “Let’s go, Red Sox” chant with “Let’s Go, Rockies,” but they were neither plentiful nor loud enough to drown Sox fans out. The end result was a muddled and indistinct chant of “Let’s go, Romphlombgm” that went on for the better part of the game.

Speling is for Ccks

Brought to You by the Wieners in Washington 

 

Disclaimer: the following column contains photographic evidence of a naughty word that you may well find offensive and/or funny, provided you’re not one of those folks with lifeless, burned-out little cinders where your souls used to be.

Bobby Cox, the longtime manager of the Atlanta Braves, was honored—sort of—by the U.S. Senate on Tuesday, May 4, 2010, to commemorate his long and distinguished career in major league baseball. At the end of the 2010 baseball season, Cox will step down from the job he’s held for twenty-five years, during which time he led his team to multiple World Series appearances and one World Championship. Two U.S. Senators, Georgia’s Johnny Isakson and West Virginia’s Jay Rockefeller, praised Cox in statements to be entered into the Congressional Record, and then presented Cox with a cake thanking him—sort of—for the half-century he’s dedicated to playing, coaching, and teaching the sport he loves.

I’m encouraged by our two governing parties’ willingness to occasionally put aside their unhealthy partisan bickering and work together in a respectful and possibly even friendly way—Senator Isakson is a Republican, and Rockefeller is a Democrat—and would be even more pleased if they occasionally did so towards some end that wasn’t, in the grand scheme of things, as utterly insignificant as talking about baseball.

Unfortunately, though, the event turned out to be at least as much of a black eye as a feather in anyone’s cap. If you haven’t heard about this already, the cake makers got the Braves manager’s name wrong. And no, they didn’t misspell “Bobby.”¹
 

Whether this was deliberate or an accident is hardly the issue, at least for me. If it was deliberate, it’s certainly a rude and nasty thing to do, and it’s so troubling, childish, and offensive that I doubt I’ll giggle at it for more than a couple more days. What’s more important and disturbing to me—and what should be embarrassing to anybody who caught a look at the cake before it was presented—is that it somehow made it all the way from the cake shop to the Capitol without being noticed, mentioned, or corrected. The odds against this happening should be astronomical, for several reasons:

1. Only three managers in baseball history (Connie Mack, John McGraw, and Tony LaRussa) have more wins than Bobby Cox. No other manager in history can match his fifteen division titles. He’s a four-time Manager of the Year, and has won five National League championships and one World Series, having beaten the equally-insensitively-named Cleveland Indians in 1995. In other words, he’s pretty well known, and if you’re not immediately familiar with his name or who he is, he’s quite easy to look up online. Seriously, try it yourself. If it takes you more than about six seconds to find the right way to spell his name, either your computer is broken or you're some sort of stupid cock.

2. Nobody on Earth has ever, ever had the last name of “Cocks.” Seriously. And anybody who isn’t aware of this fact isn’t, or at least shouldn’t be, allowed to work in government because they are—that’s right—stupid cocks.

3. A pretty typical going rate for first-class proofreading is around $25 per hour. The time it takes to read “Thanks For 50 Great years, Bobby Cocks”—seven words—is approximately 4 seconds, or just under $0.03 for the whole job.² Three cents to keep the folks in our government from looking like really, really stupid cocks is money well spent.

4. The estimated budget for the U.S. government for fiscal year end 2010 is 3.552 trillion dollars. If my math holds up, the cost to hire (for example) me to proofread this cake would have represented right around 0.0000000000008% of our national budget. Or to put it a different way, it would have cost three cents (see above). I paid more than three cents in taxes this year, so the government has the money . . . and even if the government didn’t have the money, has that ever stopped them before?

5. While I’m not intimately familiar with the paths baked goods take through Capitol Hill security, I have to imagine that at some point this cake probably would have been taken out of its box and actually looked at, possibly poked at or scanned to make sure it wasn’t actually a delicious but deadly explosive. All it took was one page, or aide, or lobbyist, or security dude with a wand to look at it and say to somebody “hey, you do realize that this word means ‘dicks,’ right?” And that didn’t happen

I suppose I’m making this a bigger deal than it really is,³ and I understand that this particular typo didn’t appear on, say, landmark legislation or a nuclear anti-proliferation treaty—as far as we know—but if nobody out there has the brains to notice an embarrassing, offensive, and obvious misspelling of a famous man’s very simple name, what the hell kinds of mistakes are we allowing into our nuclear anti-proliferation treaties?

As embarrassing as this is, we should all be thankful that the cake people were asked only to write out the guy’s name. If they’d been told to draw a picture of Cox, who knows what we would have ended up with. I certainly wouldn’t have posted it here.⁴

NOTES

1. Photo from the Atlanta Journal Constitution, used without permission but also without malice, intent to defraud, or possibility of financial gain, and all in the spirit of good fun.

2. For what it’s worth, the letter F in “For” should not be capitalized, and the letter Y in “Years” should be.

3. Just like a typical guy.

4. For the record, lest you think I’m a Braves fan, I’m not. I’m still mad that they beat the Rockies in the 1995 Wild Card round, and the Tomahawk Chop may well be the stupidest thing on Earth—D.C.-area cake decorators not included.

Sorry, But It's Baseball Season Again.....

Ah, baseball....

The sounds, the smells, the green grass under the clear blue skies. The boys of summer are back, so sit back with a cold one and a dog and enjoy the greatest game there is.

And start talking about cheating all over again.

It is shocking - SHOCKING! - that baseball players would cheat, right? But apparently, they do. What I have been struggling with is what makes A.J. Piernyskslksdfykjsdfski (yes, he is not worthy of correct spelling - or perhaps I am too lazy. You choose.), the veteran catcher for the Chicago White Sox, NOT worthy of lots of public scorn and from-the-author's-high-horse pieces about the fabric of the game being torn apart.

The Squid Bandit is no friend of Barry Bonds. It needs to be said (by me anyways), however, that there is more direct evidence that cheating helped increase A.J. Pierzynski's on base percentage than cheating increased Barry Bonds' on base percentage. Can my readers help me with reconciling the disparate treatment of the two players?

By all accounts both guys are grade A jerks. Both cheated. For one we can measure exactly how it helped, yet the other is more vilified. I can even make a reasonable argument that lying about being hit is the greater evil over taking steroids. So again, why less outcry over one and not the other?

Baseball is great. The sights, the sounds, the smells. The cheating, the hypocrisy, the media ridiculosity (yes, I just made up that word). The American Pastime.

Some Guy’s Adventures through the Pint Glass, Part 3

Day 3: “All I want out of life is when I walk down the street people say ‘There goes the greatest beer that ever lived.’”

The third selection from the Mystery Beer Case is our second from the Boston Beer Company—whose drinks had for a while been produced (strangely enough) by the Pittsburgh Brewing Company, and are now brewed primarily in Cincinnati, Ohio. Geographical oddities aside, I'm pleased to announce that rather than throwing another weirdo lemon-rind hefeweizen out of left field, the Case has delivered the brewery’s flagship brand,

Samuel Adams Boston Lager, Boston/Cincinnati/Pittsburgh, Massachusetts/Ohio/Pennsylvania.

A Boston Lager is a peculiar brand of beer that, despite being an exasperating and sometimes embarrassing failure for more than eight decades, remained inexplicably popular throughout the twentieth century not only in the Massachusetts area but also, to a somewhat lesser degree, nationwide.

Considered one of the top beers in the world until 1918, the Boston Lager went into a devastating eighty-six year drought in which it absolutely, undeniably sucked—sometimes failing quietly and subtly, at other times imploding tragically on the world's biggest stage—year after fruitless year, leaving behind a trail of increasingly frustrated and embittered supporters.

Rather than placing the blame fairly on a long history of substandard ingredients, poor recipes, and incompetent management, these poor demented fans of the Boston Lager spent most of their time venting their frustrations on more popular and successful beers from the New York City area, or conjuring up wild theories about a mystical Curse supposedly laid upon their hapless drink.

The Boston Lager finally regained some respect after the turn of the century when, in September 2004, it swept a slumping Coors Extra Gold in a four-game series, ending its long drought and once again holding sway as the World Champion of Beer. After the Boston Lager recaptured the championship in 2007, it effectively reestablished itself as a decent drink—one its fans could be proud of—instead of little more than an expensive punch line.

On a side note, its resurgence has revealed an unfortunate side effect: countless fans of the Boston Lager—for the most part an almost-pathetic and sympathetically muted, fatalistic bunch during their team’s drink’s long slump—have, thanks to their beer’s achieving a long-awaited modicum of success, revealed a tendency to be cocky, loudmouthed, insufferable pricks. Contrary to what folks might have wanted to believe, Boston fans weren’t lovable losers, but merely tolerable losers—and once they could shed the “loser” tag, the “tolerable” tag was quick to follow.

Given its history, it’s not surprising to find the Samuel Adams Boston Lager to be a touch on the dark side, more than a little bitter, and even a bit off-putting. It has an alcohol content of 4.75%—which, by an unusual coincidence, was also Babe Ruth’s alcohol content in 1918, his last season in Boston—and to be honest, it’s a bit too hoppy for my tastes. Drinkers who prefer a strong flavor and aroma, however, would do well to give this beer a chance.

Samuel Adams Boston Lager is a beer to be sipped, not hurried through—unless, of course, you find out you hate it and want to move on to the next drink as quickly as possible. It’s dark and robust enough to be a good winter beer, best served slightly warm, when the night outside is as cold as Ted Williams’ head. While the Boston Beer Company definitely hasn’t made my favorite beer, they know what they’re trying to do with  Samuel Adams Boston Lager, and they do it well. Some Guy’s rating for Samuel Adams Boston Lager: one (1) 1978 Game 163 home run by Bucky F. Dent.

For more of Some Guy’s Adventures through the Pint Glass, check here: Day 1  Day 2  Day 3  Day 4  Day 5  Day 6

Larry Walker vs. Albert Belle

For your baseball pleasure, my take on two terrific sluggers whose careers were both cut short by injuries. I give my readers, as the title subtly suggests, Larry Walker vs. Albert Belle.

First, some basic stats. I went in knowing that Walker would have a big edge in the traditional counting stats because his career was longer. As it turns out, I was correct about that. My thanks to Fangraphs for some of the stats I list, and to the REALLY cool comparison tool on Baseball Reference

Walker does indeed have the edge in the counting stats, as I had guessed, like the standard HR, doubles, runs, RBIs, etc., including a big edge in total bases, 3904 to 3300. This seems almost entirely due to having a longer career, 17 seasons (or parts thereof) to 12 for Belle - but that's still a big difference. Walker also has the edge in career OBP, with a fantastic career OBP of .400 (including a terrific EIGHT years in a row over .400), while Belle sits at merely .369 (including only four years over .400, with another year at .399). Right off the bat, Walker has a significant lead.

But Belle has a counter-punch or two to make. Here is a list of Bells's adjusted OPS (adjusted for park effects but not for position or league differences – 100 is average) by year, starting in 1989:

85
42
134
122
145
193
177
158
116
171
142
109

Career average OPS+ for Belle is 143.

For Walker, coincidentally also starting in 1989:

26
112
127
142
120
151
130
116
178
158
163
110
160
150
121
153
166
143
130

Career average OPS+ for Walker of 140.

Belle has the edge in career OPS+, AND played in the tougher league, making his higher OPS+ number slightly more impressive. Belle benefits by not having significant decline years, however - that props up his average stats while harming his counting stats. Furthermore, in a somewhat silly comparison but I think a useful one on some levels, there is the Black Ink Test on Baseball Reference (number of times they lead the league in a category, as follows: Four Points for home runs, runs batted in or batting average; Three Points for runs scored, hits or slugging percentage; Two Points for doubles, walks or stolen bases; One Point for games, at bats or triples) and the Gray Ink Test (number of times in the top-10 of a category). Belle has Walker beat in both. UPDATE - As pointed out by frequent commenter Dr. Brainsmart, it is worth noting that Walker had to contend with Barry Bonds (one of the top 5 hitters ever, no matter your opinion on how he got there) in his league so the league leader stat may be even less significant than the small weight I previously gave it.

Walker's WPA (win probably added) was 48.88 over his career, while Belle's was only 26.04, again likely due to playing time. Score a jab for Walker. And with a nice uppercut for Walker, according to this site: his career WAR (wins above replacement) is 67.1, ranking him 67th in baseball history (among position players). Belle is way down the list with 37.1 career WAR, ranking him 318th among hitters.

I also don’t have access to advanced defensive metrics like UZR, as that also only goes back to 2002, or +/- because that's a proprietary stat and I'm not a member of that site! I think it’s fair to say that Walker was a better defender, as for much of his career he considered a very good right fielder, while Belle was considered an average (at best) left fielder – obviously an easier position to play.

Walker gets a better "speed score" from Fangraphs as well, although I'm not sure what that encompasses. Let's just say that I'm willing to bet Walker was more valuable on the bases than was Belle.

Overall, it's pretty clear that Walker had the better career. But I also think it's fair to say that Belle had the higher peak and just didn't sustain his excellence as long. Belle's career wasn't as long but he was seemingly more durable during the years he played – his Games Played is consistently higher than Walker's. So while Walker has the better case for the HOF (but will almost certainly not make it due to the Coors Field stigma and his injuries keeping down his counting stats), it's a closer call as to which player you'd rather have for their 5-year peak – I might say Belle on that question.

Of course, if there was a statistic for which player I'd rather my hypothetical daughter date then Walker would win in a landslide. Belle was, by all reports, a pretty big jerk, while Walker was seemingly affable and goofy in a friendly sort of way.

The "What If?" Monster

Let's play a game - everyone's favorite game of "What If??". You may want to call it "Hindsight is 20/20" or "shoulda, woulda coulda" or one of any number of other similar names. The dreaded hypothetical. Here goes.

What if there was a young man (let's not get into whether women should play in a men's league) who wanted to play professional baseball. This hypothetical young man is 19 years old these days. He's fast and has good athletic skill and has been playing baseball most of his life. He's very strong, so he can hit the ball a country mile. And he can throw from right field like there's a cannon out there. He strikes out a lot though, so scouts for major league teams have concluded that he likely won't do much in the majors. After much review of his mechanics and studying film and whatnot, this player and his coaches determine that he can't see the ball very well. He can see just fine to drive a car, but needs glasses to read a book.

So the kid needs glasses to play. Except glasses are too dangerous to wear on the field, so he gets these tiny lenses to place on his eye to improve his vision. Contact lenses make his vision pretty close to 20/20. Ballplayers a couple generations ago couldn't dream of that advancement, but now it's pretty standard. He starts striking out less, which is good!

His fledgling career is going aces until he slides awkwardly into third base legging out a triple and tears his ACL. Bummer. He has it surgically repaired and is as good as new in about a year. Players a generation ago would have had a new career selling cars, but modern medicine allows for his baseball career to continue, this just being a speed bump on his way to stardom. He's 20 years old now, almost 21, and still considered a future All-Star!

That is, until he crashes into a wall making a spectacular catch in right field. His knee again, this time the cartilage. Good news for him - there is a new procedure called micro-fracture surgery, and he can keep playing! Players just five years ago or so with this injury would have been done, but this is now a lifeline for his baseball career. Twelve short months later, he's playing again!

Our baseball man is now 25 years old and fresh off his first All-Star season. His vision starts bothering him again in Spring Training, and he's not hitting very well. It gets worse, and he drops in the batting order. He sees a specialist, who recommends laser eye surgery. Zap - one week later his vision is now better than ever, being a tested 20/15! Amazing - he starts tearing the cover off the ball again.

Fast forward four or five years. Our boy is pushing for that big free agent contract a year from now. One game he uncorks a throw from right that nails the runner at the plate, and he feels a pop in his arm. It's his elbow, and he needs surgery. This one has become fairly routine, the procedure commonly known as Tommy John surgery. Twelve months later, still with time left to push for that contract, he's back on the field and can seemingly throw even harder. Players 40 years ago may have had to quit, or at least switch to first base maybe, but not out modern player!

Move forward another five years. After corrective lenses, two surgeries on his legs, vision enhancing surgery on his eyes and a procedure on his arm, our guy is still playing at a fairly high level, but wants one last big contract. At this point in time, medicine has developed a pill that can reverse, or at least forestall, the effects of aging at the cellular level. It's not approved by the FDA yet, but Canada has it readily available. Upon taking this pill for a while our 36-37 year old feels ten years younger, can run as fast as he did when he was 25, can see better and does not get tired anymore. He continues putting up good numbers as an outfielder.

Ten years later our guy retires from professional baseball, having made over $300 million in his career and putting up numbers that will make him a sure-fire first ballot Hall of Famer, including a 75-homer season when the League expanded to 34 teams (more bad pitchers in the L).

Is it just me or is the line between ALL OF THIS and steroids and greenies really, really, fuzzy? Is it simply the illegality of the particular enhancement that bothers people? If so, that I can get on board with. But much more often than not I see the moral argument being made, that the steroid user "cheated the game" (as entirely distinct from "broke the law") and had an unfair advantage. And THAT'S that reason Bonds doesn't really compare to Ruth. Help me find the line, people!

Mark McGwire: Counterpoint

It may be a bad idea to post my thoughts on Mark McGwire’s steroid use immediately after the Squid Bandit has done the same thing—it runs the risk of boring those readers who suffer from underdeveloped attention spans or (as a less insulting option) don’t like baseball—but my hope is that going head-to-head with our opinions might generate some good discussion on the topic, even if it’s just between the two of us.¹ And I’m also going to use a fun picture. Who doesn’t like pictures?

I can’t say that I was particularly surprised when I heard that McGwire had admitted to using steroids² off and on for the bulk of his sixteen-year career. His size, his incredible power at an age when most power hitters’ strength and batspeed have begun their clear decline, his evasive testimony before Congress, the accusations made by both Jose Canseco and McGwire’s younger brother (a bodybuilder and admitted steroid user), and the twelve to fifteen baseballs he hit into geostationary orbit all made the notion of Mac-the-steroid-user seem not just believable but even obvious to most folks with more than a passing interest in the game.

I have mixed feelings about his confession. I admire him for his willingness to face the nation—or, if not the entire nation, at least his competitors; his past, current, and future employers; and the fans whose support allowed him to make a living—and admit that he’d failed, that he did cheat not only the game of baseball but also its fans, whether they cheered for him or his opponents. Even if he was merely confirming what so many of us suspected (and thus not doing as significant damage to his reputation), it takes a big man to admit that.³ While I don’t know McGwire at all and certainly can’t tell what’s going on in his head, I’m inclined to believe that his shame and his relief at the truth coming out are genuine.

At the same time, though, his mea sorta culpa is still self-serving, coming as it does several years after the statute of limitations for prosecution had expired, and mere weeks before he’s scheduled to start work as the St. Louis Cardinals’ hitting coach. In short, Mark McGwire ducked the question when there was something to lose, kept quiet when there was nothing on the line, and piped up only when there was clearly much to gain.

What bothers me more than that, though, comes not from McGwire but from media sources—like Rob Neyer, in the article to which Squid Bandit referred—implying or outright stating that to criticize a cheater for cheating is somehow sanctimonious or hypocritical:

You may, if you like, continue to summon from your wellspring of self-righteousness the energy to condemn McGwire for doing what so many of his peers were doing, all in the interest of earning a good living and fulfilling his widely considered destiny.

If Neyer sees it as self-righteous to disapprove of one cheater's cheating, he can take solace in the fact that I'll disapprove of the rest of them when I find out who they are. And I’m sorry, but “all the cool kids were doing it” has not, as far as I can tell, ever been an effective argument. Neither is Neyer’s admission that he’d be tempted to cheat to make himself a better writer (I think the next step up from sportswriting is want ads, right?), or the argument (not put forth by Neyer or Squid Bandit, but one that you can’t help but read if you tune into the discussion) that “you’d do it to if you had a chance.” And I disagree with the notion that “if you [aren’t] cheatin[g], you [aren’t] tryin[g].”⁴ The opposite seems more obviously true: if you’re cheating, it’s because you’re less willing to try; you're looking not for the way to do things right, but the way to do things quick and (relatively) easily.

McGwire wishes he “had never played during the steroid era.” I take this at face value, and I accept what I feel is the genuine emotion behind it, but I believe it’s also a cop-out. A lot of folks looked at Mark McGwire as a bit of a hero—at least in that very limited, silly way in which athletes can be heroes—when he hit his boatload of home runs in 1998. He’d have been much more genuine a hero, though, if he’d had the backbone to stay clean in his era, the heart to do what was right when it really would have mattered, instead of when it’d do little more than clear his conscience and help him get back to a steady paycheck in the game he did his own small part to corrupt.

NOTES
1. The other risk worth considering, of course, is that by disagreeing with Squid Bandit on this issue, we risk creating an un-healable schism between readers torn by our compelling points of view and our irresistible personal charisma. It’s possible that in a thousand years, conflicts between the Someguyists and the Squidinistas (or possibly the Squindus, or the Squislims) will tear our society apart, all because of the tensions created right here at this very moment.
2. I use the word “steroids” throughout as an umbrella term to describe any performance-enhancing drug, including androstenedione, which was legal when McGwire used it in 1998; while there are plenty of differences between the varying types of PEDs, I don’t really know or understand them, and for my purposes they’re not particularly relevant.
3. But not an unnaturally big man, of course, as that’s what got him into all this trouble in the first place.
4. Grammar and spelling have been corrected to show, yet again, that I’m an anal-retentive butthole.

End of the Inning

Good Morning Vietnam is a terrific movie and the source of numerous quotes any fan can recall at an instant. One of my favorite lines, the biggest gem in the mine, is the following. Adrian Cronauer, when asked by his superior officer what was the significance of “three up and three down” on his uniform, responded:

“End of an inning?”

That’s sort of how I feel about steroids. In a slow time for baseball (no, the possible destinations of Johnny Damon does not count as news), there came the shocking (shocking I tell you!!) admission from Mark McGwire that yes, he did in fact use steroids. Did you jump up and down in anger? Scream “I told you so!” to the TV? Did you, Cardinals fans, quietly mumble “I want my summer of ’98 back…”? Or was your response somewhat similar to my own:

Yawn.

Perusing the internet for a while on the subject leads to one of two kinds of articles, mostly. Sure there is the occasional rant about how McGwire “cheated the game” or some such nonsense. But for the most part people were either saying “Duh – of course he did” or “Why is he admitting this now?”

It’s that second question that intrigues me. Yeah, I get it. Steroids are bad. They mess up your body, causing everything from shrinking testicles and baldness to high blood pressure and liver tumors. In children steroids can stunt muscular and skeletal growth. Yep, they’re bad. But doesn’t it seem odd that McGwire would lie to Congress about using steroids, but tell the truth just as he is about to get another job in baseball (as the Cardinals’ hitting coach)?

Why do we care so much about baseball players taking them? What about football players? Shawn Merriman got a four game suspension for testing positive – he’s an all-star caliber player, and not many people even remember that he tested positive. Barry Bonds, Rafael Palmiero and Mark McGwire, on the other hand, are seen as sports demons, the personification of evil in athletics. I believe that part of this outrage is the hallowed baseball statistics – no one gives a crap about Guillermo Mota testing positive, because no one has any idea who he is. But McGwire? Saved baseball after labor strife and broke the single-season home run record, a record that has been romanticized in sports as perhaps the greatest record in athletics (a status once reserved for the heavyweight champion of the world in boxing, but I digress). So that romance is shattered, stolen by a cheating liar. Maybe the other part is that baseball players have not expressed extreme remorse over their actions. No hypocrisy there at all – as Rob Neyer so eloquently points out.

I suppose I simply am a terrible person for lacking the proper moral outrage for McGwire’s actions. I just can’t. There’s an old baseball adage goes something like “If you ain’t cheatin’ then you ain’t tryin’”. Despite the fact that apparently they did not know how to speak the King’s English when this adage was first spoken, which is sure to spark Some Guy’s ire, it has endured. Why now is the ubiquitous cheating an intolerable stain in baseball? Like Neyer says, pretty much all of us would have done the same thing. In my view, it’s like being morally outraged by the thief who steals bread for his starving family, among an entire cadre of theives.

When it was first revealed that steroids were a prevalent part of baseball some said the game as we knew it was at an end. That was nonsense. The history of the game of baseball is like a game itself, and the steroid era was a bad inning. But it wasn’t the LAST inning. Hopefully as more information is made public about steroid use we will see an end of the fear-mongering and moral outrage spewed by media types. Hopefully, eventually, we will see the steroid inning in our pasttime's legacy come to a close, as if a Mariano Rivera cutter caught the inside corner for strike three.

A New Reason to Hate the Yankees

I am not one for hating on the Yankees. Yes, the New York Yankees make more money than any other team in baseball, and of course they, correspondingly, spend more money on players than any other team. For reasons that I understand but do not agree with, this makes some people irate and many others quietly perturbed. Don't hate the Yankees because they operate within the system at their maximum potential to win baseball games. Further, I concede that the system may be flawed but do not agree with implementing a salary cap. I have not heard a cogent suggestion for how to fix the issue that I can get on board with.

So I am conceptually fine with the inherent advantages the Yankees have in the economics of baseball. But what if the Yankees get an additional competitive advantage from the vast (and evil, by the way) media outlets in the immediate vicinity of New Yankee Stadium? Having just traded for Curtis Granderson, a very good, if somewhat over-rated, center fielder formerly of the Detroit Tigers, it appears the GM of the Yanks shipped off some prospects to fill a hole with a player they can certainly afford. Here's the rub - they got the player they wanted and only gave up an over-rated prospect (to be fair, he could be pretty good eventually) and a marginal major league starter and a couple relievers (neither very good - these grow on trees in major league baseball). What if the mega-media outlets, who talk about the Yankees' prospects all the time, have contributed to that team's prospects being over-rated on a consistent basis? This would lead not to better home-grown players on the field, but to better players available by trade. Consequently, not only would the Yankees be able to buy the best players, but because their prospects are hyped way more than any other teams' maybe they also have the advantage when it comes to trading for the best players too.

Gosh. Maybe this is a bit out there, and certainly not something I would normally advocate. And I definitely do not qualify as an expert on any teams' prospects. But after watching the rumors float in the world of the LA Dodgers that such and such teams want the Dodgers' top four prospects plus some major league talent for certain players in trade, it does make me wonder if other teams believe the hype given to the Yankee youngsters by the Yankees media conglomerate a bit too much when I see trades like the Granderson deal.

Maybe something I'll look into. Any ideas how to prove this from the Bowling faithful? Just what we need - another reason for everyone to hate the Yankees.

Happy Thanksgiving From Us. Specifically, From Me

The staff here at Bowling in the Dark, all the way from the overworked payroll department to the overstaffed executive lounge, would like to wish our readers a warm and wonderful Thanksgiving to share with their friends and family, or, if they're so inclined, with affable or even unfriendly strangers. Spend your Thanksgiving snowboarding with sasquatch if you want, for all we care—we’re not in the business of telling you how to enjoy your Thanksgiving. Not yet, anyway.

One thing for which we here at Bowling in the Dark are very thankful is the lively and free exchange of thoughts and ideas and shit. A good example of this exchange comes in the form of a recent post on the venerable blog The Year of the Beard.

In that post, The Year of the Beard’s host, our distinguished fellow blogman Dr. Brainsmart—who, if my sources are correct, has advanced degrees in both smartology and smartonomy—responds to our own Squid Bandit’s recent commentary on the possibility of a salary cap in major league baseball, and also researches the many faces of Alex Rodriguez and how they help him to be the well-rounded butthole he is. It's worth checking out, and not just because it's free almost embarrassingly easy to do so!

I’d throw my two cents in, but (1) I’m smart enough to get out of the way when two heavyweights start punching, and (2) I’ll be too busy stuffing turkey down my gullet to complete a coherent thought for at least a couple of days. The lack of coherent thought has never stopped me before, but I’m trying to mend my ways.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all, and remember, there are only 393 shopping days until Christmas 2010. So get cracking!

A Salary Cap Would've Stopped Hitler!

Alan Greenspan comes to me for discussions on economic theory and Bud Selig gets my input of baseball issues of the day, so I occasionally feel the need to spew my knowledge to the masses. It’s just the right thing to do, yo. Hence, we’re here to celebrate the Yankees of 2009 and World Series Champions (I hate that “world champions crap – did they beat everyone in the world? No!) as they prove the point about money being meaningless in baseball. Huh? you might ask? Didn’t the Yankees spend way more than everyone else and buy the title? In the words of the great White Goodman, let me hit you with some knowledge.

Rob Neyer of ESPN has a terrific blog, called Sweetspot. Check it out. It’s not quite as terrific as Bowling in the Dark…but not much is. Some Guy and I have a media behemoth on our hands, and the Rob Neyers of the world can get in line! Anyway, Neyer wrote a good blog entry about this topic. The basic point is that the Yankees can buy a playoff spot every year, but the last eight years (many of which the Yanks outspent everyone by even more than they did this year) taught us that the championship cannot be bought (only some timely talent and Lady Luck can grant that).

Isn’t revenue sharing a good thing? How about the luxury tax? The Yanks pay way more than anyone else – is that a bad thing? It’s a problem that the clubs are not required to re-invest monies earned through the luxury tax or in revenue sharing in the team. This has NOTHING to do with a salary cap. Simply implementing a rule that says “All clubs must invest the money they receive through the luxury tax or revenue sharing back into the team payroll” would probably alleviate a lot of what the lazy mainstream media types are complaining about.

I find it irritating when people talk about teams forcing cities to build them new stadia (plural of stadium?). It’s not true that a team does not have to pay for a new stadium. It’s simply market forces. The team says “you, Mr. City, build me a stadium or we’re leaving”. And most of the time Mr. City does just that, not calling the bluff of the team. The City of Tampa has called the bluff – no new stadium for a long time. It’s ludicrous when the team doesn’t build its own stadium. For the Yankees to get this grand new stadium (with some tickets costing $5K a game!) for free is a bunch of garbage. But no one made Mr. New York City do that for the Yankees. Screw you, Mr. New York City!

Next – we all talk about “small market” and “large market” teams. Do you know which teams are which? Below is a chart of the baseball markets arranged by population, using numbers from the 2000 census:

Markets of more than 10 million people
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21,199,865 New York Mets, New York Yankees
16,373,645 Los Angeles Angels, Los Angeles Dodgers

Markets of 5-10 million people
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9,157,540 Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox
7,608,070 Baltimore Orioles, Washington Nationals
7,039,362 Oakland Athletics, San Francisco Giants
6,188,463 Philadelphia Phillies
5,819,100 Boston Red Sox
5,456,428 Detroit Tigers
5,221,801 Texas Rangers

Markets of 3-5 million people
--------------------------------------------------------

4,682,897 Toronto Blue Jays
4,669,571 Houston Astros
4,112,198 Atlanta Braves
3,878,380 Florida Marlins
3,554,760 Seattle Mariners
3,251,876 Arizona Diamondbacks

Markets of 2-3 million people
--------------------------------------------------------

2,968,806 Minnesota Twins
2,945,831 Cleveland Indians
2,813,833 San Diego Padres
2,603,607 St Louis Cardinals
2,581,506 Colorado Rockies
2,395,997 Tampa Bay Devil Rays
2,358,695 Pittsburgh Pirates

Markets of 1-2 million people
--------------------------------------------------------

1,979,202 Cincinnati Reds
1,776,062 Kansas City Royals
1,689,572 Milwaukee Brewers


A few things jump out on this list, at least to me. Look at the 5-10 group. Why are the Cubs, White Sox, Orioles, Nationals (get a pass for recent move), Phillies, Tigers and Rangers so bad more often than not? Okay, perhaps one could argue that more recently the salaries have grown more disproportionate, and the Cubs and Phillies (at least) have been competitive. But then why are the others so bad? One may also argue that the 5-10 is too large a spread to look at. Perhaps, but note that the first three cities share two teams each. The same person is highly unlikely to attend games of both teams or buy stuff from both teams. Next, look at the 2-5 million ranges (smushing two groups together – and yes, I just used the word “smushing”). Atlanta, Minnesota, Toronto, Cleveland, Arizona and St. Louis have been fairly regularly competitive. What advantage do they have over Houston (also pretty competitive, but less consistently so than the first group), Seattle, San Diego, Colorado, Tampa and Pittsburgh? Florida is a special case, as they have no attendance and build up for a run then tear down (no other team has this particular model). I also think Minnesota is a special case, as its owner is one of the richest in the league, and they don’t spend up to their revenue level. So how does one analyze that?

In fact, the most compelling argument FOR a cap may just be the final four teams on the list. Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Kansas City and Milwaukee have certainly been the most inept teams over the last 20-30 years. But does correlation equal causation? Certainly, a significant part of the reason for their ineptitude is revenue-driven. But it’s important to recognize that a significant part is also inept-management-driven. Is the fortune of those four teams enough to drive the creation of a salary cap? And if you believe that it is, how do you explain the similar results seen by fans in Baltimore, Dallas, Detroit and Chicago (until recently)? Thus, I think that population is not what you’re looking for as an explanation.

Population is only a part of the equation. What you really should look at is team revenue. This is somewhat population-driven, but not always. Seattle is a large-revenue club. Oakland is a small-revenue club. Why? Too many reasons to list here. But the point is that if you talk population and not revenue, you’re not seeing the entire ball of wax. Is there a correlation between revenue and post-season potential? Of course. Let’s explore that next.

There is a good book that I have only read parts of thus far, called “Baseball Between The Numbers”. Since only 12 of 30 teams can make the playoffs in a given year, most teams won’t come close to making the playoffs (2008 being an outlier there, as deep into the season there was a disproportionately large number of teams still “in the running” for a playoff spot – I think this is also evidence against the need for a salary cap, but I digress). So let’s look at playoff appearances over time, since one of Some Guy’s main arguments has been that the higher-spending teams will be more consistently competitive than the lower-spending teams. Doing some statistical analysis that I am way too dumb to understand, the authors found that the correlation between team revenue and post-season appearances (the R-squared) is .51. Meaning that half of getting to the post-season is determined by revenue. Is that enough for a cap? I don’t know. But the authors make a good point – teams make a lot of money by getting to the post-season, so could the correlation really be telling us that those who make the post-season have higher revenues? Maybe, but this isn’t what we want to know. So they did a comparison of appearances in the playoffs to TV market size – go back to the above chart. It is here that my analysis above really shines (the chart was from a different source, and the analysis was all mine. Eat it Greenspan!). The correlation between post-season appearances and TV market size is only .11, meaning that only 11% of the reason for a team making the playoffs is due to TV market size. This, it should be obvious, is not enough to support creating a salary cap.

I really believe that when people say “a salary cap would be good for baseball” they really mean “I hate the Yankees for being able to buy all the best players.” “Baseball Between The Numbers” goes on to discuss how the authors believe a cap would (or would not) affect the competitive balance, and I won’t go into that here. But to quickly look at football’s cap – the Cowboys and the Raiders spent the most money on salary in 2008 (there are many complicated ways to fit lots of salary into a hard salary cap under the NFL rules). Where did that get both of those teams? The lesson, from this admittedly tiny sample size? Even with a cap, there are teams that have more money to spend than others – and even then, you’re still not guaranteed to be any better than any other team.

Rob Neyer thinks that the Yankees can buy their way to the playoffs every year. He’s a smart guy and maybe they can, but most large-revenue teams cannot. It’s pretty hard to argue, however, that revenue has no bearing on the fates of baseball teams. Spending has escalated in the past twenty years, but in 1990 the Baltimore Orioles were the highest spending team. The Dodgers have spent money like scary monkeys for a long time, with only the recent playoff fruit to show for it (and that is in SPITE of some terrible spending, on the likes of Juan Pierre, Andruw Jones and Jason Schmidt).

Okay, maybe money is not irrelevent, as the first paragraph of my post suggested with tongue firmly in cheek. But spend wisely, my billionaire team owning friends. Go ahead and try to buy your way to the playoffs. Good luck once you’re there.