This would have been a great series if not that 6 run abortion by MDC/Bard in the 1st game. Even Byrd was unlucky last night with the angry BABIP and incredible strike zone in the 1st, perhaps a temporary bridge from another universe where strikes are balls. Losing to Greinke was somewhat expected anyways, so no big deal.
In any event, all is well with the world, the lowly KCR are back to getting their butt kicked, and the Red Sox lose no ground to the MFY.
Foulke's effort isn't forgotten, but was kind of overshadowed by the hack job the CHB and others did on him afterwards. Not that Foulke did himself any favors, but the stuff about not liking baseball and the stuff about fans who don't understand the game etc. burned a lot of goodwill with the press and casual fans.
To me, he was unquestionably the postseason MVP.
Fans need someone to hate, a scapegoat of sorts, and most have the memory of gnats. Foulke of course was a key to 2004, and his bad times were related to injury. What fans need to do is when a player opens his mouth to speak, just turn the TV on mute. MLB players do not live in the real world and those with big bank accounts think this makes them smarter than they are, most of what they say is not worth hearing, especially when they feel they are getting a raw deal.
Some of the hate may be jealousy. I still remember my grandfather ranting at how Yaz made more money than the President every time he made an out.
Timlin was another target of the hate crowd as he wore down to age and injury, but he was also a key and he could have been remembered for the 2003 ring that never was, him and his closer by committee crew, Williamson and Embree. In fact the Red Sox probably don't get into the playoffs without BH Kim, another hater target. Little literally blew Kims arm out, not to mention blowing the ALCS. And then there are guys like Tek and Wake, also targets of the hate crowd, but 2004 probably does not happen w/o either one. Wake saving innings in game 3 of the ALCS saved the BP for game 4.
It's not a new phenomenom, guys like Yaz and Ted Williams were boo'ed most of their careers as the media fed them to the fans who need to hate.
Ortiz with an outside chance at 100 RBI. Surprising given his start
Funny how the RBI has become so discredited, such as when Youk was an MVP candidate last year, or when you point out Drews lack of RBI's.
Hitting behind Youk and Bay was probably beneficial to Papi. He is ranked 3rd in the AL in PA w/ROB per PA (51.2%) and has a ROB driven in % of 14.3%, which is ranked 42nd in the AL (low due to his rough start). He has had 420 ROB and driven in 60 of them (before tonight). (stats from BP stats page)
Almost 1/2 of those RBI (42)_ came against interleague, Orioles, Blue Jays and KCR in 54 games, not that it means anything. Of course, he has done well against the MFY (13 RBI), so as long as this continues over the weekend.
Yea, Bill James would say that -- in part because it justifies the demand for his services.
I'm not sure that one can evaluate things like defensive positioning and quick (or slow) breaks on batted balls
without trusting your eyes. I think defensive quality depends more than offensive performance on attributes that are inherently difficult to measure, but still tangible.
At the end of the day, on offense what counts is getting hits and getting on base (and HR and RBI), and on defense it's about turning batted balls into outs.
The defensive metrics and offensive metrics both tell you this, although the defensive metrics have issues related to transparency and lack game logs and splits, and are pretty useless for 1Bman and catchers. But on offense you need 2 years of data and on defense you need 3 years of data to tell you a players talent level for what is being measured.
For shorter periods, especially 1-2 months, the data simply indicates the players results. The results may reflect good luck, bad luck, psychological or medicinal effects, injury, quality of opponent or lack thereof, etc. On defense, players may get bad breaks, be poorly positioned due to pitchers missing location or poor scouting, GB's take funny hops. On offense, bloops fall for hits, players who can run beat out weakly hit GB, LD are hit right at someone, etc.
The eyes tell you a lot too, but the average player get up offensively 4-5 times, and makes a play in the field 3-4 times. Many of these are routine plays, and most of us don't remember what we had for breakfasts, and are unlikely to have storage capacity to remember every play. So what we remember from our eyes tend to be the exceptionally good plays or exceptionally bad plays.
Just like pitching. The eyes tell me a lot over 1 game about a pitchers performance, more so than his box score stats or pitch f/x data, especially if you have a good camera angle of the plate. However, for assessing performance over multiple appearances, one really needs to capture what the eyes told you into some kind of metric or data that is accumulated and can be broken down.
For any aspect of baseball evaluation, you need both eyes and stats, and a mind not clouded with mush or bias.
But you hit the nail on the head by bringing up conflict of interest and the biases that can result, there are few if any analysts who are not selling something or not dependent on the MLB PTB for something. Thats why they stay away from the PED issue, juiced ball issue and other stuff.
I prefer Dewans plus minus (Fielding Bible). Volume II is a big improvement. The 2009 data and previous years are available on Bill James sight for like 3 dollars a month but you can't sort like you can UZR on Fan Graphs which is more user friendly.
