The daily parade of modern, hoity-toity stats includes the WAR, the BABIP, the wOBA, the OPS, the Exit Velo and many others - mathematical stool samples for each and every player. The numbers don't lie, (but they sure can equivocate.)
Take a gander at the old form box score to the right - (actually, an updated version; the ancient ones didn't include BAs) - which, at least yesterday, keenly showcased the 2023 Yankee disaster.
Four hits, two runs, a solo shot, and eight Ks. You might as well have watched a bowl of fruit. After our No. 3 batter, nobody in the starting lineup was hitting above .218. That, comrades, is what you call a tomato can.
Yes - dented, rusted, bubbling from a greasy puncture - that's Del Monte, or Hunts, or Cento, home-peeled and fire-roasted. That's mediocrity, certified. And soon, we shall be done with it.
Except for the lowly batting average. Nope. A guy hitting .250 gets one hit in every four at-bats. A guy hitting below the Mendoza Line is a lost cause. And the kid hitting .211 is not - at least for now, anyway - the next Jeter. (I'm sorry, folks. He's just not there.)
After yesterday's sad and tired loss, Kay will need a new, creative stat to juice fan interest. The final two weeks will boil down to exhibition games, with playoff-bound teams facing Triple A squads and cynical tankers, such as Boston. The Yankees will fight to finish above .500, as if it matters. (Honestly, it doesn't.)
Stats will rise and fall. But the lowly batting average will never go away. Someday - decades from now, when we are dust - crazy Yank fans will look back at 2023 and shake their heads. What a sad lineup. What a sad period, back when the Empire was crumbling. The Hal & Cashman Era. Back when nobody hit. You saw it in those batting averages. What were they doing? Just swinging for the fences? Who was the hitting coaches? How did they get to be so ineffective? What a sad and tired time.
Posts
26 comments:
You like potato and I like potahto
You like tomato and I like tomahto
Potato, potahto, Tomato, tomahto.
Let's call the whole thing off
But oh, if we call the whole thing off
Then we must part
And oh, if we ever part, then that might break my heart
A lost year in a lost decade and a half in a century where we're 1 for 23.
But all that's fine, because winning isn't the point.
As opposed to the one that's on Cashman's head.
Judge looks headed for below .250
Volpe looks headed for under .200
Stanton if he is lucky will hit .190 ( I still think Arch Stanton is a better option might not hit as many Home runs but he would be more mobile in the outfield and he has been dead since before the Civil War)
That is also forgetting the other youngsters from AAA who will all be around the .200 mark
I am not dismissing modern stats I understand how every team in the league uses them, but I think batting average should not be dismissed totally out of hand and it still counts for something.
We seem to be obsessed with pulling the ball and exit velocity and it clearly is not working and has not worked for a number of years and perhaps it is time to getting back to putting the ball in play/hitting to the opposite field and other outdated out of fashion style of playing basbeball.
Most times when a tomato can gets banged around or dropped, the contents can still produce a good meal.
These Yankees are more like a 24-ounce glass jar of Ragu. Drop it once and your headed back to the grocery store after you’ve cleaned up the mess.
Hmmm. Should we be calling the Yankees "a tomato jar?"
Can someone explain this...
The purpose of exit velocity is that a hard hit ball is tougher to make a play on and therefore results in more hits.
So the goal of the hard hit ball is a hit... which is measured by... wait for it... batting avg. (The percentage of hits vs. ABs)
But if swinging hard all the time doesn't result in more hits as shown by everyone's BA basically sucking... then what is the point of caring about exit velo? Why do the analytically inclined think that it is important?
Because Hard and Long is considered sexier that the opposite.
What is the opposite of Hard and Long, you ask?
Brian Cashman
Once again Duque you have given song to the feelings in my heart.
The WAR, the BABIP, the wOBA, the OPS ALL include BA in some way. Exit velocity is pointless if you don't put the ball in play. It all useless if you don't make contact if you don't put the ball in play. There is no reason why the Yankees aren't as far as I can tell. Although I bet it's some institutional myopic bullshit based on a shallow and incorrect analysis of of whatever stats those assholes value most.
Fuck them all.
Traditionalists always recognised that batting average wasn't the only statistic worth looking at, but that it was a good starting point. The whole point of the Mendoza line was that it was an implied threshold, below which it was not conceivable that the other contributions of a player could make up for his poor batting average. Not every player needs to post a high batting average, if he is contributing value in other ways. But how many Yankee batters are drawing heaps of walks, working full counts, stealing bases, flashing stellar defence, or even advancing runners with productive outs? The only thing these guys seem to do is hit some solo home runs, and get injured.
Honestly, if Volpe can hit .211 next year, we should probably be ecstatic that the Yankee coaching didn't cause him to regress. And if Florial can't hit any better than .208, he's still performing better than Hicks and Donaldson, at a fraction of the cost in dollars and frustration.
Someone should tell MLB players that chicks dig winning more than the long ball. Where's Charlie Sheen when we need him?
Exit velocity is pointless if you are on the EL...
And the Yankees are definitely a tomato jar - dusty, past expiration date, with a discoloured label ("Farmer Brian's Starr Tomato-like Product"), being sold by surly staff in Honest Hal's Premium Calibre Market. They're constantly running special promotions, and the tomatoes are currently marked down to $45 a jar.
Amen, Duque! And right on, guys.
Back in the day, guys like Graig Nettles were considered slightly suspect because, for all the good things they did, they hit .248 (lifetime). In 1976, Nettles won the home run crown, but batted only .255.
Why did this matter? Well, it's less than coincidence, I think, that in the postseason, when he faced better pitching all the time, Nettles was usually overwhelmed, hitting just .225, with a .641 OPS in 53 games.
Could this possibly be a clue to the Yankees' problems over the last 23 seasons? Sure, Nettles was also the best-fielding third baseman of his generation after Brooks Robinson retired, which made up for a lot. What current Yankees are at that level with a glove?
Also, has anyone else noticed that now, with the "balanced schedule," and the Yanks playing more teams than ever outside their division...the team is constantly shut down by mediocre or downright BAD pitchers, like the two who pitched the first 6 innings yesterday?
This indicates either:
—Terrible scouting.
—Refusal to pay attention to good scouting.
Or both.
Think anything will happen about it? Well, when was the last time you heard a question about it from the sporting press?
They're not paying attention, either, and as long as they don't, neither will Cashie.
Wee Willie Keeler didn't give a damn about exit velo.
And Wee Wille Keeler is rolling over in his grave.
El Duque: "stats can spin anything"
So true, and unfortunately, it's the gullible public that is generally not well versed in statistical analysis that falls victim to the stat shenanigans. I recommend "How to Lie With Statistics". A short, illustrated paperback that makes it easy to understand how big companies, big government, & big liars manipulate statistics for their own purposes & beguile the masses.
Indeed, Michael Kay, they may have the best record in baseball over the last 20 games. But who cares? They're playing tomato cans. They are a tomato can themselves. They're in last place. Their best prospect has to have serious elbow surgery. What a mess!
How to Lie With Statistics, by Darrell Huff
Andujar finally got his revenge against the Yankees.
I did hear one really amazing stat. And I'll mention it at the risk of sounding like a mental case. They were saying that the four home runs in his first seven games by The Martian is something that hadn't been done since 1900.
There were comparisons of The Martian to others who had streaked like a supernova, then faded into history: Kevin Maas, Shane Spencer, Shelley Duncan. I think The Martian far eclipsed all of those guys. Jasson Dominguez was not only hitting the fastball, he was hitting it to all fields. And he was making adjustments on the fly to the breaking ball, and hitting that out too. You don't see that in veterans, let alone rookies. He certainly looked like the best Yankee prospect I have ever seen in 43 years as a fan.
I worry about The Martian's viability. Tommy John surgery, although it has improved to such an extent that some guys reportedly throw harder after the surgery than before, is still serious ligament surgery. And everybody is different. And not all Tommy John surgeries are successful. It could very well be that it is a career ending injury.
There was that lefty pitcher prospect for the Yankees who hurt his throwing shoulder in a bar fight, helping his brother, and he was never able to make it back after surgery for a torn labrum. I forget his name, but he was a high draft pick and a big time prospect before the career ending injury.
There is Andujar, who looked like a great hitter for a year, then hurt his shoulder diving into 3rd base, never to reach his potential.
Lately, whenever Volpe homers, it is the kiss of death for that game. He hits one to tie the game. Usually in a game where the other Yankees are not hitting. And then Yankee pitching finds a way to give up the winning run.
Good for Volpe that he hit it to right of dead center. Must be working on going the other way. He should work exclusively on going the other way in batting practice, for weeks at a time. If he takes the ball the other way, he will reach his potential.
It's not really fair to compare Volpe to Jeter. DJ was one of the greatest players of all time. I didn't expect Volpe to be anything like Jeter. I would've been content with above average defense and .260 batting average, with 10 homers.
He hasn't delivered on the batting average, but I think his defense has been okay. Perhaps he is running of out gas at the end of the season. Maybe they should give him a day off, just to try to recharge a bit.
Brien Taylor, Hammer. And that is a sad, sad story.
Boras called him the best-looking pitcher he'd ever seen in the draft. He'd put in 2 years in the minors, and was progressing nicely.
Then, his older brother got into a fight with his girlfriend's family, and recruited Brien to go help him get back a used pick-up truck that family was supposedly holding on to. Brien took a swing, missed, hit the ground...and here's Mike Axsia on the result:
"Boras initially called the injury a bruise, but the reality of the situation was much more dire. Brien basically ripped his left arm right out of the socket, dislocating his shoulder and tearing both his labrum and capsule."
Even sadder, Brien seems to have been too stupid to even understand just how stupid he was. Here is a quote from him in 1994, when it was already clear that his arm would never be the same:
“If I’d been doing things that were stupid and didn’t make any sense, I would have felt a lot worse about it. I feel that what happened with me is a family thing and I was there for my family. But I don’t feel bad about it for one day because the reason it happened is not because I was being stupid out there.”
Incredible, huh? This is why, I think, so many celebrities seem to be arrogant, paranoid pricks.
It's because you never know how many people around you—people who you think genuinely love you, and can only gain by your success—secretly (and maybe even unconsciously) want above all else to see you fail, and brought down to their level. Even a potential lifetime of living large on your dime is not enough to quell that envy.
One can picture what a young Derek Jeter would've done in such a situation, inconceivable as that must sound. He would've told his brother to go buy himself a brand new pick-up truck, and stop bothering him.
Not Brien, who, last I heard, was in prison for something or other. I wonder if he's ever realized just how stupid he was. I wonder if he could bear that.
From Wikipedia
"
In March 2012, Taylor was charged with cocaine trafficking after undercover narcotics agents purchased a large quantity of cocaine and crack cocaine from him over a period of several months.[18] He was federally indicted on cocaine trafficking charges in June 2012.[19] Taylor pleaded guilty in August 2012 and was sentenced to 50 months in prison, followed by three years' supervised release; he was released on September 12, 2015.[20]
"
As far as the statisticians/accountants in the Yankees front office go, they miss the most important stats of all -- wins and championships.
I still hold out hope (absurd, I know) that the Martian's career is not toast.
The Yankees have batted two players hitting under .200 in the cleanup spot. Done aldson and Wells. If the Yankees do not want us to look at the averages, look at how badly most of the Yuths, as they are called, look. They look overmatched.
@ Rufus, Hope is the only thing we've got!
Post a Comment