Still Americas Pastime

There are few things sweeter than the sound of the ball hitting the sweet spot of a baseball bat.  Well, as long as it’s a wooden bat.  There’s a reason the expression is “the crack of the bat” not “the ping of the bat.”

While less than impressive, the sound of the aluminum bat is not the real reason for my dislike of the aluminum bat.

Aluminum bats can reinforce bad mechanics in a swing.  This is because when you hit the ball off the end of the bat or get jammed, you can still hit the ball pretty far.  You don’t have to worry about hitting the ball with the sweet spot.

I’m not proposing that we stop using aluminum bats.  For younger kids they’re great.  They’re lighter and you don’t have to replace them as often. 

But by the time kids get to middle school, they should only use wooden bats.  That when they’ll have enough experience to know what they’re doing, but still be young enough to not be totally set in their ways.  Plus they’ll have enough time to get used to wooden bats and fix their swing before high school and college.

Before you read this, make sure you read Parts One, Two, and Three.

Over the past seven months, I’ve made my case against the Designated Hitter.  I’ve used emotional arguments, statistical arguments, and historical arguments.  These have not been an exhaustive list, and if I wanted to invest the time, I could continue railing (?) against the DH much longer.  But I feel like if I’m able to convince you, I have already.  Perhaps awhile down the road I’ll feel the need to continue arguing against the DH.

I’ve done enough for now though.  I now leave it up to you, my readers.  Do you like the Designated Hitter Rule?  Do you have your own reasons to dislike it?  Perhaps you agree with everything I’ve said.  Let me know.  Let others know.

The argument over the Designated Hitter is a great one, and one that is not likely to be resolved soon.  How would you solve it?

I know how I would solve it.  I’d get rid of it effective next season.  What other options would I be ok with.  Get rid of it in up to 5 years.

I know by now that you agree with me about the DH rule.  It should go.  I mean, we hate it, and we know it can screw with the statistics of the players who played in the field every day.

But perhaps there are still some of you out there that still like the idea of the Desinated Hitter, even after reading my first two posts.  Well, they say third times a charm, so here it goes.

Now, I’ll continue giving you arguments about why we should get rid of the DH rule.

The DH rule violates the history of the game.

The DH was not orginally part of the game.  Why does this matter?  After all, there have been other rule changes right?  This is true, but baseball has always been a game that dwells in the past even as it’s playing in the present.  Past greats are used as comparisons for today’s superstars.

The DH was introduced in the American League in 1973.  Proponents wanted to bring back some offense into a game where the pitchers had become extremely dominant.  Other rule changes made around this time lowered the height of the pitcher’s mound and shrank the strike zone.

Offense in baseball is now in the ascendant.  Wouldn’t now be a good time to get rid of this rule and go back to the way it was?  And not just for history’s sake.

There are a growing number of pitchers who are offensive threats.  Mike Hampton was one (before his surgery).  Both Carlos Zambrano (Chicago Cubs) and Micah Owings (Cincinnati Reds) have been called on to pinch-hit before.  Wouldn’t making pitchers back into two-way players open some doors for other offensively gifted pitchers?

Welcome to Part Two of my case against the Designated Hitter (you can find Part One here).  Convinced yet?  If you are, continue reading to get plenty of arguments to use against those heretics trying to defend the DH.  If you aren’t, we’re going to get past the gut-feeling, emotional arguments used in Pt. 1 and move onto some statistical arguments.

The DH allows players to inflate their offensive statistics.

Stats and records are very important to baseball players and, perhaps even more so, baseball fans.  It was decided to place an asterisk (*) next to Roger Maris’s single season home run record because the season was seven games longer than when the Babe set the record.  Numerous people want an asterisk (some want a syringe) next to Barry Bonds’ career home run record.

In light of this, it’s surprising that more people aren’t upset about the DH.  20 players (out of 53) have made it into the top ten all time in offensive categories have spent time as a DH.  6 of these 20 players have spent 324 games as a DH.  Why 324?  Because that’s the equivalent of 2 full seasons.  This eliminates people who have DH’d only in inter-league play or just a few games a season.

So there are 6 players who probably wouldn’t have made it to these plateaus as an everyday player, either because they physically can’t play everyday or because their defense makes them too much of a liability to start.  This number is likely to grow, as the DH has only been used by the American League for 26 years (counting 2009).

Why should players who really weren’t an everyday player be able to pass the greats who played the game every day in the field, the way it was meant to be played?

Note:  The offensive categories I looked at were: Hits, Doubles, Triples, Home Runs, Batting Average, Slugging Percentage, Walks, Runs, RBI, and Stolen Bases.

In honor of Opening Day, I give you a four part I Call ‘Em as I See ‘Em this month!

The Designated Hitter (DH) is one of the most vile things ever invented in the history of the world.  No I’m not overreacting, it is truly that bad.  And if you stick around and read my four entries about this disgusting mark on the beautiful game of baseball, you’ll think so too.

I’m going to be breaking down my arguments into three categories: Historical, Statistical, and Emotional.  Hopefully the preponderance of evidence and logic of my argument will cause shockwaves through the baseball world and destroy the Designated Hitter forever.

First I’m going to make my emotional arguments against the DH.  The reason for this is twofold.  First, most discussions about the DH don’t get past this point.  It’s a logical starting place because many people just FEEL really strongly about the DH.  Second, we have to get through our emotions to move onto the more logic based arguments to get rid of the DH.

The DH makes baseball less fun.

Yes it does.  I mean, who wants to see a really old guy swing a bat and either strike out, homer, or lumber (painfully) around the bases?  I know some of you are going to say that offense is what makes the game more interesting, and the DH is usually a power-hitter, so more home runs, which means more offense, which means more fun.

Wrong!  Even great home run hitters average less than 1 home run per 3 games in a season (math: 50 home runs/162 games).  Plus, home runs are not the only way to provide offense.  Nor is it the only entertaining way.  Stealing a base, executing a hit and run, squeeze plays, etc. are just as exciting, sometimes more.  Plus, when the big hitter gets up, the defense doesn’t worry about these things, because the manager won’t risk it.

There’s not as much strategy when a DH is involved.

As I hinted at earlier, the power-hitting DH (and there are rarely non-power-hitting DHs) takes away many strategic considerations from the offensive side of the game.  However, it also takes away a number of defensive decisions.  Do you take out a starting pitcher in the 7th inning of a scoreless game for a pinch-hitter?  Should you make a double-switch?  Do you hope your right handed pitcher gets the left handed batter out so that you can pinch hit for him instead of bringing in a lefty for one batter?

All of these decisions not only give manager’s queasy stomachs, but contribute to the cerebral part of the game.  Plus, then you have more opportunities to second-guess the manager when it doesn’t work out how you’d like, and everyone loves to do that.

Room for one more assertion.  Don’t want to overwhelm you yet.

DHing is too easy.

This point basically writes itself.  I mean, who do you see DHing?  People who can’t play in the field because it will wear them out.  Yes, hitting is probably the hardest thing to do in sports.  But it’s much harder to play nine innings in the field, possibly diving for balls or getting taken out by a runner, and then trying to get a hit in the ninth, than having sat in the dugout all night (except for your previous at-bats) and coming up in the same position.  Baseball is one of the sports where a player needs to be able to play offense and defense.  The DH goes against this grain.

Where there you go.  You’ve now experienced some of my persuasive power.  Are you ready to go out and picket against the DH with me? 

Well, it’s late, but I wouldn’t want to prevent you from getting your monthly fix of I Call ‘Em as I See ‘Em.

Unfortunately, the label given to the last two decades of baseball is the Steroid Era.  I say unfortunately because while a number of athletes have confessed or are under heavy suspicion of using performance enhancing drugs, an even larger number of ballplayers (who I firmly believe are clean) have now been linked to steroids, seemingly irreversibly.

I can understand why people started using the phrase “Steroid Era”: Jose Conseco’s book, the outburst of home runs, MLB players testifying before Congress, the list goes on.  But lets look at just how fair this label is.

Yes, some players have “juiced.”  There just is no escaping it and baseball shouldn’t want to try to sweep it under the rug.  But it is only some players.  The SI report, when it outed A-Rod, said he was 1 of 104 players to test positive.  104 is a large number, but there are 750 players on MLB rosters at any given time.  That means 646 players didn’t test positive.  The label of “Steroid Era” makes the average person who doesn’t really follow baseball believe everyone is doing it.

A-Rod’s confession was a big blow for baseball fans everywhere.  He was a first ballot Hall of Famer and basically the player of the decade in the “Aughts” (00’s).  His admission spread the doubt around further because everyone was looking to him as an example of what a clean player can do. 

I still think this is too much attention on only one guy, but so many people used him as an example of a clean player it really hurt baseball.  Luckily I’m even more confident that the player of the 90’s, Ken Griffey Jr., is clean than I ever was of A-Rod.  But if he should fall (not likely), perhaps I’ll be recanting this post.

But for now, let’s try to stop referring to this as the Steroid Era.  Do it for the players who are clean, and don’t need every swing of the bat scrutinized for performance enhancing drugs.

Okay, yes, I do hate the New York Yankees, as any good baseball fan outside the Bronx should.  Part of this is because of their reputation as a very good team.  Though they’ve hit a dry spell recently, they were dominant in the 90s and have won more World Series Titles than any other franchise in history.  And since they aren’t my team, I obviously dislike the fact they’ve been so successful.  Can you really blame me?

Another part of the equation is that the Yankees are a huge market team.  I’m not arguing for a salary cap here, just pointing out that the Yankees can and do outspend almost every team, every year.  That’s what being a successful team in a huge media market like New York can do for you.

The main reason that I hate they Yankees though is that for the most part, they seem to be a team that buys talent, rather than develops it, and I think that is bad for baseball.  It’s also bad for them, in the long run.  Let me explain what I mean.

The Yankees often decide that the best way for them to win World Series Titles (which in New York’s win-now atmosphere is a must-do every year) is to buy up all the talent in the Free Agent market; such as this offseason, where they’ve grabbed Sabbathia, Burnett, and Teixeira.

This definitely improves the team on paper, and the Yankees will definitely have a better starting rotation next year, which will translate into more wins.  So this is great right?  Well, not really in the long term.

Why?  Because baseball is a team sport.  There are things that make a team more than just a sum of their parts.  Team chemistry, leadership, and just time spent playing together are invaluable to helping a team get an edge on their opponents.  And just buying up a bunch of talent doesn’t help these things.

Instead teams are much better off developing their own talent.  Derek Jeter is a great example of Yankee home-grown talent, and was a big part of their successful run in the 90s.

How does buying up numerous free agents prevent a team from developing home-grown talent?  First, if you sign one of the best free agents (labeled as Class-A, free agents rated in the top 20% of players in the past two years), you lose your highest draft pick (though the first round, picks 1-15, are protected).  If you sign, say three, you lose your top three draft picks. 

Losing draft picks prevents you from picking the really good players in the draft.  So that hurts your team.  Also, if you are planning on spending lots of money on free agents, you will probably send your better scouts to see the Major league players, so when you finally get your selection in the amateur draft, the chances of you finding someone who cruised under everyone else’s radar is reduced.

The lack of a strong farm system is the first problem with this philosophy.  But I already mentioned chemistry, time played together, and leadership.  These all glue a team together and help give that team that extra step over a team lacking in these areas.  A strong farm system, not only gives you players ready to step up and fill in if a starter gets injured, but there is a good chance they’ve played some games with other players who might have been up for a year or two.  Knowing the capabilities and tendencies of teammates makes playing baseball much easier.

There is no better illustration for this than of pitchers and catchers.  If a pitcher and catcher have spent a long time together, they develop a trust for each other, and the catcher knows what type of pitch the pitcher likes to use in a certain situation.  How much better for a team would it be if the pitcher and catcher had already developed this relationship in minor league games?

Another good example is a middle infielder pairing.  Turing a double play is an art, and when a shortstop and second-baseman haven’t spent much time together, it shows.

Leadership is another thing that can get messy when a big-name free agent comes aboard.  For example, when Ken Griffey Jr. came to the Reds from the Mariners, the city of Cincinnati expected him to come in and lead the team on to greatness.  But Cincinnati already had a captain in Barry Larkin, a talented and much loved shortstop.  Had the two players had bigger egos and battled for leadership, it could have really hurt the team.

So, because of my distaste of the policy of buying talent instead of developing it, I hate the New York Yankees, and what they do to baseball.

Another reform I’d love to see in MLB is the demise of the unbalanced schedule.  As of right now, teams play many more games against their division opponents than they play against other opponents in the same league, and play more games against other opponents in the same league than against opponents in the other league. 

Let’s ignore the inter-league games right now, because it’s really another issue.  Where majority opinion lies in this matter generally depends on the group of people you’re asking.  If you’re asking Tampa Bay Rays fans, they might not be happy with having to see the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox more than the Kansas City Royals and the Oakland A’s.  Conversely, if you ask the Los Angles Dodgers fans, they’re probably happy then played the San Diego Padres and San Francisco Giants more often than the Chicago Cubs and the Philadelphia Phillies.

The schedules became even more unbalanced in 2001 thanks to Bud Selig pushing for teams to play even more games against divisional rivals.  The general argument is that the unbalanced schedule makes for more exciting baseball because you spend more time playing against division rivals, and these rivalries will increase in intensity.  And it’s a good argument.  Red Sox and Yankee fans are going to love hating each other six more games a year.  The Cubs and Cardinals aren’t going to complain about the added revenue more games between them will create.  But the argument is not bulletproof, and I have a couple shots to take at it.

First, intra-divisional games are already set up to create rivalries and are already more important than the other games a team plays.  A win against a non-division team is a win, and it’s important.  But at most, all you are doing is putting pressure on the other teams in your division to keep pace.  It is impossible to leap over another team purely on winning non-divisional games, the other team has to lose their non-divisional games.  Playing against someone in the division though, let’s you become the master of your own fate.  If you beat the team ahead of you, you gain a game.  You don’t have to rely on another team to beat your rival, because you did. 

Second, having so many games against divisional opponents allows teams to take advantage of weak divisions, and could keep better teams out of the playoffs.  If the last month of the season rolls around and a NL West and a NL East team are tied for the Wild Card lead, the advantage would be with the team out West because they have more games against their division, which has recently proved to be the weaker of the two, while the team out East will have to beat teams in what has recently been the stronger division.

My solution is to try to balance the schedule as much as possible.  Why?  Because the point is for the best teams to advance to the playoffs and therefore have a more competitive and enjoyable postseason.  The divisional rivalries will still be in effect because those games will still have more of a “must win” factor, but the teams making the playoffs will have proved themselves against all of their league opponents, not just those of their division.

At this time when everyone is complaining about the ridiculousness in college football called the BCS, I want to talk to you about the MLB playoff structure.  Let me preface this with the fact that when I started really paying attention to how the playoffs worked in Major League Baseball was in 1994 (I was 8).  That season we had the strike, and the next season was the first season with 3 divisions per league and the Wild Card.  Therefore, I really only remember watching the playoffs under the current system.

The way the baseball playoffs work is that the top team in each division and the team that has the most wins without winning a division (the Wild Card team) advance to the playoffs.  There are three sets of series in the postseason, the Divisional Series, the Championship Series, and the World Series.  The team with the better record in each match-up is the home team for the Divisional and Championship Series, while the League that won the All-Star game hosts the World Series. 

The Divisional Series is a best of five games (win three to win the series), while the Championship Series and the World Series are best of seven games (win four).

That’s the quick and dirty, but explain the exceptions, an illustration will help.  Let’s look at an example of how it would work inside one league (the format is the same for both).  Assume that the Western Division winner (W) has 100 wins, the Central Division winner (C) has 95 wins, the Eastern Division winner (E) has 90, and the Wild Card team (WC) has 92.  The playoffs would set up with WC at W, and E at C.  However, if the Wild Card team is from the West, it would be E at W, and WC at C.  This is because the Wild Card can not play the team that won their division in the first round.  Assuming that E upset W and WC upset C, the Championship Series would be WC at E, even though WC has more wins.  This is because supposedly the WC is a weaker team than the divisional winners.

What are the problems?  I have two really big problems. 

First, is the best of five series.  Baseball is a game where the objective is have the most wins at the end of the 162 game season.  This is like running a marathon.  Teams have to have depth (especially pitching depth), and a stumbling start (say a 5-win April) isn’t impossible to overcome.  In the best of five series, teams that have a dominate pitcher or two will have a disproportionately higher chance of success, and a bad game can be insurmountable. 

With all of the rest & travel days build into the series, a team can have their two best pitchers start 4 of the possible 5 games.  This gives an advantage to a team that has two really good pitchers and three so-so pitchers over a team that has a really good pitcher, three good pitchers, and one so-so pitchers, even though the second team would most likely have the better record.

You fix this problem by extending this first series to seven games.  This means you’ll have to extend the postseason into November (which means worrying about even more terrible weather like we had last World Series), or you can return baseball back to it’s previous 154 game schedule.  I’m a fan of the second idea, you gain a week of time to hold the playoffs and avoid that unfriendly weather.

The second part of the baseball playoffs that grinds my gears is the treatment of the Wild Card team.  The Wild Card team has to play as the visitor in both the Divisional and Championship Series.  Yet it possible that the Wild Card team has the second-best record in league, and just had the bad luck to be in the division with the only team to win more games.

How do you fix this?  You keep the Wild Card, and the Divisional winners, but you seed the teams on record.  The team with the best record hosts the team with the worst, and the team with the second best hosts the team with the second worst.  Don’t worry about whether it’s a Wild Card team or if both teams are from the same division.  If there is a tie, the tiebreaker is head-t0-head record.  This rewards those teams that are good enough to be second-best, but play in the division with the best.  (You could still possibly exclude teams from the playoffs that have better records than divisional winners this way, but it’s not very likely and divisional rivalries are good for baseball.)

Mark your calendar for two weeks from today, because the next I Call ‘Em as I See ‘Em will relate to this one quite interestingly.

Until next time, I’m hittin’ the showers.

A trend that seems to have been sweeping sports these past few years is the firing of coaches and managers in the middle of a season.  I’m not talking about when a manager is in the last year of his contract and at the All-Star Break, the team decides to announce he won’t be back next year.  That’s fine.  In fact, it helps keep the manager and players focused on the game because there aren’t a bunch of rumors sweeping around.  No, what I’m sick and tired of is owners handing a manager walking papers and naming an interim manager.

The latest instance of this that got me really fired up was when the Milwaukee Brewers fired Ned Yost.  Here was a manager that that was with the team as they changed from a perennial bottom feeder to a playoff contender.  He helped break Prince Fielder and Ryan Braun into the big leagues.  Then he gets canned.

Why?  Because apparently having 1 1/2 sub-par Septembers in a row is reason to get the axe.  In the 2007 season, the Brewers were leading their division in September.   Unfortunately, they ended up losing the division to the Cubs and not making the playoffs.  This is obviously Ned Yost’s fault.  It couldn’t have been the fact that it was a team made up of budding young stars, and it most certainly couldn’t have been the pressure on these young men to bring their team back to the playoffs in decades.

Then this past season, as the season was winding down, with only 12 games left, the Brewers fired Ned Yost.  They felt he was going to betray them again.  Well, the ploy seemed to work, as the Brewers did indeed capture the Wild Card and make the playoffs. 

This was obviously because they rid themselves of Yost.  The Mets (a team that ironically also switched managers mid-season) second consecutive last-season collapse had nothing to do with that.  It’s all the manager’s fault.  Get a new one, and you’ll win games.

I’m not saying that there’s no reason to fire a manager mid-season.  If he doesn’t have the respect of the players, he doesn’t show up and do his job, he bets on the game, go for it, fire him and with conviction.  But because the team isn’t winning enough games?  Don’t fire one man because it’s easier than trading 25 players.

Until next time, I’m hittin’ the showers.