Running 2011 Baseball Thread, Vol. I: Dedicated to spnited

You also have a better chance of catching for the yankees than Montero has.

 

Interesting report from Buster Olney outside Fenway this morning on how drinking in the clubhouse (pitchers on days they're not scheduled to pitch) may have been an issue.
Pitchers' distractions over the past week did not help (I could see these two possibly bending the elbow to deal with their personal issues). Lackey should not have been looking at his cell phone a half-hour before a game, and how the hell did that process server get in the clubhouse to serve Bedard? Sox management needs to look at clubhouse security while they're at it.

 

Varitek had two hits in September.

 

Start with punctuation. Once you master that, go on to colors.

 

I hope you're correct — at least about the Cardinals part.

The best series would be Cardinals-Yankees, though. THE National League flagship team against THE MLB team. And Cards in seven.

 

I remember when I was 16, the Cubs won the wild-card in a last-minute binge, and I thought the Cubs' 6-3 regular season performance against Atlanta meant jack crap.

Then again, I remember being 7 and thinking that it was crappy that the Giants got to the WS instead of the Cubs, because the Cubs beat the A's in spring training.

 

Nothing would be good about the Cards making the WS. La Russa is a horrible manager and I hate him.

 

At the risk of reawakening the saber metrics debate, and causing Moddy to reach through his modem and strangle Skip ... The Rangers built their bad-ass offense by doing a lot of things you aren't supposed to be doing according to The New Way. They ranked below average in the league in taking walks, but they also value contact, being the only team in the majors with less than 1,000 strikeouts. They also had a team BA 25 points above the league average. They ranked fourth in stolen bases.

Hit a lot if home runs -- 210, not an excessive amount but good enough for second in the league -- which drove the offense. But obviously Nolan Ryan is going against the grain on this as well as the pitch count theories, to great results the last two years.

 

When did The New Way say you couldn't score runs that way?

The New Way said walks were undervalued and raw hit totals were overvalued. They didn't say hits were worthless.

They were really good at getting hits. 1st in batting average, 3rd in run scoring. Why the two spot drop? Because they were average-ish at some other stuff like taking walks.

The Angels used to fascinate me because they could scrape a lot of value out of baserunning.