Why I Write (and why I don’t)
I've been meaning to write this post for a while now - not just during the two month hiatus, but really ever since I got back to somewhat regularly writing for the blog. I wanted to give an idea as to what brought me back regularly, taking time out of my day (some more than others, thanks to my need to research things that don't need to be researched) to do something that wasn't making me any money, wasn't making me famous, wasn't helping with my job (hell, probably hurting my job more than anything, but not really), and really had no apparent benefit. It's a question you could ask of a lot of bloggers, I'm sure, and they're bound to give you a variety of answers ranging from providing a service, honing their skill, or out of pure enjoyment.
There is that, I guess, but I think most bloggers deep down want what I wanted - an audience.
The Yankee Pitcher Curse – Part 1: The Dawn Of Steinbrenner (1975-1981)
A couple of weeks ago, Jeff Passan implied something that a lot of people have said in the past. He stated that players coming to the Yankees – most notably starting pitchers – generally fail to live up to expectations. I talked about it in an earlier post, but Passan’s point that only “three of 21” pitchers the Yankees have picked up performed better after becoming Yankees was misleading, since veterans (especially “big name” veterans) are acquired to produce at the same level as they performed previously, not better. I talk more about it here, using big words like schadenfreude.
Then I hit baseball-reference.com to see if it was true.
What follows is what I found, broken into several parts so it’s easier to digest. I started at 1975, when the Yanks signed their first free agent, some "Hunter" fellow. I figured I’d base the majority of my comparison using WAR – Wins Above Replacement – to attempt to level out things such as park factors and differences in statistical eras, although ERA+ (a statistic that gauges a player’s earned run average compared to the league average, eliminating park factors) will also be used.
Unintended Consequences
I was looking for some new bedtime story material and TwitterFriend Wendy Thurm (@hangingsliders) suggested I grab something by Dan Gutman. Gutman, who I already knew from his "My Weird School" series, also wrote a series of books based on a kid using baseball cards to go back in time to the era that the card was from and to meet the player who was on the card. Since it was Black History Month, I picked up his Jackie Robinson-related story, "Jackie & Me", not really thinking about the subject matter it could potentially contain, since hey - it's a kid's book.
Gutman doesn't pull punches, though.
The Opus
Last week, Yahoo! Sports writer (and guy I follow on Twitter) Jeff Passan wrote an article on the Yankees offseason pitching acquisitions Michael Pineda and Hiroki Kuroda and the perceived negative odds they faced coming to New York. You see, Passan would like to let us know that, more or less, pitchers generally don't do as well when they come to play for the Yankees.
No other team imports big-talent pitchers with such regularity, with such high hopes, with all of the complications that accompany wearing pinstripes. The failure of outsiders has taken on a mythical status in New York and become something of a self-fulfilling prophecy: If you’re not a Yankee, it’s awfully difficult to come in mid-career and play to their standards.
It's a belief that's going to live on forever. Going back to the days of Ed Whitson (who was the original poster boy for "not being able to handle the spotlight in pinstripes"), fans and sportswriters alike will point the finger to the Yankees free agent and trade failures, just the same as they fall into the trap of "money buys championships". It's an easy target - few teams in sports are as polarizing as the New York Yankees, and pointing out the failures of such a team is bound to sell newspapers, draw website hits, and build off of the natural schadenfreude flowing through any non-Yankee fan.
But is it real?
A Quick Note About Ryan Braun (and not murdering my wife)
I haven't been posting much because I got sucked into a giant post that I'll get into later, maybe finished, maybe not. Anyway, the big news last night/this morning is Ryan Braun's successful appeal of his 50-game drug suspension, a first in Major League Baseball. MLB is pissed, understandably so, because Braun's appeal was successful not because he "proved he was innocent", but because protocol hadn't been followed. Now everyone who had convicted Braun is frustrated because Braun "got off on a technicality", and he's still being convicted in the court of public opinion. People are questioning why Braun wouldn't just fight the appeal to prove that the test was wrong; after all, if he's innocent, wouldn't it come out in the end?
Of course not, and if you did that in a similar scenario, you'd be a fool.
A Few Words About The Kid – Gary Carter
AP Photo/Peter Southwick
I grew up on Long Island, brainwashed early by my mom to be a Yankees fan. As even a little kid, I knew baseball - so much to the point that I can remember my uncle showing me off to friends of his and how I could carry on conversations with them about player movement, team strengths and weaknesses, and overall "bar banter". I can remember an adult asking me what I thought of Reggie Jackson getting traded to the Angels. I corrected him, telling him that Reggie wasn't traded but that he left as a free agent.
Jackson signed with the California Angels in January of 1982. I turned seven the month prior.
Through the 80s, I went though the highs and lows of the Steinbrenner-helmed, Billy Martin-firing machine, always seemingly being one player away
An Idea For MLB: “Spring Teams”
OK - pitchers and catchers have started reporting (at least for the Mariners, who are weird and started a week early), and soon enough it'll be Spring Training in full bloom, with all the stretching and jogging and drills and split-squadding and wacky green jerseys on St. Patrick's Day and all that. Generally, Spring Training isn't that dramatic or interesting - for most teams, almost all of the 25 major league roster slots are full, so it's just a check to make sure that a team's players aren't suddenly 100 pounds heavier, can still play their position, try out a new position, and figure out which guys who are out of options are going to end up taking those last two or three slots on the major league roster, and which ones will end up hitting waivers and potentially end up with another organization. The games aren't all that interesting, with the major players only playing a few innings, pitchers working a specific inning limit or pitch count, so no one's really playing to win or lose, really - it's just a giant scouting exhibition. So why not try something a little different?
[Quick Post] Glee: “The Spanish Teacher”
You know I love to nitpick, but with "Glee", I've learned to accept that those kids live in supermagicland where rival schools have song battles in parking garages and a football team can play a championship game with a roster full of girls and a kid in a wheelchair and somehow keep it close enough for the "regular team" to come out in the second half and win. I've learned to concede that maybe JUST MAYBE a club with a bunch of attractive people, football players, and cheerleaders would still get mocked on a regular basis in high school.
But this just got me.
@MrWorkrate on Twitter
- @happykidlets that's me - human Shazam. 2 hours ago
- A horrible way to lose. Such heartbreak. Wow. 3 hours ago
- Heartbreak. 3 hours ago
- @hangingsliders I'm a stathead - I can't help it. 3 hours ago
- @hangingsliders the Giants are 0-infinity in games in which they did not score. 3 hours ago
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