There is little doubt that the 2010 Red Sox are going to allow fewer runs this year than in previous years.

This team, on paper, looks outstanding. Upgrading at 3rd base to Adrian Beltre from Mike Lowell and at Short with Marco Scutaro over a group of players that included noted sack of crap Julio Lugo means this team is going to stop a lot more balls from getting through the left side of the infield. Also, giving Kevin Youkilis a (more or less) permanent home at first base means this team will be outstanding all around the diamond. Add to the fact that John Lackey induces a lot of ground balls (as opposed to John Smoltz and Brad Penny who induced a lot of home runs) and this team is set to hold a lot of teams below their season average in runs scored.

But this positive news doesn’t sit well with some members of the Red Sox.

“It’s a way to put something negative on this team, to say that we won’t score that many runs,” first baseman Kevin Youkilis says. Adds second baseman Dustin Pedroia, “No one here listens to that stuff. We’re baseball players. That’s for the computer guys up in the scorebooth who care about that. They say that because those guys are some of the best at their position defensively, so that’s the first thing that comes to mind.”

Let’s take a minute to analyze Dustin Pedroia’s quote:

No one here listens to that stuff.

Read the rest of this entry »

Boom…link.

Welcome to the easiest FJM-style in the history of this website.

Tiger Woods’ apology made one of his mistresses want to bare her claws, the New York Post reported Saturday.

Ooo…you sir, are a literary ARITST.  Rawr.

Busty Playboy model Loredana Jolie Ferriolo, known as Woods’ mistress No. 10, wondered why the golf great’s long-winded statement seemed to have an apology for everyone in the universe but her and the other “other women” in his life.

Because you’re a skank and had CONSENSUAL sex with A KNOWN MARRIED MAN.  How is that deserving of an apology?  You ruined this guy’s life by telling people about your affair…what apology could you possibly deserve?

“He didn’t mention anything about the girls (he had trysts with),” the Sicilian-born model told the Post after watching his press conference.

/wopwopwopwopwopwopwop

“It seems like he was just brushing it off and not getting into it. I think he should’ve mentioned something in regards to the girls, an apology or something.”

Let me get this straight…you had sex with a man you knew was married and you’re upset that he had other women around?  And you take your clothes off for a living?  Am I the only one here who thinks this is story is absolutely batshit crazy? Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

Imagine that Major League Baseball instituted a new rule for the postseason. Only the home team may use signals to put on plays, such as from the third-base coach or dugout. What about the road team? Too bad. Just chalk it up to home-field advantage.

Preposterous? Of course it is, but the equivalent of such competitive disparity is not just on display in the NFL, but it is also celebrated. Domed stadiums, especially the effect of crowd noise, is changing how football is played and the equitability of its competition.

Preposterous?  Of course it is!  Which is why you shouldn’t have written this article…but I’ll let you go on. Read the rest of this entry »

Alternately titled: Thank God that thing that only a few stupid people were worried would happen didn’t happen!

It’s been awhile since I’ve gotten a look at a good strawman argument so forgive me if I sound giddy as I play with this one for awhile.  Sky Andrecheck who appears to be the newest, most Eastern European writer for SI is happy that baseball didn’t turn into an even more slowed down version of itself filled with walks and high OBP in the wake of the publication of Moneyball.  Take it away Sky!

By scooping up undervalued players on the cheap, Oakland was able to compete with the big-market clubs despite suffering major monetary disadvantages. The centerpiece of Beane’s strategy, of course, was its emphasis on on-base percentage and drawing walks. Beane was willing to accumulate slower, poor-fielding, unimpressive looking players that other teams had discarded as long as they could get on base. Drawing walks wasn’t pretty, but it won ball games, making Oakland one of the premier AL teams during the first decade of the 21st century.

But this was precisely what worried many traditionalist fans and commentators. After all, if every team started playing Moneyball, wouldn’t the game essentially turn into a slow-pitch softball league, filled with nonathletic, one-dimensional fat guys who took pitch after pitch? While everybody loves to win, nobody loves walks. Watching 10-pitch at-bat after 10-pitch a-bat end without action isn’t anybody’s idea of a good time. Traditionalists wondered, if all teams adopted Beane’s thinking, emphasizing patience and drawing walks, wouldn’t the game’s aesthetic appeal be ruined?

Ladies and gentlemen have a new leader for dumbest sentence written this year.  Let’s read it again shall we: “After all, if every team started playing Moneyball, wouldn’t the game essentially turn into a slow-pitch softball league, filled with nonathletic, one-dimensional fat guys who took pitch after pitch?”  Yes, if every team started playing Moneyball how would guys like Albert Pujols, Alex Rodriguez or Joe Mauer find work with guys like Matt Stairs and Scott Hatteberg stealing all the sweet jobs!?!?!? Read the rest of this entry »

If you haven’t read Bill Simmons’ latest column you’re in for a real treat because today we’re going to play a new game. It’s called, try to guess what Bill Simmons is going to write about this week. Here, we’ll make it easy for, we’ll give you the first 3 paragraphs of his column before you have to guess. Ready? Take it away Bill. Read the rest of this entry »

Link.

Favre has many of the statistical records because of his longevity as a starting quarterback. No one beats him for durability.

Obviously, Favre beats Elway for stats. As great as Elway’s arm was, he had a 57 percent career pass-completion percentage. Favre has 62 percent career accuracy playing primarily in a West Coast offense. Favre is also a three-time league MVP. Elway has the edge on Favre for playoff victories (14 to 13), but getting that second Super Bowl ring would put Favre ahead of Elway.

What’s that you say?  Favre had a higher completion percentage because he played in the West Coast offense?  A philosophy that relies on SHORT, HIGH COMPLETION passes as extended runs?  AND Favre has better stats because he’s played longer?  Might as well throw these two in the “no shit” pile. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the 4th best picture I've ever taken on Wednesdays when it rains!

In our never ending quest to quantify every last aspect of baseball imaginable, Tom Verducci has determined which teams have gotten the most bang for their buck in terms of wins, championships, and smugness.  He starts by taking us through cost per win which has the Yankees as the clear loser spending $1.75 million per win as opposed to the Florida Marlins who spent a mere $430,000.  But of course how can we place a monetary value on a win?  After all the goal of playing the game is to win and the goal of winning is to collect as many bandwagon fans as possible (especially in Austin, TX) so that you can sell more merchandise.  And the goal of selling more merchandise is to make every other fan in the rest of the world hate your team.  And the goal of team hatred is…something to do with bankrupting Third World countries. I think.  We’ll get that finalized later.

So after we figure out how much each team spends per win, we offset that by determining what these teams have achieved with those wins.  Did they win a WS, make the playoffs or win a pennant?  Well then they get achievement points!  Subtract achievement points from cost per win and you get Efficiency Rating (ER!!!!).  The smaller the number the better your team is at wisely spending money.

And the winner of the Efficiency Rating Contest of Baseball Awesome? Read the rest of this entry »

HURRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Where to begin?  Where to fucking begin?  For starters, I think Bert Blyleven belongs in the Hall of Fame.  As for Edgar Martinez, I don’t feel strongly about it either way.  But none of that is important.  Let’s find some common ground to start off with.

How about this: even people who think neither Bert Blyleven nor Edgar Martinez belong in the Hall of Fame can at least agree with me that Jon Heyman, in all his incredible famousness, has concocted the stupidest and most inane rationale for voting on the Hall of Fame in the history of baseball awards voting.

I consider impact more than stats. I like dominance over durability. I prefer players who were great at some point to the ones who were merely very good for a very long time. And I do recall it’s called the Hall of Fame, not the Hall of Numbers.

Heyman has obviously studied long and hard at the Colin Cowherd School of Stupid Aphorisms where he majored in Inanity with a minor in Increasing PageViews by stating poorly thought out nonsense. He’s due for his Master’s next week where his thesis argues the finer points of selling one’s soul to the corporate devil for a bigger paycheck and even less self-respect.

It feels good to get that out of my system.

For the record, only the most idiotic sabremetric assholes that even I despise think that you can look at a player’s numbers without ever having watched him play and determine whether or not he was any good. Secondly, numbers are not what are being voted upon. Numbers are merely a reflection of a player’s accomplishments on the field. And in baseball, as opposed to football, the numbers are respected, revered, honored, [synonym for honored], [synonym for revered], and [synonym for respected], not to mention respected! Striking out 300 batters in a single year is no small feat. Do I need to watch each one in order to appreciate to its fullest value? It might help, but just knowing that it happened is fucking impressive.

Secondly, Heyman’s contention that durability is almost a baseball crime because it leads to athletes becoming nothing more than numbers compilers, guys who stick around to pad their numbers for the sake of getting recognition, is absolute garbage.  I’m guessing Heyman hates these guys because he’s unable to recognize the difference between a counting stat and a rate stat and is sick and goddamn tired of getting tricked by all those worthless assholes who quit right after they get to 300 wins or 3000 hits or 500 HRs.  What a bunch of assholes who would, after getting so close during the course of their career, hang on for one more season to cross an historical plateau.  I’m looking at you, Randy Johnson, who should have retired 3 years ago but held on despite injury and growing mediocrity to collect that 300th win even if it meant going to the San Francisco Giants to get it.  Randy Johnson, asshole stat compiler.

But for those of us who are smarter than Jon Heyman, and there are many of us*, we know about stats like OPS+ that measure how dominant a hitter was relative to everyone else each year.  We’re smart enough to realize that looking at this stat provides us with the insight we need to compare a player’s “dominance.”  We might even suggest that a player with a career (!) OPS+ of 147 is the very definition of dominant as he was almost 50% better than the average hitter for the entirety of his career.  That’s dominant right?

While Martinez was a superb hitter, and his career .418 on-base percentage and .515 slugging percentages are impressive indeed, only twice did Martinez even crack the top 10 in MVP voting (he was third once and sixth once). That suggests something less than dominance. And even on his career totals, he comes up short. His final power figures (309 home runs, 1,261 RBIs) are underwhelming for someone whose whole candidacy is based on offense.

Let’s point to one of the times Edgar Martinez cracked the MVP voting. In 1995 Edgar Martinez came in 3rd place behind Mo Vaughn and Albert Belle. Shall we look at the numbers for that year?

Player A: 546 ABs, .317/.401/.690/1.091, 50 HRs, 126 RBI, 5 SB
Player B: 550 ABs, .300/.388/.575/.963, 39 HRs, 126 RBI, 11 SB
Player C: 511 ABs, .356/.479/.628/1.107, 29 HRs, 113 RBI, 4 SB Read the rest of this entry »

Considering that the world of sports is populated by poorly educated athletes and the people who apologize for them, it isn’t surprising that we read a lot of poorly thought out cliches every week on the newstand. It is also not surprising, then, that Dan Shaughnessy has a job.

There are two cliches that get tossed around as if they’re an argument ender that drive me especially crazy. The first is, “I thought this was America and we had the right to free speech!” or some such variation. This one is usually said after an athlete or other idiot says something offensive and he gets roasted in the press and everyone asks him to apologize. Usually it’s something like, “I hate New York and the Subway. It’s filled with people who have AIDS and crack whores and whatnot.” After the offending comment, people band together to protest his stupid ass and even talk about boycotting games. Afterwards his attorney or friend or a nationally syndicated columnist comes out and says, “For shame, Americans! It is my client/friend/athlete’s right to make fun of AIDS patients. You should be praising him for saying something so vile and offensive because it’s an unpopular opinion.”

The reason this is stupid, of course, is that Free Speech rights are a two-way street. The people responding to his comments are also exercising their first amendment rights of free speech by calling that athlete ignorant. They’re exercising their right to assemble by protesting and boycotting. They’re just as worthy of praise as the retarded athlete.

The other stupid cliche that drives me nuts: Baseball is a business so we shouldn’t get mad when an athlete leaves a good thing for ridiculous amounts of money. Cue Dan Shaughnessy to take the stupid side of the argument. Read the rest of this entry »