While most teams who decide to erect statues outside their ballparks choose influential and important ballplayers, the Milwaukee Brewers are going against the grain by erecting a statue to Bud Selig.

That’s right, the Brewers are unveiling a statue of the commissioner before an August 24th home game against the Dodgers.

Said team owner Mark Attanasio:

The Brewers and Miller Park are in this city because of the commissioner’s vision and dedicated efforts.

He later went on to praise the steroid era, the ‘94 strike, the awesome changes to the All-Star game which dictates homefield advantage in the World Series and his general hygiene.

But I can’t stop myself.

I don’t know why I was reading The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette* but they  ran an article this weekend talking about how the Pirates defense next year might not be as good as it was last year because they got rid of Jack Wilson and Adam LaRoche, etc.  He even opens with this:

If the optimistic view about the 2010 Pirates is that there is nowhere to go but up, then this also should be noted: There is nowhere for their defense to go but down.

Unless it finishes No. 1 again.

That was the Pirates’ ranking among all of Major League Baseball last season, despite 99 losses, despite midseason trades of some of their best gloves. The .988 fielding percentage was the best, and the total of 73 errors the lowest.

It’s always funny to see an advocate for a team that lost 99 games last year brag about an aspect of their team.  It’s even funnier when they’re not even correct.

• Of the defensive metrics that consider range, put outs, assists, etc: The Pirates had the 7th best defense in baseball (Mariners and Rays were 1st and 2nd).
• Of the 30 baseball teams, fewer than half of them had fielding percentages below .985, which is only 3 points lower than the Pirates
• Of the 30 baseball teams, 5 had between 73 and 78 errors.  The worst team in the league had 143.
• The Arizona Diamondbacks committed 124 errors last year.  They were the 10th best defensive squad in all of baseball.

The point?  Even when the Pirates receive praise it’s done poorly.

Listen, I know Pittsburgh isn’t really a baseball town anymore because their teams sucks so bad and hasn’t been even sorta good since 1992 when they won their last division but that doesn’t excuse their sports writers from still not realizing that fielding percentage should not be anybody’s primary metric for determining how good a team is at defense.  Nor should errors be the second.  What these two things show is that, of the balls that were hit into play that a Pittsburgh player was able to get to, they made few errors in the act of fielding them.

Consider the Blue Jays and Twins who each  had 76 errors, tying them for second in all of baseball–FPs of .987 and .988.  These teams are two of the worst defensive squads in the league.  The fact they committed so few errors means only that they weren’t fast enough to get to the balls they would have misplayed.  Just imagine, if they were slightly quicker, they could have committed dozens more errors!

Its a goddamn wonder why Derek Jeter has so many Gold Gloves.

*Yes I do.  It’s because Roman sent me a link to something about Bryce Harper which I couldn’t care less about.  There are two types of people in the world: those who get really excited about the MLB draft and those who realize that 99% of draft picks are never going to see a big league game from field level.  I fall into the latter category.

According to inside sources, signing Jon Garland, an inning-eating pitcher who will spend the bulk of this season pitching at the canyon known as Petco Park, was much smarter than spending $10 million on Ben Sheets, an injury prone fastball pitcher who hasn’t thrown more than 120 innings in the past 6 years.

That’s right, spending twice as much money on a 31 year old pitcher who didn’t throw even one inning last year, fresh off surgery on his throwing elbow was not as smart as paying half as much on a workhorse who is all but guaranteed to have better stats this year when he moves to a pitcher’s park.  Oh, and Sheets is also eligible for $2 million more in incentives.

In other news, you want to buy stocks low and sell them high.

p.s. Look at Tim Marchman’s picture.  Is there any part of you that doesn’t want to punch that look off his face?

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 »