Game 93: The Royal Scam

Tonight, the Yankees welcome the Royals to the Bronx for the first of a four game set. Luckily, Zack Greinke faced the Blue Jays last night (allowing two runs over 8 innings) and the Yanks will miraculously dodge him this time around.

CC Sabathia will take the mound for the Bombers this evening, a welcome relief after the bullpen has had to soak up 21 2/3 innings in the past three games because of Andy Pettitte's injury, A.J. Burnett's temper and Phil Hughes and Javier Vazquez's collective inability to get an out in the sixth inning.

The Big Fella draws consummate journeyman Bruce Chen (10 teams in 12 MLB seasons) tonight, who has the next lowest ERA in the Royals' starting rotation behind their young ace and is the only one who has a winning record (5-3).

Chen is walking a batter almost every other frame so far this season and striking out just over seven batters per nine innings. However, he has managed to keep his ERA and FIP down by allowing just six homers in 57.2 IP (0.94/9IP) due to a home run to fly ball ratio (7.1%) which is just about half of his career mark (14.1%).

Unless Chen has discovered some sort of magical formula for keeping the ball in the park, he is due to give up a few longballs. Fortunately for him, Chen is a lefthander, but maybe the Yankees can aid him regression to the mean tonight anyway.

And they wandered in,
From the city of St. John,
Without a dime,
Wearing coats that shined.
Both red and green,
Colors from their sunny island,
From their boats of iron,
They looked upon the promised land.
Where surely life was sweet,
On the rising tide,
To New York City,
Did they ride into the street.

See the glory,
Of the royal scam.

-Lineup(s)-

Yankees: Marcus Thames is DH'ing against the lefty as Jorge Posada returns behind the plate.

Derek Jeter SS
Nick Swisher RF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Robinson Cano 2B
Jorge Posada C
Marcus Thames DH
Curtis Granderson CF
Brett Gardner LF

Youk Zee Ahh

Via Pinto, it appears that Mr. Youkilis knows about the new frontier of defensive statistics:

Kevin Youkilis this morning when talking about the brave new world of defensive stats: "My UZR better be sick!"

"Ahh you fackin' kiddin me? It's wicked haahd to get a ball past the Youkstah!"

I think we might be dealing with a sort of Zack Grienke situation here, wherein a player knows about a stat and what it measures but doesn't really understand the metric. And for the most part, it really doesn't matter. Youk understanding the components Ultimate Zone Rating isn't going to make him a better defender. He already knows that he should try to get to every ball he possibly can. UZR isn't the type of metric that's going to lead to a strategic epiphany. It's just the best method we have for quantifying a very complex process in motion.

One small nitpick from Pinto's post. He says:

Kevin is in fact a very good fielder, much better at first than at third.

Actually, his UZR is slightly higher in his time at 3B. Granted he's logged more than twice as many innings at 1B, but he hasn't been "much better at first", despite the fact that conventional wisdom would suggest a player would perform more effectively at the "easier" defensive position.

Counterpoint: Who Cares?

In the six months I've been writing here, rarely have Jay and I disagreed on any major points. We disagreed about a hypothetical recall of Austin Jackson in the wake of a potential Melky Cabrera injury, and we differ as to how the Yankees should approach Hideki Matsui this off-season. But in instances like these, I think we both can understand, if not agree with, the other viewpoint.

Today though, I think we may have an instance of us being distinctly on opposite sides of the coin. This morning, Jay parsed the AL MVP results and had some valid criticisms of the order of finish as well as some of the more obscure individual votes. Moshe Mandel at The Yankee Universe had something similar yesterday, and I've seen traces of the same sentiment elsewhere in the blogosphere. To which I say: who cares?

Perhaps this is hypocritical of me. Just last week I put up a post here essentially criticizing the "stats based community" for not calling out Tyler Kepner, Zack Greinke, and Brian Bannister for their misuse and misunderstanding of advanced metrics in the wake of Greinke's Cy Young Award victory. Though perhaps I didn't make the point as clearly as I wanted, my issue wasn't so much with the misuse and misunderstanding as it was that everyone was so happy that Greinke both won and acknowledged FIP in the process, that they withheld the usual cantankerousness and I'm-smarter-than-you responses that normally follow such a slip up. Now, when the reaction is a bit truer to character, once again it's me who's complaining about the complaining, just as last week I complained about the lack of complaining.

That said, I still think this is really, really unnecessary. Yes, by any worthy metric Derek Jeter was more valuable than Mark Teixeira. Yes, Ben Zobrist probably finished much lower than he deserved. Yes, there were several players who received individual votes that were higher than they deserved or not deserved at all. Yes, I'm surprised/disappointed that Jason Bartlett didn't receive a single vote. Yes, a first place vote for Miguel Cabrera is so patently stupid that it's probably a waste of energy to even explain why.

But still, do we really need to break down all the grave injustices that happened behind Joe Mauer's cavernous margin of victory? Should we even care what happened beyond Mauer taking the hardware? Isn't the whole point to get the winner right, not whoever comes after him? Don't we often preach about sample size, and isn't the point of casting 28 ballots with 10 slots each for a pool of over 400 players that the "most valuable" player will rise to the top? Sure there will be some oddball votes in there, but the right guy won, and he came within one vote and five points of doing so unanimously. Does any of the rest matter?

Please don't take for me anti-statistic. If you read here with any degree of regularity during the season you know that I often sigthed OPS+, wOBA, UZR, WAR, FIP, etc. That isn't the point. The point is how much is enough? We've seen the deservedly-maligned BBWAA get all four major awards "right", and three of the votes weren't particularly close. In doing so they've eschewed traditional biases that would have favored less deserving candidates in years past. Shouldn't this be enough to keep us content for now? Remember, this round of off-season awards represents the Battle of Saratoga, not the Treaty of Paris.

At their core, the MVP, the Cy Young Award, and even the Hall of Fame for that matter are subjective, loosely-defined awards that have little value beyond whatever worth we assign to them. I have a hard time understanding the utter outrage year after year as the awards season comes and goes. While we'd all like to believe that "objective journalists" are the stewards of these institutions, the fact of the matter is we're not talking about Edward R. Murrow or Walter Kronkite here. These are sportswriters. And while many may still exhibit signs of homerism or may be hopelessly clinging to archaic and ineffective means of measuring performance, I still think they're in a much better state today than they were in the days of Grantland Rice, or Ford C. Frick, or Jimmy Cannon. We're not seeing even the likes of Barry Bonds getting jobbed out of a deserved MVP because he's an asshole to the writers. Ask Ted Williams' frozen detached skull what he thinks about that.

So, with a plethora of better methods to assess value at our disposal, why do we even care who wins these things anymore, let alone who finishes second through tenth? If we want to know who is truly valuable, then why not just pull up the WAR leaderboard, or whichever future metric proves to be the most accurate means of assessing performance? Why do we care which pitcher is given an award named after the all-time wins leader, when we know wins are a misleading indicator of true performance, and we know that Cy Young was an inferior pitcher when compared to contemporaries like Christy Mathewson and Walter Johnson? Do we even need the BBWAA to give the awards to the "right" players to validate what the metrics have already told us?

As Joe at RAB pointed out in the wake of the Cy Young voting, this isn't a culture war anymore. This is the true state of baseball these days, and it's an amalgamation of what were once two distinct schools of thought. As much as some seem to define themselves by it, this is no longer us vs. them, Moneyball vs. old-school, stats vs. scouts, RBI vs. WAR. The game - or more specifically how we look at the game - has changed, is changing, will continue to change, and will do so across the board. It's no longer just Bill James, a few forward thinking executives, a handful of enlightened websites. It's widespread; it's prevalent.

Few if any of GMs are traditional "baseball men"; nearly all have a business background in addition to their baseball experience. Every front office has some sort of statistical analysis taking place. Bill James, Voros McCracken, Tom Tango and others were or are employed by, or are consultants to, Major League clubs. David Cone's routinely referencing Fangraphs on Yankee telecasts. Keith Law, Will Carroll, and other Baseball Prospectus folks were given votes in the post-season awards process. High-profile national sportswriters like Rob Neyer and Joe Posnanski are at the forefront of the "statistical revolution", and if their work wasn't enough to force their colleagues to learn about advanced metrics it was at least enough to create a palpable buzz about the truly worthy candidates.

The times they are a changing folks. And while we might not yet be living in a sabermetric utopia, we've seen great strides made this past week. As we approach Thanksgiving and presumably stop to reflect upon what we are thankful for, shouldn't we at least be satisfied, if not grateful, that the most deserving candidates won both MVPs and both Cy Young Awards rather than griping about the idiot who voted Jason Kubel seventh? I think we should; what about you?

WHIP, FIP & The WAR Against Wins

Good morning, Fackers. In the wake of the senior circuit Cy Young, like the AL version, being awarded to a pitcher not on the basis of his won-lost record but on the quality and number of his innings pitched, we're again going to disagree with the well-respected Tyler Kepner.

As Matt pointed out on Wednesday, Kepner noted that Zack Greinke acknowledged FIP in his post-award conference call but was grasping at straws in an attempt to frame the knowledge of advanced statistics as a key component in Greinke's success. Last night, Kepner tried to connect what was said by Greinke (or more accurately, Brian Bannister) with Tim Lincecum's explanation of his approach and made the same conflation:

Obviously, there is no substitute for pure talent. But in Greinke, Bannister’s teammate, we are seeing what can happen when off-the-charts talent meets sophisticated understanding of numbers.

The same is true of Lincecum, to a degree. His stuff is filthy, but he said he was mainly concerned with how many walks-plus-hits he allows per inning – which was curious, in a way, because Dan Haren, Chris Carpenter and Javier Vazquez all had a better WHIP than Lincecum in the N.L. this season.

First, Lincecum's WHIP was a minuscule 1.05. Haren, Carpenter, and Vasquez? 1.00, 1.01, 1.03. That's a difference of one batter for every 20, 25 and 50 innings, respectively, which Lincecum easily erases with his superior strikeout ratio.

But more importantly, what if Lincecum had simply said that he was trying his best not to allow batters to reach base? It would have been dismissed as a typical cliche. On the offensive side of the ball, we frequently hear batters saying that they were "just trying to get on base" which is just a different way of saying that they were trying to improve their on base percentage.

In most cases, the goals in baseball are pretty obvious. If you are a batter, don't use up outs. If you are a pitcher, try to keep men off the basepaths, preferably via strikeout. There is still some wiggle room regarding the value of sacrifice hits and bunting, but there isn't a whole lot advanced statistics can teach players. Knowing about UZR isn't going to make someone a better defender. They already know they should be trying to field as many balls, as far away from them as possible.

The main function of the more advanced metrics that are steadily gaining in popularity such as WAR, wOBA, VORP, WPA, RE24, UZR, and FRAA is that they allow observers to more accurately compare players to one another. While players citing FIP and WHIP can only increase their popularity, which is certainly a positive thing, understanding them doesn't provide much in terms of strategical, on-field edge.

The real story emerging from the 2009 Cy Young voting is that the voters have begun to value better statistics and in turn, more objective analysis. Which is to say, they're not blindly picking the pitcher who had the most wins.

Kepner demonstrates this by comparing this year's voting to win-skewed results 1990 and 1998 (both of which illustrate the writer's old reliance on wins), but Dave Cameron over at FanGraphs sums it up best:

Congratulations to the members of the BBWAA, who have been willing to adapt as the game changes. They deserve recognition for being willing to accept the shift towards better analytical methods. And getting away from wins as a measure of the value of a pitcher is a big first step.

Of course, Adam Wainwright who left his last game of the season with a 6-1 lead in line for his 20th win still received the most first place votes in the NL. He only finished 10 points behind Lincecum, so maybe if his bullpen had held up, the aftermath of these awards would be slightly less celebratory.

Both Matt and I have taken turns raining on this parade, but I think it's likely that in hindsight, 2009 will be cited as the year that Advanced Stats won the war against Conventional Wisdom. However, I'm more inclined to think that this was the Battle of Saratoga. And considering Bill James penned the hardball version of the Declaration of Independence over 30 years ago, it's probably going to a while before we see any sort of Treaty of Paris.

Does Zack Greinke Really Understand FIP?

Yesterday was a banner day for those who value advanced baseball statistics. Zack Greinke rightly won the American League Cy Young Award, and did so in convincing fashion, sparing us all a host of indignant rants about how the voters got it all wrong again for an award that the stats community clearly states doesn't matter anyway (see Gold Gloves and Rookie of the Year).

But whatever joy statheads derived from Greinke's victory pales in comparison to the giddyness and the sense of vindication that's spreading from a Greinke quote in this NYT piece from Tyler Kepner, emphasis mine:

“But I’m also a follower, since Brian Bannister’s on our team, of sabermetric stuff and going into details of stats about what you can control.”

Bannister, a right-handed starter, is known for his appreciation of modern pitching metrics, which emphasize the factors for which pitchers are essentially responsible: walks, strikeouts, home runs and hit batters. In Greinke, he found a like mind.

“He’s extremely bright, and he’s really picked up on using all the information out there to make his game better,” Bannister said by telephone. “He’s always had the talent. His confidence level, which is extremely high, combined with his knowledge of the numbers behind the game now, definitely makes him one of the best pitchers in the world.”

Bannister said Greinke has learned to adjust his pitching based on the advanced defensive statistics. Because of the size of the outfield at Kauffman Stadium and the strength of the Royals’ outfielders, relative to their infielders, it sometimes made more sense to induce fly balls.

“David DeJesus had our best zone rating,” Bannister said, referring to the Royals’ left fielder. “So a lot of times, Zack would pitch for a fly ball at our park instead of a ground ball, just because the zone rating was better in our outfield and it was a big park.”

To that end, Bannister introduced Greinke to FIP, or Fielding Independent Pitching, the statistic Greinke named Tuesday as his favorite. It is a formula that measures how well a pitcher performed, regardless of his fielders. According to fangraphs.com, Greinke had the best FIP in the majors.

“That’s pretty much how I pitch, to try to keep my FIP as low as possible,” Greinke said.

I've referenced FIP many times here over the course of the year. I think it's a telling, if imperfect, statistic that gives better insight into a pitcher's performance than traditional metrics like ERA. I'm glad that at least some players are aware of these new metrics, and not at all surprised that one of Bannister's teammates would be amongst those to pick up on them. That said, I think the items I highlighted are absolute hogwash, and fly in the face of what FIP is supposed to represent in the first place.

First of all, for Bannister to credit Greinke's knowledge of advanced metrics as an element of his success is misleading at best, dead wrong at worst. Greinke is successful because he's a tremendously talented pitcher who strikes out a ton of batters, doesn't walk very many, keeps the ball in the park, and strands a higher than usual percentage of baserunners on base. Whether or not he's cognizant of the value of these attributes is inconsequential. You or I or any number of other baseball loving Americans know that these factors are key to a pitcher's success, but without Zack Greinke's arsenal of pitches, that knowledge isn't going to turn any of us into a Major League pitcher, much a less a Cy Young Award winner.

The rest of it demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of what FIP is. It's Fielding Independent Pitching. As such, balls in play - line drives, groundballs, flyballs, whatever - have absolutely no impact on a pitcher's FIP. And while it might behoove a pitcher to pitch for flyballs if his team's outfield defense is superior to his team's infield defense, attempting to do so demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding of how FIP works. No matter how bad of a shortstop Yuniesky Bettancourt is, 0% of groundballs result in home runs while approximately 8% of flyballs do. And since FIP values HRs four and a third times as much as BBs and six and a half times as much as Ks, allowing just one HR has a momentous impact upon a pitcher's FIP. Greinke's infield defense could give up basehits on a dozen seeing-eye singles a game; it won't make a bit of difference as far as FIP is concerned. But no matter how great David DeJesus's zone rating is, it doesn't extend any further than an arm's length beyond the left field fence. A single flyball extending an inch beyond that range has a major effect on Greinke's FIP.

Of course, of all that is predicated upon the assumption that a pitcher actually has control over the type of contact made against him. This is not a universally accepted principle in the stats community. In fact, the assumption that a pitcher has no control over such things is often cited as the reason that the vast majority of pitchers, irrespective of talent level, will finish the season with a BABIP against that's within 10 points or so of the league average. Any pitcher who doesn't is considered a statistical outlier rather than some sort of pitching prodigy capable of inducing favorable balls in play. That said, even if Greinke could actively select what type of contact is made against him, shifting groundballs to flyballs would have a favorable impact on his expected BABIP against, since groundballs generally result in hits more often than flyballs, but as described above, would actually have a negative impact on his FIP - which Greinke states he is actively trying to minimize.

Which brings me to last my last gripe. Whether Greinke knows what FIP is or not, isn't trying to keep it as low as possible the whole point of pitching? I mean, unless he's on the hill intentionally handing out HRs, or refusing to strike batters out, or continually plunking batters and issuing unintentional intentional walks, every pitcher - Greinke, Bannister, or the less enlightened - is attempting to keep his FIP as low as possible, consciously or not.

Don't get me wrong. Zack Greinke is a most deserving Cy Young Award winner, and I think it's a good thing that he and Bannister and others are embracing some of the more forward thinking ways of evaluating the game. But, I think Kepner's piece jumps to some conclusions that aren't quite evident. Performance is still predicated on talent level. Advanced metrics like FIP and zone rating are intended to illuminate quality performance in a better manner than their more archaic and generally accepted counterparts (ERA, fielding percentage). Greinke's awareness of these metrics doesn't make him any better, it just makes him smarter. And yet The Times article paints his knowledge as a hidden secret to his success despite the fact that many of the statements are in fact contrary to what the metrics are intending to measure. I wish more in the stats community would take a minute to look at that, rather than simply being happy their work was being acknowledged by the best pitcher in the game.

Game 161: Over The Hills And Far Away

Down at Tropicana Field, Andy Pettitte will get his final tune up for the postseason. Jorge Posada is catching today, and since tomorrow is a day game after a night game, Jose Molina will be behind the dish for A.J. Burnett once again. Joe from RAB brought up the possibility eariler today and Steve at The Yankee Universe looked a little deeper into the topic. Surely some people will object to taking Jorge out of the line up but he and Burnett don't seem to be on the same page very often. It's one game, and a potential bad outing out of Burnett is going to do a lot more to hurt the Yanks' chances than a good night for Posada at the plate, not to mention the advantage Molina has in controlling the running game.

Jeff Neimann goes for the Rays tonight. He was dominant against the Yankees last time he faced them, going 7 innings and allowing one run while striking out 8 and walking only one batter. He'll be up against a softer Yankees lineup this time, though. Derek Jeter and A-Rod get the night off while Jerry Hairston and Eric Hinske take their places. Brett Gardner will man CF as Melky will start the night on the bench.

Perhaps more interesting than what goes on with the Yankees, however, are the outcomes of the Twins and Tigers games taking place up around Lake Michgan.

The Twins started at 4 and are currently leading the Royals 4-1. Nick Blackburn to his credit has pitched awfully well against Zack Greinke, who had held the Twins scoreless until Joe Mauer singled across a run with two outs in the 6th. Delmon Young then hit a bases-clearing double to put the Twins up by 4. Mike Jacobs then countered with a HR for the Royals. [Update 6:15: Alex Gordon just hit a 2 run shot to make it 4-3] [6:23: The game is tied at 4 as the Royals score another run on a double play] [6:30: Cuddyer jacks one to put the Twins back on top 5-4] [Update 6:44: Joe Nathan shuts it down, Twins win.]

Freddy Garcia goes for the White Sox against Alfredo Figaro and the Tigers in a 7:00 start in Detriot. If the Twins hang on to win, the AL Central will still be undetermined going into the last day of the season. That would mean that Justin Verlander will have to start tomorrow, pushing his start in the ALDS back to Game 2. Unless of course the Twins come all the way back to tie the division, we could be on our way to the crazy play-in game scenario that Matt brought up on Wednesday.

There are still some pieces of the playoff picture yet to fall into place but they aren't going to be determined down in Tampa Bay.

Many is a word that only leaves you guessin',
Guessin' 'bout a thing you really ought to know.
You really ought to know.
I really ought to know.

Dodging Zack Greinke

When I saw that Kansas City's ace and lone star player had pitched a nice game against the Red Sox last week (contrary to the observations of Jim Rice), I figured that the Yanks would be running into him as well when the Royals came to town this week.

Up until that point, one of the very few remaining arguments against Zack Greinke's right to the AL Cy Young was the fact that he hadn't faced the Yankees or Red Sox this season. Needless to say, this is a pretty weak point both because pitcher's can't control their own schedule and if you wanted to complain about a lack of competition, you might want to start by noting that he pitches in the AL Central.

The reason that the Yankees didn't see him the first time around this year goes back to the fact that Gil Meche was tagged as the opening day starter for the Royals. This was due in part because he had that designation ever since being signed to a 5 year, $55M deal before the beginning of the 2007 season, but we can be sure it won't be the case next year, barring some unforeseen circumstances. Greinke was the Royals best pitcher last year too, but not by all that much, and as such was ticketed to start the second game of the season. As a result, when the Yankees came to town for the 4th through 6th games of the season, they missed the Zack Attack who pitched in the 2nd and 7th.

[Sidenote: The Yankees actually drafted Zack's younger brother Luke in the 12th round out of Auburn University last June. The lesser Greinke started 9 games for the Staten Island Yanks to a 4.01 ERA in 33 1/3 IP but was released out of Spring Training this year, before he could be assigned to a higher level of the minor leagues.]

As fate would have it, however, Zack Greinke shut down the Twins over 7 innings on Sunday night, temporarily derailing their charge for the AL Central title, and will once again miss the Yankees. This would be a welcome reprieve during the regular season, one that the Yankees never seem to get from the likes of Roy Halladay. However, with nothing left to be determined but how many games over 100 the Yankees can win and who gets the last few spots on the postseason roster, it would have been nice to see Greinke make a start which could potentially tip which way the Cy Young voting goes.

As Joe Posnanski has seemingly taken it upon himself to prove, Greinke is having a historically great season. He currently leads the league with an absurd 2.06 ERA (213 ERA+) and 1.066 WHIP, and has struck out 237 and walked just 49 in 223 1/3 IP. He's gone fewer than six innings only four times all year, and in two of those outings, he didn't allow any runs. His six complete games are second only to Roy Halladay's 8 and both of them have 3 shutouts to their name. Basically, the only reason he hasn't won 20 games yet is because the Royals are historically inept offensively.

As Jason pointed out this morning, Greinke's ERA in his losses is just about equal to CC Sabathia's overall mark. Were he having the same type of season for the Yankees, he'd likely be headed for 25+ wins. If he doesn't get the Cy Young it will rank alongside choosing Bartolo Colon over Johan Santana - and to a lesser extent, Mariano Rivera - in 2005 in terms of recent egregious snubs.

It's too bad we won't be able to see him first hand against the Yankees.

"That's Dustin Pedroia Hitting!"

By now you have probably heard about the comments Jim Rice made about Zack Greinke sometime yesterday (which have since been pulled down). I believe the Chirs Littman from The Sporting Blog may have been the first on the case, Baseball Think Factory picked up Littman's post, Joe Posnanski threatened to write 20,000 words on the comments (and inadvertently crashed the site), Bob Harkins from Circling the Bases took Rice to task, I linked to them in our off night post, and Posnanski did write something about it, just not the aforementioned 20,000 word retort.

What is boils down to was that Rice said Greinke had "sporadic command", "didn't impress" him and "didn't seem dominant." Since Greinke is having an all-time great season in terms of ERA+, he had been drawing statistical comparisons to all-time great pitchers. Rice was having none of this, saying, instead of a prime Pedro Martinez, Roger Clemens, or Johan Santana, Greinke reminded him of a "righthanded Roger Moret".

You all remember ol' Rog', don't ya? He was the lanky left hander who spent parts of six seasons with the Red Sox starting in 1970. You know, the swing man with a career K/BB ratio of 1.20, who pitched over 100 innings in a season a whopping three times in his career and was out of baseball at age 28.

Anyway, the point of this post isn't to point out how stupid it is to judge a pitcher's dominance based on one start because JoePos already did that better than I possibly could. Once in a while Joba Chamberlain conjures up images of a young Roger Clemens and but other times you see Sidney Ponson. That's the nature of starting pitching. A 3.00 ERA equates to 2 runs over six innings. The trick is being effective over the long run.

The real reason I wrote this post is because even though I had already read what Rice wrote, I went back and clicked on the "Ask 14" website that the post originally came from. It was back up this morning and, just in time for the final regular season installment of the Red Sox and Yankees, I struck gold two posts down.

Okay, let's go over the assumptions you're asked to make while watching this commercial:

1. Dustin Pedroia works for a 6 year old girl. At a minor league baseball stadium.
   
   
2. Pedroia is totally cool with this arrangement.
   
   
3. On this particular day, she orders him to jump on a trampoline which appears to be situated down the first baseline of the field.
   

Now, for the action sequence!

• If you watch closely, Pedroia appears to materialize magically on the trampoline, an effect which, amazingly, someone had to specifically request and another person had to actually do, but serves absolutely no purpose in the context of the commercial other than to make it even less realistic.
  
  
• At first, no one is watching Dusty jumping around on said trampoline, but then right in the middle of one of his front flips (which almost certainly violate the terms of his contract) other people suddenly materialize, including other children and several adults.
  
  
• After the flips, someone in the crowd tosses him a glove and cheer wildly as he... wait for it... CATCHES THE BALL WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY JUMPING ON A TRAMPOLINE. IMPOSSIBLE!
  
  
• And for his final trick/task for his six year old boss, lil' Dusty shows off his hitting prowess by making contact with a ball on a trampoline, which we are then lead to believe has left the park for a home run, and how conveniently, directly over a Sullivan Tire sign.

Sullivan Ti-ah Guy: That's Hall of Fame hitting!

Jim Rice: That's Dustin Pedroia hitting!

Sullivan Ti-ah Guy: When you-ah great at what you do, you can perfo-ahm well und-ah any cirah-cumstances! Thaht's what we've been doing fwah ovah fifty yeahs at Sullivan Ti-ah!

The funny part about this is how obviously contrived the connection they are trying to make is:

Dustin Pedroia is on a trampoline > Hitting baseballs on a trampoline takes a lot of skill > Getting into the Hall of Fame also takes a lot of skill > Jim Rice is in the Hall of Fame > Sullivan Tires can perform (sell tires?) "und-ah any cirah-cumstances!"

What are these circumstances? If there is a robbery taking place in the store, can you still mount and balance my new Michelins? If the location is flooded, will they still fix my flat?

Wow. Even if you leave all the other ridiculous shit the way it is, the Sullivan guy could just tell you that they sell tires that perform under any circumstances (snow tires, all-weather, racing, etc.) not they Sullivan Tire itself performs "under any circumstances" which doesn't make any sense at all.

I think people are so used to commercials, they usually just accept them at face value. They come at you during a barrage of other shitty marketing communications, most of which you either don't even acknowledge or simply dismiss offhand. But realize that every detail that goes into a 30 second TV spot has to be thought out and probably discussed with multiple other people. Which makes the above all the more laughable. If Sullivan Tire hired an outside agency to do this spot, they should really try to get some of their money back. If they did it themselves, they should probably think about hiring an outside agency.

And no discussion of terrible local advertising featuring a Red Sox player would be complete without this masterpiece from Route 125 Auto. I could write another 500 word break down of this marketing abomination but I think I'll pass.

Game 142: Who'll Stop The Rain

[Update: The game is scheduled to start at 8:20]

As the Yankees return from a rare day off in the middle of a homestand, they start their final series against the Orioles this season. It's the first team in the division they will complete the requisite 18 games against which is appropriate since they opened the season at Camden Yards.

Despite dropping the first two against the O's, the Yanks have roundly dominated the season series, going 11-1 since. The last time the O's took a game from them was on May 9th, back when the Yankees were 14-16, A-Rod had just made his triumphant return, and Phil Hughes was still in the starting rotation. Since then, the Yanks have been on the good side of 3 three-game sweeps in a row and have won 10 straight dating back to the series before.

Andy Pettitte allowed four runs in six innings against the Blue Jays his last time out but didn't derail his streak of 4 consecutive wins. The Yankees have won in each of Pettitte's last 7 outings dating back to the beginning of August. Since the All-Star break, he has an ERA of 2.88, a record of 5-1 (Yanks are 8-2 when he's pitched), and has held opposing batters to an anemic line of .208/.267/.305. To give some perspective, that .573 OPS is notably lower than Zack Greinke's .612 over that same period.

Taking on Pettitte will be the ninth starting pitcher the O's have thrown at the Yankees this year, Chris Tillman. A part of the package sent from Seattle in return for Erik Bedard (which apparently is the gift that keeps on giving), Tillman is only 21 years old and was called up from AAA at the end of July. He threw 96 2/3 IP for the Norfolk Tides of the Eastern League this year, posting a 2.70 ERA and striking out 99 while walking only 26. Since he's been up in the Majors, Tillman as made 8 starts to a decent 4.66 ERA but has only struck out 17 while issuing 13 free passes in 35 1/3 IP leading to an ugly FIP of 6.23.

Johnny Damon is scheduled to take a breather tonight with Melky Cabrera taking his place in right field and Brett Gardner manning center. However, if someone doesn't stop the rain that's currently blanketing the NYC area, everyone might be getting the night off.

Long as I remember,
The rain been coming down,
Clouds of mystery falling,
Confusion on the ground.

Good men through the ages,
Trying to find a sun,
And I wonder, still I wonder,
Who'll stop the rain.