Have Fun With This, Mets Fans...

Joel Sherman says the Mets are close to signing Gary Sheffield:

"Unless something drastic happens, he is a Met," one of the sources said. "Someone would have to offer him a second year, and I just don't see that happening."

One person who has talked directly to Sheffield said the slugger prefers the Mets over the Phillies because he sees a greater potential for playing time, and wants the heavier workload as a way to showcase for the 2010 season. Sheffield is a free agent at the conclusion of this season.

I see no way this could become an issue. He thinks he should be playing over Daniel Murphy who had an .871 OPS in 151 PAs last year and Ryan Church who was at .887 when he went down on June 5th to a concussion. Sheff's OPS in 443 PAs last year? .725

Omar, do you really want to waste valuable plate appearances on this guy over two younger, better players? The Tigers just paid him $14M NOT to play this year. He is 40 years old. He's played 28 games in the outfield over the last two seasons (with negative defensive value). Church and Murphy both have considerable upside and it's not like you have the option of DH'ing the guy. He's already making assumptions about the amount of playing time he is going to get.

It's not too late...

YMCA Is Coming To The New Stadium? Why?

I was watching the updated version of "Cathedrals of the Game: Yankee Stadium" on MLBHD last night and caught this little tidbit from Lon Trost at the end:

(Sorry for the terrible quality)


In light of reading an article this morning entitled "Stadium Laden With Trost's Fingerprints", I would tend to take the man at his word. I'm not a fan of your fingerprints, Mr. Trost.

Obviously, the emphasis was on carrying over traditions from the Old Stadium, but this "tradition" started in 1996. The song had been out since 1978, it's not like it was an original idea. YMCA blared in every roller skating rink I was unfortunate enough to have attended an elementary school birthday party at.

If they had dumped that kitschy convention, no one would have missed it after the third homestand. It was a perfect place to part ways, but now we are stuck with it indefinitely. Is Cotton Eye Joey going to make the trip too? I say that sarcastically, but seriously, if it does, we may have to organize a boycott.

Just like the food options, this is an instance when tradition is a bad thing. Do you think anyone would miss Famous Famiglia Pizza if Ray's got the contract? The Yankees represent New York City, not just the Old Stadium. There should be burrito places, Gray's Papaya, deli's, burger joints, and Chinese take-out in along with pizza, sausages and Cracker Jacks.

There's a difference between tradition and nostalgia.

I guess everyone was going to find out tonight (or maybe not...), but that is still really disappointing.

Is Harold Reynolds Gonna Have To Hug A Bitch?

It seems like some sort of karmic justice that a community college named after a marine mammal whose population was decimated by sea faring vessels, would defeat a professional team named after marauders who raped and pillaged aboard them.

From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

SARASOTA, Fla. -- Virgil Vasquez gave up three runs in 4 2/3 innings, and Dave Davidson was charged with a blown save as a collection of the Pirates' top prospects lost to Manatee Community College, 6-4, at McKechnie Field in Bradenton.

I don't know what this says more about: The game of baseball in general or the Pirates as a franchise. Sure, the Pirates roster consisted of only Single and Double A players, but could you picture that headline with any other team's logo? My heart goes out to you, DJ Gallo.

Backhanded Compliment Of The Day

"The best in the game when it comes to a routine play. When it comes to a baseball he can get to the guy's going to be out."

~ Cleveland Indians manager Eric Wedge on Jhonny Peralta's defense at Shortstop

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What lofty praise... Is that why you were thinking of switching him to 3B?

Speaking of Indians third basemen, what the fack ever happened to Andy Marte -- he of #9 prospect in all of baseball fame? Well, Marte has hit .211 in 513 Major League at-bats (56 OPS+), and was recently DFAed by the Indians. Nobody picked him up and he accepted an assignment to Cleveland's Triple AAA affiliate, the Columbus Clippers. Well, at least he has made Coco Crisp appear to be productive.

"A Night With Donald Fehr"

Last night, Simon On Sports was lucky enough to have Donald Fehr drop by his MBA Class. Fehr gave a talk for the first 45 minutes of the class and then opened the floor for questions the rest of the way. Reading through Simon's post, it seems as through Fehr let down his guard a touch and was willing to hint at his personal opinons on the Draft, and the differences between the MLBPA & NFLPA (among other things):

Someone asked [Fehr] about why the MLBPA has been more successful than the NFLPA. He at first gave a politically correct answer like "I don't think it's really fair to judge the decisions that were made when not in the room." Then he elaborated saying that the MLBPA was run by former Steel Worker Union Lead Marvin Miller, whereas the NFLPA was not. The easy to read chapters behind that are, there is no god damn way he ever would have agreed to the bullshit the NFL players are subjected to.

Fehr also elaborated on the differences between the revenue structure of the MLB and NFL and the reasons why a salary cap makes far more sense for the NFL. Check out the whole entry, as it is a unique account of a pretty high-profile guy in a pretty low-key situation.

The Fallacy Of The Predetermined Outcome

I'm a little late to the party on this one, but Lar at wezen-ball (fellow resident of Shysterville) asked one of the most loaded sports-related questions one can ponder on Tuesday: Have Two Baseball Games Ever Played Out Identically?

In other words, are there any two games in baseball history that, if I were to pick up the scorecards for each, they would be indistinguishable?

The difference between Lar and pretty much everyone else in the world is that he actually set out to crack this mystery. He created a Retrosheet database and methodically broke down the potential possibilities resulting from each plate appearance and quickly came to the conclusion that the odds would of two games playing out exactly the same would be astronomical.

If you think about the numbers involved, it's not surprising in the least: with at least a dozen possible standard outcomes available for each plate appearance (and another dozen or more possible, but highly unlikely outcomes), and with 60 or 70 or even 80 plate appearances per game, the odds become fantastic that two games would be identical.

Furthermore, if it were possible to have each plate appearance broken down by pitch, it would become even more impossible to find two identical games. Click through to see how similar the pairs of games he isolates actually were. You might be surprised.

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Take into account that it is wildly unlikely that any two baseball games have ever played out in exactly the same way, and remember that the next time some tries to apply hindsight to something that almost (or supposedly should have) occurred in a sporting event of any kind. "Oh man, if the ump had called that obvious strike, then Pettitte gets out of that inning, those two runs don't score, and the Yanks would have won." Those are the same people who think "everything happens for a reason" and that everyone has a soulmate.

The title of this post comes from something that Michael Kay likes to say during Yankee broadcasts. I've had some fun with Mr. Kay 'round here, but I must agree with him on this one. There is NO chance that the game would have played out the same way and to believe so is to subscribe to the fairy tales of Destiny and/or Fate.

Lar went back over the entire history of recorded MLB game data and couldn't find anything close to two identical scoresheets. That database consisted of 100,000 games. When people try to isolate one event and keep the rest of the game the same, they are saying that not only is the imaginary divergent outcome of the game is the same as another that occurred in baseball history (essentially impossible), they are saying that it is the same as the actual outcome of THAT game (essentially impossible multiplied by 100,000+).

This is the kind of stuff that makes life endlessly fascinating. Even in a sport like baseball where things are endlessly categorized and recorded, it is almost impossible (no, fuck it, it IS impossible) to have two games which are the same, even on a scorecard.

That's why I hate the concept of "everything happens for a reason". Ironically the people who say this are usually talking about things beyond human control, which are actually the exact things that don't happen for a reason. There is plenty of stuff in life that happens without any reasonable explaination at all, and the best we can do is try to make sense of it logically.

PeteAbe Unsure Of Bob Sheppard's Genus, Species

From the Yankee blogger of record:

BREAKING NEWS — UPDATE, 2:24 p.m.:

The New York Times is reporting that Bob Sheppard has decided to retire. The long-time announcer, who is believed to be 98, announced yesterday that he was not well enough to be at Opening Day.

The Yankees have hired Paul Olden to announced the Cubs games this weekend. No permanent replacement has been named.

He "is believed to be 98"? Is he a Galapagos Tortoise?

There are ways to find this out. The Times is pretty sure, and so is Wikipedia.

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Sorry, I didn't mean to blaspheme the Voice of God (or the LoHud of the Rings, for that matter). I really wish he could just come back for the first inning of the first game at the New Stadium. Even just the first batter.

"Now batting: Number 2, Derek... Jeter... Shortstop... Number 2."

Come on Bob, do it for the asshole that just photoshopped your head on a tortoise!

Youk The Fluke

Thank you, NBC Sports.

In our debut of "The Show," Gregg Rosenthal says there is no way that Red Sox slugger Kevin Youkilis will match his power numbers of last season.

Guess which one is Greg Rosenthal:

Are you ready for the hard hitting analysis from the "The Show"?

"I hate to say it, but the guy who I think might regress the most. A member of the Tribe! And a member of my favorite team! Kevin Youkilis. Twenty-nine home runs last year, but he's not really a power guy, I mean, he might lead the league in sweating through his helmet, but he's not going to lead the league in home runs. I would stay away from Youkilis."

"A member of The Tribe"? I hope he doesn't mean the Indians.

He didn't lead the league in home runs last year, so it would be pretty foolish to draft him expecting that this year. "He's not a power guy"? What are you basing this on, Greg? Oh... you're not going to provide any reasons? Allow me:

Those are some pretty serious spikes in power for a 29 year old without changing leagues or teams. One would imagine he is due for a regression to the mean.

Hope you're right, Rosenthal.

Obstructed Views? WHAT???

In the New York Times today, Ken Belson has some startling revlations about the New Yankee Stadium and Citi Field... THEY MIGHT HAVE OBSTRUCTED VIEWS!!1!!1!1:

The Mets and the Yankees together have spent more than $2 billion on new stadiums partly to bring fans much closer to the action. But that access comes at a cost. For the best views, fans will have to pay eye-popping prices to sit on the field level and in the decks behind home plate in seats angled toward the infield.

Fans on tighter budgets, though, will have to settle for seats in far-off sections, some of which have obstructed views of the field.

Old news, Ken, old news. New Stadium Insider has been all over this. Even we wrote a post about it.

Here is the part that kills me though (emphasis mine):

Mets fans learned this the hard way on Sunday, when St. John’s and Georgetown played the first game at Citi Field. Steven Gottesman, who has a 15-game ticket plan, went to see his four seats in Section 533, Row 15, near the top of the upper deck down the left-field line. To his “shock and horror,” he could not see the warning track or about 20 feet of the outfield from the left-field line to center field.

Dude, Steven. You bought tickets in Section 533, "near the top of the upper deck". What the fuck did you expect? Have you even been to a ballpark before? A lot of the seats in the upper deck in every park have slightly obstructed views. "Shock and horror" is what you feel when you find a dead body checking into your hotel room, not when the seats for your 15 game package IN SECTION 533 don't have a view of 20 feet of the fucking outfield.

“In other words, I will only know if a home run is hit if I am listening to a radio at the game or I wait to see the sign from the umpire,” Gottesman, 45, said in an e-mail message.

Wow, this guy really has never been to a baseball game before. Steve, if you are unsure if a home run was just hit, ask yourself a few simple questions:

1. How is the crowd reacting?
2. A roaring cheer?
3. A collective sigh?
4. Okay, what team is batting?
5. Is the batter rounding the bases?
6. Did the outfielder throw the ball back into the infield?
7. Are fans of either team high-fiving each other nearby?
8. Does the pitcher look like he just got punched in the stomach?
9. How have I not figured this out by now?
10. Will I ever get this eight precious seconds of my life back?

Gottesman added: “If Endy Chávez made his catch in this new stadium and I had been there, I would not have seen it.”

No, you might not have theoretically seen it (leaving aside the fact that this is a different park), but you would have experienced the rest of Shea Stadium going absolutley out of their minds. You know where you could have viewed it perfectly? At home on your HDTV.

You don't go to a game to see every single thing that happens, Steve. You go to take in the atmopshere, and to say that you were there when it occurred. I was at a game in 2005 where Bernie Williams hit a walk off 2 run HR in the bottom 11th inning into the short porch in right. I was in the right field upper deck and couldnt see it acutally leave the park, but I knew about two thirds of a second after it happened. If you were at Game 7 of the 2006 NLCS and had your view obscured, do you really think you'd be bitching about the fact that you couldn't see that one play?

Steve, if you are reading (doubtful), stop being a douche and sell your tickets to someone who might actually appreciate being at the game. I'm not even a Mets fan and I'd buy a few.

Dueling Jinxes

CC gets the cover but the Mets get the World Series prediction.

WHICH WILL BE WRONGEST???

Ramiro O Angel

According to Bronx Banter and others, the last roster spot up for grabs on the Yankees is a utility infielder being contested between Ramiro Pena and Angel Berroa. Pena is 22 years old and due to a hot Spring and tremendous defensive ability, he has now entered the discussion as the heir apparent to Derek Jeter. Berroa won the Rookie of the Year in Kansas City in 2003, but has never had an OPS+ higher than 81 since, and only played 93 games in the last two years in the MLB.

A quick look at Pena's minor league stats (primarily at AA) shows a line of .258/.316/.319. In the last two years, he has only 3HRs and 15 SBs in 163 games while striking out 109 times to 63 walks. That would be pretty anemic, even if it wasn't accumulated two levels below the majors.

Here are their lines this Spring.

Pena - .305/.359/.373
Berroa - .379/.390/.621

Not to go too overboard with Spring stats, but Berroa clearly has some pop, while Pena still does not. Berroa is not nearly the infield defender that Pena is, but what are the chances that Girardi lifts Jeter for a late inning defensive replacement? I say slim to none. Cody Ransom is already basically a defensive replacement at third and neither of the two guys in competition are significantly better with the lumber.

I'm guessing that the Yanks will go with Berroa. If they really believe that Pena is the shortstop of the future, then I don't think sitting him on the major league bench and only allowing him to play a couple of innings every couple of games would be the best way to continue his development. Let Berroa take the spot, and if he falters, Pena will be waiting in the wings.

My guess is that this has already been determined and they are letting Pena play out the string and expose him to some pressure on the big stage. Going with Berroa is a better diction for now because he is a better hitter, and for the future, because Pena needs to continue improving down in the minors.

Lil' Ken Offended By Yankee Stadium

It really must be a slow news cycle, because writers are publishing their bold predictions of things that will happen this season. This one comes courtesy of Ken Rosenthal (er, Rosensquirrel) and is boldy titled "These things will happen this season":

The New Yankee Stadium Will Be Offensive
I'm not talking about how the park will play; that's to be determined. I'm talking about the Yankees opening their monument to excess in the middle of the worst economy since the Great Depression. And no, I'm not forgetting about the Mets and — ahem — Citi Field.

Clearly the Yankees should have cancelled plans to move into the New Stadium based on the fact the fact that the economy sucks. They should have haulted construction when the Dow went below 8,000 and it was 3/4 completed. Nevermind the fact that the construction of the New Stadium actually stimulated the local economy by creating more construction jobs and will continue to by adding more coconcession positions dues to increased points of sale.

And how is that "offensive", exactly? Because the Stadium is extremely nice? Because the best tickets are $2500 each? You know, the seats Ken gets fucking PAID to sit in everytime he covers a game...

(h/t The Sports Hernia)

Click through and read the rest of the article because Ken is certain that A-Rod will not make it through the season, that "there will be no surprise teams" and that Gary Sheffield will hit his 500th home run (he's at 499).

Wow, It's Been A Long Offseason

It has literally been a long offseason; at least a week longer than the thirteen previous ones. It wasn't just that the Yankees didn't make the postseason, they were pretty much dead to rights when they fell 12.5 games back of the Rays and 7 games back of the Red Sox on August 31st. They hadn't even been within 5 games of the division lead since July 31st. The didn't lead the division at any point during the year.

I was lucky enough to attend each of the last three games at the Old Stadium, but by then it was completely apparent that the Yanks weren't going to the playoffs although they hadn't been mathematically eliminated quite yet. It was a great spectacale to behold, but on the field, they were dead men walking.

Despite the fact that missing the playoffs represented a monstrous failure to the organization, the outlook on September 29th was pretty rosy. Dropping Giambi, Mussina, Pavano and Abreu represented a huge amount of payroll relief and the New Stadium was set to bring in a massive influx of new revenue. Sure enough, the Yanks reeled in the top three free agents on the market and significantly upgraded their roster by Christmas.

Since then, we started this blog (and have written over 400 posts), we started our Countdown to Spring Training, Joe Torre's book came out, Andy Pettitte came back, Selena Roberts dropped the bomb, Peter Gammons interviewed A-Rod, A-Rod paused for 27 seconds before saying "thanks", we tried to start another countdown, A-Rod had surgery, the Yankees were outed as a Ponzi scheme, and then the Details magazine article came out.

All this drama has made the chasm between meaningful baseball games pretty excruciating for us Fackers. We don't want to be reduced to talking about bullshit gossipy topics like Jeter's house or A-Rod's revolting taste in women, but unfortunatley those were the most compelling things at the time. I don't think it's a whole lot better to get wrapped up in the ups and downs of Spring Training.

Is anyone else just ready for some baseball that actually matters?