THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Wednesday, May 04, 2011

If not Jeter, then who?

I got a really big laugh about this one.  First, I agreed with everything:

Should Jeter be getting the more plate appearances than anyone else on what may be the league’s best offense? Not on your life. Is he making way too much money this year, next year, and the year after that? He most certainly is. Are the dead-enders who act as though Jeter has a fundamental right to play as long as he wants for as much money as he wants and hit anywhere in the lineup he wants because, by God, he’s The Captain Derek Jeter really annoying at times? Absolutely.

But as he giveth, so he must taketh away:

But should Jeter be benched at this point? Let’s not lose our minds here. Because, putting Jeter aside, who replaces him if you take him out of the lineup? Ramiro Pena? I’ve got a real soft spot for the guy and he does a lot of little things right, but at the plate he makes Jeter look like Evan Longoria. The only plausible candidate to replace Jeter at the moment is Eduardo Nunez, and though I suspect opinions may vary on his ability, I’ve never been a big believer in Nunez.

Really?  The problem is that in your 200MM$ lineup, you don’t have a good backup middle-infielder?  That you can’t spend 202MM$ instead?  Really?

When I used to listen to the sports talk shows on the radio (*), I used to laugh at the problems the callers would call in with.  “Who’s going to be our setup guy to the setup guy to MARIANO RIVERA.” Or complaining that the #8 guy in the lineup isn’t a strong enough hitter.  Or that the #5 starter was only average.  No acknowledgement that their closer was better than their opponents, that their #2 reliever was better than their opponents’ #2, and that their #3, 4, and 5 were better than their opponents’ 3, 4, and 5, respectively.  No.  Their #3, 4, 5 had to be better than their opponents’ #2.  Their #5 starter had to be better than their opponents’ #2.

And now the problem is that they’ve run out of money to get themselves an acceptable backup middle infielder?

This goes out to the minority of Yankee fans who are obnoxious.  (If you are not an obnoxious Yankee fan, then this is NOT for you, so don’t take offense. ) They’ve got themselves a monopoly, and instead of being grateful that they have a 75% chance of making the playoffs every year, some fans need it to be 90% at least.  And the reason it’s 75% is because of the wild card, which makes alot of their September games meaningless, and so they are upset about THAT too.  That is, they want to have a meaningful race in September, but they ALSO want a guarantee that they have a 90% chance of making the playoffs!  It’s like the old people telling the government to not be involved in their medicare.

(*) I gave up the sports radio scene cold turkey once the entertaining Mad Dog left.  I liked Mad Dog.  First off, he was one of the few that talked about hockey, even though he wasn’t a big fan.  I liked the effort he put in there.  And while he sounded like a know-it-all many times, he knew when to shut up when he had to.  I remember this one time, he was talking about Roy Jones Jr, and how he was not undefeated, and so, he couldn’t have been the best.  He finally relented when the caller explained to him that Jones was the guy at the Olympics that was punching so fast that the judges/scoring system couldn’t keep up with him, and gave the win to the opponent.  (Was that in Seoul?) Francesa sometimes was tolerable (he was trying to make the case for Raines for HOF once, so I can’t be too down on him), but he is incredibly smarmy.  And I liked those two guys together, and it helped they didn’t like each other too much.  Anyway, the gasbaggery reached a critical point for me, and I figured I can’t just keep being annoyed at these guys AND listen to them.  As much as I love sports and wanting to hear the stories, going through the mud pool was too much.

Just this morning, I had the exact same feeling watching “Quick Pitch” on the fantastic MLB Network.  What a great network.  But, man, those two guys were driving me crazy.  They are so loud and obnoxious and they come to conclusions about the smallest of events as if they mean something.  I really want to see the highlights when I wake up in the morning, but so many times I flip to ESPN (only to flip back).