Woke up at 5am, drank a pot of coffee, stayed home from work, wasn’t happy with my 4pm presentation. I think this is a useful way for me to assess my academic progress.
I didn’t mention it, since Pip covered it so well (scroll down to “Chass Chafes at VORP”), but Murry Chass’ column at the New York Times was, for me, officially the moment the Grey Lady became birdcage liner—the straw that broke the camel’s back after their baseless hit piece on Ron Zook. I’ve long held the belief that the last bastion of credibility in a newspaper are in the sports and business pages, where the reporters work an actual beat on which they walk with authority born of expertise. Via Dan Agonistes, I see a piece at the Wall Street Journal rounding up the reaction from the “new-age” crowd.
In that roundup, there’s a link to something Alan Schwarz, one of Chass’ fellow columnists at the NYT, wrote back in 2004, A Middle Man’s Worth, about the efforts to better quantify the performance of middle relievers. I put together a file of inherited runner numbers after the 2005 season and was stunned by how few baserunners the typical reliever inherits. It’s good to see that smarter people than I have figured out a way to put that small amount of data to good use.
Remarkably, Pip cites a new column by Schwarz in that same post—and a few paragraphs up suggests that Josh Kinney may be the best suited bullpen pitcher to appear in high leverage situations where runners are on base and another pitcher needs to be bailed out.
I’ve been a fan of Skip Schumaker for a long time, so it was very good to hear him sock two homeruns on a 3-5 day at the plate today. At the Bird Land, DG writes: (some typos removed from quoted text)
Skip Schumaker, making a strong push to unseat one of the other outfielders written onto the major-league lineup, cracked two home runs on Wednesday in the Cardinals’ 11-1 victory against the Dodgers. One was definitely wind-aided. The other was gone out of any park. Turns out Chris Duncan was not the only Cardinal outfielder to work with Mark McGwire this offseason. Schumaker got some individual tutelage from the former slugger as well, and with just a few lessons McGwire altered Schumaker’s swing to the point that manager Tony La Russa has said Schumaker “has a better chance” at the plate now.
That means he has a better chance of making the club, too.
Don’t tell Pip about the Mark McGwire connection to Skip’s power surge.
The Big Ten Tournament starts tomorrow at noon in Chicago. Illinois plays Penn State at 5pm and John Supinie worries that Illinois will look ahead to a Friday game against Indiana. I share his worries. A loss there would likely land the Illini in the NIT. Losing out of an NCAA bid would be chum for the conspiracy theorists. (There’s a group of people who believe the Chief was retired when he was because Illinois basketball is teh sux0r, and the DIA wanted those bloody NIT dollars.
Added after: Matthew Leach wrote a full-length story about Skip, talking about the adjustments in his batting approach McGwire tried to teach him. In the article, he mentions that Skip didn’t walk much last season, which was sadly true. As a leadoff hitter, I’d hoped he would show the same kind of OBP and K:BB improvement in his second year of AAA that he’d done in his second year of AA in 2004. It didn’t happen, though. Highly detailed situational hitting figures aren’t published for minor leaguers, but in non-rigorous examinations of his gamelogs throughout last season, I recall that he struck out looking on full counts pretty often. It seemed at the time that he might be better off trying to master the Eckstein approach of shortening up to foul off close pitches with two strikes and wait for the pitcher to chuck one well away. If McGwire can turn him into the next Brian Giles, you’ll hear no complaints out of me.
