This page contains links to recent blogs by Lincoln Mitchell
Posted in: Baseball
The problem with the All Star Game is not that it is meaningless, it is that it isn’t baseball. More accurately the All Star Game is not a baseball game. The All Star Game is a fun mid-season break. The Future’s Game, fan fests and the like can be great events. Even home run derbies have some value as pure spectacle, but the game itself isn’t really a baseball game.
To believe that nobody will ever win 300 games again is to believe not only that the game will be stagnant with no future changes that will effect pitching statistics, but that no pitcher comparable to Rickey Henderson will emerge-a pitcher so unusual that older precedents will no longer apply. Baseball, however, has always changed and evolved and has always produced sui generis stars with unique skills and abilities. This latter point should be obvious in any discussion about Randy Johnson. After all, nobody, as Mel Brooks might have said, anticipates six foot ten inch skinny lefties who are able to pitch into their mid-40s.
If Derek Jeter had split his career between say the Chicago White Sox and Houston Astros, and only appeared in the post-season a few times while racking up his offensive statistics every season, he would almost certainly be a darling of the SABRmetric crowd and a target of derision from the Joe Morgans of the baseball world because of his inadequate defense and un-shortstop like stature. Of course, that is not what Jeter’s career has looked like. Instead, he has been the iconic player on one of baseball’s most famous teams, playing in an intense media climate. This has framed perceptions of Jeter a great deal, but when one gets past the nonsense written about Jeter in the local New York media, it is worth taking a second look at what kind of player he has been, and continues to be.
The Yankees are a great franchise, the most successful in baseball history. They not only have the ability, but also the willingness, to spend money to put a strong team on the field. However, Yankee management has developed some very bad habits over the last few years. It doesn’t look like the next generation of Steinbrenners is any more patient than the first generation was. Moreover, they are already repeating some of their father’s mistakes. It is worth noting that the Yankees’ longest period without a pennant, since Babe Ruth joined the team in 1920, was 1982-1995 and occurred entirely during the elder Steinbrenner’s tenure, when the team was managed much how it is today. I don’t think any Yankee fan wants to go back to that, but this is the direction the franchise is going unless management’s thinking changes.
It is tempting to attribute this dramatic increase in offense all to steroid use, or worse yet to demonize a few players such as Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez or Mark McGuire and hold them responsible. However, the spike in power numbers is part of a bigger story, or evolution, of baseball, one that is reflects somewhat more positively on the state of the game. The increase in home runs was not monocausal. To suggest that it was is to ignore a number of other obvious causes. The most prominent of these is that during the 1990s a number of teams built new stadiums, many of which were far better hitter’s parks. So, the Astros moving from the Astrodome to Enron/Tropicana field or the Giants moving from Candlestick to PacBell/AT&T/SBC Park, also contributed to increased homerun, and other hitting numbers by the Giants, Astros and their visitors. Other causes of increased offensive production which cannot be ignored include the increased use of protective equipment by hitters and the stricter rules against brushing hitters back.
The problem of middle relief, which is not so much a problem but a condition which draws inordinate attention because it is a safe issue about which management can worry, is often addressed in ways that weakens teams. One common solution to the middle relief problem is to simply add more middle relievers under the surreal theory that if the first five guys out of the bullpen aren’t doing the job than giving the work to a sixth or seventh will solve the problem. This approach is not harmless because adding pitchers means depleting the bench. A team with 12 pitchers usually does not have one legitimate pinch hitter, while a team with 13 pitchers, particularly in the American League leaves, themselves with a skeletal bench of one middle infielder, one catcher and one outfielder. Thus, in the name of the elusive to solve, but safe to articulate, problem of middle relief, teams leave themselves with no choice but to let their worst hitters bat in clutch situations late in the game.
lark stood on first, Thompson on third and the game stopped. The crowd cheered for several minutes. Crazy Charlie, Johnnie Mash and I fell on top of each other. The hundreds of hours of our youth we had spent shivering, eating bad hot dogs, warm soda and soft popcorn watching the hapless Giants lose as groundballs went through the legs of the likes of Johnnie Lemaster or Rennie Stennett or as forgettable players like Jerry Martin and Milt May failed to drive in runs and pitchers like Atlee Hammaker and Jeff Robinson gave up walks and home runs, seemed worth it at that moment.
Perhaps the best model for Barack Obama as he begins his presidency is an obscure pitcher named Ernie Shore who threw his last pitch in 1920 and is remembered by only the most intense baseball historians and sabrmetricians. More than 90 years ago, Ernie Shore was brought in to a game after the starting pitcher, whose first name coincidentally was George, had give up a walk to start the game. Shore proceeded to pick the runner off first base and retire the next 26 batters, essentially throwing a perfect game. This remains the greatest single relief pitching performance in baseball history and a task comparable to the one that now faces Obama. To continue the baseball imagery, if George H.W. Bush was, as Jim Hightower famously described him, a man who was born on first base and thinks he hit a triple, than Barack Obama is like a relief pitcher who was brought in to pitch with his team down by about ten runs and is somehow expected to lead his team to victory.