Lincoln Mitchell

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This page contains links to recent blogs by Lincoln Mitchell

What is Really Baseball's Best Rivalry

That rivalry may not be between the Red Sox and Yankees, but between two teams that are gearing up for another division race in the NL West, and who are also playing each other this weekend, the Giants and the Dodgers. Both the Yankee-Red Sox and the Dodger-Giant rivalries have had moments of intense competition, memorable games and pennant races, and genuine rancor between the two teams. However, the degree of competition and balance between the two rivals has been consistently stronger between the two NL rivals.

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Bill James Gets it Wrong on Penn State

James’ transition from iconoclastic and groundbreaking baseball analyst to whatever he is now has not been smooth. The set of skills he had that made him so good in that role and so influential to so many people have not served James as well now that the movement he has started has now become part of the mainstream of baseball analysis. Questioning everything, and not believing any conventional wisdom was a great way to reinvent statistical understanding of baseball 30 years ago, but that approach has failed James badly now.

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Romney's Tax Returns Are Only the Beginning →

Until Romney releases these tax returns, it is not possible to know what the most damaging thing in them will be; and to some extent it doesn't matter if there is any one specific thing that is very damaging. It is, however, a certainty that Romney's tax returns will continue to tell the story of Romney as an extraordinarily wealthy man whose financial life is very different from those of ordinary Americans, and who has engaged in the kinds of wealthy-person financial shenanigans which, while not illegal, will raise more questions about Romney and his wealth.

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Maybe Melky is Actually a Good Ballplayer

Cabrera’s career, to be sure has been an odd one. Before 2010, he had established himself as a useful, if not quite good, outfielder: a valuable fourth outfielder on a good team or a passable starter on a bad team. In 2010, however, he was terrible, hitting .255/.317/.354 for the Braves. The Kansas City Royals took a chance on Cabrera; and the outfielder had a career year in 2012, hitting .309/.335/.470, numbers he is on track to easily exceed this year.

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Unexpected and Expected Surprises in the Campaign →

The general election is now less than four months away. The election itself has taken on the predictable rhythm of many presidential elections. The primaries were less contested than usual as the Democratic incumbent had no challengers, not even a protest candidate of some kind; and the Republican challenger did not have any serious opposition throughout much of the race. Not surprisingly, the main issue in the race remains the economy as President Barack Obama is seeking to make the argument that while the economy still has its problems, due to his policies, it is moving in the right direction. Republican challenger Mitt Romney's campaign is arguing that the economy is still in terrible shape and that only the magic of more tax cuts can turn it around.

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Baseball's Best Boring Team

Describing a team as boring is subjective, but it is clear that at the halfway point in the season, the Yankees, despite their very good record, have not generated any buzz in New York. Last year fans watched Derek Jeter reach 3,000 hits and saw Mariano Rivera become the all time saves leader. This year they have seen Jeter pass Paul Waner on the hit list while Rafael Soriano has taken over as a good closer, but one about whom few Yankee fans care deeply. It is hard to think of any Yankee games which are even close to as memorable as Santana’s no-hitter, any one of several starts by Dickey, or even some of the early season Yankee-Red Sox games of recent years.

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What if the Republicans Lose in 2012 →

Should Obama win, Republicans could blame the nominee, regardless of who it is -- Mitt Romney for being insufficiently conservative, Michele Bachmann for being too amateurish or frighteningly right wing, Tim Pawlenty for being too boring, or whoever else ultimately wins the nomination for some other flaw. This, however, will be an exercise in avoidance allaying responsibility for a Republican defeat at an imperfect, even weak, nominee and it obscures other significant questions. The real questions Republicans should ask themselves if they lose in 2012 is how they managed to lose a presidential election during a time of poor economic conditions with the country embroiled in at least two, and possibly three, wars. The corollary question they will need to ask is whether their strategy of attacking President Obama nonstop for four years while offering few useful solutions and giving in to the party's most extreme and ugly elements was really the wise decision. If the answer to the last question is no, the Party will have to determine how and why they allowed that to happen.

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Chief Justice Roberts' Smart Vote on Health Care →

Only Chief Justice John Roberts can know why he decided to vote to form the majority on the recent court case seeking to overturn health care legislation. Nonetheless, his decision was enormously important in determining what health care will look like in the U.S. for years to come, as well as for political reasons which will shape the environment for this election and beyond. For far right activists, however, Roberts' decision must have felt like a punch in the gut. Perhaps when they recover from that initial shock they will also see it, at least partially, as a wake-up call.

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The New Context for Offense-The Case of Brandon Belt

San Francisco Giant first baseman Brandon Belt has been the subject of some controversy as many Giants fans feel he has not been given a fair chance over the last season and a half while others believe he has been a disappointment. Belt, who began the 2011 season as the Giants’ top hitting prospect, spent most of 2011 moving back and forth from first base to the outfield, the starting lineup to the bench, and the big leagues and AAA. This year, Belt spent the first month or two of the season being moved in and out of the lineup before settling, at least for now, into the starting first baseman’s role

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The Increasingly Monolithic Republican Party →

American politics is increasingly defined by a two party system where one party, albeit imperfectly and generally not easily, reflects the racial, ethnic and other diversity, tensions and strength that is central to 21st century America, while the other is increasingly simply a party of white, heavily Christian Americans. Today Americans who are non-white, non-Christian or non-straight are far more likely to be Democrats than Republicans. This is true at the level of ordinary voters, grassroots activists and elected officials.

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Roger Clemens Acquittal Still Resolves Nothing

Roger Clemens’ acquittal on perjury charges may be a triumph of justice as the government case against him was weak. For this baseball fans should be relieved, as few fans, even those who never liked Roger Clemens, would have liked to have seen the baseball legend doing time based on a flimsy government case against him. However, Clemens’ acquittal speaks to the problems that baseball still faces in its efforts to put the steroid era in the past, because it does nothing to change the realities that Clemens took steroids and MLB did not seem to care.

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How This Election Will Keep Us Polarized →

The presidential election is less then five months away and is shaping up to be among the most predictable in American history. Once the noise around new technologies, Tea Parties and Romney's extraordinary wealth is stripped away, it is not difficult to understand this race as being between a Democratic incumbent and Republican challenger, both of whom faced either no, or only nominal, opposition in their efforts to win their party's nomination. Moreover, both of these candidates have positions and even ideology that is comfortably in the mainstream of their parties' of the last half century or so.

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The Autumn of Alfonso Soriano

Soriano is winding down a career that will feel much more impressive in retrospect than it did at the time. Soriano was never quite the superstar some thought he would become because his game had too many holes and too many things at which he was not quite good enough, but when the incongruity between his tools and appearance on one hand, and his numbers and skills on the other, fade into the past, he will be more likely to be remembered as the very good player he has been.

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The Bad News for Labor from Wisconsin →

The defeat of the effort to recall Scott Walker from his post as governor of Wisconsin is less of a victory for the Republican Party, or even a defeat for the Democratic Party, as it is a defeat for the labor movement. Walker, after all, has been a particular anathema to organized labor as his radical anti-union policies have drawn attention and opposition from labor unions and their supporters across the country. For progressives, recalling Walker would have been a major victory, but for labor, the stakes were even higher.

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The Late Pedro Borbon and the Reds Closer by Committee

During the years he pitched for the Reds, Borbon was part of one of modern baseball’s longest and most successful experiments with the closer by committee approach to bullpen management. Sparky Anderson, who managed the Reds during those years, demonstrated that closer by committee never works, except of course when it does. In each of the seven years during which Borbon was a major part of the Red bullpen, the Reds had at least three players who finished at least ten games. In five of those years they had four players finish at least ten games. In 1973, they also had two players with more than ten saves and nobody with more than 14. Two years later they had a similar situation, but their save leader had 22. This was during a period when good firemen, as they were known then, regularly saved 30 or more games.

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Worley's Anti-Gay Rant and Comparisons to Hitler →

Comparisons to Hitler are too common in our political discussions as assertions that, for example, President Obama's health care policy is comparable to Nazism, are ridiculous. However, in this particular case comparisons are appropriate. Worley's ideas regarding gays and lesbians are not similar to Hitler's -- they are the same as Hitler's. The idea of putting gays and lesbians into concentration camps and killing them is not something out of Worley's distorted imagination, but is something that actually happened during World War II as gays and lesbians were rounded up along with Jews and others and sent to death camps.

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Hunter, Blue and Holtzman

On the surface, these three could not have been more different. Blue was an African American from Louisiana, Hunter a country boy from North Carolina, and Holtzman was from St. Louis and retired with more wins than any other Jewish pitcher in baseball history. It has been more than 25 years since any of these pitchers has thrown a pitch in the big leagues and their respective places in baseball history are now secure. Hunter became a Hall of Famer and a beloved figure in North Carolina before passing away in 1999 at the far too young age of 53. Holtzman’s name occasionally crops up in connection with his longtime friend and teammate Reggie Jackson and was briefly a manager in the Israeli baseball league, but is generally remembered as a solid and dependable pitcher, but not much more than that. Vida Blue is remembered as the guy who had all the talent in the world, but could never entirely get it together.

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The Yankees, Innovation and Derek Jeter

Jeter’s talent, ability to stay healthy and unique place in modern Yankee history have all contributed to his record of most games at shortstop for any one team, and the third most at any position for any team, but the Yankee management also should get some credit, not for giving in to the pressure from fans and media to keep playing Jeter at shortstop, but for recognizing that this may have been the best way to use this exceptional player, despite his shortcomings

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Why Is the Republican Party Still Trying to Define President Obama? →

There is a significant faction in the Republican Party that still appears to believe that Barack Obama would never have become president if the American people knew the "truth" about him. This is why issues like Obama's place of birth, alleged connections to radicals of various political stripes and plans to destroy America never quite go away. Those holding these views might be on the fringe of the Republican Party, but it is a big, and surprisingly influential fringe. Moreover, no major Republican official, least of all Romney, has stood up to this group within the Republican Party. Until Romney does that, he can expect characters like Ricketts with equally destructive ideas for how to go after President Obama to keep appearing during this campaign.

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The Yankees Neglected Bench

The Yankees inability to find a backup catcher or utility infielder who can contribute with the bat while fielding decently is baffling because by not finding these kinds of players, who are often available and always inexpensive, the Yankees risk seeing a team with a payroll in excess of $200 million fail to make the playoffs because they were unable to solve problems that would have cost, at most, a few million dollars in salary. Given the age of a number of key players, notably Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez, the Yankees have additional reason to need a strong bench, and should have known this before the season started.

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