FJM has gone dark for the foreseeable future. Sorry folks. We may post once in a while, but it's pretty much over.
You can still e-mail dak,Ken Tremendous,Junior,Matthew Murbles, or Coach.
I'm going to Buster Olney it up and just link a few stories that I don't have the energy to lay into. Setting a bad precedent? Absolutely. But: easier.
Here's a little ditty entitled "Attitude Can't Just Be a Platitude for Sox," by legendary comic actor Dave van Dyck (The Dave van Dyck Show, Diagnosis: Murder.) The thesis is that what the 2007 Chicago White Sox lacked was not "hitting" or "pitching" or any of those other pesky "tangibles," but rather: a certain je ne sais quoi.
It has been called "swagger" and "a chip on your shoulder," a sort of no-respect, us-against-the-world motivational mentality.
Of course, [Paul] Konerko was around when the White Sox had that intangible benefit of swagger. And he was there when it vanished, perhaps through complacency caused by lack of competition, which led to losing and a lack of confidence.
For those of you keeping your own Intangible Scorecard at home, that was:
Lack of competition ----> Complacency ----> Vanishing of Intangible Benefit of Swagger ----> Losing ----> Lack of Confidence.
Here's another flow chart: Team ERA of 3.61 in 2005 ----> Team ERA of 4.61 in 2006 ----> Team ERA of 4.77 in 2007 ----> Worse Team in 2007 Than in 2005
"The younger guys are hungry, and that adds energy," [Buehrle] said. "And it takes some of the older guys who have been around here to refocus and get that little edge back, knowing that it's more than going out and putting up numbers, that you have to have a purpose on how you're doing it. We have to try to get back to that."
It might be more than going out and putting up numbers. But I would highly recommend: going out and putting up numbers, as like a starting point.
The question is whether swagger comes naturally or takes some team meetings for everyone to believe they should have it.
That's the question? Not: "How do we improve our AL-low .318 team OBP?"
Next up, we have this useless article about how Tom Brady really isn't that good at football, and how Johnny Unitas was better. Take it away, Plaschke.
The first thing you notice about Tom Brady is, well, nothing.
Really? I notice that he is the world's most handsome man. I might also notice his league MVP award, his 3 Super Bowl rings, his 2 Super Bowl MVPs, or the fact that his smoldering eyes and dimpled chin have forced me to take a long hard look at my own sexuality and conclude in like 5 seconds that although I love Mrs. Tremendous with all my heart, I would trade her and our unborn child and everything I own to kiss Tom Brady on the mouth for fifteen seconds, because then I would know what it feels like to melt into perfection.
He doesn't have a nick on his face because today's referees won't allow it.
Also, his offensive line is quite good.
He doesn't have a growl to his voice because today's huddles don't require it.
I just looked at the HTML coding for this sentence, and it reads like this:
{PlaschkeStyle ="nonsense-level: total; meaning: none; point? no; faux-poetry: yes; garbage garbage garbage"}He doesn't have a growl to his voice because today's huddles don't require it.{/Plaschke}
He doesn't have fire in his eyes because today's teams don't need it.
What claptrap. Ugh. You've killed the mood. I don't even want to kiss Brady on the mouth anymore. You ruined it.
Tom Brady is fantastic, but he's formula. He's a champion, but he's a creation. And to anoint him as the best quarterback ever would be to forget that his position was invented, inspired and made famous by those who were neither.
He's a creation who had 50 TD passes this year. He completed 26 of 28 passes in a playoff game. He has led game-winning scoring drives late in the 4th quarter of like 9 Super Bowls. He is 14-2 in the postseason. So, yes, he is a creation...of Football Jesus.
If Brady leads the New England Patriots to a Super Bowl win over the New York Giants next Sunday, everyone will celebrate his four world championships.
They will forget that Otto Graham won seven league championships.
Graham was an incredible athlete and a great winner. But when he played, there were like 12 teams and the average LB was 4'8", 120 and played his college ball at Yale. It's a different game. There are now 32 teams, and the average placekicker can curl 900 lbs. Players sprinkle steroids into their protein shakes, which they pour over bowls of steroids. Free agency, scouting, PhD.-level offensive and defensive coordination schemes, illegal videotaping of other teams' signals...it's a very different game. A harder-to-succeed-in game.
Everyone will marvel at Brady's 15-2 postseason record.
They will forget that Bart Starr was 9-1 in the postseason with a record 104.8 passer rating.
I like that he italicizes 9-1, as if (a) Brady didn't start his postseason career 10-0, and (b) 9-1 is so much more impressive than a theoretical 15-2.
Everyone will wax about how, in two Super Bowls, Brady led his team on late fourth-quarter game-winning field-goal drives.
They will forget that, in one of his four Super Bowl championships, Joe Montana drove his San Francisco team 92 yards for a last-second, game-winning touchdown.
No one will forget that. It's like the most famous thing that has ever happened in football history. Also, Montana needed a TD. Brady did not. Apples and oranges. Or, apples and different-but-equally-delicious apples.
Everyone will applaud Brady for his tough defender's mentality.
They will forget that Slingin' Sammy Baugh actually played defense, picking off 31 passes in his career, which is more than he threw in his last three seasons combined.
Different game, man. You really can't penalize Brady for not playing both ways, a thing that has not happened in decades. And speaking of Brady playing both ways, I would like to kiss him on the mouth.
Yeah, everyone will forget Johnny Unitas.
No, we won't. Swear.
[Unitas] was football's Babe Ruth, and Bart Starr was its Lou Gehrig, and Sammy Baugh was its Ty Cobb, and Joe Montana was its Joe DiMaggio.
Dan Fouts was its George Sisler. Rich Gannon was its Paul Molitor. Rob Johnson was its George Kendrick. Jim Zorn was its Mark Loretta. Al Toon was its Wil Cordero. Marc Edwards was its La Marr Hoyt. Joe DeLamielleure was its Rick Rhoden. And, most obviously of all, Billy Joe DuPree was its Kevin Tapani. That's just a no-brainer.
Tom Brady is football's, well, um, Alex Rodriguez.
...right. He's the best player in the game. Except that Alex Rodriguez, as boneheads like you are fond of pointing out, has never won a championship. So defend this statement, please.
"I hear all these people talking about Tom Brady and I just sort of smirk," said John Unitas Jr., the late quarterback's son. "It's an entirely different game. I'm biased, but what my father did, you can't compare it to anything today."
Tell that to Plaschke. He's devoting an entire column to doing just that.
While Brady is famous for his "decision making," many of those decisions have actually been made for him by his offensive coordinators.
The Patriots' game plan is more homework than instinct, more science than scrabble.
Late in the season finale against the Giants, Brady threw deep to Moss on second down, underthrew him, and Moss dropped the ball. On the next play, 3rd and long, with the Pats losing, their perfect regular season in jeopardy, they ran a play designed to check down to Welker to try to get the first. But Brady, in the 0.8 seconds a QB has to make a decision, saw that the Giants had not rotated safety help over to Moss (perhaps expecting the check-down?), meaning Moss would be single-covered by a CB. So Brady said, calmly, handsomely, to himself: "Fuck this noise," and uncorked a 60-yard pass that dropped into Moss's hands like a day-old helium balloon. Two records fell, the Pats went ahead for good, and all was right with the world.
Please don't say that Tom Brady -- or any modern QB -- doesn't employ "instinct." That's all they have out there, really. Watch how the man preternaturally senses and avoids blind-side pass rushes, and then write Whitman-style poetry about his instinct. Because that's the only logical response to how good his instincts are.
Here's my favorite part:
Brady is playing in an era when the following scenario would never happen:
Playing in overtime for the league championship, having driven his team to his opponent's eight-yard line, a quarterback decides to pass.
That was Unitas, 50 years ago. His Colts were in position to kick a field goal to beat the Giants for the title. Yet he saw a hole in the defense and threw a seven-yard pass to Jim Mutscheller to set up Alan Ameche's one-yard touchdown run.
This is incredibly dumb. Kick the field goal. It's overtime. (Unless NFL rules were different back then and it wasn't sudden-death. Anyone weigh in on this?)
I said I was just going to sample some articles to save time and energy, and now here we are, like two hours later. Oh well. Here's one more, about a man you might have heard of, Eric Walker, who thinks steroids don't really help people that much.
“If power were up, we’d see it in the statistics,” Walker said. “But the boost just isn’t there.” [...]
Apparently, he hasn't noted the extreme end-of-the-bell-curve-probability rise in 50- and 60-HR seasons since the "Steroid Era" began. Smaller parks, maybe. Expansion, maybe. Steroids probably helped, too, though, considering McGwire, Sosa, and a bunch of other Congressionally-invited dudes are on that 50+ list.
Regarding Bonds, for example, they note that, yes, his peak home run rates came at 36 through 39 years old, when most players are in decline. Then again, another slugger three decades before enjoyed almost the same late-30s surge: a fellow named Hank Aaron.
That doesn't seem like a huge "surge." (Though he did play in fewer games at 37-40 than in the previous years, so his HR/AB rate was higher.)
“I’m tired of people saying, ‘This is what happened because I see more home runs,’ ” Walker said. “If you disagree with me, deconstruct the argument; tell me where it’s wrong. If you can, more power to you.”
The argument has already been "deconstructed" [sic], at least w/r/t Bonds. It's here, and it's telling. Basically, it sets the odds of a 37 year-old hitting 73 HR at one in 53 million. That season was so many standard deviations from the mean, the author had to like go searching for a chart that would even calculate it.
And before any of you make fun of me for wanting to make out with Tom Brady...I got nothing. Go ahead. I want to make out with Tom Brady. Do your worst.
I'm pretty sure it was the first game in NFL history that required sudden-death (regular season games just ended in a tie with no OT, I believe).
As far as throwing the ball from the 8 in sudden death, that does seem like pretty horrible strategy, especially when you consider that was before the goal posts were moved to the back of the end zone. I suppose one could argue that place kicking was so brutal back then (pre-soccer style of course) that a field goal from any distance was a risk. (Come to think of it, maybe the 8 was even too close to kick because of the goal post thing.) Also, their kicker Steve Myhra was just 4 of 10 in FGs that year according to Pro Football Reference.
Thanks, Vinnie. Although, I'm pretty sure I could hit a 15-yard FG more than 40% of the time.
before Pete Gogolak popularized soccer-style field goal kicking in the 1960s (that is to say, well after Unitas' and the Colts' victory over the Giants in the 1958 NFL Championship Game, known as "The Greatest Game Ever Played"), field goal kicking was much more of a crapshoot than it is today, to the extent that successfully executing a field goal try from the 8 yard line (or even from the 1 yard line) wasn't really the given that it would be today. (As an illustration, per Wikipedia, Lou Groza, NFL Hall of Famer and namesake of the NCAA's annual award for the best DI-A kicker, made just 58% of his kicks, well below what even an average kicker accomplishes today.)
Additionally, while I can't find any specific information on point, we're talking about a game that was played on natural grass in New York in the winter. Heck, even today field goals at Giants Stadium on FieldTurf can be an adventure. One article I've read says the game featured numerous turnovers and missed field goals. I'm guessing weather probably would've added to the difficulty of a game-winning field goal attempt.
Those things being the case, I'd imagine that continuing to drive for a touchdown was netiher as "incredibly dumb" as you might have thought, nor as heroic as Plaschke portrays it as being.
I will officially back off from the position that going for it was dumb because they should've kicked, though I still think a 15-yarder was makable. However, as Joshua notes, Unitas maybe shouldn't be given a ton of credit for passing, since they kind of had to try to score a TD, and who knows what defensive alignment he was facing (10 in the box?).
Either way, I am definitely sure that I could have been the league's best FG kicker in the 1950s. Maybe even a good RB.
Achieved by -- naturally -- Peter King. King's new column contains the ranking of 32 NFL QBs. What formula does he use to measure these QBs, you might ask?
As for how I arrived at my picks, other than with a divining rod, I used a few measuring sticks. I value wins from my quarterback, which helped Manning and Brady, the leaders in victories over the last two years.
Fair.
I value postseason success; their seven combined wins over the past two years is significant.
Sure. I mean, it's more significant than wins by a pitcher.
Completion percentage and yards-per-attempt are the two passing stats I value the most because they tell you how often a quarterback succeeds in efficiently moving the chains through the air.
This seems good. I might toss in that weird QB Rating thing even though it is impenetrably dense and weird, but COMP% and YPA seems decent. What else?
Finally, intangibles.
Intangibles. You made a statistic...out of intangibles. You turned "intangibles" into a tangible.
Brady led all passers with a 10 on a 10-point scale, because he's a coach, an offseason facilitator, a free-agent recruiter -- and he does it while retaining respect from the guys he often has to lean on hard.
And that is worth: 10 intangi-points.
I've been crunching the numbers on some other people and how they rate on King's tangible intangible scale:
Dan Marino: 6.8. Surprisingly low total for an all-time great, but remember: he couldn't win the big one (-1.4); and he had weird curly hair that failed to inspire greatness in teammates (-.8).
Don Mattingly: 8.1. Mattingly gets a boost from winning an MVP at a time when the Yankees weren't very good (+1.2), and wearing the pinstripes with pride (+2.5). He is docked, however, 0.1 for being lefthanded, which is a weird quirk of the King Intangibles Scale.
Phil Spector: 9.5. This one surprised me. Spector gets mad intangipoints for creating a famous production style, the so-called "Wall of Sound" (+3.3). He also gets a boost from having a distinctive aura (+1.1) and being super skinny (+1.7). Also, I naturally assumed he would be docked something for being on trial for murder, but interestingly, that is not the case.
Prince Fielder: 2.0. I thought I'd run the numbers on a young guy just for kicks, and the results were pretty much as I expected. Fielder's youth hurt him. He did get +1.0 for being the son of a relatively famous MLBer, and a +.5 for being fat in a "lovable" way. But he plays for a small-market team (-2.0 in baseball, -0.3 in football, +4.0, weirdly, in hockey) and is left-handed...there's a lot of negatives there.
Mike, a loyal reader and Yankee fan, gives me a dose of my own medicine:
"Mattingly gets a boost from winning an MVP at a time when the Yankees weren't very good"
The Yankees record in 1985, the year Mattingly won the MVP- 97-64. But I guess I'm the idiot for expecting Sawx fans having [sic] any baseball recollection before 2004.
The Phillies are built upon old-fashioned scout values, which figures, because general manager Pat Gillick is still an old-fashioned scout, prone to traveling thousands of miles on late notice to see a low-level minor league player or an amateur prospect with his own eyes.
It's hard to make fun of Pat Gillick. He's won in Toronto, Baltimore, and Seattle, and he's close to winning in Philly, maybe. He's made some stupid trades, and some stupid non-trades, and he let Brett Myers pitch the day after assaulting his [Myers's] wife on a Boston street. But hey, nobody's perfect. And in the grand scheme of things, he's got a pretty good track record. Still, all this talk of traveling thousands of miles to see minor leaguers reminds me of something...Spideysense tingling...
...[W]hile most teams are relying on on-base percentage, the Phillies have traded some of the crown princes of on-base percentage (Jim Thome and Bobby Abreu), while making a concerted effort to create a lineup of players who score high in intangibles among scouts, like Shane Victorino, Aaron Rowand, Chase Utley and, of course, NL MVP Ryan Howard.
Is the best thing to say about Ryan Howard -- or Utley or Victorino, for that matter -- that "he scores high in intangibles among scouts?" Seriously. The premise of this paragraph is that while other teams go after high OBP guys, the Phillies and Pat Gillick are doing it another way -- they're building teams around guys with "intangibles." It seems to me that these OBPs --
Victorino: .346 (first full year...not great, but okay for a 4th OF) Utley: .379 Howard: .425
-- are pretty freaking tangible. As is an MVP Award. As are chase Utley's 32 taters and .906 OPS as a second baseman.
Rowand is another story. Here are some of Aaron Rowand's 2006 tangibles:
OPS+ 87 OBP: .321 EqA: .256
So what is Buster saying here? The Phillies, instead of going after guys with high OBPs, have gone after guys with great intangibles -- like high OBPs. Or low OBPs, or MVP Awards. Or bad hitting skills, or excellent hitting abilities.
For the record, there is one Phillies-related intangible that I care about deeply; namely, Shane Victorino's nickname, "The Flyin' Hawaiian." That's a good nickname.
Wes Helms, who will share time at third base this year, is never going to be confused with Miguel Cabrera in his production, but he is a well-respected professional and of the players with at least 150 plate appearances, he led all major league hitters in average after the All-Star break last season, hitting .385.
Let me rephrase:
Wes Helms, who is a pretty good 31 year-old journeyman, had a very flukey 240 AB last year, posting an OPS 200 points above his career average. In 130 AB after the ASB, he did this:
.385/.444/.654
In 110 AB before the ASB, he did this:
.264/.322/.482
Wes Helms ain't bad, but he ain't great neither. (Not that Olney said he was, obviously.) The only important thing about his 2006 2nd half is that it ended in early October, and will most likely have no bearing on his play in 2007. And I refuse to believe that his well-respectedness as a professional will help the Phillies' offense, or outweigh his 101 career OPS+.
What will help the Phillies' offense: Ryan Howard's total dominance of the game of baseball, Chase Utley blowing past his PECOTA forecast, and the Flyin' Hawaiian getting better at taking walks.
I would like to say, for the record, that I am very pleased with myself for the title of this post, despite the fact that the pun does not entirely work.
Recently, the Yankees Captain has been hit with some misguided criticism that he should come out stronger in his defense of Alex Rodriguez...
"That's exactly what I said," Jeter calmly explained. "I said the only thing I wasn't going to do was tell the fans who they should boo and who they shouldn't boo."
Then Jeter took the opportunity to stand up for Giambi, who was booed so loudly after he struck out in the eighth inning it was hard to hear public address announced Bob Sheppard announce the next hitter. Jeter implored Yankees fans to stop booing Giambi.
"The fans have to start cheering for him," Jeter said. "If you're a Yankee fan, you want us to win and we need Jason ."
One more time: 2006, re: ARod:
"I said the only thing I wasn't going to do was tell the fans who they should boo and who they shouldn't boo."
And 2005, in re: Giambi:
Jeter implored Yankees fans to stop booing Giambi. "The fans have to start cheering for him," Jeter said. "If you're a Yankee fan, you want us to win and we need Jason ."
I wonder if its pure objective analysis, or a fetish for contrarianism that's led us to the conclusion that 2006 Jeter = great tangibles, weak non-tangible things.
Every day in my hotel I get a little distilled edition of the NY Times slipped under my door. Today I read it as I sipped my coffee and watched "Tommy Boy" on F/X Buenos Aires. (It loses something in the translation.) And today, my NY Times distillation had an article about the AL MVP voting (which had not yet happened). The title of the article was "Jeter Looms as an MVP Candidate."
In the distilled article, there was a quote from worthless pontificator Tim McCarver, who believed that Derek Jeter should have been MVP. Why, you ask? WARP3? VORP? WPA? EqA? Probably EqA. That's McCarver's like go-to stat. I can't quite remember...well, let me just re-read the article and refresh my memory as to why Jeter should be MVP.
"Derek Jeter is different from all the other power guys," said the Fox broadcaster [sic] Tim McCarver..."It's not like he doesn't do anything from a numbers standpoint; he does a lot of things. But he's different, and you have to consider him differently. If Phil Rizzuto can win the MVP in 1950, Derek Jeter can be a candidate 56 years later."
Now, if any of you loyal readers out there ever question again why we at FJM despise Derek Jeter, or Tim McCarver, please just read that quote.
Derek Jeter is different. You have to think of him differently.
Yikes.
Now. It's possible that what McCarver is saying here is:
"Derek Jeter is different from the power guys. You have to take his position into account. You have to realize that the numbers he puts up as a SS are perhaps more valuable than the numbers Justin Morneau puts up as a 1B. Therefore, let's use things like VORP and WARP and stuff to determine exactly how valuable this guy is to his team."
I don't think that's what he is saying, though. I think he is talking about intangibles, here.
Perhaps that is a leap for me to make, here, in Argentina. But look again at that qualifier: "It's not like he doesn't do anything from a numbers standpoint; he does a lot of things." He brings up how Jeter has good numbers, which leads me to surmise that when he talks about how Jeter is "different," he is not actually talking about numbers at all, or about comparitive numbers among players at different positions. Plus, I have heard McCarver talk about Derek Jeter so often, and so miserably faux-poetically, that I'd be willing to bet 10,000 pesos (about $3500 US, give or take) that McC is saying that in a metaphysical, poetic, intangible way, we have to think of Derek Jeter differently.
And to that extrapolated exhortation from McCarver I say: no, sir. No we do not. We do not have to think of him differently. We have to think of him exactly the same as we think of any baseball player. We have to consider his position, yes. But when it comes to evaluating his contributions to his baseball team, we absolutely do not have to think of him "differently".
He does not possess superhuman powers. He is not physically handicapped. He is not a warrior-poet. He is not blessing us with his very presence. He is not a wizard. He is a baseball player.
He should have been the MVP because of how good he is at baseball. Not because of his calm eyes (a phrase McCarver, I believe, invented) or his intangibles or his steely gaze or his charisma or his elegant gait or his composure or the fact that he's currently schtupping Jessica Biel.
The thing that really bugs me is, McCarver is right about the Rizzuto-in-1950 comparison, but not the way he thinks he's right. Rizz had this line:
Phil Rizzuto, 1950:
.324/.418/.439 122 OPS+ 7 HR 112 RC .296 EQA
And there were certainly bigger power guys, like Larry Doby and Vern Stephens and stuff. (Teddy W. would assuredly have won the award if he hadn't played in only 89 games due to Korea -- he hit 28 bombs and had a .338 EqA in those 89 games. Also, did you know he had a farking .419 EqA in 1941? I mean, holy shit.) But, Rizzy had a 12.3 WARP3 because he played SS. Much the way Calm Eyes McGee had a 12.1 this year. Although, to be fair, DJ is a way better offensive player than Rizzy ever was.
I might have actually given the 1950 award to Yogi Berra, who had a 10.5 WARP3 and a .303 EqA, going .322/.383/.533 with 28 HR. But really, I would have given it to him because in 597 AB he struck out TWELVE TIMES. Look it up. That is batshit insane, my friends. But I digress.
The point is, Tim McCarver is a dumb dummy. And he is right about Rizzuto/Jeter for exactly the opposite reason that he is arguing. And no one should ever think of Derek Jeter, or anyone else, "differently" when evaluating him/them.
And if McCarver says tomorrow that all he was talking about was VORP and WARP and RC and FRAA and EqA, I will take this all back. And I will eat my sombrero.
A Spanish language grammar correction from beloved reader Pandrew.
Hey Sr. Tremendous.
The word "noche" in Spanish is feminine and is accompanied by a female article: la noche triste, for example. Thus, the greeting is "Buenas Noches," as both adjective and noun must agree on a gender.
Qué tienes buena suerte en Buenos Aires.
Let me just say that I am proud to be a poster on a blog that gets grammar corrections in two languages.
A little correction on beloved reader Pandrew's Spanish:
One would say "Que tengas buena suerte en Argentina."
1. there is no accent over the e on Que because it is not a question marker.
2. When you use que to wish someone well, the verb it precedes should take on a subjunctive ending (further explanation would be long and boring). Anyway, there you go.
In Basketball, "Intangible" Means "Good at Basketball"
Real quick:
ESPN GameNight, tonight, a little after 7:00. Freddy Coleman and some other guy, maybe Steve Czaban (though I thought he went to Fox) are saying that the thing that makes the Pistons so good is that they are maybe not the best individual players, but they work well together as a team. They have a lot of "intangibles," like not being ball hogs and stuff. So, okay. Then they say that they tried to put together a starting five from among all the players in the league, who would be the perfect "Team," the ultimate five-man Team, comprised of unselfish, smart players who would just work well together -- maybe not the best players, they keep saying, but the best TEAM. Loaded with intangibles.
Each host drew one up. Here's the first one:
G Steve Nash G LeBron James C Tim Duncan F Ben Wallace F Vince Carter
So, the Ultimate Team-with-a-Capital-T of Maybe Not the Best Guys But the Best Teammates contains: the reigning two-time league MVP, the widely-thought-of Next Jordan who finished second in the MVP voting this year, one of the best centers ever and a guy who not only seemingly always wins championships but also Finals MVPs, the like thirty-time NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award winner and rebounding champion, and a fifth guy who is awesome at basketball.
I did not hear the second starting five of Intangibly Good Teammates, but I assume it was Magic, Cousy, Shaq, Bird, and Jordan, with Dr. J, Kareem, Wilt, Teen Wolf, and Jesus Christ coming off the bench.
Several people who know far more about NBA basketball than I do have written in to make further points about Vince Carter's inclusion on the All-Intangibles Team. I am going to summarize their comments Zagat-style.
Are these people "crazy?" Vince Carter is a "whiny baby," who "literally quit on his team" and forced a trade to the Nets. What's his intangible -- "being a puss?" Or is it "not playing hurt" or "not driving the lane" or "not stepping up and being a leader?" The fact that he is on this list is a "travesty of justice" that makes the "O.J. trial look like '12 Angry Men.'" The ESPN announcers "should be ashamed of themselves."
I'm really sorry about this, but I was re-reading old posts on this (delightful) compendium of insanity, and I came across this sequence from a previous Joe Morgan chat:
Sean (Washington DC): Joe, you mention "intangibles" Do you think that most players understand and believe in them (such things as clubhouse chemistry, baseball IQ, etc. because I do and I think a lot of fans do but there seem to be quite a few analysts and reporters who think they are overrated. What's your take?
Joe Morgan: Well, Sean, I agree with YOU. Those intangibles ARE important. To hear people downplay them, means to me that they don't understand them. The computer age that we are in does not look for intangibles or reward them or recognize them. It's a definite plus when a guy brings more than a batting average to the table. Derek Jeter is the best example that you can get of a guy that helps you win championships with his intangibles. I've played the game for a long time and I've been an analyst and I know just how important those intangibles are. I couldn't agree with you more
Now, look. I don't want to beat a dead horse. But everyone who is stupid talks all the time about how undervalued "intangibles" are, and how there are guys who do things that "don't show up in the box scores" and all that stuff, and they argue, these idiots, that these "intangibles" are just as valuable to a team as actual baseball skills, and that no one rewards these people for their "intangibles."
But the thought just hit me: first of all, contrary to what Joe says here, EVERYBODY recognizes Derek Jeter's intangibles. People can't fucking shut up about Derek Jeter's intangibles. Ironically, there are dozens of sportscasters and -writers who talk incessantly about how nobody talks about Derek Jeter's intangibles. This, then, nullifies one part of Joe's "point." And second, in re: Joe saying that nobody rewards Derek Jeter's intangibles: Derek Jeter makes $18 million a year. Think about that. A guy who is, by any measure, a less-than-average shortstop, and who every year has like an .825 OPS or whatever (I don't have the energy to look it up) makes more than Bobby Abreu, and Adam Dunn, and Vlad Guererro, and even Pujols, and a whole lot of guys who are flat-out better players. So, what is he being paid for, if not "intangibles?"
In fact, if you decide to be crazy and take the approach that "intangibles" are a quantifiable aspect of baseball, like OPS or RC27 or anything else, then you would have to say that "intangibles" are among the most *over-appreciated" and *over-valued* of all skills. Because Derek Jeter is wildly overpaid, and everyone who is insane agrees that Derek Jeter does the most "intangible" things to help his team win.
And there are other guys, who don't make nearly as much money, but who are nonetheless overpaid, seemingly because they provide their team with intangibles. Jason Varitek is the best catcher in baseball right now, but will he be when he is 37? Because he'll be making like $10 million when he's 37, and a big part of the reason is his "intangibles."
It seems to me that if you want to make a lot of money as a baseball player, you should stop working out and taking extra BP and stuff, and work on your intangibles.
And also, since it's late and I am riled up, let me add the oft-made point that if Derek Jeter played for the Tigers, and had put up the exact same numbers and said and done the exact same things on and off the field, no one in the fucking world would ever have mentioned his name and the word "intangible" in the same sentence. And if Carlos Guillen had patrolled SS in the Bronx from 1996-2000, Joe Morgan would lie awake at night screaming at the ceiling that nobody recognizes how many intangibles he brings to the table.
In conclusion, I'd like to thank everybody here at the Institute for the Advanced Study of Preaching to the Converted.
when JM finally does publish everyone in the league's "intangibles" stats in the Joe Morgan Anecdotal Abstract, i'd be interested to see how they break down along racial lines. it seems to me that baseball's "intangibles" stat is analagous to basketball's "heart" stat of the bird/magic era.
it's amusing to me that JM believes he has special privy to the world of "things that don't show up in the box score." well, sabrmetrics was invented to fix shortcomings in box scores and traditional statistics -- to invent more accurate and more useful stats than batting average, wins, etc. yet JM will reject sabrmetrics for traditional stats and box scores -- the very things he routinely calls into question whenever the intangibles debate comes up. it's almost as if he senses that the inaccuracy of batting average and wins are what allow him to speculate stupidly that the gaps are filled in not by quantifiable numbers, but by derek jeter's nutsack, which he hopes to grasp tightly and fondle some day.
Good points, Jimmy. I would also add that the term "throwback" is almost always applied to white guys. Chipper Jones, Jim Thome, Paul Molitor, Trot Nixon, Roger Clemens, etc. Right now, I'd say guys like Juan Pierre, Dontrelle WIllis, and even, say, Mike Cameron, are all throwback players, yet you never hear them referred to as such. Why is that?
Hey, when are you going to get a blogger account and start posting here? Or are you worried that if you use your real blogger ID, we'll find your Warcraft III slash fiction blog?
"For this team to continue to contend they need to go out and make a trade for a No. 2 hitter. The Phillies have the perfect guy for them in Placido Polanco. He's not getting consistent at-bats in Philly, but he's a great No. 2 hitter because he gives himself up."
The best hitters in the world are the ones who intentionally make outs.
"They also would be well served if they could get a lefty starter to mix things up in the rotation. They have excellent intangibles with manager Bruce Bochy who is the best manager in the division."
Bochy leads all NL managers in intangibles this year with 106.40. Pretty excellent. Second place is Tony LaRussa with 115.42. (Remember, when you calculate intangibles, you want the LOWEST score possible.) The all-time record for excellence in intangibles in one season is Cookie Lavagetto, who achieved an unthinkably excellent 30.1 with the Washington Senators in 1960, despite his team going 73-81. Which just goes to show you: having excellent managerial intangibles does not guarantee success.
Greg (Tallahassee,FL): Joe, with all the controversy still out there about steroids and such, shouldn't MLB try to push young players like David Wright, Jose Reyes, Clint Barmes and Justin Morneau? It seems like they are pushing superstars who are still questionable...Instead of young players who play hard.
Joe Morgan: Well, I think you answer your own question, Greg. The big names start are only 'questionable' NOT proven.
Ken Tremendous: (looking around for help) What?
Seymour (Brooklyn): Joe, as far as best players in the game today are concerned, where do you rank The Captain - Derek Jeter?
Joe Morgan: Well, I think Miguel Tejada is the best player in the game for everything that he adds and brings to the field each day. I think Alex Rodriguez is next on that list. I don't know where Jeter would rank, obviously he's one of the best players, and he does bring the intangibles like leadership, etc. ... but he's not better than Miguel Tejada. I'd say Derek Jeter is in the top 8 or 10 best in the game today.
Ken Tremendous: Jeter is having a decent year -- one of his better starts. There are still 24 players with a higher RC27 in the AL alone. Prefer stupid stats like BA? Okay. He's 16th in the AL. SLG? Not in the top 40. Remember -- this is AL only. He also has the 5th lowest ZR in all of baseball. He is not one of the 8 or 10 best players in the game today. He is one of the 60 best, perhaps. You should be fired, Joe Morgan.
Chris, Toronto: Are the Blue Jays for real? What do they need in order to seriously make a run at a playoff spot?
Joe Morgan: Well, they've definitely improved over last year's team, but I think in the long run, they'll still miss Delgado's bat. I just can't see the Blue Jays beating out the Yankees ... BUT, anything IS possible.
Ken Tremendous: Joe, the question was, "What do they need in order to seriously make a run at a playoff spot?" You should try answering the question. It makes the chats more fun!
Sean (Washington DC): Joe, you mention "intangibles" Do you think that most players understand and believe in them (such things as clubhouse chemistry, baseball IQ, etc. because I do and I think a lot of fans do but there seem to be quite a few analysts and reporters who think they are overrated. What's your take?
Ken Tremendous: Now, Joe, before you answer, remember. You are an analyst. You have to be smart, and current, and knowledgeable. You have to correct people when they are wrong, and express, in clear, concise language, opinions and facts based on empirical evidence. Okay? Great. So, the question is about "intangibles," which are pretty irrelevant and meaningless. So, let the guy have it!
Joe Morgan: Well, Sean, I agree with YOU. Those intangibles ARE important. To hear people downplay them, means to me that they don't understand them. The computer age that we are in does not look for intangibles or reward them or recognize them. It's a definite plus when a guy brings more than a batting average to the table. Derek Jeter is the best example that you can get of a guy that helps you win championships with his intangibles. I've played the game for a long time and I've been an analyst and I know just how important those intangibles are. I couldn't agree with you more.
Ken Tremendous: Oh, Joe. Joe Joe Joe...
Derek Jeter (Kalamazoo, MI): Hey, Joe? You can stop licking my balls, now.
