We've come so far, baseball writers. You're citing OPS occasionally, you're learning that wins and losses for pitchers aren't all they're cracked up to be, you're even acknowledging the dubious worth of small sample sizes. It makes me proud, like a mama city raccoon watching her baby eat its first piece of leftover Taco Bell. So please, when you're doing the last of these three things, don't merely pay lip service to sample size and then leap to ridiculous conclusions, like
Mr. Timothy Kawakami did today:
1. Barry Bonds is not missed, in part because Fred Lewis is a better player than Bonds was at the end of last year. (italics and insanity his)
In the top of the third inning last night, Macedonian superstar Kevin Kouzmanoff hit a home run off of Jamie Moyer. On Friday, May 20, 1927, Babe Ruth struck out against George Ernest "The Bull" Uhle.
Kevin Kouzmanoff is a better player than Babe Ruth was during that at bat. (italics and hamhanded hyperbole mine)
EMPHASIS ON: BONDS AT THE END OF LAST YEAR. I’m of course not saying Lewis is better than Bonds at the height of his power/the injections or when Bonds was 27, as Lewis is now. EMPHASIS ON: BONDS DURING AN ARBITRARY, TINY SMATTERING OF AT BATS THAT I CHERRY-PICKED COMPARED TO FRED LEWIS' HIGH BABIP-FUELED START THAT HE ALMOST CERTAINLY WILL BE UNABLE TO SUSTAIN.
I’m saying that Lewis is a better producer in LF for the Giants at this moment than Bonds would’ve been if he was currently playing LF for the Giants, or any other team, or DH-ing, or whatever.Fred Lewis is hot as hell right now. He's got a .952 OPS. I'm sure even Kawakami would admit that he's performing a little over his head.
You know what Bonds' OPS was after the month of April last year?
1.349That is not a typo. You know what Bonds' OPS for the year was?
1.045It's early, motherfuckers. Nate McLouth has a 1.083 OPS. Let's keep our heads when comparing 27-year-old virtual rookies with the first- or second-greatest hitter of all time, even the hypothetical 349-year-old version of that hitter who would be playing this year.
(And Bonds would’ve only been worse this year, while Lewis is getting better.)Probably. Though Barreee did increase his OPS from .999 to the aforementioned 1.045 from 2006 to 2007, at the age of 9,528.
Flash back to early August, when Bonds was a good player.Something happened between early August and late August that made Bonds not a good player anymore? Did he lose an arm in a lathe accident? I feel like Barry Bonds with one arm in a lathe would still OBP in the high .300s.
He hit HR No. 756 on Aug. 7, to break the all-time record.
Then he hit a few more, then went into a predictable post-record, pre-indictment lull. But there was still more baseball to played and Bonds knew his career was on the line. After the record-gazing, he still needed a big September to prove he could play at age 43. September should be a good barometer for what Bonds has/had left.YES LET'S JUDGE THE ENTIRETY OF BARRY BONDS' REMAINING BASEBALL ABILITY ON THE BASIS OF ONE MONTH'S WORTH OF AT BATS, NOT THE REAMS AND REAMS AND REAMS OF DATA, INCLUDING THE SEVERAL MILLION RECORDS HE BROKE AND THE KIA SEPHIA HE CLEAN-AND-JERKED OVER HIS HEAD IN LATE OCTOBER 2007.
Here’s what Bonds did last September: 1 HR in 30 at-bats, 7 hits, (.233 batting average), 6 walks (.361 on-base), 1 double (.367 slug). That’s a .738 OPS, way, way under his alleged-steroid totals and career totals.Did I say one month's worth of at bats? I'm sorry, I meant
two weeks' worth. Tim Kawakami is judging Barry Bonds' current baseball-hitting prowess on 12 games' worth of data.
Through 9 games this year, Fred Lewis had a .388 OPS. That's worse than Alicia Silverstone would hit in the majors! Throw him into a viper pit of pit vipers! Through 10 games, it was .654. That's worse than Jennie Garth would hit in the majors! Drop him off of Mount Everest into the Marianas Trench! Through 11 games, it was .761. Eh, okay. That's about average, I guess. Through 12 games, it was .946. HE IS OUR NEW BASEBALL GOD.
The point is, after each one of these games, Fred Lewis seemed to be an entirely different player. The larger point is, you can't judge players after 9 or 10 or 11 or 12 games. What's frustrating is that Kawakami seems to know this (as we'll see from what he writes later), or seems to think he knows this, and yet he still wrote all of this nonsense about Lewis definitely being better than Bonds.
Here’s what Lewis is doing right now, comfortably settled into the lead-off spot at the end of April:
-92 at-bats, .337 batting average, .419 on-base (13 walks, 17 runs), .533 slugging, 4 stolen bases, 7 RBI.92 at-bats is better than 30, and Lewis appears to be developing into a productive offensive player. Then again, check out this hotshot:
35/104 15 4 26 1 .337 .926
Yeah. That's Xavier Nady. I just made you get a baseball-rection from Xavier Nady, 29 years old, .777 OPS in 551 career games.
-Lewis has the fifth-best OPS (.952) among regular LFs, ahead of Matt Holliday, Johnny Damon, Jason Bay and Carlos Lee, among others.
-That’s much more than Bonds could’ve logically been expected to produce this season, with or without steroid injections, with or without a federal indictment, with or without clogging up the clubhouse with his karma.Well, there was that whole 1.349 OPS in April of last year. But more importantly, I think we have a new rival to "clogging up the basepaths." "Clogging up the clubhouse with his karma" -- it's delicious, pungent, and utterly nonsensical. Brian Bocock's karma wants to run free with the antelopes. But oh no, here comes Barry's karma (I picture these karmas looking a little like the creatures from
Where The Wild Things Are)! It's fat and it's slow, and it's clogging up the clubhouse! Who cares about his karma's karmic OBP (kOBP) when he can't run the karmic basepaths (in the clubhouse)!
-Lewis obviously might and probably will cool down. Thank you.
His defense isn’t very good (great play here, bad play there) and I’m not volunteering Lewis for Gold Glove consideration at any point. But Bonds was a sieve out there for the last three years. So Lewis is better in the field, too.Sure. Not helping your point much that Lewis is a butcher in left field, but I'll give you this.
-I realize these are relatively small sampling sizes–September for Bonds, April for Lewis. Relatively? Relatively?! This is like a dude telling a girl he just slept with, "I realize that I may be relatively chlamydia-y, but..."
You can't just say "Yes-these-are-small-sample-sizes-moving-on-I'm-using-them-anyway." That's, as Buzz Bissinger would say, fucking glib as shitfuck. You didn't even use an entire month for Bonds. You used 30 at bats. That's a fraction of an eye-blink in Barry Bonds' career. I just looked it up. He has 9847 at bats. Some of those could have been incorporated into your evaluation. More than 30 should have been.
But they’re the most legitimate comparable sample sizes. Infinite monkeys on infinite MacBooks could not construct a more false sentence.
Both players were extremely motivated to do well: Bonds to get another contract, Lewis to stay in the line-up. We’ve seen the results. I’m going with them.
-Therefore: Lewis is better than Bonds, and Lewis is a big reason why the Giants are, so far, out-performing the low expectations.I'm willing to listen to arguments that a healthy, young, solid-hitting outfielder who plays every day and is far more valuable than Barry in the field might, just might have more value to a team than a gimpy, non-DH-ing Bonds. But what I'm not willing to do is accept 12 games' worth of semi-crappy at bats as ironclad evidence that Markus Winston Barrold Bonds IV is done as a hitter, and that MWBB IV's "karma" is going to "clog" its way to that many losses for whatever team it and he join.
Hey, I looked up Fred Lewis' batting average on balls in play. It's .414. This guy is going to fall off big time. Going out on a limb here, but I'm going to say that I don't think he's actually a better player than Barry Bonds.
Labels: barrold bonds, barry bonds, clogging up the clubhouse with his karma, fred lewis, small sample size, tim kawakami
Gilloolies? Let's go with Gilloolies.
You know what I'm talking about. Three days into the season, a sportswriter disembowels a player for "hitting .028!!! He's killing his team!!!!" Then a month or two later, it's completely forgotten
because baseball's season is eternal.
Exhibit A, NUMBER ONE, AWESOME today: Wallace Matthews in Newsday.
Reyes, do you want to be a Jeter or a Rey Ordonez?We're 18 games in, Wallace. Please don't use statistics -- which I'm sure you claim not to trust anyway -- to crucify a guy who is 24 years old and in all likelihood is going to be fine.
I'll summarize the intro for you: Derek Jeter is a supergod amongst gods, like all Titan-style, like Cronus and shit. Rey Ordonez was a bust. Jeter rules, Ordonez drools. Et cetera, ad nauseam.
Here's the meaty part:
This year, you [Reyes] are hitting only .280. I'm excited to do this. Are you?
Jeter: .277.
You have drawn a mere four walks, Jeter: 2 walks.
stolen only three bases in five tries, Jeter: 0 steals.
scored only 12 runs. Jeter: 7 runs (!)
Your OBP, .313, Jeter: .309.
is worse than all but three other NL leadoff hitters. -- but better than the living embodiment of heroism, Derek Jeter.
Even Rickie Weeks, batting .192 at the top of the Brewers' lineup, is getting on base more often than you.And Jeter. Don't forget the man whose face I am nominating to adorn the next dollar coin, Derek Jeter.
Jeter is a terrific hitter. Jose Reyes is a terrific player. Wallace Matthews is driving an Underwater StupidTank to Uninformed Thinking Island if he believes that either of their starts is indicative of what their career values will end up being.
Labels: derek jeter, gilloolies, jose reyes, small sample size, underwater stupidtank to uninformed thinking island, wallace matthews
Coincidence? Not if you're Wallace Matthews, who believes that the Yankees' recent resurgence has one cause and one cause only:
Jason Giambi's injury.
(And before I begin investigating this article, allow me to say, as a meta-critic of sports journalism, that the discovery of
Newsday's Matthews has been, for me, equal to Darwin landing in the Galapagos Islands.)
[Giambi's] rehab is going as well as can be expected, he said. Another MRI is planned, but surgery is not an option because cutting would only make things worse. Yesterday, his treatment consisted mainly of sitting around waiting for his sore foot to heal... As far as the Yankees are concerned, Giambi should take as much time off as he needs.For the record: Giambi was in a terrible funk right before his injury. Even still, he was at .262/.380/.436 for the year, with a .297 EqA. Not bad. Not everything you want from Giambi, but not bad.
The Curse of the Giambino descended upon Yankee Stadium in December 2001 and they haven't won a thing of importance since. Giambi may not be out of their lives, but he is out of their lineup, and what do you know? They win.
Other things that happened in December 2001: President Bush grants Permanent Trade Status to China. Riots erupt in Argentina. And of course,
Sultan Salahuddin Abdul Aziz Shah ibni Almarhum Sultan Hisamuddin Alam Shah Al-Haj, Sultan of Selangor and 11th Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia, dies in office.
Each of these things has had roughly as much to do with the Yankees not winning the WS as Giambi signing with the Yankees.
Here are Giambi's season HR totals in his NY career: 41, 41, 12 (injured), 32, 37.
Here are his season EqA's: .351/.327/.262/.347/.332.
Steroids or not, (ok: steroids), Giambi is a world-class hitter. He walks all the time. He hits home runs. (He singlehandedly roided two of them out of the Stadium in Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS from the 7-hole, keeping the Yankees in the game.) His illicit substance-ing has no doubt been a distraction for the team, but his on-field exploits far outweigh whatever negative effect that might have had.
Also: there is no such thing as a "curse."
Suddenly, October doesn't seem quite so bleak. There are plenty of factors to point to as reasons for this remarkable turnaround - the rejuvenation of Bobby Abreu, the return to his April form of Alex Rodriguez, who hit two homers and drove in five runs yesterday; the long-awaited arrival of Roger Clemens, who, we are told, inspires by his very presence even when he's not around.Yes. These are all actual reasons. Also, the Yankees were pretty seriously under-performing their Expected Win-Loss prediction before the injury to Giambi, so it was only a matter of time before they went on a run like this. In fact,
ExWL has them at 35-26, five games better than what they are now, so the run will most likely continue, if not immediately, then over the next month or so. They had a ton of guys slumping significantly below their career averages, like Cano and Abreu, who have been on fire recently.
And who, might I ask, "told you" that Roger "inspires by his very presence even when he's not around?" Have you been talking to
Suzyn Waldman?
And then there is the absence of Giambi, the beginning of whose stint on the disabled list coincides almost exactly with the resurgence of his team. Call it coincidence or call it karma, but the Yankees, who were a far better team before Giambi's arrival in December 2001, are a measurably better team since his departure from the active roster 10 days ago.
Also coinciding almost exactly with the resurgence of Giambi's team, Dr. Kevorkian being
released from jail.
I would also like to address the idea that the Yankees were, and I quote, just to rub it in, "a far better team before Giambi's arrival in December 2001." In order to address this, I will quote my own post of
April 15th:
The payroll became more menacing after that, but the trophy has not returned. As the Yankees stocked up on Randy Johnson, Kevin Brown, Jason Giambi, Johnny Damon, Gary Sheffield, et al., they became less potent.
Incorrect. They became far more potent.
In 2000 they won 87 games and got to the WS from a very weak AL East. They scored 871 runs, allowed 814 .
In 2002, the first year with Giambi, they went 103-58. They scored 897 runs, allowed 697.
In 2003, they went 101-61. They scored 877 runs, allowed 716.
In 2004, the first year with Sheffield/ARod, they went 101-61 again, scored 897 runs, allowed 808.
In 2005, 95-67. Scored 886 runs, allowed 789.
In 2006, first year with Damon: 97-65. Scored 930 runs, allowed 767.
So. To sum up. More "potent" pretty much every year since 2000. Just haven't won the WS, due mostly to thinner pitching, better competition, and bad luck (esp. 2001, 2004).
In what universe can you claim that the Yankees were a "far better team" before Giambi arrived? Perhaps only in the universe where you point out that the Yankees' pitching was not as good after he arrived; a universe, I might add, that thanks to reason and logic, would indicate that the Yankees being "worse" in some way has nothing to do with Giambi, who has certainly helped the Yankees' offense.
Without the drag of Giambi, the Yankees' lineup is rolling again. In the 10 games Giambi has missed, Abreu has hit .500 (19-for-38) and raised his average 44 points to .272. In the same period, Melky Cabrera is hitting .378, A-Rod .371 with five homers and 18 RBIs, Jorge Posada .364, Robinson Cano .293, Miguel Cairo .292 and Hideki Matsui .282.This is all due to Giambi not playing.
Abreu is a walking embodiment of the idea of "regression to the mean," given his career .313 EqA, the fact that he was hitting like .040 for the first two months, and the significant fact that he was still walking a lot even while not hitting, meaning that he had not lost his strike zone management. Or maybe it was Giambi going down that caused Abreu to start hitting.
And Cabrera...thanks to his incredible hot streak -- due entirely to Giambi going down with his injury -- he is up to a blistering .255 EqA, which is still shy of his 50th percentile PECOTA projection. Say it with me people: regression to the mean.
ARod is ARod. He hits like a motherhumper all the time. He was mediocre in May, and is knocking the hell out of the ball in June. This is 100% because of Giambi's foot injury, and not his decade-long demonstration of hitting dominance.
And Posada! My God! He is hitting .364 since Giambi went down?!? That is
hugely significant, since he is hitting a paltry .358 for the entire season. (Also, if any of you can explain to me how an almost 36-year-old catcher has a .980 OPS this deep into the year, I would be much obliged.)
Robby Cano had an OPS more than 100 pts. below his career average through May. His torrid Giambi-induced hot streak has him...still below his career averages in most offensive categories. So he will probably keep hitting. Regression to the mean.
Miguel Cairo. Oh my God, you're citing Miguel Cairo's 7-24 June as an indication that Jason Giambi's injury is making the Yankees play better. That's 24 AB. And 7 hits. All of these batting averages you've cited -- besides being batting averages, which is a stupid stat -- are from really small sample sizes (around 40 AB or so) but this one takes the cake.
And finally , Matsui. He has hit .282 since Giambi went down! My goodness, that is interesting. You know what he was hitting before Giambi went down, in a much large sample size? .282, dummy. In fact, in the month of June, Matsui's slugging .371. He has 1 HR. His OBP is down. His power is down. He has gotten worse. So the question is:
How can you cite his performance as evidence that Giambi going down is helping the team?
If you're going to claim that solar eclipses cause crops to grow, at least cite some crops that are actually growing.
The absence of Giambi has allowed Johnny Damon to DH, a role he likes, and get his legs healthy while Cabrera, a defensive upgrade over Damon, plays centerfield. And because of the regular at-bats, Cabrera has become the Melky of 2006.The fact that Damon can DH might actually help, since he's been battling leg injuries. But you know what Damon has done so far in June? .262/.340/.333/.673. No HR. Worse across the board than May, when he was in the OF. And the phrase "Cabrera has become the Melky of 2006" sounds like bad Dr. Seuss. (The Melky of 2006 had a .272 EqA. The Melky of 2007 has a .255 EqA.)
In a culture in which a player will wear the same underwear for weeks if it has hits in it, that seems to be prima facie evidence that for the Yankees, the absence of Giambi has been addition by subtraction.First of all, how dare you try to smarten up your article with Latin. Second,
your underwear has hits in it. Third, all the superstition in the world can't change the fact that most of the guys you cited as doing better since Giambi went down with his injury are doing pretty much the same, or worse, or they are simply starting to hit after bad slumping. This, to me, is
prima facie evidence that you are a moron, but, you know,
de gustibus non est disputandum.
This should come as no surprise to Yankees purists, for whom the signing of the greasy-haired, tattooed captain of the bad-boy Oakland Athletics to a seven-year, $120-million contract signified the franchise's crossing over to the dark side. In his years as a Yankee, the postseason record stands at 19-22 with one World Series appearance, the six-game beatdown by the Marlins of Wal-Mart.Why in the world would you blame this on Giambi, and not their pitchers? In exactly 100 Yankee post-season AB, Giambi has 28 H, 6 HR, 6 2B, and 19 BB. He rakes in the post-season, roughly like he does in the regular season. How about looking at Pettitte, Mussina, and Wells getting lit up by Anaheim in the 2002 ALDS, while Giambi went 5-14 with a HR and a .526 OBP? That series loss was Giambi's fault?
Dollar-for-dollar, win-for-win and ring-for-ring, Giambi probably is the worst deal the Yankees have ever made this side of Carl PavanoKevin Brown. Kyle Farnsworth. Johnny Damon, probably, by the time it's over. Matsui's new deal, probably, by the time it's over. There have been a lot of iffy deals. Giambi's isn't one of them.
Giambi, for on-field only reasons, was a good signing. I don't care if he's immobile and can't field. They signed him in his prime, the year after he had a .381 (!!!!) EqA. And yes, he was clearly on steroids, and yes, he was expensive, but nobody in baseball cared about steroids then, and the Yankees don't care about money.
and like it or not, they are stuck with him, to the tune of $47 million - $21 million each for this year and next, plus a $5-million buyout. The money they will eat. It's the losing they can't swallow.Fortunately, the losing doesn't really have anything to do with him. And yes, he is expensive now vis-a-vis his performance, by they knew that would happen. This is what teams like the Yankees do -- they offer more years and more money and no-trade clauses, knowing the deals will be costly at the end of them, in order to out-bid teams who can't afford to take that financial hit.
For a long time, they suspected they were a better team with Jason Giambi on the DL than on the field. Now they've got the numbers to prove it.
No, they didn't, if they had a brain. And no, they don't now.
You wrote this
ab absurdo. I end this analysis
ab irato.
Labels: jason giambi, latin, small sample size, wallace matthews, yankees
For two years now, even as he compiled (literally) MVP-level statistics, the press has been asking: "What's wrong with ARod?" They based their ideas that something was wrong with ARod on his performance in a very very small number of games in October, which is like basing John Gielgud's acting career on "Arthur 2: On the Rocks."
Yes, he swiped the ball from Arroyo's glove, and yes, he failed to come through in the "clurmtch," or whatever that word is. But so did every other Yankee. Sheffield popped the ball up in key at bats. Matsui K'd a lot. Giambi forgot to take his medicine and turned back into a pumpkin. They all fell apart, but only ARod got blamed. And in the 2005 postseason, when he went 1-14 (the very definition of a small sample size) the press was all over him like a cheap suit.
Now he's off to a torrid start, and the new fun story to write is "ARod Finally True Yankee!!!!" But whom are they going to blame now, based on a tiny sample size?
Not...surely they wouldn't...oh my God...
Run!!!!!!!!!!Time to ask ... what’s wrong with Jeter?
As A-Rod's fortunes soar, Yankee captain down in dumps
By Mike Celizic
MSNBC contributor
 | Mike Celizic |
|
Alex Rodriguez has undoubtedly had many moments — some of which could be timed with a calendar — during which he wished he were Derek Jeter. This is not one of them. The Yankee captain and New York’s favorite baseball player since Don Mattingly has been having a rough go of it this year. It’s not so much his hitting, although his average is sinking fast after a torrid start and he’s got just three RBI in 12 games, but his fielding that’s been a problem.
Jeter has made a lot of errors so far. But so has Mike Lowell. And unlike Jeter, Lowell is actually a good fielder. Freaky things happen in small sample sizes. That's why after a week Ian Kinsler is 2nd in HR. That's why people say things like "At this pace, Garth Iorg will have 300 RBIs!" and then he ends up with like 34. You really can't tell anything about a player's year after 40 AB or 10 games in the field.
For the record, the reasons Jeter has made a lot of errors are probably: (a) it's been really crappy playing conditions, or (b) he's never been that good a defensive SS, or (c) it's a complete fluke.
Jeter has won three Gold Gloves, but he’s not on his way to winning a fourth. Through 12 games, he has six errors, the most in the major leagues.
For the millionth and final [sic] time, Gold Gloves are 99% meaningless.
Everybody’s writing about his problems catching and throwing, but no one’s trying to run him out of town. Yankee Stadium with him would be like the Sistine Chapel without Michelangelo’s ceiling work.
I’d ask you to imagine A-Rod in the same situation, but you don’t have to, because we’ve seen what would happen...He was booed at every opportunity and flayed daily by the talk-show guys and the columnists, many of whom suggested the only way for him to fix things was to take the first plane out of town. I was one of them, and I don’t apologize for it.
You should. It was insane. In 2005-06 he hit 83 HR, drove in 251. He walked 181 times. His OBPs were .421/.392.
SLG .610/.523.
EqA .354/.319.
His WARP3s were 13.0 and 7.5 (same as Troy Glaus in 2006, BTW), and if he had been able to play his natural position on the field, they would probably have been much higher, all things being equal.
Even when he had his legendarily "terrible" year, when everything "fell apart," when he hated New York and was a "head case" and everyone in the world wrote about how he didn't fit in with the Hallowed Pinstripery of New York, he was an awesome, awesome baseball player. Who in his right mind can think differently?
He had come to the Yankees as the best player in baseball.
By last season, he wasn’t even the third best third-baseman.
J'accuse, Monsieur de Chapeau!!!
And the worse it got for A-Rod, the better it got for Jeter. Every bad throw, every late-inning out, every clumsy attempt to explain himself made A-Rod look more misplaced and Jeter more the true Yankee hero.
Jeter had a great year last year. ARod had a very very good year that looked bad only in comparison to his outstanding previous years. It happens.
So this year, A-Rod showed up wearing high stirrups and after a couple of games to warm up started hitting — for average and power, in early innings and late, by day and by night.
I don't think this makes cognitive sense. "...after a couple of games to warm up started hitting." Does that mean, "after taking a couple of games to warm up?" Also, the part that comes after the dash reads like a weird parody of "Paul Revere's Ride."
After three years of waiting for him to do his part, he was suddenly doing everybody’s part.
He has been doing pretty much what he did in his 2005 AL MVP Season, when he went .321/.41/.610 with 48 HR, a .354 EqA and a 13.0 WARP3. This didn't come out of nowhere, people. He has always been this good. He was this good even while you were all talking about how bad he was.
But there’s something wrong with this picture — the Captain’s early-season slump, especially in the field. The SABRE folks will tell you that Jeter has never been a particularly good shortstop despite the Gold Gloves, but his teammates, his manager and anybody who watched him every day will differ.
"The facts will tell you some information. Some casual anecdotes will contradict this. Your choice."
There are some things the stats don’t tell you, and unless you watch the guy every day, there’s no way to tell you about them.
I've seen somewhere in the vicinity of 500 Yankee games, I'd say. And I think Jeter is vastly overrated as a fielder by every anecdote-toting sportswriter and fan out there. Twice a year he goes deep into the hole to his right, stabs a backhand, jumps in the air and gets the guy at first by a step. It's very impressive and flashy, but it doesn't nearly make up for the fact that he gets nothing to his left. He has what people often call a "high baseball IQ" in that he is very alert and smart when the ball is in play -- I will give him that. He takes relays well and is very athletic. But he is nowhere near the league of the Vizquels, Everetts, or even Cabreras of the world.
But there’s no denying he’s killing his team in the field right now, and his hitting isn’t that great either. Come to think about it, he’s not even stealing bases with his normal ease — just one-for-three on the season.
He's not off to a great start, but his OBP is .390, which tells you his patience is still there. And it's been like 50 AB. In 2004 Jeter had an 0-32 in April, and ended up having a fine offensive year.
It’s as if he and A-Rod are two yo-yos that are out of synch. When A-Rod was down, Jeter was up. And now that A-Rod is tearing the cover off the ball, Jeter is down. It’s a little spooky. It’s as if he thrives on A-Rod’s negative energy and is being sapped by A-Rod’s success.
Or, alternately -- and I don't mean to disparage the Yo-Yo/Vampire-Energy-Suck Theory, which seems air-tight -- ARod has always been awesome, Jeter had a mediocre first 50 AB, and this is all pointless and stupid.
I’m sure — well, pretty sure, anyway — it’s just an aberration, that Jeter’s problems are just a slump that will pass and not the result of him trying for the first time since A-Rod arrived, to keep up with and outdo his teammate.
Yeah, probably. Or -- and bear with me here -- what if ARod, brimming with jealousy and malice, is secretly poisoning Jeter with a magic serum that causes him, Jeter, to have a slightly mediocre first 50 AB of the season and be slightly worse in the field than normal? Could such a serum exist? Get on this. Pronto.
You never thought of Jeter as needing to outshine anyone. He’s shared the stage with plenty of great players, and it’s never stopped him. On the other hand, in the three years that A-Rod’s been playing next to him, he’s always been the leader and A-Rod the guy trying to keep up.
The roles are reversed right now. Jeter says it’s just a slump. So do Joe Torre, his manager, and Brian Cashman, the team’s G.M. They’re probably right.
But what if they’re not?
I said get on this! Visit every witch doctor in the city! Search ARod's home for boiling cauldrons! We will get to the bottom of this, fair readers. That I promise.
Labels: arod, derek jeter, gold glove award, HatGuy, mike celizic, small sample size, true yankee
