Gullycanyon's musings on baseball

[The Suburban Avenger]

I just kept saying, "Wow". After this season, it would only make sense that the World Series goes like this. I may never again see a baseball season with so much drama and so many twists and turns.

Guy that sits next to me at the office just said the same thing. Other than that 15-5 game the Tigers lost, all of the ALCS games were damned exciting.

I thought when Hamilton homered last night the thing was in the books.

And Deadspin gave Joe Buck (yes, that Joe Buck) a nice way-up for echoing his pa from the 1991 Series "We'll see you tomorrow night!" Cool.

[Doctor Detroit]

I just kept saying, "Wow". After this season, it would only make sense that the World Series goes like this. I may never again see a baseball season with so much drama and so many twists and turns.

Guy that sits next to me at the office just said the same thing. Other than that 15-5 game the Tigers lost, all of the ALCS games were damned exciting.

I thought when Hamilton homered last night the thing was in the books.

And Deadspin gave Joe Buck (yes, that Joe Buck) a nice way-up for echoing his pa from the 1991 Series "We'll see you tomorrow night!" Cool.

They played the Jack Buck and Joe Buck calls back to back on the Ticket this morning, it was cool. Joe Buck is growing on me a little, I have to admit. But McCarver has got to go.

[The Beav]

I just kept saying, "Wow". After this season, it would only make sense that the World Series goes like this. I may never again see a baseball season with so much drama and so many twists and turns.

Guy that sits next to me at the office just said the same thing. Other than that 15-5 game the Tigers lost, all of the ALCS games were damned exciting.

I thought when Hamilton homered last night the thing was in the books.

And Deadspin gave Joe Buck (yes, that Joe Buck) a nice way-up for echoing his pa from the 1991 Series "We'll see you tomorrow night!" Cool.

In response to Ya Mar, I have to say that the 91 Series was every bit as exciting as this year's.

[gullycanyon]

Yep, I loved it, too. The entire season was loads of fun.

Poor Michael Young. Moved three times, kept his nose to the grindstone, and made it to the World Series twice in a row, only to walk away empty-handed... literally so.

I gather that a lot of folks love Ron Washington and even enjoy his antics in the dugout. I don't. All of that gesticulating and ass-shaking is fine for a cheerleader. Washington is supposed to be their leader. Enthusiasm is fine, when displayed in a reserved fashion, but a little fucking dignity would be admirable. Shaking your ass when there are many innings left and your team just went up by a single Run is undignified showboating-- the suggestion that it's totally natural, just Ron Being Ron, doesn't cut any ice, with me-- and it usually causes the other team to feel disrespected, as though that skinny ass is being wagged in their faces.
He was very down-to-earth and classy at the post-game presser. Again, I'm not impressed. No maturity, no dignity, no class.
He may be a "Players' Manager," but the players are not the only part of that team he represents.

If I was Nolan Ryan, I would be upset.
It's one thing to make it to The Big One and lose; obviously, it happens all of the time. But when (after some tweaking to your squad) you are good enough-- and lucky enough-- to make it back there, the next year, you're goddam well supposed to win it, and if you don't, now you really have failed.

So, Ron Washington may be smarter than some guys think he is, he may be a "Players' Manager," and I realize that the field boss can't run out there and pitch, hit, and field, but the Texas Rangers, after bringing along, or acquiring, a huge number of better players (including, for the first-ever time in the team's history, paying some attention to the pitching aspect of team-building,) just went out there and fucking blew the best opportunity for a world championship that they have ever had, maybe the best one they ever will have, and while you don't just shit-can a guy who took you to the World Series two years in a row, if I was Nolan Ryan, I would be asking myself just what the fuck it was that I just watched happen, out there on the field in St. Louis, why it happened that way, and what to do next.

[gullycanyon]

I have been engaging my favorite wintertime pursuit a bit early, and an examination of the fact-stats (as opposed to abstract concepts based on hypotheticals: see "WAR" et al) has shown me a few things "right off the bat." (HAR!!)
Michael Young and Adrian Gonzalez were incredibly productive and were the offensive MVP's of their respective teams.
Athletics SS Cliff Pennington, hardly known for his batting prowess, had 25 Plate Apps with Runner at 3rd/Less than 2 Outs, and smacked 16 Hits (3 Doubles, 2 HR, also 5 BB,) batting in a total of exactly 25 Runs: one for each PA. No player with an even halfway-significant number of such PA's was anywhere near his gaudy .800 BA.
Hits collected with Runners in Scoring Position/2 Outs?
1. Cabrera, Miguel DET 29
2. Martinez, Victor DET 27
3. Peralta, Jhonny DET 27
4. Ellsbury, Jacoby BOS 26
Hits with Runner at 1B: A. Gonzalez, Kemp, Miguel Cabrera, V. Martinez, followed by Hunter Pence, who looked good in these categories and who the Astros were their usual suicidal selves to let get away.
You may have heard me bitch, moan, & complain about how many times Miguel Cabrera, our "cleanup" hitter, was the lead-off batter in Tiger Innings. Fortunately, he batted .331 with an OPS of .957 (Gonzalez' OPS for the season in total) in those AB's. Thanks, pal.
Total Bases in September:
1. Ellsbury 80
2. Beltre 77
3. Cabrera, Miguel 69
3. Kinsler 69
5. Kemp 68
6. Beltran 63
7. Braun 62
7. Fielder 62
9. Pujols 60
9. Upton, BJ 60
Of those 10 players, the highest root-numbers for the profoundly basic Gully List-making-- Runs+RBI-- were Kemp's 52 & Beltre's 50. (Perhaps Brandon Belt can establish himself and get up into this mix before Beltran conks out; he had better hurry it up.)
Beltre's 29 September RBI led MLB. He was followed by Victor Martinez (26) Kemp (24) Shelley Duncan of CLE, fer chrissakes (23) and Braun, Longoria, & Juan Rivera (Dodgers, 22).
They were followed by 4 guys with 21: Miguel Cabrera, Cano, Ellsbury, Scutaro.
Only 2 players-- both Rangers!!-- had 10 September HR's: Beltre (12) & Kinsler (11)

[gullycanyon]

Oh, aren't the Marlins the Big Fucking Deal, right now.

Set to open their fancy new stadium, they are acting like college freshmen who just received a fresh new credit card with a limit of, "Oh, we don't remember what the dollar figure is, but it's a lot."

Tonight, I hear that they have secured the services of Jose Reyes; early reports have the contract as 6yrs/$106mil.
Immediately following that announcement, I get word that they are going to make another attempt at signing Albert Pujols.
What a bunch of bullshit.
I hope the fuck-dumb Marlins realize that by signing Reyes to a contract through which Reyes will earn, on a yearly average, only about 750 grand less than Miguel Cabrera earns from the Tigers, they have automatically driven the price for Pujols up even higher.
Suddenly, the 9yr/$200mil offer that the Cardinals reportedly made to Pujols, an offer that sounded pretty square-deal to me, earlier tonight, doesn't sound like quite enough for a guy like Prince Albert. Or, for that matter, Prince Fielder.

Don't get me wrong. Reyes is a really good player. I would have liked to have him here, even though we have a SS who had a remarkably good year for us and who deserves to go right back into the 2012 season without having to hear any horseshit about moving to another position to make room for a newcomer.
I'm saying that being able to afford to pay Reyes that much doesn't make it any less foolish, and every time a team does some dumb shit like that, the stakes are raised for everybody, including that team, so lots o' luck with Pujols, you assholes; you just made him worth about $300,000,000.00.

[gullycanyon]

Anyone else notice how it came to seem as though free agents not signed by the end of the Winter Meetings would be lost forever?

Gully's beloved grumbled, "sounds like everybody did somethin' but us." I had to point out that no deadline would be coincident with the end of the Winter Meets.

Still, most of the big dust has settled, and it's not too early to look ahead to the 2012 campaign.
I made a few comments in the MLB News thread:

Y'know, it's normal, for a team to make it to the World Series and lose, but when a team is good-- and lucky-- enough to return to it the next season, those are the four Wins that they had better get, because if they don't, something changes in the over-all psyche of the team and it could be a loooooooooong time before they get another shot.

Now, that team has lost its "Ace" to its only serious inter-divisional rival, the rival who kept them jumpy until nearly the last minute in 2011's regular season, and their pitchers will be facing the most devastatingly complete hitter of the last 30 years about 70 times as he now wears the uniform of that same rival.

C'mon, Ron Washington, shake that shriveled ass one more time. It'll give us a chuckle.

I read that Wilson lost:

The season opener
The All-Star Game
A game in the ALDS
A game in the ALCS
A game in the World Series

I don't know; I didn't look it up.

I don't know if the Rangers will have worries about their starting pitching or not. It's hard to say, given that Wilson just left and, from what I have heard, they are going through the same "maybe we'll have Feliz start" song & dance that they performed last year. You remember; the idea was maybe Feliz would start-- despite having shown himself to be a terrific Closer-- and Ogando would be the Closer, despite never having been called upon to save a MLB game.
Well, I recently saw something about the Rangers possibly being in the market looking for a Closer. I didn't bother to investigate the accompanying article. Just the thought, alone, was enough.

Now, though, with Wilson having surfed over to the Angels, perhaps the plan is to have Feliz and Ogando start.

I don't know; really, I don't care. But this much I know: the Rangers are going to have a hard goddam time getting back to the World Series.

The Angels really needed some sure-fire punch in that line-up, and now they've got it. How they will arrange things, I don't know. Mike Trout, touted as being the Second Coming of, oh, I don't know, of Mike Trout, I guess, is an outfielder and may make the team as it comes out of Spring Training. Mark Trumbo stepped in for the leg-destroyed Kendry(s) Morales, who, because Trumbo was freakin' awesome, is now entirely out of the 1B job and, with or without his mysterious "s," may as well clear out his locker. Any thoughts of rotating Morales & Trumbo at 1B & DH went right out the window with the Pujols signing, because Albert, while recently being the subject of a few statue-related comments, is hardly one at 1st; in fact, he is great at fielding his position, and... come to think of it... hey, somebody grab Morales and tell him to hang on for a minute... he has played, and could easily again play, 3B, which would free up Maicer Izturis to... come to the Tigers!! Hey now!!

Meanwhile, our man Dombrowski, never one to act impetuously or tip his hand, returns with the modest acquisition of Octavio Dotel, an acquisition which may elicit even more yawns than do these very Musings of Gully.
None the less, Dotel is a good, solid pitcher who may be able to be our version of Darren Oliver. I didn't want to go into the 2012 season depending on some of the guys we used in 2011. In fact, I don't think it's really just a mere coincidence, that the names "Ryan Perry" and "Brad Penny" are constructed in similar fashion, and if I never see Perry in a Tigers uniform again, that's A-OK with me.
I have to wonder if this talk of a trade for Gio Gonzalez is more smoke than fire. I'd love to have him here, but I'm loathe to include Boesch in a trade for him. Fuck that. Maybe that's stupid, on my part. I don't give a fuck. No.

The most tiresome aspect of the Winter Meetings, for me, was the constant relaying of non-news. I grant you that I inflicted that pain on myself by too frequently attending to MLB-TV and Twitter. (Snicker, all you wish, at ol' Gully for looking at Twitter, but there is no news outlet in the Milky Way galaxy whereon news is reported faster, and if one is judicious in one's choices as to who one "follows" on it, the news is reliable as well as fucking immediate.) These guys-- from ESPN, Sports Illustrated, Fox Sports, NBC, MLB-TV, CBS, TCF Bank, Disney Pixar Studios... oh, wait. Never mind, I'm just saying that the poor fuckers have to stand around all goddam day while little, or nothing, of any real import is going on, and in between "live reports from the Winter Meetings," wherein they confirm that meetings are being held and lunches are being eaten, they nervously tweet away, guessing about which speculations are merely rumor, which rumors are merely speculation, and where there may be room for a speculum and a mirror. Who can blame them? The poor bastards are bored silly, and yet dare not walk away.
The saving grace of a tweet: the 140-character limit forces them to be short enough that one can glance at them and one's brain absorbs the message without actually engaging the reading process.

Yeah, yeah, I know, I know; too bad ya can't do that with Gully's Musings, huh?
Well, if you made it this far, you enjoy my ramblings, you're a masochist, or both. Either way, I assume that some pleasure was involved.

[gullycanyon]

I gotta figure that many of you folks have seen this item. It's not new. I just want to make sure that I share it, in case any of you didn't see it.

http://www.onionsportsnetwork.com/articles/justin-verlander-doesnt-bother-telling-parents-dif,20379/

[gullycanyon]

Am I the only one who has an intuition, or a sneaky suspicion, that Dave Dombrowski just may have something big that he's working on?

I really hate the way that question came out. Grammatically, I grade it as a D-. But, fuggit. It's a baseball thread, goddamit. I don't need to suck it up, give 110%, or leave it all out there on the field.

[gullycanyon]

Happy 77th Birthday to one of the very few heroes, from the world of sports, that I have, a man who I greatly admire and who I hold in high esteem.



(I'm having a bit o' difficulty with "formatting" this next set of lines, but it's not worth fucking around with, because any of you interested enough to eyeball it already know how to fucking read it, anyway.)

#6's magnificent 1955:

G AB R H TB 2B 3B HR RBI BB IBB SO SB CS BA OBP SLG OPS
152 588 121 200 321 24 8 27 102 82 12 57 6 8 .340 .421 .546 .967 -

[D-Day]

Happy 77th Birthday to one of the very few heroes, from the world of sports, that I have, a man who I greatly admire and who I hold in high esteem.



(I'm having a bit o' difficulty with "formatting" this next set of lines, but it's not worth fucking around with, because any of you interested enough to eyeball it already know how to fucking read it, anyway.)

#6's magnificent 1955:

G AB R H TB 2B 3B HR RBI BB IBB SO SB CS BA OBP SLG OPS
152 588 121 200 321 24 8 27 102 82 12 57 6 8 .340 .421 .546 .967 -

G-152
AB-588
R-121
H-200
TB-321
2B-24
3B-8
HR-27
RBI-102
BB-82
IBB-12
K-57
SB-6
CS-8
BA-.340
OBP-.421
SLG-.546
OPS-.967

[Roquefort Robert]

Happy 77th Birthday to one of the very few heroes, from the world of sports, that I have, a man who I greatly admire and who I hold in high esteem.



(I'm having a bit o' difficulty with "formatting" this next set of lines, but it's not worth fucking around with, because any of you interested enough to eyeball it already know how to fucking read it, anyway.)

#6's magnificent 1955:

G AB R H TB 2B 3B HR RBI BB IBB SO SB CS BA OBP SLG OPS
152 588 121 200 321 24 8 27 102 82 12 57 6 8 .340 .421 .546 .967 -

G-152
AB-588
R-121
H-200
TB-321
2B-24
3B-8
HR-27
RBI-102
BB-82
IBB-12
K-57
SB-6
CS-8
BA-.340
OBP-.421
SLG-.546
OPS-.967

It's a Festivus miracle!

[gullycanyon]

Hey, D-Day, thanks for that, but now I feel guilty for accidentally prompting you to go to the trouble to do a bit of clerical work that I was not motivated to do.

In any case, what a season.

The thing, about Al, that just drives me nuts: I totally get that, when he reached the point where he thought he just wasn't good enough, anymore, to take up a roster spot, he was resolute about walking away, but goddamit the guy had 399 HR's & 498 Doubles.

Being a stat-geek, stuff like that just bothers me.

[gullycanyon]

I am shamelessly wanting the Tigers to ask Cabrera, "Hey, Miguel, if we were to sign Prince Fielder, would you be willing to move back over to 3rd Base?"

[gullycanyon]

I am shamelessly wanting the Tigers to ask Cabrera, "Hey, Miguel, if we were to sign Prince Fielder, would you be willing to move back over to 3rd Base?"

I'll be damned. I forgot about writing that one.
It wasn't like I was sensing anything, at least I don't remember sensing anything. If you would have asked me, I would have said No Fucking Way will they even try to sign Prince Fielder.

Anyway, here we are, again. The only sports season that I love dearly is about to begin.

I expect the Tigers to be in the playoffs. I don't think it will be as easy as some folks are foreseeing. Some good "Ifs" won't happen and some bad "Ifs" will happen.
Shit, we've already had a Bad News/Good News:
The Bad News is that Victor Martinez totally fucked up his leg.
The Good News is that the resulting anxiety prompted the Tigers to sign Prince Fielder, who no one-- no one-- foresaw the Tigers even trying to sign.

I do not understand why some folks (even some who watch baseball quite attentively) perpetually believe that if a team loads up on good-to-great hitting, they are bound to win. How can you not realize that it all comes down to pitching and, to a lesser extent, defense?
Great pitching wins games. Great hitting prevents you from being beaten too easily. That's about it.

A truly solid wire-to-wire season from Scherzer and/or Porcello would be more valuable than Fielder's bat. I'm not worried about Fister. Doug Fister knows what to do, and he's capable of doing it. The guy we watched, late last season, was not an illusion. That's the real Doug Fister. He's our #2 guy only because our #1 guy is Verlander.
Scherzer & Porcello strike an interesting contrast, in my view. Max seems like a guy who has everything he needs but doesn't believe in himself quite enough. Rick seems like a guy who believes in himself (maybe too much, if you know what I mean,) but doesn't quite have everything he needs.

I see that MLB teams are more aggressively looking at the newer methods of statistical analysis.
http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20120316&content_id=27343374&vkey=news_mlb&c_id=mlb
That's a good thing, in most ways-- although I am already sick of hearing the word "metrics" being over-used, as though there are no other ways of describing the concept-- but like any information, those new-fangled stats & measurements are of little value if the person examining them is a dope.
Some of that shit is instructive & helpful if you're a fantasy baseball geek, but I hope that some of the Managers & G.M.'s who are getting their feet wet in this modern wading pool of WARs and BIPs don't lose sight of Gully the Stat-Geek's Cardinal Rule of Statalysis:
Stats tell you what happened; they do not tell you what will happen. Neither any statistic nor analysis of statistics would have even come close to suggesting that Magglio Ordonez would hit a gaudy .363-- almost .05 above his career BA at the time-- in 2007.

A lot of those new "metrics" are held tightly & fondled by dumbshits who want to believe that they know something special even while they totally overlook one of the most basic truths of life: that no part of life is truly static, that everything is on the move. Growing, wilting, improving, worsening, changing.

"Well, Cabriguez' BABIP was much better than the league average, last season, so you can look for his WARP to drop, this year."

Man, shut the fuck up. All you know is what happened. You have no fucking clue as to what will happen. Some guys work on their game and get better at it while other guys are resting on their accomplishments and being lazy. Guys get older, which can go either way; while a guy's reflexes & vision may be on the wane, maybe he's gotten to be a little bit wiser, too, and is actually better than he was when he could see better, move quicker, and heal faster. Guys incur (or heal up from) little nagging injuries that we may not hear about but which prevent(ed) them from performing as they performed in the previous season. Guys develop bad habits-- mechanically and, sometimes, behaviorally. Guys get into funky states of mind that can last for months and which bring down their performance.
In short (as though anything coming from me is ever "in short,") because there is so much that we don't know, we are hard-pressed to make gainful use of that which we do know.

I will have nights when I am spitting flaming, radioactive nails about something Jim Leyland did or did not do, but he is not just sitting there, he knows what the fuck he is looking at and knows how to deduce information from it. He doesn't need "metrics" to observe that a guy has been using his batting practice sessions to work on improving his ability to lash liners between 1st Base & 2nd Base. So, when there's a guy on 1st (with less than 2 Outs,) maybe we wonder why Leyland chooses to, or chooses to not, bring in a certain pinch-hitter. Whichever choice he makes, and whether it succeeds or fails, he is not necessarily going to explain it after the game, because A ) he really doesn't give a shit if we understand it, and B ) that macaroni salad is not going to eat itself, y'know.
A guy like Leyland notices all kinds of little stuff. I watch for little stuff, myself, such as minute body-language signals, and if I'm noticing that when Justin Verlander is becoming fatigued, or anxious, he paces around more and very distinctively kicks his heel into the dirt with great frequency, it stands to reason that Leyland, sitting there with that rigor mortis face of his, is noticing it, too, and probably knew what the fuck it means long before I even got close to catching on.

So we may need to excuse ol' Jim for smirking when he hears about "metrics" or is asked a blockhead question by a media-type who thinks he's ahead of the Skipper.

Well, there's the inaugural Gully's Musings for 2012. Members of the TL;DR Club have only themselves to blame if they even so much as opened this thread, so I hope the rest of you enjoyed it.

Play fuckin' Ball, goddamit!!