The return of baseball made me able to tolerate Joe Morgan

Two days every year inspire tremendous, through often unwarranted, optimism throughout the USA, says Woodberry history professor and Nationals fan Fred Jordan: the first day of school, and baseball’s opening day. The Nachoman has not felt optimistic about a professional sports season since 1991. See, I’m a Reds and Bengals fan – the past two decades have crushed the spirit of Cincinnatians. That said, I’m quite optimistic about the 2009 Bengals. They just signed Tank Johnson, who will be able to supply the weapons to break the team out of jail in time for training camp.

Nevertheless, I do enjoy basking in the warm glow[1] of the new baseball season. Opening night even made Joe Morgan tolerable. Or maybe that was Steve Phillips. Either way, I got through an entire Sunday Night Baseball game on ESPN2 without hitting the mute button.


Do you think our sports fan ancestors could ever have foreseen this?
Sunday night, baseball took a backseat to women’s basketball – the womens’ final four played on ESPN uno, while the national pastime’s season opener got bumped to the deuce.


Speaking of women’s basketball
The highlight packages on the worldwide leader were, as always, cross-promotional – they showed women’s basketball highlights all night. The video editing could not help but draw the viewer’s eye to the specially painted floor for the final four, part of which is shown in the picture here. Is the sweeping arc through the scorer’s table from baseline to baseline not the most hideous basketball-related decorative attempt you have ever seen?[2]

Women’s complaints aside, I’ve been pleased with the men’s tournament floor designs, which the NCAA has standardized this year to a simple, understated blue outline and center circle, with a teensy logo allowed for the host site.


Oh, yeah, the Sunday night game.
The Braves sent Derek Lowe to fight[3] Brett Myers. Both pitchers are considered good but not top-of-the-line starters, as evidenced by Yahoo fantasy leagues. Mr. Myers is owned by 83% of Yahoo teams, while Derek Lowe is on 89% of teams. This wisdom-of-crowds reasoning places Mr. Lowe as about the 30th best starting pitcher in the majors, with Myers about 35th.

On this day, Mr. Lowe proved superior – he pitched eight gorgeous innings, walking none and giving up only two hits. And, one of the hits came after a miscommunication between Jeff Francoeur and Kelly Johnson caused a foul fly ball to drop off of Mr. Francoeur’s glove. (ESPN commentators actually offered insightful and accurate analysis of the miscue.) Mr. Myers, on the other hand, seemed to be throwing batting practice for the first few innings. He allowed three homers, a double, and two singles. He didn’t really fool anyone on the night, but to his credit lasted six innings before exiting.

Much credit should be given to the Philly bullpen, who allowed nothing, not even a hit, over three innings of work. Even though they were losing 4-0, they kept the game close to set the stage for the inevitable comeback against the purported “closer.”

Mike Gonzalez, the Braves’ Anointed One, entered to pitch the ninth. The contrast between him and Mr. Lowe was immediately apparent. Mr. Lowe had been pitching confidently, sacrificing velocity for movement, all night. It looked like Mr. Lowe barely worked up a sweat in some innings, making Phils hitters ground out to shortstop on wicked sliders. On the other hand, Mr. Gonzalez overthrew his fastball at least once per hitter – by “overthrew” I mean that he reared back and threw as hard as he could, disregarding the fact that the catcher reached above the batter’s head to catch the ball. The radar gun might have looked good, but the two hits and a walk that Mr. Gonzalez produced threatened to unravel Lowe’s brilliant night.

Then, Gonzalez got lucky. Ryan Howard chased a pitch outside, and struck out on a 3-2 pitch. During his at-bat he swung right through a few sliders. Then Raul Ibanez struck out swinging, also on a 3-2 pitch. Wipe your brows, Braves fans, you won… though it appears that the bullpen has picked up right where it left off last year.


Woah, that Nachoman, he is prescient
Take a look, if you dare, at the box score from Wednesday’s Braves-Phils contest. Of the SIX walks in the inning, FOUR of them forced in a run. This excellent bullpen work blew a 10-3 lead, costing Javier Vazquez and the Electric Marshmallows (the Nachoman’s fantasy team) the win. Go Braves.


Can we agree that hitters are capable of garnering hits on good pitches?
Monday afternoon, Pirate Nyjer Morgan’s bases loaded single tied the game against the Cardinals. Mr. Morgan hit a wicked Trever Miller slider, which started over the plate and broke right onto the outside corner. Of course, the analyst for Fox Sports Midwest noted twice how the pitch “caught too much of the plate” and how Mr. Miller should have thrown it farther outside. I disagree – look at the replay. The hitter could have been sitting on the slider; or perhaps he adjusted very well to the off-speed stuff. Either way, Morgan did a tremendous job keeping his head down on the ball, waiting on the slow pitch, and driving the ball to the opposite field.

I’ll spare you the rant about how Trever Miller gets stuck with the blown save, while Josh Kinney, who walked the pitcher to load the bases in the first place, earns a “hold.”


Don’t always blame the refs when the fouls are out of balance
Imagine that you’re at a basketball game where the first five fouls of the game are whistled on the same team. (That happened, in fact, in Monday’s national championship contest.) Certainly you can expect that the coach on the short end of the calls will be complaining incessantly to the officials. And if the home team has been called for all these fouls, the crowd will mercilessly attack the refs with their catcalls. How could any officiating crew be so blatant in their favoritism?

The referee will often explain to the offended coach that his team is playing a more physical style of play than the opponent, and so might expect to be on the bad end of the foul count. Sure, physical teams should expect more foul calls. But a five-foul discrepancy at the beginning of a game should be somewhat common, even if the teams are equally likely to foul – no bias is necessary.

Just look at the numbers. Let the probability of a foul on each team be 1/2. Then, the probability of one of the teams committing the first five fouls is 1/16. In a typical 30-35 game college season, then, a team should expect to play two games or so in which the same team gets called for five fouls in a row to start the game. And, random chance dictates that in 1/32 of a team’s games, or about once per season, one team should rack up the first SIX calls.


How could there be a delay in Toronto? It’s a DOME.
Why was a game delayed in Toronto on Monday night? The mlb website didn’t say, so El Molé and I engaged in wanton, irresponsible speculation. I recalled my only visit to Skydome, when the game was delayed for 45 minutes due to fog and rain – it took that long to close the 1980s vintage roof. El Molé had more entertaining ideas, suggesting a plague of frogs or a hot dog vendor strike.


Turned out, it was a plague of Beer Cups
Skydome[4] has been declared an alcohol free zone for three games as punishment for the actual goings-on on Monday, when drunken fans threw beer cups at players. Apparently this is not the first time that Skydome fans have become extra-rowdy -- a brawl in the upper deck led to a similar ban last year, according to USA Today.

While I heartily agree with the Ontario Alcohol and Gaming Commission’s[5] decision, a close reading of the article unearths a worrying decision by the AGC. Last year, after the brawl, alcohol was banned only in the upper deck. That smacks of classism to me… we can’t trust the rubes chugging beer in the cheap seats, but the upstanding rich folks behind the plate can still sip their martinis, right, Ontario?

Credit to Fox Sports Milwaukee

Thursday night, 9th inning in San Francisco, Giants pitcher Joe Martinez took a direct hit on his temple off of a line drive. Fox Sports announcers were right on top of the call, reacting to the injury but still noting that the ball, which had ricocheted into foul territory, was still in play. They noted that batter Mike Cameron was visibly disturbed by what his hit had wrought; furthermore, the broadcasters reminded the audience of the brutal head injury that Mr. Cameron himself had suffered in a collision last year at Shea Stadium. After the play was over, the cameras of course focused on Mr. Martinez in his attempt to walk off the field, and then the trainer’s ministrations on the field. But, most crucially, when it became clear that Mr. Martinez was bleeding profusely from his temple, the camera angle changed immediately. From then on, the only visual shown of Mr. Martinez was from behind, where his somewhat gruesome injury was not visible. Thank you. If I wanted to watch gore, I would be in the living room watching Burrito Girl’s shows.

Quit yer thinking, just throw the dang ball
The most common fault of a pitcher – at any level of baseball, from 8th grade to the majors – is to give hitters too much credit. Yes, if your name is Greg Maddux, and you can execute any pitch in anyone’s repertoire to perfection, then you should think carefully, read scouting reports, and fool the hitter with pinpoint control. If you are anyone else, just hit the catcher’s glove. If your stuff is good, you’ll be successful.[6]

I enjoyed the mlb.com writeup of Tuesday’s Snakes-Rox game. Apparently Rockies pitcher Ubaldo Jimenez got into some trouble trying to paint corners with his expansive variety of pitches, catcher Chris Iannetta told him to stop thinking and just throw his best fastball. It worked.


How does a newspaper reporter describe arm strength?
The Denver Post article about Tuesday’s game noted the incredible arm strength of Mr. Jimenez. This begs the question, what is the basis for comparison for “arm strength?” In Colorado, the answer should be obvious: The Post risked heresy by comparing Mr. Jimenez’s arm to that of noted car dealership maven John Elway.

That led me to wonder about industry standards. The “kilogram” is the unit of mass. In order to standardize the amount of mass that defines the kilogram, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures maintains a platinum-iridium kilogram in a vault in France. If anyone wants to know what a kilogram is, all they have to do is get The Kilogram out of the vault. In principle.

So:

Does the National Institute of Standards and Technology – headquartered in Boulder, proudly supplying “industry, academia, government, and other users with over 1300 reference materials of the highest quality and metrological value” according to their website – have, in an evacuated vault, the international basis for unit of arm strength? Is this basis, in fact, John Elway’s disembodied arm? Can we refer to Mr. Jimenez as having 0.96 elways, while Jamie Moyer has merely 0.12 elways?

Yes we can. The “elway” is now this column’s standard unit of arm strength. I encourage readers to lobby congress to accept the elway as the official national standard as well.

Next week
The Nachoman discusses the frustrating case of Reds prospect Homer Bailey, whose arm strength of 95 elways but mental aptitude of only 0.38 madduxes has led him to spend yet another opening day in the minors.

NM

[1] Literally… it’s from the 42” plasma screen.
[2] No, it’s not. Check out the giant guitar on the floor at last year’s women’s final four.
[3] Not literally fight – Mr. Myers only delivers actual punches to his wife, as evidenced by his 2006 domestic assault arrest.
[4] Yes, I know it’s called “Rogers Centre,” complete with the Queen’s spelling of “Centre.” To me, it will always be “Skydome.” And “Enron Field.” And “Byzantium.” Humph.
[5] Um, why alcohol and gaming, together? You don’t have to gamble to drink booze, and you don’t have to booze to gamble (though I’ll bet it helps). This makes as much sense as the American combination of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. And what do these government organizations say about culture? Canadians get drunk so they can throw their money away, but Americans get drunk so they can shoot people? Draw your own conclusions.
[6] And if your stuff isn’t good, then all the fancy-pants slurves and screwballs in the world ain’t gonna help, especially if you keep throwing them out of the strike zone.