Monday, November 27, 2006
Making Verisimilitudinous Proclamations
It was a foggy Wednesday morning as I dragged myself from my sublime sleep to prop myself up in front of the computer; two-week-old coffee remnants were molding in my coffee pot, and as I blinked myself awake, I double-taked the sports news...
Surprise begat hilarity, which continued unabated until I could catch my breath long enough to assure my girlfriend that my mind had not just then snapped. Derek Motherfucking Jeter, long considered a lock for the MVP award in the American League, lost out to the bomb-bashing Minnesota Twins' first-baseman, Justin Morneau.
These are the cases in which I absolutely LOVE making a bad assumption.
Don’t get me wrong; I could give a shit who wins these ridiculous popularity-contests, and I was no more happy on Wednesday than I was on Tuesday that Morneau, similar to me, is Canadian, and became just the second one of our little 35-million-tribe to win the award. I was, however, ECSTATIC with the mental image of Jeter sitting at home with Jessica Biel, balling his hands up in fury and cursing at the baseball gods for forsaking him, in his mind, once again.
It’s like the Oscars: I don’t care from year-to-year who wins the Best Leading Actor trophy, but I was happy for Phillip Seymour Hoffman when he won it whenever it was that he did so. Good for Morneau, despite the anti-Justin tripe that’s been seeping out of various Sports News Network’s online homes. Good for Derek Motherfucking Jeter, who can, I guess, go back to spit-polishing his World Series MVP, those pathetic Glove awards, and one of the hottest women in the world.
Poor Jeter.
Pardon me; poor Motherfucking Jeter. ¶ 10:44 AM 0 Comments
Surprise begat hilarity, which continued unabated until I could catch my breath long enough to assure my girlfriend that my mind had not just then snapped. Derek Motherfucking Jeter, long considered a lock for the MVP award in the American League, lost out to the bomb-bashing Minnesota Twins' first-baseman, Justin Morneau.
These are the cases in which I absolutely LOVE making a bad assumption.
Don’t get me wrong; I could give a shit who wins these ridiculous popularity-contests, and I was no more happy on Wednesday than I was on Tuesday that Morneau, similar to me, is Canadian, and became just the second one of our little 35-million-tribe to win the award. I was, however, ECSTATIC with the mental image of Jeter sitting at home with Jessica Biel, balling his hands up in fury and cursing at the baseball gods for forsaking him, in his mind, once again.
It’s like the Oscars: I don’t care from year-to-year who wins the Best Leading Actor trophy, but I was happy for Phillip Seymour Hoffman when he won it whenever it was that he did so. Good for Morneau, despite the anti-Justin tripe that’s been seeping out of various Sports News Network’s online homes. Good for Derek Motherfucking Jeter, who can, I guess, go back to spit-polishing his World Series MVP, those pathetic Glove awards, and one of the hottest women in the world.
Poor Jeter.
Pardon me; poor Motherfucking Jeter. ¶ 10:44 AM 0 Comments
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Aaron Hill as a Syndrome
Here’s the deal: I watched Aaron Hill have himself a great season this past summer for the hometown Toronto Blue Jays, and yet nothing about his year-end stats would have me believe my own recollections:
.291/.349/.386
6 HR
50 RBI
and his .735 OPS was 60th in the American League, for fuck’s sake.
...so, what gives? Did he just have a great 90-or-so games that I just happened to catch? Does my evaluation of a player’s talent become grossly biased due to day-to-day familiarity? Did I get a crush on the dude during Spring Training that somehow caused a perception-aneurysm that manifested itself by blacking my eyesight out during Hill’s 12 errors?
Possibly.
Or, this was just a giant exercise in circumstantial awareness. Perhaps, just perhaps, the times that Hill was striking out were directly after a masher had just untied the game with a three-run bomb; perhaps his errors came with two outs, the following batter rolling a grounder to third to end the inning, no harm, no foul; perhaps half of his groundouts were runner-advancers to the right side to prolong an inning; perhaps...
What? It’s not like I’m comparing Hill to Miguel Cabrera or Travis Hafner; every day of the week, including Sundays, I could watch Aaron Hill battle a pitcher through 13 pitches and come out on top with single flared to right-center, compare it to a Hafner at-bat where he blasted the first pitch he saw foul into the upper stands of Jacob’s Field and proceeded to pummel a frozen-rope into the bullpen on the very next pitch, and surmise that Hill had a good at-bat but Hafner was a ludicrously good fucking hitter. I mean, Hafner crowds the plate like a bully daring you to throw him a fastball, while it looks like Hill is himself surprised at how fast his own bat is.
How many times did I watch Hill upended like a dropped ice cream cone after completing a flawless double-play? I’ll tell you: No more than 19. And when you break it down and look at the facts (such as Hill’s "DP" stat that states that he was involved in 19 twin-killings, meaning that the likelihood of his ending up on his ass as the catch-and-throw guy in every case about as possible as a flipped-coin landing heads 19 straight times), you get a much more quantitative idea of how your own mind works. Look at Derek Motherfucking Jeter*; he dove into the stands to catch a foul ball two years ago, coming up all bruised and smashed-puppy-dog-faced, and is now a perennial Gold Glover because of it. Vernon Wells made a ridiculous catch to rob a Bomber of a homerun in Yankee Stadium and he, too, is now an annual award recipient.
"What a catch!"
[quick perusal of the useless, judgment-call, too-arbitrary-to-be-taken-seriously "E" stat]
"Only 4 errors?"
[jots down a note to himself]
"I’ve just found my Gold Glover at whatever position that guy plays!"
So, as the title of this piece states, I think what I have is Aaron Hill as a syndrome: a great year to the eye that was diminished by the year-end statistics. The good news? 4 of his 6 HR came in September, meaning a pro-rated 2007-projection leaves Hill with a .884 OPS and 24 homeruns!
Bye bye ill-conceived syndrome!
*I have it in good confidence that he has legally changed his name to this; as such, I will abide by his peculiar wishes and refer to him as that for as long as he deems necessary. ¶ 8:36 PM 0 Comments
.291/.349/.386
6 HR
50 RBI
and his .735 OPS was 60th in the American League, for fuck’s sake.
...so, what gives? Did he just have a great 90-or-so games that I just happened to catch? Does my evaluation of a player’s talent become grossly biased due to day-to-day familiarity? Did I get a crush on the dude during Spring Training that somehow caused a perception-aneurysm that manifested itself by blacking my eyesight out during Hill’s 12 errors?
Possibly.
Or, this was just a giant exercise in circumstantial awareness. Perhaps, just perhaps, the times that Hill was striking out were directly after a masher had just untied the game with a three-run bomb; perhaps his errors came with two outs, the following batter rolling a grounder to third to end the inning, no harm, no foul; perhaps half of his groundouts were runner-advancers to the right side to prolong an inning; perhaps...
What? It’s not like I’m comparing Hill to Miguel Cabrera or Travis Hafner; every day of the week, including Sundays, I could watch Aaron Hill battle a pitcher through 13 pitches and come out on top with single flared to right-center, compare it to a Hafner at-bat where he blasted the first pitch he saw foul into the upper stands of Jacob’s Field and proceeded to pummel a frozen-rope into the bullpen on the very next pitch, and surmise that Hill had a good at-bat but Hafner was a ludicrously good fucking hitter. I mean, Hafner crowds the plate like a bully daring you to throw him a fastball, while it looks like Hill is himself surprised at how fast his own bat is.
How many times did I watch Hill upended like a dropped ice cream cone after completing a flawless double-play? I’ll tell you: No more than 19. And when you break it down and look at the facts (such as Hill’s "DP" stat that states that he was involved in 19 twin-killings, meaning that the likelihood of his ending up on his ass as the catch-and-throw guy in every case about as possible as a flipped-coin landing heads 19 straight times), you get a much more quantitative idea of how your own mind works. Look at Derek Motherfucking Jeter*; he dove into the stands to catch a foul ball two years ago, coming up all bruised and smashed-puppy-dog-faced, and is now a perennial Gold Glover because of it. Vernon Wells made a ridiculous catch to rob a Bomber of a homerun in Yankee Stadium and he, too, is now an annual award recipient.
"What a catch!"
[quick perusal of the useless, judgment-call, too-arbitrary-to-be-taken-seriously "E" stat]
"Only 4 errors?"
[jots down a note to himself]
"I’ve just found my Gold Glover at whatever position that guy plays!"
So, as the title of this piece states, I think what I have is Aaron Hill as a syndrome: a great year to the eye that was diminished by the year-end statistics. The good news? 4 of his 6 HR came in September, meaning a pro-rated 2007-projection leaves Hill with a .884 OPS and 24 homeruns!
Bye bye ill-conceived syndrome!
*I have it in good confidence that he has legally changed his name to this; as such, I will abide by his peculiar wishes and refer to him as that for as long as he deems necessary. ¶ 8:36 PM 0 Comments
