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
.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
