Bill: Let me change it up a bit: five best uses of the Rolling Stones in a film or a TV show. (No--not entirely Scorsese...)
I've undoubtedly forgotten something...I know many people would take "Tell Me" from Mean Streets instead.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 9/20/2016
There's a really memorable use of “Gimme Shelter” in Apocalypse Now.
-------------------
Bill: Re Steve's comment on Truman and MacArthur: I'm halfway through David Halberstam's book The Fifties (I still remember your methodical inventory of all the factual errors in Halberstam's Summer of '49), and I found the chapter on Truman and MacArthur's showdown over Korea fascinating. (I'm a '70s guy, so it was all new to me.) If anything, the way Halberstam characterizes MacArthur reminded me a lot of Trump: "Like most narcissistic personalities, [MacArthur] idealized life and his role in it: He demanded perfection of himself, and when he erred, he was loath to admit it or accept any responsibility. The blame had to be apportioned--more often than not, to rivals who were suspected of seeking his downfall." Not that Trump is unique among politicians in that regard, but he does seem to have a facility for delegating blame and a persecution complex that are Nixon-like in their dimensions.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 12/17/2016
Well…tempted as I am to consign your query to the circular file for turning this into an unnecessary attack on our beloved Prezelect, or merely to note that I don't see any similarities between Trump and Nixon…"Nixonian" became a term. Sneaky, underhanded, clever in a somewhat pathetic way. So, I wonder, what will "Trumponian" come to mean?
-------------------
Bill: Regarding Steve9753's question about one-and-done HOF candidacies: Carlos Delgado probably wasn't the best player to fall off the ballot in this first year, but he was my favourite. And, as a Jays fan, I remain puzzled by McGriff staying on for so long and Delgado disappearing immediately. No knock on Fred, but that's a real disconnect for me.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 1/21/2017
Stay with us. All things will become clear.
-------------------
Bill: My favourite baseball biographies are Robert Creamer's Ruth and Stengel books, Ed Linn's Nice Guys Finish Last, and Brad Snyder's A Well-Paid Slave, about Curt Flood. (Can't quite remember--the latter might have been focused on the free-agency challenge, not Flood's whole life.) Favourite autobiography: Marvin Miller's A Whole Different Ballgame.
And one I'd advise everyone to stay clear of is Steven Travers' The Last Icon: Tom Seaver and His Times. Travers writes with some inexplicable chip on his shoulder, like Seaver was horribly mistreated and underrated by writers and fans. Probably a little underrated, but seemed really strange when talking about a player who went into the Hall of Fame with 99% support (deservedly, don't get me wrong).
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 1/6/2017
It's a narrative. The John Goodman movie about Babe Ruth inexplicably turned Babe Ruth's story into a whining story about how he wanted to manage and those ungrateful bastards in baseball wouldn't let him manage. Sometimes writers just don't take the time to think through what the story we are telling really is.
-------------------
Bill: Jackie Robinson endorsed and campaigned for Nixon in '60 (although I vaguely remember reading that he had second thoughts along the way...not sure if that's right). Here's a long piece discussing Robinson's endorsement:
http://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2013/4/15/4225534/jackie-robinson-richard-nixon-42-movie-civil-rights
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 1/1/2017
Thanks. Better you than me…
-------------------
Bill -- Random non-baseball question: any thoughts on Mad Men?
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 2/26/2017
Never watched it. Saw parts of a couple of episodes.
-------------------
Bill: That’s what I was thinking, too--that your reader was looking at average approval rating for presidents, where Reagan indeed comes out at 52.8%, 6th out of 12 presidents starting with Truman.
I think that’s misleading, though. Someone like the first Bush has an inflated average because of his chimerical post-Gulf War peak of 89%. I think the approval rating when a president leaves is more meaningful than the average, and there, Reagan’s 60+% is very good--like Obama, he was relatively steady and (like George Costanza) left on a high note.
For what it’s worth, I think the approval rating of each successive president deserves an incrementally upward adjustment reflecting ever-starker hyper-partisanship. Maybe that starts with Reagan himself, I don't know; he gets an extra percent, the first Bush gets +2%, all the way to Obama at +5%. Trump...ugh.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 2/20/2017
My theory is that Hillary invented hyper-partisanship. Let's hope it passes away with her.
-------------------
Bill: From Henry F.'s Hall of Fame-related "Hey Bill": "Most of the marginal players in the HOF are from before the free agent era, so there will be something of a bias towards lesser players playing predominantly with one franchise."
Aside from the actual point under discussion (single-team careers and the HOF), isn't Henry's statement demonstrably *not* true? Aren't the majority of marginal HOF players Veteran's Committee picks from before the free agent era?
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 2/10/2017
That was his point. The wording is confusing, and I think it confused you.
-------------------
Bill: "...decent player who suddenly puts up MVP/HOF numbers for a couple of years and then regresses back to being merely good/decent?"
Thought of Terry Pendleton in 1991/92 immediately. He wasn't at all like Maris as a player, but I think he otherwise fits jimmybart's description really well (conceding that Bonds probably should have been the MVP in '91--close).
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 3/11/2017
Good one.
-------------------
Bill: Agree with everything that you and Christopher say about the extreme shakiness of Fidrych's long-term prospects. Wanted to mention, though, something I didn't know (or maybe had forgotten; I was 14 when I watched his incredible Monday Night Baseball start against the Yankees in 1976) until I read Doug Wilson's excellent The Bird: The Life and Leacy of Mark Fidrych: his original injury that shut him down for much of the '77 season had to do with goofing around shagging fly balls and tearing up his knee, not pitching. Which doesn't really change anything--the next injury, a few months later, was his rotator cuff and a dead arm--but there's that gray area where maybe the knee caused him to alter his motion in some small way. Anyway, the workload and low strikeout rate were almost certainly going to catch up with him anyway.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 5/6/2017
Thanks.
-------------------
I would think Lou Brock is a fairly clear pick as the "worst" player to get 3,000 hits, stipulating the word almost loses meaning in that context. Markakis and Brock's basic slash stats are relatively close: .293/.343/.410 for Brock, .289/.358/.424 for Markakis.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 6/13/2017
Well…900 stolen bases has some value, and there is a big difference between doing that in the 1960s and doing that in a more normal run context.
-------------------
Bill: In the past couple of weeks, the Jays lost three games to the Astros and Red Sox by a combined score of 46-4. We know that run differential usually tends to even out over the course of a season, and I’m sure every player knows that too. I realize you’re not a psychologist, but any insight into how players think about such losses, if at all? Thirty years ago I would have thought it’d be, "A loss is a loss, no big deal." But do such blowouts ever give them pause nowadays about how good their team actually is? Maybe they just figure they’re now bound to win some blowouts at some point...
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 7/14/2017
My guess would be that with ONE blowout loss, or one blowout loss a week, it rolls off the team's back; a loss is a loss, no reason to sweat this one. You lose several games like that, you're going to start to question the capability of the team you play for.
-------------------
Bill: No question...The deaths of Lee May and Don Baylor this past week has me thinking about the disappearance of an archetype from when I first started watching baseball in the ‘70s: the RBI Guy with Mystique. As RBI become more and more obsolete when evaluating hitters (for awards, for the HOF, in general--with good reason, I understand that), a way of perceiving certain players is disappearing too. There were so many of them when I was young: May, Baylor, Perez, Cepeda, Bob Watson, Willie Horton, Boog Powell, Eddie Murray towards the end of the decade. Joe Carter had that for a while (and was the first guy I’d point to if I wanted to show how context-dependent RBI can be). I think Ortiz might have been the last guy to fit the bill, with him very much tied in with his post-season play. Even if my sabermetric self tells me otherwise, the nostalgic part of me will miss this archetype.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 8/9/2017
Fred White used to say that Don Baylor "just looks like an RBI standing there."
-------------------
Bill: Do adjustments--for park, for era, etc.--lose any precision at the extremes? I’m always suspicious that with guys who play in Coors, even after a park adjustment their overall offensive value is still a little over-stated (a skepticism, as a Blue Jay fan, that was deepened the past couple of seasons by watching Tulowitzki up close). Similarly, I wonder if guys like Mays and Aaron and Clemente aren’t still a little underrated after the requisite adjustment is made for spending much of their careers in the pitcher-dominated ‘60s.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 8/7/2017
Well…I wouldn't want to tell you that we have it all figured out and that we understand the ratios in all cases. I don't think we have the exact problem you state. There are examples of players who left Colorado and did not seem to lose much in moving to another park, like Matt Holliday and Andres Galarraga (at least in the first year.)
-------------------
Bill – Can you shed some light on something that came up on another message board the other day: why Ron Santo was so underappreciated during his career relative to Brooks Robinson? First of all, is that even true? If it is, how much of a role did the 1970 World Series play? My two guesses--i.e., I didn’t become a fan until 1970--were that Robinson played on a much better team, and that Santo’s two biggest offensive advantages, HR and walks, were both underrated then (walks, certainly). None of this is meant as a putdown of Brooks Robinson, by the way.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 8/4/2017
Well…defensively Santo was not on the same level as Brooks. He just wasn't. Clete Boyer was on the same level as Brooks, but nobody was in the National League. Somebody has to be voted the Gold Glove in each league every year, so Santo won five of them, but the fact that Santo won Gold Gloves and Brooks won Gold Gloves doesn't mean they were even. They weren't.
Santo was an underrated, underappreciated player. He walked a lot, which didn't draw much attention, and he was slow, and he played the first half of his career for terrible teams. Brooks was famous as a great fielder when I first became a baseball fan in 1961, and extremely famous for his fielding by 1964, when he won the MVP Award. The 1970 World Series made him legendary.
-------------------
Bill: I suspect you’ve been asked numerous times already, but I don’t recall it turning up here: would you expect Judge or Bellinger to have the better career? One of the core ideas that was drilled into me via the early Abstracts was that with a 22-year-old and a 25-year-old of comparable value (and I think those two look more or less comparable right now, at least as hitters), bet the house on the 22-year-old--it won’t always work out that way, but that three-year gap represents a very significant head start (position players only). Whenever I mention this, that I’d rather have Bellinger, no one seems interested in their ages.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 9/29/2017
Well,,,you have a good point, but (a) Bellinger is not quite on the same level as Judge now, and (b) the age difference MAY be less relevant for a dedicated power hitter than for a mixed-skills player. But you have a good point, yes.
-------------------
Bill: Just finished Jason Turbow’s Dynastic, Bombastic, Fantastic: Reggie, Rollie, Catfish, and Charlie Finley's Swingin' A's. Finley’s antics during the first year of arbitration hearings (where he’d say Holtzman owed all his success to Fingers on Monday, and then the next day--in front of the same arbitrator--say Fingers owed all his success to the starters) reminded me of your contention that the worst thing you can ever do in an arbitration hearing is get clever. A broad, perhaps unanswerable question: was major league baseball circa 1973 more like the game today or more like the game played in 1947 (I'll say '47 to eliminate one obvious difference)? I was a very young fan during Oakland's Reggie-Catfish World Series run, so I still think of that game as being on a continuum with what I watch today. Reading the book, though, it often felt like I was reading about some entirely different game.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 11/16/2017
That's a very good question, but probably a question better addressed through research than by an off-the-cuff answer.
-------------------
Bill: The Red Sox outfield can't be the Killer B's; the Jays already claimed that in the '80s with Bell, Barfield, and Mose-bee.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 9/15/2018
Let it Bee.
-------------------
Bill: Maybe this is something you can't (or choose not to) comment on, but if you can, please explain to me the logic behind pulling Gio Gonzalez after two innings last night. I was, and remain, mystified, regardless of Woodruff's home run--didn't Milwaukee specifically get Gonzalez down the stretch in anticipation of making the playoffs? The Brewers got the win, yes, but they burned through seven pitchers in the process. It reminded me of something you once wrote about not changing pitchers for the sake of it, because eventually you're going to land on someone who doesn't have his stuff that day.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 10/13/2018
Well…this issue is being hotly debated by many people, and I will fall back on the answer that I always give. You can't actually calculate all of the advantages and disadvantages and know what is the right strategy. You can study it; you can improve your understanding of the percentages. But ultimately you can only do what you think is right.
-------------------
Bill: Open question to you and readers: did Christian Yelich just have the greatest finishing month ever? Three others that spring to mind, including what I always considered the benchmark, Yaz in ’67:
All four were in (and won) close pennant/divisional races; two took MVP, with Yelich presumably about to become the third (Manny’s deadline trade to the other league prevented him from winning). Caminiti’s August was even better--he probably had the greatest final two-month finish to a season.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 10/6/2018
OK.
-------------------
Bill: I'm sure you get bombarded this time of year with awards-related questions, but I'll ask anyway: do you think there's a case to be made for deGrom or Scherzer as the NL MVP, or is it hands-down Yelich's award? I thought Verlander and Kershaw were good MVP picks, but personally, I'm reluctant to give it to a pitcher when there's a position player who seems like an obvious pick...I think of your Guidry/Rice and Clemens/Mattingly essays, and I'm not sure if my view is outdated.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 11/1/2018
I'd have to look more carefully at the issue to give you an intelligent answer. Intuitively, I'd vote for Yelich, but I wouldn't actually say that that's the right answer. I do think that the WAR numbers are pretty useless for making this decision.
-------------------
Bill: Question relating to Mel Stottlemyre, who died earlier today. If there had been a separate Cy Young for the AL in 1965 (Koufax took the dual-league Cy unanimously), do you think Stottlemyre or McDowell would have won? If the vote were held today, McDowell would almost certainly win. I'm even inclined to think he would have won in '65, too, even though Stottlemyre had the better W-L record (20-9 vs. 17-11)--I think voters from that time were sometimes more perceptive than they're given credit for today. (I'd look no farther than the '65 AL MVP: Zoilo Versalles won, which always struck me as strange as a kid, but WAR also says he should have won.) Were writers so stuck on W-L record then that Stottlemyre's three extra wins and two fewer losses would have gotten him the award?
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 1/22/2019
I am 95% certain that Mudcat Grant would have won the Award. You can take it for what it is worth; your opinion may be as good as mine, but I am so certain that Grant would have won the Award that I often lapse into thinking that he DID win the Award for the American League in 1965, forgetting that there was no such award. Grant was 21-7 and also, his team came out of nowhere to win the American League pennant.
-------------------
Bill: As someone who lived and died (thanks, Jim Sundberg; thanks, wind) with the '85 Jays, I think I can answer those questions about Bill Caudill: on July 29, Toronto found someone they liked better:
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 5/23/2019
OK.
-------------------
Bill: I was looking at Verlander's career box this morning and noticed he's now 27-10 with the Astros, which I immediately recognized as Carlton's W-L record with the '72 Phillies. Here's how they line up in some other key categories:
Carlton Verlander
H: 257 216
K: 310 401
BB: 87 56
HR: 17 42
ERA: 1.97 2.36
Obviously you're looking at different eras ('72 was a big pitcher's year), different parks, and, most of all, the difference between playing for a WS winner and a terrible last-place team. I give Carlton a big advantage in HR, Verlander a big advantage in strikeouts, and a smaller edge to Verlander in walks. All in all, I think Verlander has basically pitched as well as 1972 Steve Carlton since coming over to the Astros (split over two seasons, mind you, so not as valuable).
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 5/17/2019
Verlander is the number 1 pitcher in baseball right now. Carlton was the #1 pitcher in 1972, I would suppose. But you know…doing something over the course of three seasons is not the same as doing it in one season.
-------------------
Bill: The Nationals are more and more reminding me of the '85 Royals, and I wouldn't be shocked if they win everything.
1) Good-not-great regular season: Nationals won 93 and a
wild-card spot, Royals won 91.
2) History of postseason disappointment.
3) Veteran-heavy--the Nationals are the oldest NL team,
the Royals had the second-oldest lineup among position players in the AL. (They
did have a young pitching staff.)
4) At least one resident superstar/franchise player:
Brett for the Royals (sure HOF'er and MVP candidate in '85), while the
Nationals split that in two (sure HOF'er in Scherzer, Rendon the MVP
candidate).
5) An emerging superstar: Soto and Cy-Young-winner-at-21
Saberhagen.
6) The Royals beat a team with 99 wins, the Blue Jays, and a team that won 101, the Cardinals. The Nationals have already beat the Dodgers (106 wins), and would have to go through the Astros (107) or Yankees (103).
Maybe the biggest difference is that the Nationals don't have a Quisenberry.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 10/17/2019
Also they are a long distance from my house. Thanks.
-------------------
Bill: "As of January 26 I had responded to 'Hey Bill' questions on only 4 of 26 days, or 15.4%, which would mean that I would have to do 296 of 340 days the rest of the year, or 87.1%. But now I have increased my percentage to 72.6%, and I have to do 85.2% for the rest of the year."
I hereby dub this HBRR--or, because you don't like acronyms, Hey Bill Response Rate. If, harkening back to RC/27 outs, you factor in the number of days in a month, it becomes HBRR/30 days. You can also make adjustments for the room you happen to be in when you respond, the quality of the questions, the working condition of your computer, etc. HBRR+.
Sabermetrics marches forward (or maybe just I Have Way Too Much Time on My Hands Right Now).
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 4/5/2020
I think we may be marching backward here.
-
Bill: This years Veteran's Committee ("The Golden Era"--ugh) covers Curt Flood's window, 1950-1969. I think Flood should be in the HOF already, but voting him in this year, would, I feel, make a strong statement about the moment we're in. Not sure if you agree--you may not--but if you do, the problem then becomes how do you categorize him? He was a good player who falls short based on his on-field career, with the mitigating circumstance that his career was cut short because of the very thing you'd be inducting him for. But can you call him a builder? That seems weird.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 8/29/2020
Player and pioneer.
-------------------
Bill: Any thoughts on Don Buford? Something showed up on my Facebook wall today that prompted me to look him up. I remember him--I was just starting out as a baseball fan in the early '70s when he was around--but not very well. I was impressed by what he accomplished in such a short career (10 seasons, 9 full-time). He drew MVP votes in four of those nine seasons, and looking at the Orioles regulars on their great '69-71 run, my informal ranking would be 1. Frank Robinson, 2. Blair, 3. Buford about equal with both Powell and Brooks Robinson. Of the five, he would seem to be far and away the least remembered.
Asked by: Phil Dellio
Answered: 12/16/2020
Oh, yes; he's a VERY underrated player. I was thinking about him just a few days ago, following this thought: that a great deal of what makes a team successful is asking a player to do what he CAN do. If you ask a player to do something he can't do, the player will fail 100% of the time.
Buford I believe was the minor league player of the year in 1963. 1964 was a weird year with phenomenal performances by rookies….Tony Oliva, Dick Allen, Rico Carty, Wally Bunker, Tony Conigliaro and many more. Buford got buried behind them, although he had a decent rookie season. Then the White Sox had him playing a position at which he was adequate but not really good (second base), and then also the White Sox run environment was probably the MOST difficult in the last 100 years. In 1965 Buford had 30 Win Shares--an MVP candidate type number; in 1966 he had 21, which is a borderline All Star type number. But the American League batting average in 1965 was .242, in 1966 .240; the league ERAs were 3.46 and 3.44. On top of that, the White Sox Park Run Index was .79 in 1965 and .82 in 1966--in both years the lowest in the American League.
In Baltimore he (1) escaped that horrible run environment, and (2) was asked to do what he best at doing, and for two years he was the best leadoff man in baseball. Very underrated player.
No comments:
Post a Comment