Here's to You Ken Singleton

Many of you have never had the privilege of hearing Ken Singleton broadcast a baseball game, never mind the privilege of hearing him on a regular basis. As a Yankee fan in the NY area, I get the pleasure of hearing him quite often and I want to write a tribute to one of my favorite broadcasters out there.

Why is Ken Singleton so good? Well let’s start with that he’s completely unpretentious. He doesn’t speak down to you, and never comes off as self-important. At the same time he’s clearly very articulate. He doesn’t talk about things he doesn’t know about and keeps the focus on the game itself.

He’s completely self-deprecating and you’d never know he was really a quite good player, unless well… you knew was quite a good player. (No he wasn’t hall of fame material, but he was no slouch.) All these things allow him to work seamlessly with a multitude of partners, from Cone, to Lieter to Flaherty to Kay; he doesn’t miss a beat no matter who is in the booth.

But the best part about getting to listen to Ken Singleton? The little sayings you’ll hear every game.

One particular game a pitcher threw a curveball and they were showing the replay of said curveball and Singleton describing the brake on the pitch goes, “WEEEEE” like a school child going throwing his hands up and jumping down a slide. It was unexpected, enthusiastic and quite simply great.

Another game a Yankee (probably Jeter) made a high throw to first and Giambi has to jump up to grab it, lands on the bag and gets the out. Singleton says, “Giambi proves you gotta get up, to get down.” Once again unexpected, enthusiastic and great.

So here’s to you Ken Singleton, keep doing what you’re doing.

Hank Steinbrenner: Just Shut Your Mouth Already

Hank Steinbrenner the new managing owner of the Yankees is running his mouth yet again. After already saying the Red Sox Nation was B.S., giving deadlines for the Santana deal and saying the Yankees wouldn’t sign A-Rod (and then did) Hank Steinbrenner has taken the cake recently. He said he wants Joba in the starting rotation and only an idiot would want him in the setup role. Additionally he mentioned 5 starters he wanted on the team going forward and one of them was not Mike Mussina who is currently in the rotation.

Previously I haven’t minded his comments and proclamation. Granted he’s probably hurt the Yankees bargaining position in certain situations, I figured as long as he keeps writing the checks like his father did it would be ok.

Now I’m going to not so politely have to tell him to Shut his Facking Mouth. First in saying he never liked them moving him to the pen last year he’s ignoring the fact that if they did not, there’s little to no chance they make the playoffs last year. Granted they didn’t get past the first round last year, however without a bad case of the bugs who knows how that series could have turned. My point is last year it was clearly a smart decision to move Joba to the bullpen.

Now I understand he’s probably been watching Bronx is Burning and wants to be like his dad when George told Billy Martin to hit Reggie Jackson fourth, but it’s possible to own a successful team without being an idiot.

Here’s a few reasons why Hanks comments are so dumb.

1) With his recent statements in one foul swoop you’ve alienated one of your starting pitchers, your GM and your manager.

1a) Mussina hasn’t been that bad, aside from his last start he’s pitched at least 5 2/3 every other start and not given up more than 4 runs in all of them

1b) Your general manager is the one who drafted Joba in the bloody first place

1c) Your manager is less than 20 games in, is there really a need to castrate him already and make him face constant questions?

2) His baseball people (you know the ones that actually know the game) think Joba should only pitch about 150 innings this year and if he went through 30+ healthy starts he would be way over that by the end of the season, lets just throw him out there anyway.

3) The Yankees really have no proven setup guy if Joba is moved to the rotation. Number one starters are more important than setup guys, but between Rivera in 96 and Nelson, Stanton and Mendoza after that the Yankees haven’t won a W.S. recently without a very solid setup crew.

4) We’ve never seen Joba as a major league starter. Is he doing to be as dominant throwing 94 instead of 97, and having to work in curveballs and changeups?

5) One of his reasons for thinking Joba needs to be in the rotation is because you don’t keep a guy with a 100 mph fastball as a setup guy. According to Jayson Stark: Joel Zumaya, Justin Verlander, Joba, Matt Lindstrom, Ubaldo Jimenez, Jonathan Broxton and A.J. Burnett. That's the list of all pitchers who threw at least three pitches last year that were clocked at 100-plus. Not including Joba that’s three starters and 3 relievers. And other than Verlander who has struggled this season, none of them are dominant.

Don’t get me wrong I’m not against moving Joba to the rotation and giving him a shot there, but to call people idiots for thinking its not a bad thing for him to be in the bullpen at this point is, well… idiotic.

Replay in Baseball: Get Your Head Out Your Arse and Use It

On ESPN Jayson Stark is having a chat about whether replay should be used in baseball. To summarize the argument for replay: those in favor of replay would basically like to get calls right. I don’t see any merit in getting calls wrong, so unless there’s a compelling reason not to get the calls right I say use replay.

The arguments against replay are many, but basically well… dumb. One argument is it will slow down the game. People argue that baseball is already a slow game, we can’t be going over to a replay booth to check every close call. That’s a valid, but again stupid argument. Why? Well for two reasons really…

1) no one is arguing we should replay every play. Balls and strikes will always be the umpire’s discretion. Certainly one could argue a system like ques tec or k zone would do a better job, but no one is arguing for it to be used for anything other than an evaluative tool. Some people would argue replay should be used for all close safe-out calls, but I won’t even argue for that. I’m simply arguing that on easy to review calls like whether a ball was fair or foul and whether a ball was trapped or not we can go to an upstairs umpire who probably won’t need more than one look at the play and can radio down with his decision.

2) In addition to it not being used on every play it will not in any significant way slow down the game. What happens when there’s a close play like a fair or foul home run? Often times the umpires will gather together discuss it and may or may not reverse the decision. Based on whether they reverse the decision or not one of the managers will come out there and discuss/yell about it. Let’s say the umpires discuss the call for 1 ½ minutes and then the manager comes out for another 2-5 minutes, that’s somewhere between 3 ½ - 6 ½ minutes for a close call. Instead of that couldn’t we just review the play for 2-3 minutes tops. We could probably have a good 3-4 replays per game in the same time span as one challenged call.

The other argument against replay is it takes out the “human element” of the game. I for one don’t even really know what that means, or why it’s so sacred, but I understand that it’s important for the purists. Again I’ll make a similar argument that there’s still a significant portion of calls (like balls and strikes) that will never be up for replay. So even with the most liberal use of replay there will still be the human element.

But again I question what’s so sacred about the human element? Baseball like every other sport needs to progress over time. They used to have storm drains in centerfield that severely affected the careers of players like Mickey Mantle who got caught up in them and got injured. New technology came along and they no longer need to put storm drains on the field, is anyone upset about that? Let’s go back in time further; they used to wear no gloves at all or if they wore gloves it was barely larger than their hands. Now outfielders wear gloves large enough for a small baby to sleep in. Again, where’s the complaining about that?

Technology is not a bad thing and it’s time for baseball to give it a shot. Lets try it out see where it works and were it doesn’t. I think most people would argue inter-league play and the wild card have been good for baseball and I think they’ll realize if replay is instituted it’s good for the game too.

Can We Get Rid of Batting Average?

Now I know the traditionalists among us (read those over the age over 45) will object, but I propose getting rid of batting average. In fantasy baseball and especially in real life. What prompts this… is it the books I’ve read on sabermetrics, or some profound breakthrough I’ve had? Nope, it’s just a stupid statement about Brad Lidge by Jayson Stark. He says in 2005 Lidge was considered the best closer in baseball and in 2007 he was a bust, but his stats aren’t all that different. He cites opponents batting average which was higher in 2005 than 2007. That’s great, but all that shows is that the stat itself it means nothing.

Here are Lidge’s stats for 2005 and 2007.

	ERA	SV	BLSV	K/9	K/BB	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS	HR
2005	2.29	42	4	13.12	4.48	.223	.293	.323	.612	5
2007	3.36	19	8	11.82	2.93	.219	.312	.409	.716	9

You’ll notice the only stat that was better for Lidge in 2005 was avg. and if we can all agree average is all but meaningless it’ll be easy to tell why Lidge was considered a bust in 2007. He struck out less people, he allowed more base runners, and he allowed a greater percentage of bases on those base hits. Now would he have been considered as big of a bust if his 2006 season wasn’t so awful (to the tune of an over 5 era)? Maybe not. However it’s clear that blowing 8 saves in 27 opportunities, almost 1/3 of your saves, is not good. Neither were any of his other stats compared to his 2005 season.

Lidge is just one case study on the pitching side of how little batting average matters. I could go on about how OBP and slugging are such better measures for hitters as well, but I think we’ve all heard those arguments. So isn’t it time we all agreed to get rid of batting average. After all we’ve got computers nowadays computing the other stats doesn’t need to be done with an abacus.