SB Nation User Blog: DavidNYC

NYT: Mets Fire Randolph

DavidNYC — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 07:32:30 -0000

NYT: Mets Fire Randolph

No article yet, just a blurb at the top of the site:

"Breaking News 3:23 AM ET: The New York Mets Fire Manager Willie Randolph"

How this news managed to break in the middle of the night, I have no idea.

[Update, by kingcritical] Promoted to front page. WFAN says Randolph, Peterson, and Nieto all are fired. This is just a bizarre move, especially (as Tony Page points out) since the team just won a game after flying out to the west coast. More as it develops.

[Update #2] Adam Rubin got the scoop.

[Update #3] Story link at the top edited to point to short NY Times story on the matter instead of NY Times front page.

So What Was Willy's Excuse? (+ POLL)

DavidNYC — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 19:30:17 -0000

I stuck around to watch the end of last night's painful, painful game, and spent the final innings growing angrier and angrier at Willie Randolph's inexplicable managerial decision in the 7th inning.

For those of you just tuning in, we started the night with a "short bench" due to the double-header - Pelfrey had been called up to pitch the second game, and Beltran was hurt but not on the DL. Paul LoDuca was injured running the bases in the 7th and left the game (El Duque pinch-ran). The pitcher's spot was due up in the lineup, but rather than bat Ramon Castro - who was going to have to come into the game in the top of the next inning to replace LoDuca - Willie went with Marlon Anderson. In so doing, Randolph ensured that we'd have no more batters on our bench, which forced him to send Tom Glavine to the plate in the bottom of the 9th.

Gary Cohen said that the only reason he could think of for this move was because Willie liked the pitching matchup better with Anderson versus Castro. But both Cohen and Mex agreed that, despite this reasoning, it was a pretty absurd move to make. Needless to say, I - and just about everyone in Mets fandom - seemed to concur as well, particularly when Glavine made out in the 9th.

In any event, I went out to a friend's birthday party and didn't stick around to watch the post-game press conference. What I want to know is, what the hell excuse did Willie offer? I did a quick (not exhaustive) scan of the tradmed and only found one short mention of Randolph's decision:

With Hernandez demoted, and with Beltran out since Wednesday, the Mets actually had only three available bench players for the nightcap - two of whom Willie Randolph burned when he decided to pinch-hit Marlon Anderson against Ray King in the seventh, knowing Ramon Castro would have to enter the game for Lo Duca. (Randolph said he favored the King-Anderson matchup over Castro vs. Jon Rauch, whom the manager figured would have otherwise entered.)

So his proffered reason was exactly as Cohen had hypothesized - and, like I said above, it still sucks. What I want to know, though, is:

a) Did Willie say anything else? Or was this the sum total of his explanation?

b) Why didn't another coach - say, Rick Peterson or Jerry Manuel - say, "Hey, skip, maybe we should send Ramon up there - we don't want to be caught with our pants down in the 9th"? If one of them did speak up and Willie over-ruled them, well, I hope that means he'll listen more carefully next time.

c) And finally, why aren't there any indignant columns about this in today's papers? Did I just miss them, or will they appear on Monday? (In other words, why - apart from the broadcasters - is this criticism appearing pretty much only in the blogosphere?)

Anyhow, take the poll.

Poll

Did Willie Randolph Make the Right Move Last Night?

Yes

0 votes

No

1 votes

Hell, no!

21 votes

22 votes | Poll has closed

Express 7 Trains to Run After Games

DavidNYC — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 18:21:36 -0000

Hallelujah! The MTA is finally making the obvious, smart move that fans have long clamored for:

All aboard the Mets express!
Fans can zip home on the No. 7 line starting Thursday after the Amazins take on the Cincinnati Reds. New York City Transit is beginning long lusted-after express service weeknights from Willets Point/Shea Stadium to Midtown.
...
And after much complaining from the oft-downtrodden Mets fans, MTA and New York City Transit listened. Express trains will arrive on the middle track every six minutes shortly after the game ends and will continue to run for about an hour.
Transit is also ramping up local service. More local and eight express trains will arrive every six minutes.
Transit officials expect that the increased service will shave off six minutes of both trains' service. A trip from Shea to Times Square will now take 25 minutes instead of 31, and riders heading to Queensboro Plaza will get there in 13 minutes, not 19.

Six minutes might not seem like a lot, but check this observation out:

Research has shown that consumers routinely perceive the wait to be far longer than it actually is.
"We have good clocks in our heads for roughly three minutes," said Paco Underhill, founder of Envirosell, a retail consulting firm.
"Once we get beyond that, time expands wildly," he said. "If somebody is there for 4.5 minutes and you ask them how long they waited, they will say 15 minutes."

The article in question was talking about supermarket checkout aisles, but I'm sure the findings apply to waits of all kinds. So six minutes is going to make a big difference. Just think about how much faster it feels to take the express out to the games rather than the local. I know I'm always happy to let a local or two pass by at Grand Central in order to get on an express.

Anyhow, with parking more difficult at Shea due to the construction of CitiField, the new service comes at a great time. And with the city focusing heavily on sustainability, getting more people to ride the subways is clearly a good move. Unfortunately, express service won't be added for weekend games (right now it doesn't exist in either direction), but I won't look a gift horse in the mouth. Though who knows - maybe one day it will!

New York Press: Gratingly Clueless on Piazza

DavidNYC — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 22:07:38 -0000

The New York Press recently launched its annual whinier-than-thou slugfest known as the "50 Most Loathesome New Yorkers". Mike Piazza is ranked all the way at #13, but the NY Press doesn't seem to have a good understanding of how baseball works:

Mike came to New York with such promise in 1998. He fulfilled most of that promise. He turned the Mets into a playoff winner in 1999 and led them into the World Series in 2000. Those were good years, and when the Mets went sour Mike Piazza tried to pull the team up. It didn't work.

But he tried and New York loved him for that. So much so that we were willing to play him into 2005. Hell, for his lousy 2005 year, New York gave him $16 million dollars. But even by 2003 it was clear that Piazza was a terrible catcher.

The joke in gay bars in New York was, what do a lot of gay men and Mike Piazza have in common? They both can't throw a man out going for second base. (At least he deflected the "gay rumors" with good humor and a Seinfeldian "Not that there's anything with that.")

Mike, we stuck by you anyway. New York always had your back. So how did you repay us? You ran away when the going got tough--not for the team, but for you. And Mike, that makes you a selfish baby. Now we're glad, glad, glad to see you go. We hope the door didn't hit you on the way out of Gotham. New York is bigger than any one athlete. We swallow them whole. So when we like you, behave or we will destroy you. Just ask Ed Whitson, Calvin Scharadi, Chuck Knobloch, Charles Smith, Neil O'Donnell and Tim Berra. We will eat you and your young. Piazza knew his contract would end in 2005. He could have gracefully retired. We in New York would have hailed him. Given him a job with a Minor League team or in the front office--and maybe one day he could manage the Mets.

But Mike's ego got the best of him. We even would have let him stay if he learned first base and signed as a part time player for the Mets as a back-up at catcher and first. But no, Mike will not accept aging gracefully. The American League--where he would be a natural as a designated hitter--passed on him and he fled to San Diego to be a "star" again. Mikey, your time has come and gone. You should have retired in 2005 and let us given you the big sendoff. But you are going south to a baseball wasteland and will disappear like Ed Whitson.

Oh boy, that gay joke, har har. (And nice job flubbing the Seinfeld quote.)

But seriously, "ran away"? What idjits. Piazza was in total decline (as even the Press understood) and the Mets wanted nothing more to do with him. You can blame Piazza for a lot of things - such as this - but running away just isn't one of them.

What's more, as we all know, Piazza did try his hand at first base. The Press just sounds hopelessly clueless when they act as though that episode never happened.

Look, I'm not happy to be defending Mike Piazza. I'm glad he's gone, and that he's found a nice, politically conservative city to call home. But when hipster wannabees who think they're such hot shit but actually don't know jack about baseball start spouting off, it really grates on me. Morons.

Team Stands Behind Liriano (+ POLL!)

DavidNYC — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 22:48:05 -0000

You've probably already seen this bit of news:

Twins top pitching prospect Francisco Liriano was arrested by the Cape Coral Police Department early Thursday morning and charged with driving under the influence.

The 22-year-old pitcher was pulled over on Cape Coral Parkway around 1:58 a.m. ET after leaving a bar in Cape Coral, Fla. Liriano was issued three sobriety tests at the scene and failed all of them. He was given a breathalyzer test at the police precinct where his blood alcohol level registered at .133. The Florida legal limit is .08.

Despite this, according to MLB.com, team management is sticking with Liriano:

Twins general manager Terry Ryan, manager Ron Gardenhire, and Liriano met with the media on Friday morning to talk about the incident. Ryan said that Liriano's status on the team will not be affected and there are no plans to fine or suspend the pitcher, but rather to let the law take its course.

As for Liriano's role with the team, this is what Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports is saying:

Before Twins left-hander Francisco Liriano was arrested for DUI, a rival executive said that the Twins should make room for him as a starter by trading right-hander Kyle Lohse, who will earn $3.95 million this season.

Pitching Liriano in relief, the executive says, is "a waste of his service time." Lohse, a free agent after this season, was 4-0 with a 2.14 ERA in spring training. Given the intense demand for starting pitching, the Twins could exchange him for a more affordable pitcher or hitter.

Do you think Lohse will get traded to make room for Liriano in the starting rotation? Take the poll!

Poll

When will the Twins trade Kyle Lohse?

Never

9 votes

June

8 votes

July

10 votes

Right at the trading deadline

14 votes

April

0 votes

Not this season, but eventually

18 votes

May

5 votes

64 votes | Poll has closed

Diary: Does Batting Order Matter?

DavidNYC — Sun, 19 Mar 2006 23:21:19 -0000

(moved from diaries. --Eric)

If you've been following the latest statistical research, the answer, as you might expect is "No", or at most, "Not really." The NYT has a good article today on the subject, vis-a-vis where David Wright should hit in the batting order:

Mark Pankin, a financial adviser based in Lincoln, Va., has developed one of the most advanced computer models of lineup behavior, a method that simulates all the interactions among hitters and their tendencies to hit doubles, draw walks and more.

Using last year's statistics, Pankin turned it loose on the Mets and a half-dozen plausible batting orders.

Whether Lo Duca, Wright or Beltran batted anywhere from second to sixth, each order scored at rates of 4.82, 4.83 or 4.84 runs a game -- which over a 162-game season would be a difference of merely three total runs.

"No matter how you look at it, switching hitters around only makes a difference in the second decimal place," Pankin said. "It basically doesn't matter." (Emphasis added.)

What's even more interesting is that Pankin uncovered something rather counter-intuitive about batting orders that does matter:

Strangely enough, Pankin found that the most efficient lineup (assuming Reyes led off, an inevitability) featured Lo Duca second, then Delgado, Wright, Cliff Floyd and then Beltran; the worst had Wright batting second and Beltran third. (Even allowing Beltran to improve from last year's disappointing New York debut did not change matters much.) The reason, it appears, comes in how managers gear their lineups toward first-inning potency, at the expense of later innings.

A Reyes-Wright-Delgado start did enjoy the best first inning -- but carried with it a 59.3 chance that the Nos. 4 or 5 hitters (Floyd and Beltran) led off the second inning, costing that frame more than the first inning had benefited. With Reyes-Lo Duca-Delgado-Wright-Floyd-Beltran, the best hitters (Delgado and Wright) usually came up with either runners on base in the first or led off the next.

"You weaken the first inning a bit, but you strengthen the second," Pankin said.

It appears as if Pankin is on to something. According to Stats LLC, over the past five seasons, more runs were scored in the first (1.16) than second (0.97) innings. But the average of those two (1.06) was still lower than any inning until the seventh -- when relievers start taking over -- suggesting that managers are indeed overplaying their first-inning hands. (Emphasis added.)

So it seems that a smart manager would actually try to balance his 1-2-3 with his 4-5-6. Which means we can be sure that Willie Randolph won't do that.

Anna Benson: A Dumber, Bustier Anne Coulter

DavidNYC — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 03:43:29 -0000

I'm sorry. I just hate bringing politics into baseball. But sometimes, you just get forced into it. We all know about Anna Benson's rantings, her monster ego, her snarling at Carlos Delgado's principled stance against the war in Iraq. But Tom Watson points us to some stuff Anna's puked out that makes her previous remarks on the record look positively tame in comparison:

I honestly have to tell you...I hate your fucking guts. Forget about how un-American you are, how politically retarded you are, or how fat you look while slobbering your political garbage all over everyone, mainly, I despise you for the fact that you make money off of influencing the young minds of America to be Bush-haters.

Anna, who makes even Michelle Malkin look brilliant by comparison, continues:

You are a pariah to our nation...a fat kid that got beat up by the jocks at school, and this has formulated your hatred of America. If I didn't know any better, I would thing George W. himself went to school with you and kicked the shit out of your pie-hole everyday for being such a candy-ass. If you are so passionate about politics, use some of your blood-making money to make it a better place instead of making movies that only benefit your fat-ass fanny-pack. No one likes to see Hollywood try to engage our minds with their ridiculous and one-sided political rants during award ceremonies. Your "movies" are just a façade for your own political agenda, which, by the way, is fucking warped.

Her self-hatred knows no bounds. I'm pretty sure this twisted masochistic fantasy is actually just a bit of wishful projection. (Her milque-toast boring husband I am sure is not nearly exciting enough for her.)

You are a selfish, pathetic excuse for an American, and you can take your big fat ass over to Iraq and get your pig head cut off and stuck on a pig pole. Then, you can have your equally as fat wife make a documentary about how loudly you squealed while terrorists were cutting through all the blubber and chins to get that 40 pound head off of you. I dare you to go to Iraq and diarrhea all over our soldiers; they would love to strip you naked in the streets and leave you so that the terrorists can pick you up and dispose of you the way terrorists do. If you believe that Iraq and Al-Queda were not together, go over there and see for yourself.

As Watson says, the Mets need to trade the wife.

Moneyball Revisited... in College Football

DavidNYC — Sun, 04 Dec 2005 07:47:16 -0000

Michael Lewis, whom everyone knows as the justly celebrated author of the seminal "Moneyball," is back with a new story in this week's NYT Magazine. Alright, I realize it's not about baseball, but I figured the piece would be of interest to Moneyball fans because it describes a college coach (Texas Tech's Mike Leach) who, like Billy Beane, has emphatically thrown out the rule book and started anew.

Does stuff like this sound familiar?

Schwartz had an N.F.L. coach's perspective on talent, and from his point of view, the players Leach was using to rack up points and yards were no talent at all. None of them had been identified by N.F.L. scouts or even college recruiters as first-rate material. Coming out of high school, most of them had only one or two offers from midrange schools. Sonny Cumbie hadn't even been offered a scholarship; he was just invited to show up for football practice at Texas Tech. Either the market for quarterbacks was screwy - that is, the schools with the recruiting edge, and N.F.L. scouts, were missing big talent - or (much more likely, in Schwartz's view) Leach was finding new and better ways to extract value from his players. "They weren't scoring all these touchdowns because they had the best players," Schwartz told me recently. "They were doing it because they were smarter. Leach had found a way to make it work."

Chad Bradford's ears are burning. Like Beane & baseball, Leach re-assessed what's actually valuable in a football game, and found otherwise ignored players who could give him precisely that value. More on the flip.

Leach and his offense are approaching the natural end of a path football strategy has been taking for 50 years. They are testing a limit. Synergy, in Leach's view, doesn't come from mixing runs with passes but from throwing the ball everywhere on the field, to every possible person allowed to catch a ball. "Our notion of balance," Leach says, "is that the five guys who catch the ball all gain 1,000 yards in the season." (The Indianapolis Colts last season became only the fourth team in N.F.L. history to have three receivers gain more than 1,000 yards in a single season.) The trouble with running plays, as Leach sees it, is that they clump players together on the field - by putting two of them, during a handoff, in the same spot with the ball. "I've thought about going a whole season without calling a single running play," Leach says, only half-joking. To a team that gains as many yards as Texas Tech, the usual boring, penny-ante yard-eating tactics - punts, penalties - are trivial. Field position is simply a thing to improve. Cody Hodges, who has spent the last four years marveling at Leach's in-game refusal to accept that his offense might have to be so conservative as to punt, says, "There's been lots of times I'm on the sidelines, and I'm like, 'Oh, my God, we're going for it!' We went for it on fourth and 5 on our own 23 - in the first quarter. We went for it once on fourth and 18 - and we were ahead." E. J. Whitley, an offensive lineman, says: "If you're on this offense, you expect to score. Most offenses on fourth down are coming off the field. On fourth down we expect a play to be called. Because we haven't scored yet."

Predictably, Leach has gotten a dismissive cold shoulder from the rest of the coaching establishment. Like the A's, his Red Raiders are considered some kind of weird fluke.

Bad as it was for Texas A.&M., its staff might wonder how much worse it could have been if Leach had the same access to talent as A.&M. or Texas or Alabama or, God forbid, Notre Dame. The chances of that happening can't be great, though. Leach remains on the outside; like all innovators in sports, he finds himself in an uncertain social position. He has committed a faux pas: he has suggested by his methods that there is more going on out there on the (unlevel) field of play than his competitors realize, which reflects badly on them. He steals some glory from the guy who is born with advantages and uses them to become a champion. Gary O'Hagan, Leach's agent, says that he hears a great deal more from other coaches about Mike Leach than about any of his other clients. "He makes them nervous," O'Hagan says. "They don't like coaching against him; they'd rather coach against another version of themselves. It's not that they don't like him. But privately they haven't accepted him. You know how you can tell? Because when you're talking to them Monday morning, and you say, Did you see the play Leach ran on third and 26, they dismiss it immediately. Dismissive is the word. They dismiss him out of hand. And you know why? Because he's not doing things because that's the way they've always been done. It's like he's been given this chessboard, and all the pieces but none of the rules, and he's trying to figure out where all the chess pieces should go. From scratch!"

Of course, within a few years, we'll doubtless see plenty of college coaches (and then NFL coaches) imitating Leach - grabbing up speedy players and spreading them out across the field. Such is the life of an innovator.

I've never been a fan of college football, but after reading this, I'm definitely gonna try to watch Tech's next game.

How Brilliant IS Leo Mazzone?

DavidNYC — Mon, 03 Oct 2005 00:14:46 -0000

Everyone always praises Leo Mazzone's alleged pitching genius to the skies - he's the baseball equivalent of Lee Strassberg, the longtime acting instructor whose best-known role was Hyman Roth in Godfather II. But how clever is he, really? From today's NYT:

For a guy who makes the postseason every year, Leo Mazzone can become a little annoyed watching the games. Mazzone, the Braves' renowned pitching coach, can handle the bloated time for commercials, the countless glove-tugs and pensive resin-bag bounces. But when it comes to all the times a relief pitcher trots in to face just one hitter before leaving for yet another, he, like many onlookers, gets a little fidgety.

"I think all that matchup stuff is overrated," said Mazzone, a plain-spoken West Virginian. "Just go ahead and pitch."

Contra Mazzone, however, the rest of the article goes on to make it clear that using one-batter pitchers has a big impact. In a thousand such at bats this year, hitters have only hit .170 and slugged .282. (In 2004, it was even better: .131/.209.) These kinds of numbers don't lie - and what's more, they even include the screwups who get yanked by Joe Torre after one disastrous at bat.

Pronouncements like these make me wonder about these supposed baseball gurus. Mazzone's remark sounds no different to me that Minaya's anti-intellectual remarks about on-base percentage. I suppose Mazzone is not making the ultimate decisions on when to use pitchers, but I'm sure Bobby Cox listens to him intently.

Mazzone has an unmatched track record - but who knows? Maybe it would be even better if he paid more attention to the stats.

Good Pitching Performance Yields Punishment?

DavidNYC — Tue, 30 Aug 2005 02:47:26 -0000

In a column in tomorrow's NYT, Murray Chass makes the following claim:

With the Mets, a good performance seems to bring punishment, not reward. It must be a tough-love form of motivation.

He backs it up by offering the following evidence:

They waited far too long to yank Kazuhisa Ishii from the rotation, tolerating his wildness (48 walks in 89 1/3 innings, nearly 5 a game) and his hefty earned run average (5.04). They watched Aaron Heilman pitch a one-hitter in April and 10 days later allow two hits in seven innings, then they banished him to the bullpen. They saw Jae Seo give up one hit in seven innings and exiled him to the minors.

Do you think his assessment of Heilman and Seo is fair? If so, the treatment of Heilman, Seo and Trachsel after their impressive performances is either psychotic or idiotic. (And yes, I realize that Minaya might be playing some clever deep game by making Zambrano look more tradeable by keeping him in the rotation instead of Trachsel - but come on, Steve Phillips is no longer the general manager of any team in baseball, which means that there aren't any suckers big enough to fall for that ruse.)