May 05, 2009

Phil Watch: Crap! Do I Have To?


I suppose I should.  It's been awhile.

So...Phil writes a column calling for the designated hitter in the National League because Zambrano pulled a hammy...

...and promptly uses every argument against the World Baseball Classic to support his own argument.

Now, I don't want to talk about the WBC any more than you do, but...

Let's get started.

National League needs designated hitter rule too
Zambrano's injury once again shows NL needs the DH

So how bad is it?

Carlos Zambrano landed on the disabled list Monday after straining his hamstring Sunday bunting for a hit? Will he miss more than two starts? And will his pitching be impacted when he returns?

Three questions, right?

If the answer to only one of those three questions is yes, the Cubs will have avoided a dangerous situation... 

How have they avoided a dangerous situation if the answer is yes to the first question?

Cripes.  Even the sports editors at the Trib have given up on Phil.

...one that in a tight playoff race -- which it appears they will be in this season, either with St. Louis for the division title or in the wild-card crowd -- could have lasting implications.

Phil loves lasting implications.  And harbingers.  And omens.

I think a bad edit in the first graph is a harbinger of things to come in this column.  It's an omen that will have lasting implications on my very psyche.

Like saying that the performances and standings on May 4 automatically means there will be a tight playoff race in September.  

Rule #1 for being a dippy sportswriter:  Draw wildly stupid conclusions based on a perilously small sample size.  

It's called the Swine Flu Rule.  Oh, sorry...the H1N1 Rule, because calling it the Swine Flu Rule upset the pork industry.  I'm not kidding.

A Zambrano injury from running the bases is not one of the worries they should have.

Well...then maybe using him as a pinch-hitter on days he's not pitching is a bad idea.  

C'mon.  Take a shot at Lou for being stupid.  It's your job.    

Most baseball fans disagree, especially those who follow National League teams, but here in the home office of Common Sense Central...








...it's time to make my recurring plea: Let's add the designated hitter rule to the NL, giving Major League Baseball the standard set of rules that exists in the NFL, NBA and NHL.

(wipes mouth)  Whew!  That was a big one.  Still kinda recovering from that previous piece of garbage.

I have a question, though.  (Glurp) 'Scuse me.  Why, exactly do all the leagues have to have a standard set of rules again?  Because it's pretty?  

Truly, I don't care either way.  I like the DH in the AL but I could give a poo whether the NL gets the DH.  Wait a minute.  He's not going to talk about the fragility of pitchers and how much clubs have invested in them...................is he?

I've written this before, and I'll write it again: 

You said that.

Every time a pitcher takes the field, he's an accident waiting to happen. The risks inherent in pitching are huge. It's silly to increase those risks to include the ones that hitters and baserunners face, especially when so much of a team's payroll and its hope for success is tied into those arms.

Oh, Holy Shit.  This...from the man sucking Bud Selig's gherkin all through the WBC!!!

But let's demand players play full-speed in full-fledged games before anything resembling Spring Training!!!

Crim.  In.  Y!!!

Zambrano, for example, is in the second year of a five-year, $91.5 million deal. He'll earn $17.75 million this season -- more than $500,000 per start. It's crazy that Lou Piniella used him in three consecutive games as a pinch-hitter, no matter how much he loves to hit or how much Wrigley Field fans love to watch him hit.

There!  That's your column!  

Not the fact that Zambrano pulled a hammy in a regularly scheduled at-bat means the NL should have the DH.

It's the fact that Hendry signed guys bad at baseball like Miles and Gathright, leaving Lou to get all cutesy and use El Loco as a pinch hitter to generate some offense.  It's the fact that Lou gave the front office the middle finger by doing it and nobody in town is writing about it because the Cubbies are cute.

National League fans argue that the old-fashioned game is a better one, that there's beauty in the art of the sacrifice bunt and that the DH rule eliminates much of "the chess game" between managers. I've got nothing against a bunt, not when it's being used by somebody who can hit, but the average NL pitcher batted .128 a year ago. The strategic considerations caused by sending men to the plate who can't hit are consistently overestimated.

Okay.  Here's a better way to make this argument.

Check the statistics for #8 hitters in both leagues in 2008 (NL/AL) and see the marked difference between all the guys who saw time there on a fairly regular basis (100 PAs).  

NL #8 hitters aren't seeing pitches, especially something they can drive, which should also shut up any argument regarding any move of the pitcher to the #8 spot, also something Phil also thought was intriguing.   

Most decisions managers make are automatic -- walk the No. 8 hitter to get to the pitcher; pinch-hit for the pitcher if you're behind and have a rally going. The play is dictated by the situation.

Agreed.  It's not quantum physics.  Don't forget the double-switch.  Only shamans have the ability to understand the delicate nuances and intricacies of that.  

Still reading? 

Crap.  He's talking to me.

If so, and if you've grown up watching NL ball, I apologize for the annoyance. I know this is fingers-on-chalkboard material. Feel free to disagree. But know that the price of your disagreement is to continue watching the AL be superior.

Quit apologizing!  Just make your case.  

Crap.  Now I'm talking to him.

An NL/DH backer will probably see the domination of the AL over the last decade and a half as a random, cyclical confluence of events. But I believe it has a lot to do with the DH rule.

Christo loves it when Phil thinks he's the first to think of things.  It's adorable, really.

For one thing, AL general managers are forced to develop or acquire one more quality hitter than their NL rivals. They can use the DH spot to lengthen the careers of one-dimensional veterans like Jim Thome or to open the doors to a young run-producer like Adam Lind or Matt LaPorta while a Jake Fox (.420, 12 homers, 31 RBIs in 21 games) is stuck at Iowa, the Cubs' Triple-A affiliate.

There we go!  We've found the real impetus of this column.  It's Phil's 2009 man-love for Jake Fox.  Sam Fuld denied his advances.

That's partly why AL payrolls are higher -- although not as much so in 2009 as in recent years -- and AL teams are deeper, thus better able to withstand injuries.

Load of crap.  The Yankees and Red Sox completely skew any comparison with their market size and TV contracts.  

Only four full-time DHs make over $10 million with none making over $13 million.   

Of the top-25 salaries in baseball, 14 are in the National League, none are DHs (BTW, three are Cubs, three are Astros, two are Dodgers, all big market teams no matter how much Houston likes to scream poverty.  And BTWW, Jason Schmidt is being paid over $15 million this year.).

And actually, of the top-100 salaries in baseball this year, I count only four full-time DHs.  

Hardly any bank is being broken in my book.  Yours?

There's no way to prove the next point, but I think it's a big one. Deeper AL lineups make for mentally tougher pitchers, who are more likely to perform under the greatest pressure.

They acquire the fire and the passion.

There's no way for a pitcher to finesse his way through any AL lineup. An NL starter is guaranteed some easy outs, which could help him get through two or three innings. I think the extra toughness shows up in October, when AL teams have won 11 of the last 17 World Series.

I just want to pet Phil at times.

Look, this shit is easy to look up.  The AL is better because the DH bumps the average to below-average down a notch.  

Simple.  Over.  Done.

The numbers are out there and it takes about two minutes to look up.

Check out what #8 hitters did by league in 2008 (it's summed up at the bottom).  And play around with it a little.  Go back a few years (2007 was an anomaly).  Every slot below #5 is slightly better in the AL compared to the NL.  

But all of that basically is silly and obvious.  The #9 hitters in the AL last year (and it pretty much holds up every year) hit .254 compared to .177 in the NL.  Cripes.  The NL #9 hitter OPSed .495 last year.  No position player came within 190 points of that.  Not even Michael Bourn or Willy Taveras, the definition of slap-hitters.

It's a better offensive league because better hitters have a chance to bat.

The DH is an advantage.  Come up with something bigger than Zambrano pulling a hammy, like actual statistics of pitcher injuries while batting and maybe I'll rethink my cancellation of the local paper.  Alas, that never happens, does it?

These are just theories, of course. So is this one: More of you would agree with me if Zambrano had strained a muscle in his rib cage taking a big hack or torn up his ankle sliding into second.

Can I ask why?  Why would that matter?

So if I were a person who believed in the pitcher hitting, I might be swayed by HOW Zambrano got injured?  I would question my entire baseball belief system by something that happened to a pitcher in early May?

That's how you end your treatise, Phil?

With nonsensical blather?  

I ask.  Phil has offered a mere 2,000 words a week of boring and ridiculous crap on average since this blog's inception.

For comparison, Big Red Egg last week, a very slow week at the mother ship, typed 2,327 words.  And that's taking out all the cut-and-pastes (which Phil basically does anyway.  Ba-Zing!).  

Would somebody please tell me who's paying this guy?

C'mon.  I need an answer.