Hey, Sports Guy! Listen Up...
By Blogger
David Ortiz is a baaaaad, baaaaad man. He spits on pitchers' graves. He cures what ails ya'. He hits home runs for the Red Sox. That said, Bill Simmons displays no understanding of the concept of league context in his comparison of Larry Bird and David Ortiz. Observe:
Bird averaged a 26-9-8 in the '86 playoffs, won the Finals MVP and cemented a summer of "Greatest Player Ever" features, then followed that up with a career year in '87 (28 points, 9.3 rebounds, 7.6 assists, 53 percent field-goal shooting, 91 percent from the line, 40 percent from 3s, his second straight title in the 3-point shooting contest). Meanwhile, Big Papi just completed the following 12-month stretch (starting on Aug. 1, 2005 and ending July 31, 2006): batted .294 with a .399 on-base and .604 slugging percentages, 59 homers, 165 RBIs and at least 20-25 humongous hits in the clutch. Sorry, those are Roy Hobbs numbers.
I'm not going to mess with the basketball claims, though I suspect someone with more time and know-how can show that Bird's greatness lies in his sustained excellence, not his peak.
Baseball, on the other hand, is right in my wheelhouse. Calling Papi's numbers from last August 1 "Roy Hobbs numbers" is hyperventilating blindness at its best. Papi is awesome, and those numbers sure do look sweet, but he's not so superhuman that nobody else is doing what he's doing. I give you several other hitters and their rate splits from 1 August 2005 through 1 August 2006 (give or take a day or three, due to the database needing time to catch up). They are all very much baaaaad, baaaaaad men. Without peeking, can you guess who they are? Stats via the Baseball Musings Stats Database, which is based on Retrosheet.
Papi: 296/401/642, 59HR
(Simmons's numbers are screwed up. He didn't give Papi enough credit to begin with!)
Player A: 295/413/610, 44HR
Player B: 314/432/649, 46HR
Player C: 291/368/615, 52HR
Player D: 319/426/629, 46HR
Player E: 289/407/619, 33HR
Player F: 327/425/586, 28HR
Player G: 301/406/584, 40HR
I'll tell you who they are right after this next bit of inanity from Simmons...
The DH thing will hurt Ortiz in any voting, which doesn't quite make sense -- so if he played 90 games at first base and gave you a C-plus there, that would make him more valuable? I don't get it. Bonds won the MVP in 2003 and 2004 moving around in left field like Redd Foxx. That gave him more credibility than Ortiz as a DH? Crazy.
If Papi played adequate first base (for the record, I have little doubt he could), Theo could have gone into the season planning on having Manny DH, and therefore have had more and better offensive AND defensive options for the lineup. While the Lowell/Youkilis combo has worked out beautifully at the corner infield spots, there's no way the Sox could have expected Lowell's contributions this year. Playing Youk at 3B, Ortiz at 1B, and figuring out whether Manny should DH and finding an outfielder, or acquiring a big bat to DH would have been a better problem to have than risking a Mike Lowell meltdown in order to get Beckett. Brian Giles, anyone?
As for the Bonds claim, let's see what Mr. "I may have used PEDs without knowing I used them" did over the ENTIRE 2003-04 seasons:
Barry Bonds: 353/572/783
Who was hitting like Roy Hobbs, again?
And the players I listed above...
A: Hafner
B: Pujols
C: Howard
D: Manny
E: Thome
F: Chipper
G: Berkman
Bonus: 8 guys have been intentionally walked as many times or more than Papi has since 1 August 2005 (It's good times hitting in front of Manny, isn't it?). Can you name them? ANSWER
Bird averaged a 26-9-8 in the '86 playoffs, won the Finals MVP and cemented a summer of "Greatest Player Ever" features, then followed that up with a career year in '87 (28 points, 9.3 rebounds, 7.6 assists, 53 percent field-goal shooting, 91 percent from the line, 40 percent from 3s, his second straight title in the 3-point shooting contest). Meanwhile, Big Papi just completed the following 12-month stretch (starting on Aug. 1, 2005 and ending July 31, 2006): batted .294 with a .399 on-base and .604 slugging percentages, 59 homers, 165 RBIs and at least 20-25 humongous hits in the clutch. Sorry, those are Roy Hobbs numbers.
I'm not going to mess with the basketball claims, though I suspect someone with more time and know-how can show that Bird's greatness lies in his sustained excellence, not his peak.
Baseball, on the other hand, is right in my wheelhouse. Calling Papi's numbers from last August 1 "Roy Hobbs numbers" is hyperventilating blindness at its best. Papi is awesome, and those numbers sure do look sweet, but he's not so superhuman that nobody else is doing what he's doing. I give you several other hitters and their rate splits from 1 August 2005 through 1 August 2006 (give or take a day or three, due to the database needing time to catch up). They are all very much baaaaad, baaaaaad men. Without peeking, can you guess who they are? Stats via the Baseball Musings Stats Database, which is based on Retrosheet.
Papi: 296/401/642, 59HR
(Simmons's numbers are screwed up. He didn't give Papi enough credit to begin with!)
Player A: 295/413/610, 44HR
Player B: 314/432/649, 46HR
Player C: 291/368/615, 52HR
Player D: 319/426/629, 46HR
Player E: 289/407/619, 33HR
Player F: 327/425/586, 28HR
Player G: 301/406/584, 40HR
I'll tell you who they are right after this next bit of inanity from Simmons...
The DH thing will hurt Ortiz in any voting, which doesn't quite make sense -- so if he played 90 games at first base and gave you a C-plus there, that would make him more valuable? I don't get it. Bonds won the MVP in 2003 and 2004 moving around in left field like Redd Foxx. That gave him more credibility than Ortiz as a DH? Crazy.
If Papi played adequate first base (for the record, I have little doubt he could), Theo could have gone into the season planning on having Manny DH, and therefore have had more and better offensive AND defensive options for the lineup. While the Lowell/Youkilis combo has worked out beautifully at the corner infield spots, there's no way the Sox could have expected Lowell's contributions this year. Playing Youk at 3B, Ortiz at 1B, and figuring out whether Manny should DH and finding an outfielder, or acquiring a big bat to DH would have been a better problem to have than risking a Mike Lowell meltdown in order to get Beckett. Brian Giles, anyone?
As for the Bonds claim, let's see what Mr. "I may have used PEDs without knowing I used them" did over the ENTIRE 2003-04 seasons:
Barry Bonds: 353/572/783
Who was hitting like Roy Hobbs, again?
And the players I listed above...
A: Hafner
B: Pujols
C: Howard
D: Manny
E: Thome
F: Chipper
G: Berkman
Bonus: 8 guys have been intentionally walked as many times or more than Papi has since 1 August 2005 (It's good times hitting in front of Manny, isn't it?). Can you name them? ANSWER
posted by Blogger at 5:00 PM
4 Comments:
Good stuff. I'm going to tackle the basketball for tomorrow. Just assinine on all sides.
good stuff, and I find the annointing of Ortiz as MVP already a bit tiresome. The guy is a great hitter, but he does have Manny behind him, who is actually a better hitter and having a slightly better year IMO.
I still enjoy Simmons, but there are two major problems with his latest article:
• Comparing players in different sports is like comparing apples and oranges. Pressure situations vary from sport-to-sport. It's fine to compare them within a sport (say, comparing the clutch performances of Larry, MJ, Magic, and Reggie Miller), but he might as well have brought Vinatieri and Brady into the argument if he wants to compare Papi and Bird. (And for the record, how do you beat a clutch record of game-tying and winning kicks in the snow game, then game-winning kicks at the end of regulation in two Super Bowls?)
• I'm pretty certain that a year or two ago, he referred to Ortiz on at least one occassion as a horrible defender (if I had his book handy, I could probably dig one of them up). Now he's saying Papi is okay in the field. Someone needs to call him on this; I doubt that two years of DHing every day have helped refine the guy's defensive skills.
Matt, a guy who can play the field is more valuable than one who can't at all, because anybody can DH. If DH is the only position you have to fill, every available hitter is in your pool. However, if Papi has to DH, then the roster options are limited. On a day-to-day basis, even, guys like Varitek or Manny can't get "off days" in the DH slot. I think some level of subjectivity and imagination is appropriate when discussing the issue; it's not like it's a Thome/Konerko situation in which both guys deserved to be in the lineup over anyone else they could get, and the better defender gets the fielding assignment. As Ben points out, it's not like Kevin Millar was an irreplaceable cog. If Papi had been able to play 1B, it's not out of the realm of possibility the Sox would have been in running for Carlos Beltran's services at the deadline in 2004 since they could have moved Damon to LF and DHed Manny.
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