Baseball: Re-play it again, Bud

Baseball: Re-play it again, Bud

MLB has announced major changes to instant replay and reviews for the coming season.

Best of all, they say there will be more replays shown on the video boards at the ballparks. That was one of my biggest knocks on Target Field, especially the first couple years. The routine pop-up would be shown again, but any play with even a hint of controversy was even’t acknowledged, videographically speaking.

For the most part, there aren’t that many plays in baseball that need to be reviewed. But because it is such a sequential game – every minor action changes the situation for the next play – it is important to get the calls correct so the game can proceed as it should.

The downside of replay is that it deflates the dramatic moment. In the NFL, if there’s a crucial play that’s close, it doesn’t pay to get excited about it, because you know it will be reviewed and you won’t know for three minutes yet if the result is what you want it to be.

Baseball will now have the same challenge. But baseball is already a slow enough pace that pausing to get a call correct might not be nearly as noticeable an interruption as in football.

We’ll see . . . and then we’ll see it again.

World Series: sleepless in St. Louis

With the Red Sox holding a 3-2 lead going back to Fenway, it’s been three straight nights of tardy bedtimes.

But it’s been a great show. Not always perfect baseball, but exciting baseball. Games ending on obstruction calls and pick-offs. The Red Sox making errors almost every game, but getting the clutch hits when they need them.

The World Series is especially great to watch on TV (free TV!) because of detailed coverage with numerous camera angles. There are countless replays showing the spin on the ball, the bats vibrating as they make contact with a pitch, you can count the gray hairs in the pitcher’s beard.

The pitch tracker shows how often the home plate umpire misses the call, which has been surprisingly often. It goes both ways – both teams, balls instead of strikes, strikes instead of balls – so I guess it evens out at least.

Most enjoyable is being able to enjoy the sport for the sport itself. It took me decades to learn not to hate certain sports teams. Somehow, the more I hated them, the better they did.

Now, I might or might not have a rooting interest, but have settled down to the point of being able to like just about every team. My cheering this week is for the Series to go a full 7 games.

The final out means no more baseball until next spring, and another long winter is nearly upon us.

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I vaguely remember a few years ago when the baseball coverage would show the statistical chance of success in each current situation – for example, how often a team would score, say, with a man on first and one out in the eighth inning. This feature disappeared as quickly as it surfaced – I suspect, because it ruined the game for fans.

Baseball is about hope – hope that something good will happen in each situation even though the chances are somewhat remote. There’s a chance of a home run on every pitch, but if you figure out how often a home run actually occurs, it’s not very often (it appears to be safely under 1 percent). I suppose it’s like if at a casino, you were clearly informed before each bet how much the odds are against you. That’s no fun.

Sports: World Series winners

How hard is it to get to the World Series and win it?

This year, we’ll have a team that will win its third title within 10 years, whether it’s either the Red Sox or Cardinals.

If we look at the last nine seasons, several teams repeat appearances while a few others show up once and then are gone. Here would be the standings:

NATIONAL:
San Francisco 2-0
St. Louis 2-1
Philadelphia 1-1
Colorado 0-1
Houston 0-1

AMERICAN:
Boston 2-0
New York Yankees 1-0
Chicago White Sox 1-0
Tampa Bay 0-1
Detroit 0-2
Texas 0-2

So in that list, we notice:
• St. Louis is in its 4th World Series in 10 years
• of those that made it in consecutive years, the Phillies split while the Rangers lost both times.
• Detroit is 0-2, and just missed getting there again this year
• Texas at 0-2 was the victim of the Cardinals’ storybook comeback in 2011, twice down by two runs and at the last strike before rallying to tie, again fall behind, and then win
• The storied Yankees have made it only once in the last 10 years.
• The high-paid Dodgers came close this year but didn’t make it. The low-paid A’s haven’t made it to the Series but have been in the playoffs often.

Book review: Ball Four

In honor of the World Series, a baseball book: "Ball Four" by Jim Bouton.

This is an old one, which was highly controversial in its day. Written primarily in diary form, Bouton tells the day-to-day stories from throughout the 1969  season with the Seattle Pilots and Houston Astros. (The Pilots existed for only one year, becoming the Milwaukee Brewers the following season.)

Although it blew the lid off the baseball world at the time, it does show players as human beings going through the stress, drudgery, excitement – all the ups and downs of a several-month long season – and including the late nights, drinking, swearing, fights, contract issues, etc. Everything that happens behind the scenes, but in those days, as not acknowledged publicly.

I remember that I read it as a kid then, but nothing particular came back to me, other than the names of many famous players who were the stars at the time.

Some of the best lines:

• Pilots manager Joe Schultz: “It’s a round ball and a round bat and you got to hit it square.”

• Pitching coach Johnny Sain: “The world doesn’t want to hear about labor pains. It only wants to see the baby.”

• Baseball second-guessing: “If a guy can’t hit the curve ball, keep throwing the damn things until he proves to you he can hit it” followed by “ You can’t keep throwing a guy the same thing. He’s bound to hit it.”

• And along those lines, pitching scouting reports often talk about a player being a good first-ball hitter. “I want to hear somebody say ‘Good third-ball hitter. Likes to hit that third pitch.’ Then I’ll have learned something.”

• Greg Goossen, doing a Casey Stengel impression: “We got a kid here named Goossen, twenty years old, and in ten years, he’s got a chance to be thirty.”

Sports: our teams aren't all losers

As sports fans, we sometimes like to joke – or seriously complain – about how big of losers our favorite teams are.

If you look at the numbers, though, the picture isn’t quite as bleak as one might imagine.

Let’s start with the Vikings, who I refuse to spend three hours a week with these days. Through last season, their all-time regular season record, excluding ties, is 426-355, a .545 winning percentage. Not bad, really. Throw in the playoffs, and it dips to .538 with a 445-382 mark.

Through 2013, the Twins – since they became the Twins and not the Senators – stand at .498 with a 4,204-4,243 record. As recently as two years ago, they were above .500 all-time.

The Wild, who haven’t been around as long, are chugging along at 431-381 (again excluding ties, which there are a lot of in hockey) for a .531 mark.

Finally, the Timberwolves have actually won 731 games in their existence with 1,107 losses for a .398 percentage. I would have thought it to be much worse, given all the miserable seasons and should-have-been-lottery-draft-picks.

Bottom line: they’re not so bad. The competitive balance of pro sports is so strong that you have to be really awful for a long time, and even then you win 4 out of 10.

Sports: getting popped by the cable bubble

I’m not in the right group. I stubbornly refuse to pay for television – either cable or satellite – so I just don’t fit.

Most of the time, free tv over the broadcast airwaves is satisfactory, since I don’t have enough time to watch a lot of sports anyway. But now, with most of the Major League Baseball playoffs only on cable, I’m left on the outside, having to go to someone else’s house, a sports bar, or just track scores online.

Here’s a long but interesting article about the “sports cable bubble.”

To sum it up, a lot of pepole who don’t care at all about sports are being forced to pay for them through their cable packages. You have buy a “bundle” of programming which most likely includes some channels you don’t want. For some people, that is sports.

But by making all those people pay for sports even if they don’t want it, there is so much money coming in that even average professional athletes can earn millions of dollars a year.

It also means that the pay-tv companies are so profitable that they can force more and more programming into a paid-only format, like what is happening with MLB now. Enough people pay, either willingly or through forced bundles, that those like me don’t have many freebies left anymore.

It’s a balancing act for big-time sports to have enough of your product shown free on tv to get enough interest from enough people that enough of them will pay for it so you don’t have to give it away anymore. Unfortunately, the scales are tipping way in their favor right now.

Sports: baseball uniforms

Here’s an interesting question on the “controversial” topic of baseball uniforms from MLB:

My preference falls with the guy who says let the home team choose first, and then the visitors need to pick something contrasting.

Whites and grays are fine, but get old after awhile. I do like the occasional switch into some colored tops. But even though it doesn’t affect the game, when both teams wear the same colors, it’s just not as good to watch.

In any sport, it’s nice to have differing uniform colors. Once in awhile even in football or basketball, the “white” uniform will be so loaded with other colors, the contrast between teams is lost. Dominant red vs. blue, green vs. gold, or whatever is best whenever possible.

What I really dislike is the overdone “throwback” uniforms. They tend to be really ugly. Maybe if the home team wore them for an occasion honoring something, but don’t make the visitors do it, too! Once every three yeas or so, a throwback mixes it up a bit, but otherwise stick to regular uniforms and either put more talent on the field or lower ticket prices.

Book review: in memory of the 2013 MN Twins

One more baseball book – title is: “100 Things Twins Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die” by Alex Halstad.

Sorry, but this one doesn’t cut it. Although it has the variety and is comprehensive enough about the Twins’ 50-plus years, it lacks on three points:

• Repetitive – when topics overlap, too much detail is repeated in multiple places. For example, a player’s performance in the World Series would be repeated in both essays.
• Organization – it probably was intentional, but the topics jump around as if drawn from a hat. An organized outline might have helped alleviate the repetitiveness as well.
• Writing – although clean, it just isn’t quite interesting enough. Reads like a book report.

Instead, I would recommend Steve Ascheburner’s “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.”

Although a few years older and thus pre-Target Field, it covers much of the same material without the flaws above. I own a copy because I left it out in the rain on vacation and the library made me buy it.

Book review: Three Nights in August

As promised, another baseball book:

Full name:  “Three Nights in August: Strategy, Heartbreak, and Joy Inside the Mind of a Manager” by Buzz Bissinger, author of Friday Night Lights (that’s a book too, not just a movie and tv show), and Tony La Russa.

Also 10 years old, but like many great finds turned up in an obscure reference and when checked out, is enjoyment beyond expectations.

This centers on Tony La Russa and the St. Louis Cardinals of 2003, focused on a late-season series against the rival Chicago Cubs in the heat of the pennant race, but spreads out to the whole season, often going into background and back stories of the players involved. It shows us the strategy and planning of match-ups – weeks ahead, innings ahead, or pitch by pitch.

In one case, half an inning lasts a whole chapter describing what backgrounds and attitudes the players brought with them (free agent year, established star status, etc.) and the strategic shifts with each change in the count.

It is a great look at well-known La Russa – a Twins foe in the late ‘80s – and is a fantastic read for anyone who enjoys major league baseball.

From the book: You need to know who to leave alone, who to pat on the butt, and who to kick in the butt. The manager is a tactician, psychologist, and riverboat gambler.

From me:  Baseball is the greatest sequential game. When down to the last pitch, an out can make it a loss, a home run a victory, or somewhere in between it’s tied up and goes on for three more hours.

Book review: Moneyball

Baseball is heading into its prime time of pennant races so a couple baseball book reviews are in order.

Moneyball: this is about 10 years old but I just found it. Didn’t know there was a book (by Michael Lewis), just a movie.

The subject, of course, is about the Oakland A’s achieving success with a low payroll by emphasizing lesser valued stats such as on-base percentage and slugging percentage in evaluating players. That and specifically looking for under-valued players while getting rid of high-priced ones that aren’t proportionately better at getting on base and avoiding outs.

Some examples:

Saves – a slightly above average pitcher can come in for the ninth with bases empty and succeed most of the time. Once established as a “closer,” he’s worth millions. Then it pays to sell/trade him for something of value, and develop another one.

Given the minimum salary requirements and assuming at least 49 victories by even the worst of major league clubs, how much money is spent on each victory above that threshold? Doug Pappas calculated in the three years prior to the book, the A’s paid only about $500,000 per win while teams like Baltimore and Texas paid nearly $3 million for each victory. Not surprising, the only other team in six figures was the Twins at about $675,000 per win.

Voros McCracken took on pitchers’ worth by looking at what pitchers can control: preventing home runs, preventing walks, and preventing balls in play by striking out batters. Once the ball is hit, he proved, there is quite little the pitcher can do about it – measured over a long period, the stats bear out that there’s lot of luck involved (the scorching line drive right at the shortshop vs. the broken bat bloop that falls just inside the foul line). Sort of puts a damper on the Twins’ pitch-to-contact approach.

AVM Systems also dove into the aspect of measuring luck and players’ actual performance in each event on the field. Example: bloop to left field with known-to-be-slow left fielder with runner on second and two out. Knowing the fielder is slow, the runner takes off and scores. The record shows the batter succeeded, the pitcher failed, and the runner and left fielder were present. More fairly, the pitcher (who made a great pitch) and runner (who used the situation to score) succeeded while the batter (should-have-been-an-out hit) and the left fielder (didn’t get to the ball) failed.

Over the length of a 162-game major league season, stats can predict general outcomes. In a short series of a few games, “the playoffs are a crapshoot.”

Side note: A’s general manager Billy Beane, who was and is the decision-maker based on his staff’s detailed analysis, was a member of the Twins ‘87 championship team as well as the A’s ‘89 World Series winners.

Next up: Three Nights in August

Sports: Target (Out)Field

I’ve been to Target Field quite a few times but fortunate to have seats around the infield. This time, scored free tickets in auto dealer promotion which were in the “Home Run Porch View.” As expected, he definition of view is upper deck, left field.

Got there early enough to snag the free ear buds (thanks T-mobile) and used the time to wander around the park to places we’ve never seen before, a self-guided tour without getting in trouble.

The outfield view at TF is amazingly good, other than that you can’t see the outfielder below you if he gets close to the wall.

This we’d discovered before, but made another visit: there’s a small area behind center field where you can get a nice close look into the bullpens. It has a real zoo-like quality about it as you watch the caged subjects in their native habitat.

Oh, yeah, there was a game, sort of. Toronto scored 5 in the top of the first, and when the Twins left bases loaded a couple times that could have at least made it interesting, it wasn’t.

This is rookie time. There’s a youthful photo in the Legends Club of Hrbek, Puckett, Brunansky, Gaetti, and one other player when they were first called up to the big leagues. Hope we can look back on this starting lineup with Presley, Mastroianni, Arcia, Colabello, Pinto, and Florimon someday after they’ve won a couple championships.