The Reds vs. Joe Sheehan

I'm trying to catch up on all the baseball news I've missed since I fell into that cheering-induced stupor.

What the heck are the Reds doing in first place? That's been the big question every day when I've looked at scores and standings in the newspapers. I've always been a big Adam Dunn fan, but it doesn't seem like he's been going off.

They just dropped two of three to the Marlins. Looks like the difference between first place and .500 is winning seven in a row at home. They are still being outscored.

Thank god Joe Sheehan took up this subject over at Baseball Prospectus's pay archive. This is going to make my post on the Reds that much easier. While I share his disbelief, he overstates his case that there's nothing real about the Reds as a first-place team. Hyperbole is Joe's real weakness, as we've seen with his Pirates writing, and it's fun to pore over his essays since they tend to fall apart in revealing ways as you examine them.

Another huge flaw in Sheehan's game as a writer is the fact that writes shit like this:

You have to understand: I want to believe that the Reds can keep this up. They were my uncle's favorite team, for one, and while the city's blind spot for Pete Rose is a mark against it, it is a great baseball town, one that will fill the park if given any reason to do so.

Why do this, Joe? Of course we don't believe that he "wants to believe" or duh, he would be seen believing. His uncle's favorite team? Are we to think that his hold on objectivity is so thin? No--Sheehan's not someone who routinely claims that he has a flimsy grip on objectivity. Are we to be grateful that he can overcome the genetic bias he feels whenever he ponders that Pete Rose-loving Reds team? What's the point then? What kind of style points is Joe going for here? Is he conceding a point - "I really like the Reds" - in hopes that this will make his case against the Reds stronger? WTF? Either way, this is no way to mask your disrespect for a ballclub.

This is a major flaw in most of the baseball writing done for a national audience. Writers who are closet partisans of some team, bandwagon fans for a few teams, or worse, generic fans of the game with little attachment to team play, are often claiming to be your best friend right after they insult your girlfriend. Compounding the insult of such a statement is the fact that the author seems to believe that making such statements strengthens his case. Note to Joe: next time you want to bash a team and throw around some paragraphs to prop up your naysaying disbelief, restrain yourself from inserting the gratuitous paragraph in which you claim to really love the team in your heart of hearts. Or, when you are claiming to really love a team, restrain yourself from mentioning the "serious flaw" about the team that makes your love so heroic. If you translate this paragraph into one about a girlfriend, it would read, "You know what, friend, I'm sorry I had to point out that there's reason to believe your girlfriend Mabel is running around with Tom, Dick, and Harry while you are working nights at the tavern. I really want to like Mabel, so it hurts me to tell you she's a slut. My uncle had a thing for tall blondes and I like them too even though they are always really stupid. The other great thing about Mabel is that when she makes herself available, lots of guys will crowd around and cheer her on." Thanks a lot, Joe.

Back to Joe on the Reds. He explains the recent parity in the NL Central by noting that "the NL Central just hasn't had exceptional teams." OK, maybe, if "exceptional" means something more than "better than average" and is a word you reserve for just one or two teams. I sure thought the Cardinals were one of the top teams in 2002, but maybe Joe saw Arizona coming all the way.

What about this year? Is the parity in the NL Central the result of all the teams being average? Looks to me like the Central is 38-24 (.613) against the NL East and 35-28 (.556) against the NL West. To put that in persepctive, the best teams in the NL have a .574 winning percentage. Am I doing the math wrong, or does it look like the NL Central has been been beating the crap out of the rest of the league? If one team has a 27-20 record and plays against some terrible teams in a weak division, is that as impressive as another team that routinely plays against the best teams in the league and also arrives at a 27-20 record?

Joe writes that the Reds are "not contenders in any real sense of the term." What the hell does that mean? The only "real" sense of the term is the "real" standings. The Reds are contenders in the only real sense of the term. Unless the NL East and NL West grow some exceptional ballclubs, the winner of the NL Central should be the odds-on favorite to represent the NL in the World Series.