Snell and Lohse at 1:15.
"We find it easy to tread on and crush a worm that we see crawling on the earth; so it is easy for us to cut or singe a slender thread that any thing hangs by: thus easy is it for God, when he pleases, to cast his enemies down to Snell."
In this game report, Dejan Kovacevic quotes Bay, Wilson, and others on the subject of listlessness.
The team appears to understand, but somewhat resent, our perception of the team as not highly motivated. The hits will fall, they say. They appear to be thinking, from these few quotes, that it's mainly a matter of luck.
A consistent approach must be a good thing to have. And it's probably true that they are never as good as they look on the best days, and never as bad as they look on the worst days.
But there is a generosity in the theory that they are not sufficiently motivated. Perhaps they understand this, perhaps they do not. If motivation is not a problem, then fans can only say one thing. These are not good ballplayers. This is a bad team.
Look at the scoreboard. They are seven games under .500. Good teams made up of good ballplayers do not slip to seven games under .500 by accident or luck.
Either these guys are not working very hard out there. Or they are working hard and they are not very talented. It's hard to know the difference. I think it's the former case, but they probably know better.
Harang vs. Maholm. Krivsky vs. DL. Enraged at this upstart Krivsky stealing his thunder and determined to reclaim the basement throne, DL needs his typically crummy team to lose this series. Epic struggle starting soon.
Back from visiting the Dominican Republic, Bob Nutting has pledged to "build a new baseball academy there or upgrade its existing one," reports Dejan Kovacevic.
"There is a strong feeling within the organization that a new, state-of-the-art facility will be the choice."Is this a P.R. stunt? Or a reason to be genuinely encouraged that Bob Nutting wants to win (by 2015)?
Today's Q+A quizzes Dejan Kovacevic on Duke's delivery, bringing back Craig Wilson, and Chacon.
Kip vs. Ian. "Snell is oneself, Snell is alone, the other figures in it merely projections. There is nothing to escape from and nothing to escape to."
Pirates ready to spend, reports the AP from the Dominican Republic, where Nutting, McClatchy, and DL wrapped up their four day visit.
The Pirates are considering building a new full-time academy as well, said assistant general manager Louie Eljaua.No word yet on whether they found any takers for Wasdin."That is something that is in our plans. Maybe not immediately, but it is something that you cannot rule out," he said.
Wainwright vs. Duke, starting now. Jack Wilson returns and bats 8th. Bautista leads off, Bay bats third. Nady's in CF, so no Duffy tonight.
Negra Modelo for me. What's in your hand?
Ballgame comes on in the central time zone tonight.
Brian O'Neill has a good point.
Another somewhat dubious move in that now-infamous Saturday game: leaving Gorzelanny in there to finish the fifth. This is more debatable than calling on the guy with the biggest rash of recent troubles to face Tony Clark. But at the time, I was annoyed. You have to win these games, and it looked to me like Gorzelanny was being left in there so he could get the win. He got the final out, and he came back out there and did the sixth. But he was laboring, the team had a big lead, and a sure win appeared to be within reach. I thought at the time that Tracy was taking a risk by leaving him in there; I wondered if Gorzelanny was not getting the chance to continue only so he could get the win.
It would be a dumb thing to risk a team win so that one particular player has a greater chance of getting a personal win. There is the notion that players "have to grow" and that a manager might turn a kid into a proven veteran by showing how he can overcome adversity in a situation like that. This I consider worthless psychobabble. The best thing a manager can do is teach the player an unconditional respect for the team winning the game. There can be no compromise of this. There may be more to life than winning games, but if that is true, the big-league manager should be the last person in the world to believe it. So if a kid starter walks the bases loaded and has fallen apart after his team just batted around and he got a cute trophy for his fireplace and ran the bases etc., why not take the ball from his hand. Why not say look man, nothing personal, but you look distracted to me. So get out of here.
I could be all wrong, but I ramble on this way to compare that move to neglect of the firemen O'Neill describes. Tracy's narrow-minded view of the need for clear roles strikes me as something that might be too deferential to the save stat. It betrays a concern for something other than winning. On a losing team, no player deserves any kind of job security. I don't know. I could go on but I'll stop.
Take it easy.
When play resumes, the Pirates will have a chance to separate themselves from the lower third of the NL Central. First, they travel to St. Louis for three games. This is the worst year in all Tony La Russa's 12-year tenure, but it is hard to get excited to face the Cardinals. After St. Louis, the Pirates go to Cincinnati for four games. The Reds have not won a series all month.
The Pirates dodged a bullet when they won the game that Armas started earlier in the week. But they fried out the long reliever winning that game. So it was Marty McLeary to face Tony Clark with the lead. Dejan Kovacevic explains.
The team was stubborn with Armas. When you make shitty personnel decisions, they have a ripple effect. If the team wants to win games, they have to win games now. Not later. No amount of losing today will increase the winning later. If they want to win games now, they have to play the most competent players. This means scrapping the "plan" when necessary. Armas, a $3M part of the offseason plan, was failing us well before this week. He had no business getting that last start.
On the other hand, by the same reasoning, I have to give Tracy credit for benching Chris Duffy.
I'd like to see Armas and McLeary starting at AAA. Bring up two of the better AAA starters and work them in long relief. If they can't pitch effectively in long relief, then they are primadonnas. You can't hide bad pitchers on a winning ballclub.
Randy Johnson and Paul Maholm at 1:30.
Micah Owings and Tom Gorzelanny. Arizona color guy Mark Grace adores Owings. (Well he adores everything and everyone, but he seems to extra adore Owings.) Owings looks like he'll stick around. I've seen a few of his starts. I'm not sure he'll be better than league average, but he does play like a guy who belongs in the big leagues.
For some reason, I think the Pirates will hit him tonight. He looks pretty hittable to me. If he was a Pirate, I'd expect him to get knocked around at least half the time. To his credit, though, he's smart and unusually ballsy and self-confident for a young guy. He appears to think like a veteran. We'll see if he can fool and trick his way through the lineup.
The D'backs have a younger team than the Pirates. They are starting far more rookies than the Pirates. The Pirates do not often play a younger team; they should beat up on these guys pretty good.
If the season is a quest to finish so far above .500, then tonight's another must-win game. Every game's a must-win game. There can be no great margin of error with this team. The team can win tonight, or they can win two later. Either way they make one step toward that goal.
It's always easier to win one now than it is to win two later. Snell and Gorzelanny are not going to pitch any better than they have the last two months. Some players are going to come around, but there's not so much hidden vigorish that anyone should expect the Pirates to be dramatically improved in a month or two. So here's hoping that the team plays error-free ball with sustained concentration and no stupid mistakes.
The Reds have been as bad as the Brewers have been good.
The Pirates are 9-12 at home (and 10-10 on the road). They can finish .500 at home--yes?
Snell vs. Davis, starting now. Bautista returns, hitting second. Doumit's on the bench again.
Milwaukee still owns first with the 26-15 record. The Pirates hang back at 18-22.
A losing record is like a negative bank account. It's like debt. Every game, the team can pay down say $10K in debt or they can charge another $10K to their account. There is no breaking even. Had they lost yesterday, they would be six games under today. But they won. So they are four games under. This means they must lose two to be where they would be had they lost one yesterday.
There is a psychology to getting out of debt. I enjoyed this film linked from the Consumerist blog. And I wonder if the Pirates should have some kind of graph or chart in their little moleskin notebooks.
This is a corny idea, sure, but the old respect for the present moment is one of the things that the team needs to get out of the red and into the black.
The P-G Q&A is all about why folks don't buy tickets. The Pirates will sell out consistently if they establish a winning tradition. It's not enough to be on the upswing; it's not enough to play .500 ball. They need to play better than .500 ball for two or three years straight. They need to be in first or second place in the NL Central for two or three years straight.
Four games under .500 will not bring the crowds. Fans identify with the team. Right now the team is a Loser fourteen years straight. There is nothing cool about that kind of losing. No one goes to the movies to watch stories about how it is exciting to blow out your knees and back while working, without insurance, for minimum wage, or about how great it was when a poor victim filed a fair lawsuit and was denied justice, or how it was cool when this plain-looking guy asked six girls to the prom and was rejected every time. The Pirates are Losers until the standings say otherwise not for one day, or for half a season, but for several years running. Only then will the attendance come back. Only then will large numbers of fans identify with the team.
'Tis nobler to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take Armas against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them?
I brought home a case of Straub for what might be the last Tony Armas night of the season.
Duke vs. Olsen in fifteen. Doumit and his newfound confidence think things over from the bench.
Mitre vs. Maholm. "The Thing That Should Not Be" leads off for the Fish.
The Bucs are three games under and seven plus back of Milwaukee. The Brewers are on pace to win 106 games. That's not going to happen--but they could win 90+ easily if guys like J.J. Hardy keep it up and stay healthy. The Astros are in second despite the 0-6 showing, this year, against the Pirates. The Reds have imploded. At 15-24, they are nine games under .500 and ten plus out of first. They are on pace to win 62 games. How'd that happen so fast?
This came up in Dejan Kovacevic's chat:
Vito_Jr: Doesn't it seem like the Pirates are the vicitims of bad calls every night? Take Friday for instance. How is interference not called on Chipper Jones at 3rd base?Dejan Kovacevic: Good teams get the calls. True in every sport. When the Pirates get good, they will get calls. One does not come before the other.
I've been meaning to comment on this.
As someone who watches or listens to a lot of Pirate baseball, I've gotten the strong impression the last year or two that the umps despise the Pirates.
It does no good to complain about officiating. But I will anyway.
Not only do they despise the Pirates, the umps do not seem to be as impartial as they were, say, ten or twenty years ago. Gone is the idea that they are fair and kind and above the passions of rooting. Now they are more like a bunch of evil prison guards. They make one bad call Everyone protests. They stand up for each other and the call, stupid as it was, stands. They make a virtue of being stubborn. This would be OK if they were more fair-minded. It is important to respect the rule of law in any game.
But instead of making the call up by giving the injured team the next borderline call, or by outright blowing another call in their favor -- something I remember seeing more often in the 1970s and 1980s -- now then make another lopsided call against the complaining team. And then they swagger about like conceited jackasses. How dare you call us wrong, they seem to say, now watch us get medieval on your ass.
The first time this really hit me in the face were the back-to-back series in Boston and New York that year, I dunno, two or three back, when they clawed back to 30-30. Now it's routine. It's part of what really sucks about being a Pirates fan.
When McClendon was fired, I wondered if all of the animosity of umps was not directed at him. But they do the same thing to Tracy. So it's not McClendon they hate.
Whatever's the source of the problem, I wish the league would find a way to improve the quality of the officiating. Those guys need to be more impartial. The prison-guard mentality of the umps impairs our ability to enjoy MLB's product, and it only discourages the fans from bothering to follow this team.
I just watched the "condensed game" for yesterday's blowout. If they could somehow mute the announcers - who speak in gibbers and squeaks - but keep the in-game sounds (ball off batt, ball into glove, crowd, etc.) - then these things would cause less motion sickness.
It looked to me like the Pirates did some aggressive baserunning yesterday. I saw a lot of guys getting tagged out all over the place. I saw a lot of hitting the fastball to all parts of the field, too. That was a lot of singles for one game.
Also, since the red vest has us talking about uniforms, I will add that the pinstripes are sweet.
In today's PG notebook, Dejan Kovacevic indicates that Tony Armas might be looking at real estate in the bullpen.
For the love of God, get him out of the rotation.
I was not aware that all of our players could hit the fastball to any field. I will have to pay more attention.
James and Armas pretty soon. I am going out and will miss this edition of "Tony Armas night."
These uniforms are awesome, I think. They would look even better in the full sun of summer day game.
The Pirates should do more yellow and less red. I like red as an accent but not as a main color. Maybe next year ...
Davies and Duke. Jim Tracy plays the same lineup that scored six runs last night. Smart play, I say.
Maholm and Zambrano at 2:20pm.
... curious lineup. Sanchez, Bautista, Bay, Doumit, Nady, LaRoche, Paulino, Wilson, Maholm. Works for me. I like it. Here's hoping they do better than 1-for-18 to start the day off Zambrano.
... Haloscan is down so no comments at the moment. We will switch to comment plan B: smoke signals. I will keep an eye on the sky for your wisecracks.
... Zambrano drilled Freddy on lead elbow. He's on first, not looking too maimed. Bautista followed with a pretty double to right. Kill, Pirates, kill!
... thank you Matt Murton. Pirates 2, Cubs 0, Jason Bay standing on second. Jason Bay is clutch.
... Ryan Doumit, hitting cleanup and sporting some serious eye black, ropes a single into center. First and third for the Nads.
Gorzelanny and Marquis in about four hours. Both these guys are 4-1 with pretty good ERAs.
Ron Cook offers his condolences in this column dated yesterday.
If/when the Pirates fall six games under .500, that's when I start shoveling dirt on the coffin. They could still rise from the grave, but recent experience suggests this rarely happens. Until they fall six games under, I'm game. I prefer not to think much on the possibility of making the playoffs or putting the Brewers in their place, sure, but I'm around and I'm paying attention and I would not be surprised to see the Pirates rattle off seven or eight wins in a ten-game stretch. Two starters are pitching like aces, after all, and the hitters have laid up massive hidden vigorish to enjoy in the warmer weather.
My point is not to be cheerfully optimistic or make a virtue of seeing the glass as half full only three games under half full. My point is that most teams are average, the Pirates could be average, and even the average team can surprise and hold a winning record. Just about any team can bump along at .500 ball, and it's not highly unlikely that an average team could finish five to ten games above .500. So until we know for sure that the Pirates are not as good as any run-of-the-mill ballclub, then my attitude will be to wait and see. The standings will tell me when the team truly sucks.
Why six games? That's a good question. If I'm so sure an average team could finish the year six games over, why, you might ask (humor me), why worry about falling six games under?
I draw the line at six games because of the learned helplessness. This appears to have characterized the Pirates' locker room in recent years. I think six games under might be something that would lead to that slackening of desire, that neglect of daily study of the standings, and that kind of pathetic, sheepish, we-will-hustle demneanor that prompts guys like Tony LaRussa to juggle the rotation so no ace is wasted on the Pirates. Such conditions might lead to .500 ball the rest of the way, as they did last year, but they are not going to make up the six games because that would change the environment in which the helpless find comfort.
A team can make up two or three games pretty easy on a ten-game homestand. They can't make up six games without winning 8 of 10. So I see a big difference between three and six games under .500. In the first case, a hot or good or lucky week could lead to that outpouring of optimism and media attention that attends the Pirates as they hold a .500 record. In the second case, the team requires a much more sustained period of winning. This puts the .500 record more than a week away with medium luck and good play. That's too long to wait. Enter the learned helplessness.
That said, I'm not really a sports psychologist. I just play one on my blog.
I am a patient guy. The standings will tell me when to stop paying attention. Right now I see a faint glimmer of life in this team. I can wait to see what they can do with it.
The Pirates are three games under and eight back of the Brewers. They've lost seven of their last ten.
They have Gorzelanny tonight, a getaway game at Wrigley, and then a ten-game homestand with the Braves, the Marlins, and the D'backs. If they can split the remaining two games, I imagine they could see .500 again before the end of the month.
Looking ahead, too, I'd circle the series with the D'backs. They have a younger team with nine rookies. And they have a winning record.
In the meantime, it's two more with the hated Cubs.
Gene Collier is pro-beanball.
For the record, and I write this in small print, so to speak: a person or behavior that is polite cannot be annoying. "Annoyingly polite" is a nonsensical oxymoron of the class that includes "tall short" and "heavy light." Non-offensiveness is the essence of polite. So I'm not sure what Collier means. Supercilious? Obsequious? Whatever. It's not my job to put words in his mouth.
This has been the problem with the back half of the rotation. When those guys throw strikes, the other guys hit them--hard.
I'm all for any plan that enlivens the game. But the Pirates should wait until they are ten to fifteen games under .500 before they crack open Bones' all-Wiggy playbook.
The Pirates will raise Snell in about two hours. Look for them to batter Lilly into a whimpering, self-loathing jelly-like mess on the mound.
Dejan Kovacevic fires well-deserved salvos in his Q+A at unsound approaches (and the "undeniably poor" job done by hitting coach Jeff Manto) and an offense-challenged organization. The 2007 Pirates seem unlikely to make Dejan's list of "Things that make Pittsburgh great".
Today's Q+A mentions possible 2007 first-round Bucco selections: Boras clients Matt Wieters and Mike Moustakas.
The Pirates get a day off. They are 13-17, 4 games under .500 and 7.5 out of first. The Brewers are 11 games over .500 and running away with the division.
Tomorrow night the Pirates will play the Cubs at Wrigley. As I expected, the Pirates catch the Cubs just off a sweep of the Nationals. They've won six straight.
The good news for the Pirates: tomorrow night, there will be Snell to pay.
Armas vs. Sheets. Doumit catching. Iowa Pirate waving the Jolly Roger in LF.
Dejan Kovacevic explains the perhaps unlikely combination of the Pirates' good fielding percentage and their not-good BABIP (opponents' batting average on balls in play). The players' range has not been good, and the fundamentals have been neglected. Pitchers like Duke and Maholm cannot be expected to look good if they start in front of a defense that cannot get to an above-average percentage of balls.
10-0, ouch. Meanwhile the Cubs have won three straight and now own second place.
The Pirates have two more with the Brewers and then three games at Wrigley. Then a long homestand with Atlanta, Florida, and Arizona.
Maholm and Claudio Vargas in less than an hour. McLouth in CF, LaRoche at 1B.
The Brewers are feeling the love from USA Today.
Brewers owner Attanasio:
"I love waking up in the morning, picking up the paper and looking at the standings," Attanasio says. "I'd wish I could tell you that was it, but I probably look at that thing 10 times a day."
Everyone should look at the standings ten times a day when their team is eight games above .500 and in first place, don't you think?
Two stories worth reading: this Greg Couch item for the Chicago Sun-Times and this Bill Plaschke item for the Los Angeles Times.
In the first, the Cubs are described as a failure for their 12-14 record. I'll go on record as saying, when the Cubs left Pittsburgh, I pitied their next few opponents. They look ready to go on a tear. Ten days from now perhaps I'll revisit this prediction and see what came of the Cubs.
In the second, we learn about the subservient toadies hired by teams (some? all?) to puff the whiny titty-baby ballplayers. This is not a flattering portrait of life in the clubhouse. It's repulsive in fact. I mention it because the man at the center of the story worked for the Dodgers while Tracy was there. FWIW, a peek behind the curtain.
Gorzelanny and Bush in five minutes. Doumit starts at first, Nady in right.
Dejan Kovacevic gently pokes a stick at the still-hibernating LaRoche in "Adam bomb".
In today's Q+A, Dejan continues the LaRoche theme, and suggests calling Wally Joyner or trying anything other than what's clearly not working.
I've got an idea. Adam wears Deluxe Eye Patch for games and batting practice for one week. He'll continue to struggle, most likely. After one week, he removes eye patch. The sudden return to binocular vision will give his neural circuitry involved in seeing a baseball a chance to reset.
Up from Indy, on DL, and due back tonight, respectively, notes Dejan Kovacevic. Wasdin was put on the DL with an unspecified ailment, possibly chronic ineffectiveness. Should Nady's return force Doumit to the bench?
The Pirates will be back, in a little bit, for the full game of the one-and-a-quarterheader . . . with Snells on.
Pirates and Cubs will finish the suspended game before all Snell breaks loose in the regularly-scheduled afternoon game.
Lilly and Armas in half an hour. I would call that an even match-up.
Some thunder in the area.
The Bucs are right at .500 and three and a half back of Milwaukee. Last night the top three teams in the division standings, the Brewers, the Pirates, and the Reds, beat the bottom three teams, the Cardinals, the Cubs, and the Astros. After Milwaukee, not much separates the division.
The Pirates are 5-6 at home this year and 5-2 on this current homestand.
Brian O'Neill looks at the new deal, fangraphs.
I admit I'm underwhelmed by these things. Of course the win probability goes up as the end of the game approaches. A football version would show how a last-second field goal wins the game, and for this a person might be tempted to argue that field goals are terribly important and field-goal kickers, terribly clutch. But we all know, as one of the tenets of the higher criticism, that football games are not won and lost on last-minute field goals. Both teams had 59 minutes to achieve a field-goal-proof position.
The same is true in baseball. A run is a run. In a 2-2 game, a run in the eighth is not important without the two runs scored earlier in the game. If the team wins 3-2, it sounds foolish to me to talk like the third run figured more in the win than the first or the second run. All runs count equally on the scoreboard. Preventing runs in the first is just as important as preventing runs in the eighth. And so on and so forth.
That said, Matt Capps and Ian Snell have been as good as anyone in the NL. There's no denying it. All hail Matt Capps, all hail Ian Snell.
The Pirates are one game under .500 and three and a half back. The Brewers, at 15-9, had a great first month. All the teams of the NL Central continue to play each other today and tomorrow.
Pirates are still at Mediocre Point looking up at Opportunity Mountain. Paul Maholm and Aaron Harang this afternoon.
So far I'm underwhelmed by these picks, but what do I know? I don't know much of anything, sir.
... tell me they did not trade up to draft a punter? What's next--a mascot?
Picking Spaeth allows Arians to go with three TE sets. PFW likes the pick:
(Spaeth) is one of the best blockers in the draft and has the type of tough-minded, hard-nosed mentality to endear himself to the Pittsburgh brass. The Steelers, who like to use a lot of multiple-TE packages, landed a warrior.
Scouting reports from the NFL and NFL draft countdown are favorable. PFW adds that Woodley "... made plays for the Wolverines and came up with big plays in the clutch". This bizarre youtube montage 'the Wood' has highlights (and quotes and pictures of wood. Earmuff the kids for this, as there's profanity).
Nate Silver of BP presents The PECOTA Top 100. Only one Bucco. When Upsides are used to assess overall organizational talent levels, the Bucs come in dead last in the final summary rankings of "Total Talent Stock". (Thanks to sludgeworm for the link).
Mesmerized by the Bucs' 11-10 start, we haven't thought much of late about football. But of course we're acutely aware that, later today, the names of young men will be read aloud in succession. A select handful of these men will be given the chance to compete for the right to wear a new throwback mustard helmet.
The Steelers needs are many (e.g. OLB/OL/DE/RB/CB/WR/ILB/P). As one would expect given the vagaries of the draft, predictions rarely agree:
Ryan of HSS predicts G Ben Grubbs. Ryan also likes punter Dan Sepulveda.
PFW predicts LB Lawrence Timmons.
Ed Bouchette predicts the Steelers trade down with JAX from 15 to 17, trading CB Darrelle Revis for DE Jamaal Anderson and an extra third round pick.
For live draft coverage, the P-G's Jerry Micco will be updating the P-G's Blog 'N' Gold.
John Fay describes their trouble. Jerry Narron comments.
They've had problems with their bullpen, which features not enough variety and not enough talent.
Four wins in a row and the Pirates have moved to that definition of mediocrity, the .500 record.
Every win now is big money for the team and the players. But they will have to kick it up a notch if they want to win much the rest of this homestand.
That series with the Astros was an epic battle of weakness against super weakness. I'm with Phil Garner. The Astros lost these games more than the Pirates won them. The Astros were much weaker than the Pirates. The Pirates had just enough self-command to walk away big winners.
That said, wins are wins and you take them as you find them.
The next two series are all-important.
Ian Snell goes for us tomorrow, with Tom Gorzelanny to follow. They have their aces ready to go, so the Pirates should approach these two games as they would a playoff series. If they get blown out by the Reds and then get blown out by the Cubs, then they are back to needing something like a four-game winning streak just to regain the opportunity. And the way the last fourteen years have gone, it is hard to say that four-game winning streaks are common things.
So it could be the team's last chance. They need to establish themselves as a group of men who tour the country with a winning record. The sooner the better. And that must be the goal: get above .500 and stay there--for a long time.
If they need a little extra motivation, they should study the standings. It is always a good day to win a baseball game, but it is an especially good time to be mediocre, or slightly above average, in the NL Central. The Pirates are locked up with the Reds. Only one team can advance from this point.
The Pirates are 9-10 and three games back. Today they send Tony Armas to match strikes with Wandy Rodriguez.
This is a day game. It starts in about three hours.
Keep an eye on the weather ... should be OK but sudden rain could happen ...
Adam LaRoche is uh, clutch.
Jose Bautista followed with a hit up the middle that moved Wilson to third. And Jason Bay was intentionally walked so that the Astros could face LaRoche.Hey, why not? LaRoche came to the plate 0 for 4 on the evening, leaving him 0 for 18 at PNC Park since joining the Pirates.
Houston shortstop Adam Everett was shading well behind second base, and LaRoche noticed it. Moehler would throw him the steady diet of low-and-away sinkers he has been seeing -- and not hitting -- all season. And LaRoche was aware of that, too.
"How can you not be?" LaRoche asked.
He took a pitch, then willfully squibbed one of those sinkers right to where Everett would have been. It barely eluded Everett's backhand try to reach the outfield, and Wilson touched home to end the Pirates' longest game since the 18-inning gem they won against the same team at the same venue May 27, 2006.
"I didn't even want to stroke the ball," LaRoche said. "I just wanted to guide it right through that hole, just like a game of pepper."
That's Dejan Kovacevic on the lyre.
Dejan Kovacevic touches clutch again in the Q&A. He expresses a little frustration. I disagree with the parts I read. I would agree with the parts I didn't read except--I didn't read them.
The Pirates need good hitters. They would be wise to keep it simple. Hitting in this or that kind of situation is putting too fine a point on it. Get and make guys who hit well in every situation, and they will do it in the clutch.
Albers vs. Duke, starting now. Freddy has been scratched after an unidentified object was removed from his eye earlier today.
Fire Joe Morgan has fun with Dejan's clutch piece. The conclusion:
Tracy's "case" is that they need a high BA with RISP, and that OBP doesn't matter so much. That's like saying that the important part of the alley-oop is the slam dunk, and it doesn't matter so much whether anyone bothered to lob you the ball.(link via WHYGAVS)So, in the end, I guess I made fun of Jim Tracy. Dejan Kovacevic gets a check-plus, because I think if you read between the lines he is on the side of Facts and Truth. Freddy Sanchez and Jason Bay get gold stars. Ronny Paulino and everyone else who would rather pitch to Albert Pujols than David Eckstein gets a punch in the face and an exhortation to seek counseling.
In response to Dejan Kovacevic's clutch study, Charlie argues that the Pirates are wrong and Dave Pinto follows Jason Bay and argues that it's not clutchiness that exists but chokiness.
There's no doubt that the situation affects a player's ability to hit. With all respect to Charlie, I am not persuaded by something like career batting averages and postseason batting averages. The hitting environment is just not stable, and the data is far too incomplete (making sample sizes much too small) to say with any authority that the numbers prove anything in the debate about "clutch." It could be coincidence that Joe Rudi's postseason numbers delivered in the clutch match his overall regular-season numbers. Joe Rudi does not dent the argument either way.
Think about the variance in the hitting environment from at-bat to at-bat. Some players are affected by defensive alignments. Sometimes you'll see a shift on, for example, and both the shortstop and the second baseman will be on the right side of the infield. That affects a player's ability to get on base in the at-bat. Or maybe some lucky genius had the right-fielder cheat just far enough toward the line that a usual double is caught for an out. These situations are not easily sorted from the rest of the player's at-bats. And there is no "true" or consistent "regular" hitting environment. There is enough variance from at-bat to at-bat to make each one unique and each one its own too-small sample size--when, that is, we get into debates about one of the endless variety of at-bat subsets.
So it's hard for us to say what a player's "true" clutch hitting ability is--it depends, in ways we cannot articulate with the current stats made available, say, from ESPN or USAToday, on the kinds of situations in which they bat. I am not saying that season-long, month-long, or career-long averages are meaningless. I am saying they are too messy and complicated to neatly subdivide into statistically authoritative arguments about subsets of at-bats.
And not all "close and late" situations are the same. There are games where both teams look tired and appear to be going through the motions, and there are games where the playoffs are on the line and the stadium is packed and the crowd noise is intimidating.
The data is not complete enough to say much of anything decisively at this point.
Proof for me that hitting is heavily influenced by the immediate hitting environment are the abysmal numbers most players post in pinch-hitting situations. Very few players are good pinch-hitters, as I discovered, to my surprise, a few years ago. If hitting ability was truly some kind of ideal constant, we would not see a difference between PH numbers and everyday play numbers. This, for me, is proof that something like "clutch" surely exists--but what that is would depend on how it's defined and even then, the numbers are not likely to be very helpful in distinguishing one player's clutchiness from another's. Fine distinctions may be impossible to quantify.
Further proof that clutch exists is anecdotal. Even Charlie concedes it in Elway and Jordan. But for me, this anecdotal evidence carries as much or more weight than the kind of statistical evidence we have at hand today. I have no disdain for statistics, mind you. Rather it's a serious respect for their present limitations. Because I have thought so long and hard about them, I am of the opinion that they do not tell as much as we wish. So I expect the study of baseball to be one that is further characterized by innovations in approach and further scholarly explanations of how everything you previously thought was all wrong. (For example.) Though I do think that some sabermetricians adopt a tiresome "Mr. Enlightenment" tone toward the observation of anecdotal evidence, I am no bleeding-heart Romantic arguing for the conviction of reason-transcending intuition. My belief in clutch is not an article of faith, either.
My advice to the Pirates would run along the lines Adam LaRoche advances in the piece. You certainly can't depend on some perception of clutch ability. The season is too long. Not every game will have a playoff atmosphere. It's just not possible.
If the Pirates want to score more runs, they have to get on base more often. Any way they can get on base is a good way to get on base. As I've said before, I'm not so frustrated when they load the bases and fail to score--as they have too often done this season. The best solution to such trouble "in the red zone" is practice in the red zone. If they keep loading the bases, they will score more runs.
So I believe in clutch and I believe that people choke, but I would not trust in clutch. I would trust more in consistency. I'd rather have a #2 hitter who can draw a walk in his sleep than a #2 hitter who appears to have an ability to deliver a hit in a clutch situation. Why? Because the first player will have far more opportunities to exercise his skill than the second player. As a result, the team would score more runs. And I'd also be skeptical that we can be certain that this or that player truly possesses more clutchiness than the others.
And one more thing on the lineup. I'd stick with what works. If the Pirates win big against mainly right-handed pitching on Monday and face a right-hander on Tuesday, I'd run that same lineup out there again. If they can win often with Jack Wilson in the #2 spot, then don't fix what's not broken. The standings, however, suggest that Jim Tracy would do well to keep tinkering with the lineup until he finds a consistent winner.
Brian O'Neill looks at the coming homestand.
I'm still not sold that anyone's hitting numbers are beyond the usual week-to-week fluctuations. They don't look good, a number of them, but they have established a good level of ability in previous year(s). They are not rookies. So they are due.
Break out the hidden vigorish, and bust some people on the head.
Take it easy.
Here's some reading material if you need it. The Pirates climbed out of last place with the win yesterday. Hopefully the Cubs can sweep the Brewers in their series this week.
The coming homestand will be Astros, Reds, Cubs. Weekday games this Thursday and Wednesday a week from now (5/2). It will be nothing but the NL Central until May 10. Now would be a good time for the team to heat up and maintain concentration.
The Pirates are 6-10, in last place, and 3.5 games out of first. The Pirates have won only two of their last ten. The Astros have won eight of the last ten, and the Brewers have won seven of the last ten, and they are teams at the top of the NL Central. Those teams play each other at two o'clock.
The Dodgers are 13-5 and own the best record in the NL. The Pirates send Tom Gorzelanny against Brett Tomko. They need a win. Game on at four.
