Archive for October, 2009

Mistakes Kill Me

Published by Bob Sanchez on October 24, 2009 in Baseball and Observations. 0 Comments

Check it out! My first Mailbag entry!

Pete writes:

Question for you regarding pitchers and their ability or non-ability to hit their “spots”. When a pitcher, such as last night when Hughes was pitching to Guerrero and had him looking like a 2nd grader swinging a wet noodle, throws at a 45 foot curveball for a swinging strike do you throw him another CB to get rid of him or waste a pitch up and in to his zone? We know what happened, Hughes missed down the d@ck and Vlad as his does hits a weak GB up the middle for a hit to extend the inning. Was that pitch a mistake because he missed his “spot”???? What is the percentage of mistake pitches that are made during a MLB game. Someone here has the opinion that it is somewhere in the 85% range of mistake pitches during an MLB game. I am very curious to read your take on this.
Thank you!
Pete

And, from Pops:

Bob,

Dan Koosed is my Assistant GM here at the Flyers. We debate baseball a fair amount and have been discussing the bad umpiring on the last few games as have you.

I made mention about the infamous “mistake” pitch and it boiled down to me claiming that a pitcher only really hits his “spot” perhaps as low as 15% of the time. I mean really throws the ball exactly where he intends it to go!

Not talking balls and strikes here, I am talking I threw the dang thing on the mark I set in my brain.

So the question is to the wise Bob Sanchez, what percentage of the time do you think this occurs? That th pitcher could actually say I meant to hit that spot?

Can’t wait for your answer. No money on it. . . yet.

XXOO

Readers comin’ out of the woodwork! I love it! If I didn’t know better, I’d think Pete and Pops are trying to settle a bet through Bob Sanchez’ BS. Bring it on!

Pops, tough question that doesn’t have a scientific answer as far as I know! Some smart folks have studied it and written about it on the Internet, and there still isn’t a way to get into another human being’s head and know for sure what he wanted to do.

Yet that is what analysts and scouts are asked to do. You can rely on the catcher’s target and what you know about the pitcher and the pitch sequences, but I don’t think anybody is any more or less clued in than the hitter, and if we’ve done this right, most of us remember what it’s like to be a hitter!

I’m cycling through the memories of the hundreds of pitching performances I’ve seen over the last four years and settling on numbers that seem right, so please pardon the lack of scientific evidence here.

A lot depends on how you define a “spot,” and of course the pitcher’s objective (within the objective of getting the guy in the batter’s box out) changes with every succeeding pitch. On a 3-0 count, for example, you want to throw a strike that doesn’t get hit 10,000 miles assuming the batter would swing and you’re not trying to walk him. Your “spot” would be pretty big, then, in that case.

I think a Major League starting pitcher with poor command on any given day will still hit his spot with 30 out of 100 pitches. Of course, he probably won’t get to 100, but I think 30% is the least you can expect from a professional starter at the highest level on the planet.

A starter who is dealin’ will be somewhere between 50% and 70% for me. Here, the fact that he is having a great day works in his favor. You can bet the hitters are talking about the location of his stuff, and they may not be expecting anything good to hit. Let’s say a pitcher misses his spots and walks a guy or gives up a double, well that’s no matter, he’s on fire with his command and will get the next guy. That’s my best explanation as to how a guy can be dominant and still “miss” 40% of the time.

Pitches over the middle of the plate are easier to hit hard than pitches elsewhere, for the most part. However, hitting is so difficult that even if the pitcher “leaves one over the middle,” it’s not the end of the world. Watch the HR round of BP and see how guys ooh and aah when the batter hits three in a row out of the yard. Or 28 HR in one round of the Derby? Just amazing.

The best hitters hit the tobacco juice out of pitches over the middle when they get them, but if every “miss” left the park or eluded the eight gloves out there, we’d have guys hitting .450 with 130 HR. Yes, hitters get good pitches to hit that often.

Pete, let’s get to your question for one example of a “mistake.” As you mentioned, Hughes’ target on that pitch was up an in out of the strike zone, a tough pitch for Vlad to do anything with except hit on the ground between the shortstop and third baseman as we’ve seen him do countless times. That may have been why Jeter seemed to be a step or two closer to third base.

Hughes ended up throwing the ball right down the c@ck, as you put it, and Vlad hit a weak grounder up the middle that got “pasta-diving Jeter!” My head sunk when he hit that ball, as yours probably did, because it didn’t seem to have enough juice to get through the infield in that first instant. The replay showing the reaction on the bench was exactly the same. The guys stayed down and exploded when it got through; they didn’t get up on their toes on the crack of the bat and then jump up in a separate motion as could be expected if Vlad had hit a rod.

Telling, isn’t it? Here’s a “mistake,” and it’s not hit well. Hughes missed his target, that is undeniable. But so did Vlad! Unbelievable! Unacceptable? Imperfect execution on both ends, but not what I would call mistakes. Asking Hughes to thread the needle or Vlad to hit everything in a certain zone on the screws every time is asking too much.

I’ve asked around and heard the “mistake pitch” attributed to Tom Glavine, who called one of his own pitches a mistake after a game in the 1990s. It spread like wildfire and morphed into what we know today, the casual comment made by commentators about pitches that went wrong based on the results.

People feel smart when they can point out where someone else messed up, and I think that announcers and fans alike don’t consider what they are doing when they criticize these elite athletes. They can say, “The Twins can’t make these mistakes and expect to beat the Yankees,” or “You know you can’t make pitches like that to Vlad,” around the water cooler and feel like baseball geniuses. Disrespectful, negative, and derogatory, each and every one.

What “mistake” hounds miss, I think, is that the pitcher-batter matchup is not a Scantron test with one side automatically executing something based on the human input on the other. It’s two human beings facing each other in a battle of wits and skill, and the success rate is perfect enough from either side that it makes the battle fun to watch. Again, and again, and again.

Thank you, gentlemen, for reading and asking.

From Rocking Chairs to Extinction

Published by Bob Sanchez on October 21, 2009 in Baseball and Observations. 2 Comments

There is a problem with the way we watch baseball games, or perhaps more accurately, with the way baseball games are provided for our eyes and ears to enjoy. The picture has never been clearer, the camera angles never better, the sound never sharper, and the graphics never more informative, but the taste of it gets more and more sour with each passing postseason.

Countless replays and K-Zones have made it incredibly easy for fans to be armchair umpires, which is interesting because some accounts have the umpires themselves in rocking chairs twenty feet behind home plate in the 19th century. We are able to see every pitch and every tag from a myriad of angles at varying stages of slow motion whether we want to or not, and I imagine that many of us take a perverse pleasure in doing someone’s job better than he can do it from the safety of our homes and offices.

The two or three talking heads assigned to overanalyze each postseason baseball game jump into the fray as well, declaring calls good or bad based on these replays. Notice that they reserve judgment until the replays show what is without a doubt the right call, that their tongues cluck only after the ball has settled on one side of the white line or the other, or that they offer congratulations for a consistent strike zone only after the points are plotted and the yellow streak is painted on the rectangle.

To be fair, there have been some badly missed calls this offseason, some that leave me shaking my head and feeling awful for the men in blue. I try to make my call when they make their call, to form my opinion in the moment just like they must, but I cannot close my eyes when the replays come. The admonishment from the press box makes my stomach turn, but in these cases, the fact remains that the umpires were wrong.

This is not a good thing. Umpire errors are not as much a part of the game as the curve ball and the seventh inning stretch. We should not tolerate such incompetence, especially since we now have the technology to correct these mistakes.

There are two systems at work here. One is archaic and relies on human resources. It is expensive and frustrating and rarely goes a day without making someone upset at a malfunction, real or perceived. The worst feature of this system is that it will correct an error by itself only very rarely; everyone in the game must live with whatever the system produces and continue on with life.

The second, newer system has not been officially implemented yet, but we can see it at work on our TVs and our favorite stats websites. It will almost always tell us the right call with complete impartiality, offer us an infinite number of looks at every single play, and, perhaps best of all, never argue and never ask for a vacation.

The two systems do not work in harmony, rather creating a cacophony, a polytonal opus comprised of smug second-guessing, embarrassing replays, and superfluous graphics that have to strain to show us their meaning. It is difficult to watch baseball with these two systems warring against each other and MLB standing by doing nothing about all of the noise.

Something needs to happen before the first pitch of the 2010 season. I see two alternatives.

1) MLB, the umpire’s union, and the networks agree not to show instant replays. Ever. Umpires’ responsibilities remain intact.

2) MLB strips umpire responsibilities down to tag plays and rule interpretations and leaves fair/foul, ball/strike, force plays and home run/not home run to the hardware. The game is ruled by computers that give instant, indisputable decisions.

The first option would make watching baseball so much more beautiful but is also so unlikely to happen. Of course people want to know what the right call was. Of course people want to see that bang-bang play again and again, if anything to distance themselves as far as possible from having to actually watch the game and make a decision for themselves.

I could live with umpire errors if we weren’t constantly reminded of their frequency and degree. I could accept the human element if game analysis and reporting were approached with more humanity. This last gripe extends to coverage of the players and managers as well; second-guessing has gotten so harsh and so negative lately that it’s a wonder that any of these “journalists” are still allowed within thirty-nine feet of the clubhouse.

The first option might spur a decline in the number of useless graphics and in-your-face pseudo-analysis. Who cares how far Bobby Abreu is standing off first base when he takes his lead, don’t the producers understand that the naked eye can tell us enough? Why do I need to know that a Yankees key to victory is for A-Rod to “continue past struggles” or that “Figgins’ bat needs to wake-up” for the Angels to have a chance? (No kidding on those last ones, I wonder if we can show replays and ostracize the producer that those gems sneaked past)

When is the last time you watched a baseball game at any level without an electronic scoreboard? It’s amazing how rich a baseball experience can be when you actually have to pay attention to the score, the count, and how many outs there are. Maybe ditching umpire-bashing replays could help steer the mad, mad baseball media machine back in that direction.

The second option takes care of the incorrect calls, speeds up the games, and almost completely eliminates arguments and ejections. It would take some capital to develop the perfect strike zone machine and install it in all 30 ballparks, but fair/foul is basically already being done with line judging in tennis, and I’m sure that geniuses can come up with some system for force plays where they rig the bases and the infielders’ shoes with sensors that could pick up stimuli and make the correct decision.

The Yes or No calls in baseball are easy enough for a machine to make on the spot, nearly as fast as a human being (way faster in the case of certain guys behind the plate). My primitive mind can’t imagine a computer system advanced enough to get tag plays right with any kind of speed, and it even takes human umpires some time to see the whole play and make those calls. We could keep four umpires around for tag plays, balks, and for interpreting rules.

I’m ready to do away with umpires calling balls and strikes, fair and foul, home run and not-home run, and force plays. We have the technology to do it and it is dangled in front of us on the television, there for any yahoo with a blog or a sports column or a microphone in front of his mouth to use it to pontificate about umpires “bearing down out there” and taking accountability for their performance.

Those in favor of keeping umpires around are trying to honor the history of baseball, but mocking umpires with instant replay and loudmouthed analysis is degrading and is getting old fast. Keeping both systems in place as they are is a disgrace and an embarrassment to the umpires and to the game of baseball and requires urgent attention.

After posting this and sleeping on it, I realize that I strayed a bit with my comments about negative commentary regarding the umpires’ calls. I don’t think that the live announcers have been all that brutal about the missed calls, and I haven’t seen anything in writing that really goes after the umpires.

I think that everyone probably understands that attacking the calls after the fact is egregious second-guessing and is quite cowardly. However, I’ll stand by my feelings that media coverage of the players and managers is far too negative and smug. Everything is a “mistake” or a “awful decision” and these people have no business using the words and tones that they do to describe these plays because they are so far away from the action.

Some idiot game recap reporter at ESPN assaulted Maicer Izturis’ attempt at a double play in the 13th inning of Game 2 of the ALCS by calling it a “TERR-R-R-ible throw,” which, though partly true, was annoying because of the way he said it. The screen showed the barf-inducing Yankees dogpile and then cut to the box score, where the announcer decided to harp on Izturis again, saying, “…and the Yankees take Game 2 on Izturis’ HORR-R-R-R-ible decision…” The man should be fired and ESPN ashamed at that excuse for coverage.

What happens now? Are we going to ditch replays or sack the umpires? I’m afraid that we’ll get some lukewarm, middle-of-the-road alternative and that MLB will do one more thing to compromise the quality of its product.

Apples and Pears

Published by Bob Sanchez on October 4, 2009 in Comforts of Home and Translation. 3 Comments

Now is about the time of year that I am most glad that I live in Kochi. Everyone in most of the rest of Japan has gotten out their long pants, long-sleeved shirts and jackets, but we’re sitting pretty down here, looking forward to another month or so of 80-degree days. Sure, it’s getting cooler and it rains a bunch, but we can count on not having to put our T-shirts away until mid-November.

It’s just like this in the springtime as well, so we get two extra months of pleasant weather in a country that is renowned for having unpleasant weather. “I’ll take that,” said Mac, licking his index finger and making another tally on the board for Kochi.

We are on the cusp of my favorite season for local produce. Asian pears are falling off the branches as I write this, and soon enough, my beloved tangerines and ponkans will start showing up in grocery stores and fruit stands. Delicious potatoes, bok choy, and other vegetables make the rounds, and my refrigerator and fruit bowl burst with tasty fresh food into the spring.

I tried to arrange a pear-picking event last weekend and got no bites from friends and acquaintances around town. Undeterred, I hopped on my bike and went by myself to a farm different than the one from last autumn. All in all the experience was just OK, and would’ve been much more fun with a bunch of friends, but the pears were pretty tasty and the scene relaxing.

The trees are between four and five feet tall and the branches grow around the wires of a grid strung up in the air just above the orchard, so you have to stoop to get inside and sneak around like you’re in a gigantic, leafy cave. These hot pear babes will show you how it’s done.

Kochi has a variety of pear called the Niitaka Nashi, which I liberally translate as GIANT KOCHI PEAR. This website has a humorous explanation of the Niitaka Nashi and lots of other Japanese food. As it says on her website, she is a Japanese glutton. I applaud her effort and in the same breath summon the deckhand to bring me my brown pants because that machine translation isn’t bad.

These things are humongous, observe one in the hands of this Japanese college basketball player.

YouTube Preview Image

GIANT KOCHI PEARS are the offspring of a species of pear from Niigata, Japan, and a Kochi species which were scientifically married in 1912 or something like that. They weigh in at an average of over two pounds and can weight as much as four pounds. If pear trees could talk, they might be as much fun to prank call as bowling alleys used to be. “Excuse me, do you have four-pound ovaries? How do you walk?”

Aside: My generation’s children are not going to be able to experience the joy of crank calling. We’re way past the days of worrying about whether the geeks at Pizza Hut knew how to use *69. Caller ID, GPS Location, and random government wire-tapping take all the fun out of it.

Aside-Aside: Do you still answer the phone with a greeting intended for an unknown caller? One that would work for anyone from your kid brother to the President of the United States? I admit that I still do and pretend like I don’t know who the caller is. Silly, but I just can’t shake the notion that you’re not supposed to know who’s on the other side of the line digital signal traveling to space and back.

GIANT KOCHI PEARS cost as much as ten bucks apiece when they are shined up and packaged as local souvenirs for travelers, and two bucks when they’re especially lumpy or have a gash or scar on the skin. Japanese produce distributors think, right or wrong, that Japanese shoppers are finicky about the appearance of produce and have strict guidelines about shape and size. Whatever the case, I enjoy lumpy pears, crooked cucumbers, and stained carrots all year at close-to-reasonable prices. They’ll still never beat California, but I have to declare victory and feel good where I can.

I’m going to Tokyo tomorrow for a string of business meetings and to look at apartments in case I decide to move there next year. I ponied up fifteen bucks for two monstrous GIANT KOCHI PEARS at the farm, thinking that it’d be a classy move to walk into the meetings bearing some fabled local fruit that I picked myself. Wouldn’t be surprised if I cut one up and ended up feeding 5,000 with it.

In other news, my sister lives in New York and did the same thing with apples this weekend, only much, much cheaper. Check out her story here.