Another Reason I Love Sports

When you read the link below, you'll encounter Benjamin Hochman who is the beat writer for the Denver Post that covers the Denver Nuggets. Sports is better than everything.

http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_21760399/an-angel-outfield

The Horror.

Now that I've finally built the strength to discuss last night's debacle... here we go...

Since September 1, 2007, Michigan fans (myself included) have referred to Michigan losing to Appalachian State in the Big House as "The Horror", and I've debated all day on whether to use that term to refer to the Braves season-ending loss... as you can see by the title of this post, I've decided to use it.

There were 4 different types of factors that played into the death of the Braves Season... 

The Braves Players Beating Themselves

• The Braves made 3 errors last night. There were only 3 times this season that the Braves committed 3 errors.
• All 3 errors led directly to St. Louis runs.
• Chipper Jones' throwing error in the 4th inning was likely the single biggest play of the game, and Andrelton Simmons (an elite defensive shortstop in the entire MLB) couldn't execute a simple field and throw later in the game.
• Dan Uggla, as bad as he is normally, let the Simmons play matter even more with his hilariously poor effort on David Freese's groundball to start the 7th.
• Andrelton Simmons running inside the baseline on his bunt in the bottom of the 4th inning, causing an interference call, and taking away even the one run that would've scored had the bunt actually worked.

Managerial Incompetence from Fredi Gonzalez

• The most egregious play of the night for Gonzalez surrounded the Simmons' bunt in the 4th inning. Everyone assumed it was a rookie player doing an incredibly stupid thing when he bunted with runners on 1st and 3rd, 1 out, and the pitcher on deck. The play ended with the interference call, no runs in the inning, and the world killing Simmons on Twitter.... Until Fredi admitted in an interview that he called a safety squeeze. That is an impossibly bad decision with the pitcher on deck, and even in Simmons ran in the baseline, the Braves inning caps at 1 run, as you've just given an out away and put the pitcher in the batter's box. #Frediot.
• Throughout the game, Fredi managed it as though it was a regular season game, refusing to use his deep pitching depth, and letting Medlen, who admittedly was underwhelming by his recent standards, to continue to stay on the mound.
• Other instances of his pitching mishandling include: Letting O'Flaherty face three consecutive right-handed, middle-of-the-order bats. Inserting Chad Durbin (and his 7.2 strikeouts per nine) in an obvious "we need a strikeout" spot that led to the aforementioned Simmons error. Pinch-hitting his 7th or 8th best bench bat as the first pinch-hitter when he used Constanza (his best pinch runner, also) in the 7th. I realize that this play "worked", but the move itself is indefensible regardless of result.
• Rant over.

Major League Baseball

• I have only one point here. How in the world does it make sense to take a 162-game "marathon, not a sprint" season and reduce it to a one-game playoff? In addition to that, how in the world does it make sense that a team could be 6 full games better over 162 games and suddenly be forced into a 1-game playoff with that team over night? Thank you MLB. Oh, and thank you for not even really listening to the appeal below...

The Infield Fly

• First of all, I am not arguing, even a little, that the Braves definitely win this game if the Infield Fly Catastrophe didn't happen. Let me just say that out loud now.
• Secondly, even 24 hours later, I still feel that this was the worst officiating decision in a playoff game that I've ever witnessed. The call was a) flat-out wrong, and b) incredibly late. There is zero defense for a left-field umpire to make this call anyway, and I could yell and scream about this for days.
• There is no evidence that the Braves would have cashed in the bases-loaded, 1-out, and Brian McCann coming to the plate situation, but the stadium was rocking, Mitchell Boggs hadn't pitched well to that point, and I feel pretty darn good about McCann (even injured) in that spot. 
• The worst part of it all? The faux protest that MLB denied in about an hour because this was a judgment call. Yes, the Infield Fly Rule is inherently a judgment call, but there was one specific issue with this. It explicitly states that this has to be called "immediately" and Sam Holbrook wasn't raising his hand until Pete Kozma was fleeing from the ball. 

This one hurt.

And the biggest reason for despair, frankly, is that Chipper Jones deserved a better send-off. If the Braves lose a normal 6-3 game with no ridiculousness (as outlined above), the fans are able to send Chipper off with a standing O and a curtain call or two. Instead? We were treated to bottles on the field, the Cardinals sprinting off with the final out, and nothing special for the greatest "Atlanta" Brave of all-time. That's a shame. I'm sure that in the coming days, people will forget how unfortunate of a night that this was for Chipper, between his 1-for-5 at the plate and his costly error, and focus on the great swan song season that it was for Larry. 

But I'll remember this particular game with a stomach punch feeling. At least for a while. 

The 1-Game Playoff

Greetings! As the Braves set course for the 1-game wild card playoff game (5:07 first pitch tonight) against St. Louis, let's take a look at how things might shake out...

• ROSTER - One of the quirks to this ridiculous 1-game playoff format is the fact that this one game has it's own roster selection. In contrast, normally a team would have to set a 25-man unit for the entire series, whereas this roster only applies to the game this afternoon. The Braves roster for tonight is as follows: 
• C - David Ross (starting over McCann), McCann, Boscan
• 1B - Freeman, Baker, Overbay
• 2B - Uggla
• SS - Simmons, Pastornicky
• 3B - Chipper
• OF - Prado, Bourn, Heyward (starters), Johnson, Constanza, Hinske
• SP - Medlen (starter), Hudson, Minor
• RP - Kimbrel, Venters, O'Flaherty, Gearrin, Durbin, Avilan

• MANAGER - To get this out of the way, I'm terrified of the potential disadvantage the Braves may encounter with the roster settings as they are. Fredi has elected to go with 9 pitchers and 16 bats, and while that isn't inherently crazy when you can carry 3 starters and have them all be available, I have zero faith in Fredi deploying this sort of lineup correctly. My two complaints on the roster selection are 1) carrying Hudson instead of Maholm or the Delgado/Teheran combo, and 2) Carrying Overbay over Francisco. Hudson needs to be your Game 1 NLDS starter IMO, and Overbay has shown absolutely nothing at the plate. Fingers crossed!
• THE CARDINALS - Here's what you need to know about St. Louis. They can hit. They scored the 2nd most runs in the NL this season, and their lineup for Friday features some scary bats in Beltran, Holliday, Molina, and Craig. The lineup is majority right-handed (Beltran, Jay, and Descalso the exceptions) and while this would normally seem to be a good thing against a right-handed starter in Medlen, the curious part is what this does to neutralize Medlen's deadly change-up. He has a career reverse platoon split, and he'll have to figure out a plan to stop the big right-handed bats. On the pitching side, Kyle Lohse gets the ball for the Cards over Adam Wainwright. I'm frankly thrilled that they went with Lohse, as I think Wainwright is/was the much scarier option, but Lohse has been lights-out this year with a 2.86 ERA and 1.09 WHIP in 211 innings. He's not an overpowering guy and the Braves beat him up a bit earlier in the year. 
• MEDLEN - You all know the story by now. The Braves have won 23 straight games that Kris Medlen has started, and he's been the best pitcher on Planet Earth since his first start of the year on July 31st. He's allowed more than 1 run only twice in that entire span, and never more than 3 runs in any game. He's been ridiculous. It's not the ideal matchup (as discussed above), but I feel great about running him out there and asking him to give 6-7 lock-down innings. 
• FEAR - There's nothing quite like a do-or-die baseball game to effectively murder a fan's psyche. Baseball, unlike any other game for me, provides that dead time between every pitch for 3-4 hours and allows the build-up to rise and rise to the point of craziness. In the perfect world, the Braves would grab an early lead and hold on for dear life, but if it's tight throughout, good luck to us all.

And like Skip Carey once told us... "If he hits it there, we can dance in streets...."

MLB Awards - 2012

Greetings! I'm making a triumphant return to blogging for the MLB Playoffs, and that kicks off with this awards post, and a big-time preview of the Braves 1-game playoff game coming Friday pre-game. Let's do it...

AL MVP - Mike Trout, OF, LA Angels - This is the award that everyone is arguing the most about and with good reason. Miguel Cabrera won the batting triple crown, marking the first time that had been accomplished in nearly 5 decades... and he still isn't winning the award if I have a ballot. First, the "triple crown" of batting statistics (batting average, home runs, RBI) has pretty much been shown to be non-indicative of player performance. RBI is an "opportunity" stat, and while there is certainly a correlation between performance and # of RBI's (a bad player has a ceiling of these, etc.), there is certainly not causation there. In addition, batting average is significantly less important than on-base percentage statistically, and while, again, a high batting average is certainly a good thing, I'd rather have the guy with a .280 BA and .400 OBP than the guy who hits .310 with a .350 OBP. Done and done. With that said, here is a list of offensive categories that Mike Trout outperformed Miguel Cabrera in: Runs, On-base percentage, stolen bases, triples. In addition, Trout was basically identical to Cabrera in batting average (.330 to .326) and walks (67 to 66) in 70 less plate appearances. However, if the award was "most valuable hitter", Cabrera would win a slight edge with the extra power (40 HR to 27 HR) and overall OPS advantage (.999 to .963). See where I'm going with this? The award is much more than just hitting statistics, and Trout utterly dominates Cabrera in every other aspect of the game. On the base paths, Mike Trout stole 49 of 54 bases to lead the entire league, while Cabrera produced negative value on the basepaths overall according to advanced metrics. In the field? Mike Trout's UZR ranked him 6th in the entire AL in defensive runs saved (while not even playing the whole season) and Cabrera actually cost his team nearly a full win in the field with -9 runs saved. Even if you agreed to excuse Cabrera's defense to a "push" with league-average because of his position change (and I still wouldn't), he gets wiped out by Trout's elite glove at a premium position. Oh, and here's the "big gun". In FanGraphs WAR (wins above replacement), which is designed to assess overall player value, Trout emerges with 10.4 additional wins vs. 7.2 for Cabrera. In baseball-reference WAR, the gap is even larger, with Trout pulling a ridiculous 10.7 to 6.9 for Cabrera. Statistically, it's not even close. And for everyone using the narrative of a playoff appearance for Cabrera and the Tigers while the Angels are going home, please consider this. The Angels have a better record than the Tigers, and they did so in a much, much tougher division. Thank you and good night. Here's my top 3:

1. Trout
2. Cabrera
3. Robinson Cano

NL MVP - Ryan Braun, OF, Milwaukee - This is a tough one. Braun and Buster Posey are neck-and-neck in WAR on fangraphs (8.0) and Posey has a slight lead in BB-Ref, but this is one where the integrity of defensive metrics may be the swing. Offensively, Braun has been ridiculous, posting a .987 OPS to lead the National League, blasting a league-leading 41 homers, and scoring a league-leading 108 runs. In addition, Braun stole 30 bases in 37 attempts, which lends significant value over Posey who only stole 1 base. The edge that Posey gets over Braun comes in 2 ways. First, Posey's team is significantly better than Braun's and they are headed to the playoffs whereas the Brewers stalled out with 83 wins. I'd throw that away for the most part, as Braun's teammates simply aren't as good as Posey's, but even if you want to grant it a small victory of Posey, that's fine. The other "edge" is defensively. That said, Braun's defensive metrics seem to wildly fluctuate year-to-year, which indicates to me that most systems have no idea how to grade him out, and Posey's defense falls prey to the fact that catcher defense is basically untrackable by defensive metrics unless you strictly use the ability to throw out runners. With that, Posey is granted a huge edge in WAR because of defense that I don't particularly value. There's no wrong answer here, but I feel like Braun would be the runaway winner if the steroid cloud wasn't hanging. Since I disregard that completely, he's the champ. Here's my top 3:

1. Braun
2. Posey
3. Andrew McCutchen

AL Cy Young - Justin Verlander, SP, Detroit - Remember when Verlander was the runaway winner last year and no one even questioned it? He's been virtually as good this year with one big change. His win-loss record was 24-5 in 2011 and 17-8 in 2012. What does that tell us? Nothing! Absolutely nothing! Win-loss record is meaningless for a starting pitcher, and because of this, let's not talk about it again. Verlander was 2nd in the league in ERA, 2nd in WHIP, 1st in strikeouts, 1st in innings, and 1st in both sets of pitcher WAR. It's pretty clear-cut for me. Here's my top 3:

1. Verlander
2. David Price
3. Felix Hernandez

NL Cy Young - Clayton Kershaw, SP, LA Dodgers - This one may be controversial, but I firmly believe the numbers back me up. Led the league in both pitcher WAR stats, 2nd in strikeouts (1 K behind RA Dickey in 1 less start), 2nd in innings, 1st in WHIP, and 1st in ERA by 1/5 of a run. That's a dominating line, and if Kershaw had a better win-loss record than 14-9, he'd be the consensus winner. Because that doesn't matter (at all), he still wins for me despite 20 win seasons from Gio Gonzalez and RA Dickey. Sorry, gentlemen. With all that said, you'll hear a lot of chatter about how Craig Kimbrel should win the Cy Young, and while I'm as big of a Kimbrel supporter as anyone, that's just ludicrous. Kimbrel did strike out an absurd % of hitters and was generally lights-out, but he threw only 62.2 innings on the year. If you're scoring at home, that's less than 1/3 of the innings of the starting pitching contenders, and the "value" that Kimbrel can bring simply can't match that of the starters in 1/3 of the innings. Here's my top 3:

1. Kershaw
2. Dickey
3. Gonzalez

AL Rookie of the Year - Mike Trout, OF, LA Angels - The biggest no-brainer in the history of the Earth. Literally. Instead of talking more about Trout, let's break down the rest of my top 3. Yu Darvish comes in 2nd place for me after posting a 4-win season. 221 strikeouts in 191 innings is ludicrous and while his control suffered at times, he still posted a sub-4 ERA in a bad ballpark and led all other AL rookies in WAR. Yoenis Cespedes rounds out the top 3 after a break-out year for Oakland. An .863 OPS with 23 homers and 16 steals would often run away with ROY honors, and he can't be faulted for being in the "Year of Mike Trout". Top 3:

1. Trout
2. Darvish
3. Cespedes

NL Rookie of the Year - Bryce Harper, OF, Washington - Another tough call. Bryce Harper and Wade Miley are dead-locked in Fangraphs WAR while Harper has the slight edge in BB-Ref. Harper posted a really impressive .817 OPS with 22 homers and 18 steals as a 20-year-old in a pennant race. Scary stuff. Miley finished in the top-15 in the NL overall in pitcher WAR, WHIP, and ERA and was easily the best rookie pitcher in the National League. I'm taking Harper based on his surge late in the year and the fact that Miley leveled off a bit, plus the upside of the position player over a pitcher. Both are quite deserving. Here's the top 3:

1. Harper
2. Miley
3. Todd Frazier, 3B, Cincinnati

And there it is! Argue away...

Braves. Playoffs.

After some technical difficulties (mainly a stolen macbook), It took an event with a magnitude as large as the Braves clinching a playoff spot to get me here, but here I am.

With Atlanta down 3-2, Freddie Freeman hit a majestic blast for the walk-off, clinching, 2-run home run and in one swing, the Braves shed the pain of last year. It was weird synergy to see Freeman hit the blast as he was the guy who made the final out last year, and what a scene from the time he hit the ball until he touched home plate.

Shout-out to Chipper Jones and company on, at the very least, getting to the dance in #10's final campaign.

I can't wait.

9/11: MNF Doubleheader, Braves, etc.

Greetings all.... here we go again...

• Baltimore 44, Cincinnati 13 - For everyone that crapped on Baltimore in the offseason, this one was for you. Joe Flacco looked about as good as he's ever looked, Ray Rice is the best back in the league, and that undermanned defense made Andy Dalton look like a child.
• Chargers 22, Raiders 13 - Horrendous football from Oakland here. 3 errors in the punting game, virtually nothing downfield in the passing game (13 catches from McFadden masked the overall ineptitude), and they lost at home to a team who ran for 32 total yards. Oakland, everybody!
• The Braves blew a 1-0 lead that Mike Minor staked them to when Jonny Venters and Chad Durbin imploded to the tune of 4 runs in the 7th. The offense was the problem in this one (again) though, in only scratching 1 run against someone named Wily Peralta. Eesh.
• Andy Murray won the US Open and became the first British tennis player to win a grand slam since 1936. Big-ups to him.
• The Falcons won impressively on Sunday, but lost Brent Grimes for the season to an achilles injury yesterday. Brutal loss for this newly "pressuring" Falcons defense, as Grimes was probably the best pure cover guy, and while the Samuel/Robinson duo will be fine, a 3rd corner is really, really necessary in today's NFL and the Owens/Franks combination is something that makes every informed Falcons fan cringe.

Enjoy!

2012 NFL Preview Part 4: AFC West

Greetings! Let's wrap up the AFC...

1. San Diego Chargers (10-6) - I have no idea how I can make myself pick Norv Turner, but here we are. This pick is based on the fact that I firmly believe that Philip Rivers is a better player than he showed last year. In fact, he's the QB in this division that I trust the most (we'll get there), and with a healthy Antonio Gates this season, I think he bounces back huge. One huge add on defense is rookie Melvin Ingram, who should provide the pass rush they've been missing since Shawne Merriman fell off of the Earth. There's not a lot of conviction in this pick, but they still probably have the most talent in the division, and if you combine that with good QB play, it's hard to beat. 
2. Denver Broncos (9-7) - If we knew Peyton Manning was PEYTON MANNING (in capital letters), then 9 wins isn't enough. But no one knows that. I'm going with the assumption that he'll be solid, though unspectacular (because of arm strength concerns), and that he'll play the majority of the games. The running game won't be pretty with McGahee but it'll be solid, and the receivers should leap forward with Manning directing their steps. On defense, they were flat-out bad at times last year overall, and were bad against the run all year. In a division where they see Darren McFadden, Ryan Mathews, and Jamaal Charles? That's bad. Anyway, the Tebow magic is gone, but Peyton would seem to be a good fit. 
3. Kansas City Chiefs (9-7) - Matt Cassel isn't good. That's the concern for anyone giving KC a record over .500. That said, I don't think he's bad either, and he doesn't have to do too much. The Charles/Hillis backfield combo could be scary good, and both guys can catch the ball out of the backfield. Dwayne Bowe returns as a nice #1 on the outside, and there is support elsewhere too. On defense, Eric Berry is back, and should lead a fairly productive unit. If Cassel is the guy is the guy we saw two years ago (27 TDs, 7 INTs), then they'll win the division going away, but if he's just average, they'll compete for a playoff spot.
4. Oakland Raiders (8-8) - I have no idea what to make of Oakland. Darren McFadden is one of the most electric players in the league.... but he can't stay on the field. Carson Palmer has a big arm, and they have plenty of downfield weapons... except we have no idea if they're any good (Denarius Moore, Darrius Heyward-Bey, Jacoby Ford). And defensively, there's some high-end talent with guys like Rolando McClain, but the depth isn't there after some bad drafts/lack of draft picks, and I'm not sure they'll be able to hold up. If everything goes right, and Carson Palmer turns into Carson Palmer from early Cincinnati, they'll be good, or if Darren McFadden goes for 2,000 yards (and he could, by the way), they'll be good, but I'll be safe and leave them in the basement.

It's the mediocrity division!