Looks as though these aaasholes could have saved themselves a lot of time by shelling out 20 bucks for a Fielding Bible.

I read that on CBS a little while befote you posted this and thought the same thing.

"Jensen's team of researchers found that most triples were hit to right field, where it is a much longer throw for the fielder."

Yeah, I think I heard about these guys. They also found that:

1) the time it takes a player to get from the batters box to first base is far less for a base hit than for a base on balls

2) balls hit in the air were more likely to be caught than balls hit on the ground

3) amongst infielders, more left handers play first base than third base

4) a players batting average tends to be way higher on balls he makes contact with than on balls that he fails to make contact with.

But seriously folks . . .

To take a method of study that has basically been done the exact same way by someone else and then publish the method as your own is borderline unethical.

Along the same lines...another discoverer of the wheel.

--While Bukiet is the first to admit he’s not a baseball expert, in five out of the past six years, he says that his model has produced more correct than incorrect predictions.

“I thought it was neat that you can do just as well as the so-called experts,” he said. --


way to reach that lofty goal of better than 50%...
in five of the past six seasons.

peep these Yankee fans grasping at straws talking about Jeter's "character"

http://www.nypost.com/seven/02172008/news/nationalnews/youve_got_to_be_kidding__98050.htm

That is borderline objective, hard-hitting journalism by the New York Post's standards.

If we bring back the Bonehead Sportswriter of the Month Award, should we call it the New York Post Award or the Bob Nightengale?

"'I don't know what they're smoking down at Penn,' said Yankees fan Mike

Birch, 32. 'That's preposterous. I completely disagree. Jeter's a clutch player.'

'It's ridiculous,' said fan Jay Ricker, 22. 'Jeter is all-around awesome. He's better than A-Rod any day. Character has a lot to do with it. He's out there for his teammates, not just himself. He does it for the good of the team. That's the kind of guy you want on the field.'"

This gives me the heebie-jeebies.

Joel Sherman is cool and writes for the Post. We should call it the Mike Vacarro award since he never got me that lunch or answered me in a year.

Remember that time I made up that string of emails from Yankees fans defending Jeter and bashing A-Rod? These comments are along those lines, and those were made up to be obviously fake and absurd.

I wouldn't be surprised if those were fake as well.

This story is leaving pock marks in the ground like an asteroid shower on the moon, and not one single report on the story I have read has made a mention of John Dewan or the Fielding Bible.

I don't understand.

I wouldn't be surprised if Dewan considered legal action.

I assume you meant to say that Joel Sherman is a tool and writes for the NY Post.

Sherman predicting that Carlos Beltran would combine for more runs and RBI than A-Rod in 2007:

http://blogs.nypost.com/sports/st/archives/2007/03/day_45_jeter_vs.html

Great Link: interesting that he would analyze Jeter vs. Reyes RBI-run combination, because Reyes ended up winning 176-175. Way to hone in on a competitive matchup.

Not too many people saw the year A-rod had last year coming. I'd give him a pass on that

http://www.firejoemorgan.com/search/label/new%20york%20post

My sides are hurting.

I have been reading more of this guy's stuff on FJM and he is easily the most entertaining writer on the net.

Yes. That piece on the Post was insanely funny.

Hey, if Joe Morgan thinks that Billy Beane wrote Moneyball does he think that he (Joe Morgan) is the author of firejoemorgan.com?

"And when all the zeros are finally in place, the 28-year-old Venezuelan's enormous contract and the Himalayan expectations wrapped around it will subject Johan to more fan and media scrutiny than any pitcher in the history of a city, the Sour Apple, that has made a lot of grown pitchers cry. Hideki Irabu, Jeff Weaver and Kevin Brown come immediately to mind.

Because you apparently are unfamiliar with the sport of baseball, Bill, allow me to forthwith explain to you the differences between these three men and Johan Santana. I will do so in the manner of, oh, let's say, a Mets fan talking to his girlfriend who knows nothing about baseball.

"Shit, honey, don't you know anything about baseball? Shit! Jesus. Hideki Irabu never fucking played an inning of Major League Baseball before pitching for the Yank-Mes! Me and Sal call them the Yank-Mes, get it? Hideki Irabu! Goddammit, Denise, you are so fucking dumb. The guy just wasn't any good, see? He went to Montreal and had like a nineteen ERA, and there isn't a fucking Montreal Post printing embarrassing pictures of you on the back page. The only thing in Montreal are like pretty dece strip clubs and fries with gravy on them. Remember those fries, Denise? Yeah, you shouldn't eat shit like that anymore, you're not a kid anymore, you'll get big in the hips. Yeah, I said it. Shut up!

"We're talking about Johan Santana here. JOHAN! Don't bring that weak Hideki Irabu shit into my house.

"Jeff Weaver? You gotta be kidding me. Jeff Weaver was always a piece of shit. Fucking California pussy. The guy was never that good. He had a couple of half decent years that would make Johan cry if he sunk that low. And look what he's doing in Seattle. You're telling me it's pressure in Seattle too? Shit, Denise. Although with Weaver, who knows, you could be right. His brother's a pussy too. Tell him I said that. Tell him!

"Kevin Brown can suck my cock. You want to compare him to Johan? Fucking Johan?! Kevin Brown was 39 his first year with the Spank-Mes. Spank-Mes! Where do I come up with this shit? 39 and the only reason he was good the year before was all the fucking 'roids he was shooting into his ass. It was in that report that Kevin Mitchell just put out. Plus KB's spine was made out of fucking Styrofoam peanuts by then. Johan is 28 and ready to rock, and he's pretty handsome for a Latino or whatever he is. I'm not gay or anything, I'm just saying. I'm not gay, remember when you caught me with all that porn in my car? It was all hetero porn. Not even any Asians or weird shit like that.

"Anyway, I think I've proven how you know shit about baseball, Denise. Get me another beer, I'm not done pre-gaming before I go over to Sal's to watch Gladiators. Fucking Wolf, man! I would kick his ass in Assault, though."

posted by Junior # 1:21 AM 1 new comments

This one had me in tears.

Just want to say I got this from firejoemorgan.com so I don't get into any kind of shit for posting oit

Before reading this to my little brother, who is 13, I said

"What is wrong when talking about Santana coming to NY and how it might effect him while comparing him Irabu, Brown and Weaver"

He then responds

"duuuh, Santana is 1000X times better?"

Derek Jeter arrived at his 16th Yankees spring training yesterday labeled the worst shortstop in the majors by some statistical braniacs over at Penn. "Maybe it was a computer glitch," the three-time Gold Glove winner said of the report. But Jeter just didn't laugh this one off. He defended himself, saying, "Every [shortstop] doesn't stay in the same spot, everyone doesn't have the same pitching. Everyone doesn't have the same hitters running, it's impossible to do that." Yankees senior advisor Gene Michael was infuriated by the University of Pennsylvania report. "Something like that is a disgrace," the scout said. "It made me ill when I read that article. First of all, what pitching staff was out there? Each team has a different staff. Derek doesn't really have a sinkerball pitching staff whereas other shortstops, you sit behind certain pitchers, you're going to get a lot of ground balls. "You simply can't do that by those charts, that's a bunch of baloney," Michael added. "It's disgraceful. You have to use a scout's eye to determine range." -- NY Post

For the last five years I assumed that the Yankees knew Jeter was a bad defensive shortstop - what with the mountains of statistical evidence - but kept him at his position because he was Mr. Yankee, and they didn't want to upset their very popular star.

As it turns out, they don't even know how bad he is!

I can't believe we are still fighting this fight. I can't believe there is information out there that baseball people don't know and take advantage of. I can't believe that there are still people in baseball who think Billy Beane and Theo Epstein are relying on hocus-pocus to pick players.

I can't believe there are people out there who disregard information by saying things like "you have to have a scout's eye."

You know, for the last four years, I have been saying that the Red Sox are the new Yankees. But you know what - they aren't. They're what the Yankees could be if they took their heads out of their rear-ends: an absolutely dominant team who uses their excessive resources to create a farm system overflowing with talent and a team loaded with great players.

They do it the right way.

Hey Yankees, good luck in 2008. At the end of this season, when your galaxy record breaking payroll again fails to get you past the first round of the playoffs, maybe you'll start listening.

Someone should send Gene Michael a Fielding Bible.

"Derek doesn't really have a sinkerball pitching staff"

This Gene Michael character can't be watching the actual games, much less looking at statistics. I guess his knowledge of the Yankees comes from reading the New York Post.

I had respect for Michael up until I read that statement about their staff.

Yeah, I can't blame him for defending Jeter. He could easily agree that he is an overrated defender but just be supporting one of his own. But in his method of defending him, Michael showed a bafflingly narrow understanding of the game of baseball for someone who gets paid to scout players.

Who wrote that, Rich?

Scouts, you gotta love 'em. There's no way their initial appraisals of Jeter could have been incorrect, is there? He must have slipped. He must have regressed.

Never mind the fact that these defensive metrics show that Jeter is no worse now than he was 5-10 years ago.

Joel Sherman and here is the rest.

One AL official said, "You particularly notice with groundball guys like [Andy] Pettitte and [Chien-Ming] Wang how many grounders went through that shouldn't have. Pettitte must have had a culture shock going from Adam Everett in Houston, who was the best [shortstop], to Jeter, who is not in that league."

Perhaps the strongest condemnation came from Jeter, who said, "Last year, I didn't have a good year defensively."

It doesn't sound like much, especially since Jeter limited a serial inadequacy to just 2007. Except Jeter is not one to ever publicly apologize for, or criticize, his own game. But this is more than words with Jeter. He rededicated himself in the offseason with exercises designed to improve his lateral quickness and first-step explosiveness. One Yankee official saw this version of Jeter and said, "He set the clock back five years."

"I'm a lot quicker, a lot more agile," Jeter said. "Only time will tell, but that is what I worked on."

No one should be surprised if Jeter's whole game, including his defense, soars in 2008. The two best defensive seasons of his career, as measured by most modern metrics, were 2004-05. It should not be viewed as coincidence that those were Alex Rodriguez's first two seasons as a Yankee. Now A-Rod has re-upped for 10 years and Jeter has arrived in camp looking so good that Rodriguez, citing the conditioning, predicted an MVP win for Jeter.

Rodriguez's new deal led to suspicion that at some point, the YanksNew York Yankees also will have to extend Jeter, who is signed through 2010. But as one AL executive said, "It already is a below-average range left side of the infield. I don't know that they can live with it for a long term."

This is the elephant in the room. Will the Yanks move Jeter off of shortstop when the time comes - assuming that time is not here already - or will they be like the Orioles, who kowtowed well past Cal Ripken's expiration date at short and hurt the organization? Brian Cashman and Joe Girardi avoided that bubbling cauldron by saying they won't look beyond this season. Jeter said the same, but then cited San Francisco's Omar Vizquel, 41 in April, in suggesting he could also play his whole career at short.

"I am comfortable with the left side of the infield at this moment in time," Cashman said. "Do I have concerns in future years? Let me get to future years."

So if the future is now, Jeter has an opportunity with his streamlined body to punch new data into those computers. Maybe the prom king can still win over the geeks.

"No one should be surprised if Jeter's whole game, including his defense, soars in 2008. The two best defensive seasons of his career, as measured by most modern metrics, were 2004-05. It should not be viewed as coincidence that those were Alex Rodriguez's first two seasons as a Yankee. Now A-Rod has re-upped for 10 years and Jeter has arrived in camp looking so good that Rodriguez, citing the conditioning, predicted an MVP win for Jeter."

No one should be surprised if every Yankee, especially Derek Jeter, has the best year of his career in 2008. It should not be viewed as coincidence that the Yankees elected not to add any quality players to their squad in the offseason. Now all of the Yankees from last season have one more year's experience of being Yankees under their belts, which means that each and every one of them is an MVP candidate.

Looks like Joe Maddon needs to buy a copy of The Fielding Bible as well. It's funny... The Rays are one team that I would have guessed relied on it extensively given their offesason moves.

See also: Batting/fielding runs, win shares.