The vaunted Red Sox lineup will face the best pitcher in baseball Wednesday night at Citi Field in New York. It’ll be Boston’s turn to take a shot at the Mets’ Jacob deGrom, a two-time Cy Young Award winner who’ll come into the game with an ERA of 0.31 and 50 strikeouts to go with only three walks in his first 29 innings of 2021.
Reminds me of when Oakland’s 10-1, soon-to-be-anointed MVP and Cy Young winner Vida Blue faced the Red Sox at Fenway Park in May of 1971 (a year in which Blue went 24-8 with a 1.82 ERA and 301 strikeouts). J.D. Martinez better have his iPad fully charged for this one.
Acting Mets general manager Zack Scott says deGrom is the best he’s seen since Pedro Martinez. Former batting champ Keith Hernandez says deGrom is the best he’s seen since Randy Johnson.
It’s heady stuff. It’s must-see TV. And like everything in New York, it’s larger than life. Perhaps even, dare we say, a little overrated?
Don’t get me wrong, sports fans. DeGrom is on fire, and for all we know, he might no-hit the slugging Sox. But as I sift through the numbers and press clippings, I can’t get past the nagging notion that hungry-for-a-superstar New Yorkers have gotten carried away with deGrom’s meteoric start.
Showing posts with label New York Mets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New York Mets. Show all posts
Thursday, April 29, 2021
He Has His Doubts
New York Mets pitching ace Jacob deGrom came to Fenway Park last night, and Shank writes a pretty good column about him, albeit in his trademark negative style:
Monday, November 02, 2015
The One Where Dan Confuses 'Formula' with 'Strategy'
So Kansas City is the World Series champions. God help us all.
That's not because KC is somehow undeserving. While this team will never be seen as a threat to Murderer's Row, and in all likelihood not a single player from either season's model will make the Hall of Fame, they have made it to the big dance two years running: Clearly they are doing something right.
Rather, the problem is that lazy observers like The CHB will somehow try to extrapolate genius from what is, more than anything, simply good timing.
"KC’s formula [emphasis mine] was the same throughout the 2015 postseason," writes The CHB. "The Royals would fall behind, rally in the eighth or ninth, then wait for the Mets to blunder. It worked just about every time ... "
Such a presentation suggests that 1) there is an advantage to falling behind and 2) that the Royals deliberately did so. Nonsense, all.
In baseball, of course, the team with the lead sees a big jump in win expectancy. As Dave Cameron writes at FanGraphs today: "[The Royals] late-game offensive success was remarkable, but there just isn’t much evidence that it’s something that can be planned on; KC hitters had a .691 OPS and averaged 0.11 runs per plate appearance from the seventh inning on during the regular season. While there was a lot of talk about contact hitters providing a huge advantage in those situations, the Royals were basically the best contact team ever during the regular season and didn’t see it translate into success against elite relievers for the first six months of the year."
If the Royals were better than their peers in overcoming leads in late innings, it's likely because their own bullpen was so good at shutting down opponents and keeping the game winnable.
And no Shank column would be complete without a few obvious cliches, in this case references to John McNamara, who failed to substitute Dave Stapleton for Bill Buckner in 1986, and Grady Little, who left a gassed Pedro Martinez in against the Yankees in 2003. The CHB is as dependent on framing everything in Red Sox terms as he is on oxygen to breathe.
If you want to read a good column on the Royals victory and what it means, click here.
That's not because KC is somehow undeserving. While this team will never be seen as a threat to Murderer's Row, and in all likelihood not a single player from either season's model will make the Hall of Fame, they have made it to the big dance two years running: Clearly they are doing something right.
Rather, the problem is that lazy observers like The CHB will somehow try to extrapolate genius from what is, more than anything, simply good timing.
"KC’s formula [emphasis mine] was the same throughout the 2015 postseason," writes The CHB. "The Royals would fall behind, rally in the eighth or ninth, then wait for the Mets to blunder. It worked just about every time ... "
Such a presentation suggests that 1) there is an advantage to falling behind and 2) that the Royals deliberately did so. Nonsense, all.
In baseball, of course, the team with the lead sees a big jump in win expectancy. As Dave Cameron writes at FanGraphs today: "[The Royals] late-game offensive success was remarkable, but there just isn’t much evidence that it’s something that can be planned on; KC hitters had a .691 OPS and averaged 0.11 runs per plate appearance from the seventh inning on during the regular season. While there was a lot of talk about contact hitters providing a huge advantage in those situations, the Royals were basically the best contact team ever during the regular season and didn’t see it translate into success against elite relievers for the first six months of the year."
If the Royals were better than their peers in overcoming leads in late innings, it's likely because their own bullpen was so good at shutting down opponents and keeping the game winnable.
And no Shank column would be complete without a few obvious cliches, in this case references to John McNamara, who failed to substitute Dave Stapleton for Bill Buckner in 1986, and Grady Little, who left a gassed Pedro Martinez in against the Yankees in 2003. The CHB is as dependent on framing everything in Red Sox terms as he is on oxygen to breathe.
If you want to read a good column on the Royals victory and what it means, click here.
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