Best Pitcher of the 1980s: Beating the Poor Dead Horse

Two fine pitchers...two Hall of Fame mustaches.

I have only recently entered into the annual Hall of Fame debate conducted by thousands of people, most of which have no significant influence on the vote (including myself).  And already I have grown weary of the vitriolic arguments for or against certain players.  In researching for this post, I quickly tired of the argument I was going to make against Jack Morris for the Hall of Fame.  The guy was a very good pitcher who is now being dragged through the ringer that results from straddling the fence between an older generation that evaluates the game and its players with archaic measures and a narrow range of focus, and the new generation that takes advantage of all available tools to better understand baseball and all its intricacies.  The old generation remains stubborn in the face of progress because there is a lot more work involved now, and I imagine a creeping feeling that what they've always known about the game amounts to not nearly as much as prided upon.  And they don't like it.  Gut vs. Brain.  The game pulls at both but should lean more heavily on the brain.  And the new generation, the stat-heads, as we are so derisively regarded, fuel this ongoing fire in part because it is so damn frustrating to have all these resources that provide clearer, more interesting representations of the game that are all but ignored by the baseball mainstream, from ESPN to broadcasts to the BBWAA.  The new generation is winning the war, which will make baseball better in the long run, but the old curmudgeons don't like it one bit.  And Jack Morris is the man chosen to represent that older generation's outlook on the game.*

Coffee is for Closers

Simpler times

One of the most insightful tidbits of Michael Lewis' Moneyball, takes up a mere page and a half of the 300 page book.  Just a couple paragraphs in a sea of words stood out to me more so than almost anything else, in particular this passage:


" ... it was more efficient to create a closer than to buy one. Established closers were systematically overpriced, in large part because of the statistic by which closers were judged in the marketplace: "saves." The very word made the guy who achieved them sound vitally important. But the situation typically described by the save - the bases empty in the ninth inning with the team leading - was clearly far less critical than a lot of other situations pitchers faced."

wOBA, WAR, and the MVP

Every boy in America dreams of one day winning an award with this man's face on it.

Around this time every year, children go back to school, the days get shorter, and baseball writers parse the meaning of the word “valuable.”  This can get tiresome, but it is not without reason.  The opening line of the letter sent to all 60 MVP voters states:

"There is no clear cut definition of what most valuable means. It is up to the individual voter to decide who was the most valuable player in each league to his team." 

The letter goes on to say that pitchers and designated hitters should be considered (though they rarely ever win), that the winner need not come from a playoff team (although more often than not, they do), that offense, defense, number of games played, character, disposition, loyalty and effort should all be taken into account. How very nebulous.