Baseball Nation: All Posts by Jason Brannon

Yer pants too long

2013-05-17T02:45:19Z

If you think about it, almost all the best people have manifestos. [Pause to let you nod in agreement.] Paul Lukas, ESPN's resident uniform authority, has one, too, and it's well worth your time:

Unfortunately, despite all the regulations regarding baseball uniforms (you have to wear a cap, everyone's sleeves have to be roughly the same length, blah-blah-blah), there are no rules regarding baseball pant length. As a result, we now have a sorry mishmash of some players with their cuffs hiked up high, most with their pants down at their shoe tops and a few who can't decide ...

The easiest way to clean up the mess is to impose a simple rule stipulating that pants can go no lower than mid-calf. That will eliminate the footie-pajama look and give us a nice display of colored socks on the diamond.

And why do we want that? Because that's how baseball is supposed to look, that's why.

Lukas is right that the only way to restore pants normalcy is a rule. The NFL has rules like that, and they're not afraid to enforce them. Luckily, Major League Baseball has the kind of young, vigorous leadership that isn't afraid to ~~add a bunch of wild cards~~ fix the game's problems, no matter how small.

Steve Carlton had dominating slider, is kind of a loon

2013-05-15T20:03:31Z

I have a friend who believes basically every conspiracy theory that comes down the pike, even the ones that contradict the other ones. Turns out he has that in common with Steve Carlton:

"The Revolution is definitely coming." He believes in the Revolution, only he isn't precisely sure which of a myriad of conspiratorial groups will begin it. Possibly, he says, it will be started by the Skull and Bones Society of Yale University. Or maybe the International Monetary Fund. Or the World Health Organization. There are so many conspiracies, and so little time. Sometimes all those conspiracies confuse him and he contradicts himself. One minute he'll say, "The Russian and U.S. governments fill the air with low-frequency sound waves meant to control us," and the next he'll say, "The Elders of Zion rule the world," and then, "The British MI-5 and-6 intelligence agencies have ruled the world since 1812," and, "Twelve Jewish bankers meeting in Switzerland rule the world," and, "The world is controlled by a committee of 300 which meets at a roundtable in Rome." The subterfuge starts early. Like the plot by the National Education Association to subvert American children with false teachings. "Don't tell me that two plus two equals four," he once said. "How do you know that two is two?"

Great question. I think you should read the whole thing. But I'm probably in on it, so I would say that, wouldn't I?

20 things I'd do if I were the commissioner

2013-05-14T15:20:27Z

Len Kasper, the Cubs' play-by-play man, recently penned a column about what he would do if he were "commissioner for a day." He has a lot of great ideas, like adding a fifth umpire to each crew (to handle replays), and bringing back the two-for-one doubleheader. Maybe Len's most novel suggestion is giving the home-plate umpire a microphone, so he can announce substitutions and explain the occasional odd ruling, like in the NFL (e.g. "The runner is out on interference."). It's terrific stuff, and I encourage you to read the whole thing.

It got me thinking, What would I do if I were the commissioner? Herein is a partial listing:

1) I'd promise to address the problem of players stepping out of the box constantly, but never actually do anything about it.

2) I'd also do nothing whatsoever to eliminate dangerous home-plate collisions. "Man up, Posey" seems like pretty sensible advice to me.

3) I'd bully local and state governments into buying ballparks for millionaire owners, to the tune of ~$10 billion over twenty years. I know that seems like a staggering amount of money, but here's the thing: It is.

4) Speaking of the owners, I would only let undercapitalized yes-men own teams in the first place. Believe you me, this couldn't possibly go wrong.

5) Every few years or so, I'd appoint a commission to fix this or that problem. I would always and only refer to it as a "blue ribbon" commission, because everyone knows that's the best kind.

6) Under the theory that people love the sound of my voice, I would interrupt regular season and All-Star games to make a speech on the field, with weepy movie music playing in the background.

7) I'd limit teams from spending a lot of money on the draft, because I have a feeling my best friend will be a notorious cheapskate owner.

8) I'd institute "interleague play." It won't really work that well, but I'll cite attendance figures of "interleague" games to prove its success. But, and this is key, I would NOT mention that these "interleague" games were concentrated on weekends, in good weather, and after the kids are out of school. I would do this for years and years.

9) If my owner pals and I ever got in trouble for colluding against the players, I'd just add a couple of teams. Let the new owners pay the penalty. If it's still not enough, we can just do it again in five years.

10) I would ruin the All-Star game (with an assist from a longtime manager, who will treat it like a tee ball game).

11) I would hire someone to work day and night to keep baseball highlights off the web. Because between you and me, I'm pretty sure this ultranet thing is just a fad.

12) I'd make the very act of watching your favorite team a mind-numbing, Sisyphean ordeal, because baseball fans are chumps who will put up with basically anything.

13) If there were some kind of territorial dispute between two neighboring teams, and an easy solution wasn't apparent, I'd leave the long-suffering, cash-strapped team in limbo until my retirement or death.

14) Speaking of retirement, every few years I'll tell everyone I'm going to retire but never actually do it, just to screw with people. In reality, I'll probably haunt the game until I die.

15) I would lead the faction that ousts my predecessor, then head the committee to hire his replacement. After a long, drawn-out "search," I'll appoint myself Interim Commissioner For Life.

16) I would probably just make up the vote totals for the All-Star Game.* It's not like we have election monitors or anything.

* Prove me wrong, kids!

17) I hate baseball players, so if confidential PED tests were leaked, that'd be aces with me.

18) I would fire any arbitrator who dared rule against the league in a dispute with a player, and I would immediately wage a vendetta against any player who prevailed against us in any kind of hearing or appeal.

19) My guiding principle would always be There's nothing wrong with the game that can't be fixed by adding more wild cards.

20) I would cancel the goddamn World Series. Because I'm a human garbage monster.

What would you do if you were the commissioner? Let us know in the comments!

Another rule change we should definitely do but probably won't

2013-05-10T13:00:05Z

From the "Hey Bill" page at Bill James Online:

Hey Bill, I've long thought this would be a fun if crazy way to play baseball: No fixed lineup; every turn through the "order" the manager is free to send hitters out in any sequence he wishes, so long as all nine players bat before any one player gets an additional turn ...
Asked by: PB

Bill James: It would be fun. I'd like to try it. It would have to result in SOME increase in runs scored. Your big hitter would probably bat 75% of the time with runners on base, which would mean that a hitter having a Miguel Cabrera-type season could drive in 220 runs. You'd be adding a lot of strategy, which would lead to a lot of interesting post-game talk.

As I see it, there are two groups of people who would be against such a rule:

1) People who think baseball achieved a kind of recondite perfection when the World Series was introduced in 1903.

2) Professional baseball managers. If anything, managers today would prefer that teams be required to order their hitters by age or height. Whatever, just so long as I don't have to think or answer any difficult questions after the game. You know, like we did with the bullpens. "What are you gonna do? He's my eighth-inning guy."

Anyway, this goes on the list of things we propose to the next commissioner when Selig finally reti--HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!! Not happening, people. This Bud's forever.

Other than the stadium collapsing, Mrs. Busch, how was the game?

2013-05-07T18:26:01Z

A fun (by which I mean slightly horrifying) tidbit from a recent Will Leitch podcast:

Leitch: I was actually down the field [of Busch Stadium] a couple years ago ... It was 2007, so the stadium was fairly new, and I was talking to an usher down there, who'd worked at the old Busch for like 30 years, and we were still kind of adjusting to the new park at that point. I'm like, "So what do you think of the place?" He's like, "Oh, this place is going to collapse someday." I was like, "Wait, wait, what was that?" [laughs] He said, "Oh yeah, they spared every expense because they had to pay for it themselves." And I was like, "Oh, well that's good to know. That's good to know."

Joe Sheehan: And you start to look around, every time you take a step you're like, "Is the concrete going to --"

Leitch: Oh, yeah. Every time it gets really loud now, I start looking up.

... in the hope that ours is a merciful God, no doubt.

FADE IN, INT. KITCHEN:

I'm a mom. [Puts grocery bag on the counter.] My kids are important to me. I don't want them to wind up at the bottom of a pile of rubble in some shoddily built, self-financed stadium. That's why I'm voting "Yes" on Prop. 37, to impose a quarter-cent sales tax increase to fund a new downtown ballpark ...

O, Baseball! O, Spring!

2013-05-06T14:30:15Z

Adapted from D.H. Lawrence and Late Night with David Letterman.

How to think about intentional walks

2013-05-02T14:09:31Z

Bill James, a couple years ago:

American airline carriers carry about 800 million passengers a year. Let us estimate that the security apparatus wastes 10 minutes of each passenger’s time per flight ... the loss of 10 minutes of life for each flying customer, those 10 minutes being both unproductive and unpleasant. That is a gross loss of 8 billion minutes.

And how many minutes are a lifetime? Assuming that the average traveler would live another 40 years and not counting the time spent sleeping, we could say that each 14 million minutes would be a lifetime. The TSA is, in effect, killing about 570 people a year, ten minutes at a time.

Every year in Major League Baseball, 1,200 players, give or take, are intentionally walked. Well, Prince Fielder was intentionally walked 50 times the last two seasons, so fewer than that, but you know what I mean. Twelve-hundred times a season, a pitcher or manager (usually a manager) decides that discretion is the better part of valor.

A regular player, a starter, steps up to the plate about 600 times a season, a little more than 600. Put another way, every year, two players are lost—not to injury, but to intentional walks. And not just any players. Intentional walks are not perfectly distributed among the baseball-playing population. They are disproportionately given to Prince Fielder and Joey Votto and Ryan Braun and Andrew McCutchen, i.e. baseball's biggest stars, the players fans most want to see.*

* and National League catchers who bat in front of the pitcher

Barry Bonds was intentionally walked 688 times in his career. That is, an entire Barry Bonds season was wiped out, stolen from baseball fans, because of a selfish strategy that obviously would have been outlawed a century and a half ago if anyone had imagined some jackass might actually employ it. Think about it this way: Why is there a limit on the number of balls a pitcher can throw outside the strike zone? Why do walks exist in the first place? A free base is the penalty a pitcher pays for not throwing reachable pitches (a.k.a. strikes) to his opponent. The walk says to the pitcher, This is your punishment for failing to give the batter a fair chance for a hit, for not challenging him. That managers are only too happy to incur such a penalty 1,200 times a year is proof enough that the penalty isn't great enough.

Say you're a Marlins fan. Marlins fans have been kicked around so much lately they're starting to envy Expos fans. Nevertheless, about 20,000 ~~masochists~~ people, on average, attended each of the Marlins' four games with the Cubs last week. I'll bet if you polled those people about why they went to the ballpark, a lot of them would probably say, "I just love baseball," or "I'm still a fan, this is what being a fan is," or, "Stanton might do something amazing." And he did! Stanton was awesome. He had one of those series that makes you think, "This guy has solved baseball." I'm a Cub fan, and by the end of the series I was ready to trade half our roster for him.

Anyway, imagine you're a Marlins fan, months from now, and you've just shelled out fifty bucks for the chance to see Stanton activate that home-run "sculpture" we'll all decide is charming fifty years from now. Stanton comes up in the late innings with the game on the line and ... the opposing manager holds up four fingers. Because first base was open, and that's what managers do. Setting aside whether or not it's good strategy, you have just been ripped off. You paid top dollar for the best baseball-related entertainment available in South Florida, and Fredi Gonzalez or Terry Collins or someone robbed you of that opportunity. You wanted to see a battle between Stanton and the other team's closer. You wanted to see baseball. Baseball is what happens between the pitcher and the batter, or the batter and the fielders. The intentional walk isn't baseball, it's the avoidance of baseball.

In basketball, you can double-team the opposing team's best player, but you can't keep him off the court, you can't keep him from shooting the ball. But in baseball, you can take the bat out of the hands of the other team's best player. Regardless of whether or not the intentional walk is good strategy, is it good for the fans? Is it fun to watch? Let's ask the Moneyball question: If we weren't already doing it this way, is this how we would do it?

"What is my opinion of his performance?!?!"

2013-04-30T20:25:33Z

Yesterday was the 30th anniversary of Lee Elia's poignant encomium to Cub Nation. Which reminded us of the second most famous manager diatribe ever caught on tape. Not as angry, nor quite so profane, but lots of fun in its own right...

WARNING: BAD LANGUAGE!