By Dalton Del Don
I’m obviously borrowing (stealing?) the now defunct FireJoeMorgan.com’s method here, but I’ll make it up to Mose Schrute by telling all of you to be sure to check out “Parks and Recreation,” every Thursday at 8:30 p.m. on NBC (seriously, it’s a great show). Anyway, without further ado, I give you one of the worst articles I’ve read in recent memory.
“While teams created by Ruben Amaro Jr. of the Phillies or Brian Cashman of the Yankees cling hopelessly to National League and American League pennants and a misplaced faith in the old order represented by stats like batting average, fielding average and RBI, teams of the new millennium like the Red Sox believe those are insignificant relics of a bygone era, the buggy whips of baseball.”
Last season the Yankees led all of baseball in this silly stat called on-base percentage (by a wide margin), the Red Sox had 34 more RBI than Philadelphia, while the Phillies also happened to have the fourth-best team UZR in the National League. But these don’t fit Mr. Borges’ preconceived narrative, so let’s move along.
“They have been replaced by faith in OBP, OPS, UZR (I thought those were the initials of a former Russian state only to learn it means Ultimate Zone Rating)”
You see, he writes about sports for a living, yet he’s proud to admit he just learned what UZR means, and this is a good thing! I’m not saying all writers must accept and use all the newer metrics (after all, I still read Bill Simmons despite his clear naivety with advanced stats), but it’s one thing to stubbornly ignore them and quite another to mock them. Maybe there are reasons other than being too intimidated to learn something new, but the fact so many openly admit their ignorance, almost in a bragging tone, is what’s truly fascinating to me.
“Based on crunching numbers into these new formulas, one expert in baseball metrics, John Dewan, has written that the addition of Adrian Beltre, Marco Scutaro and Mike Cameron in the field will add nine more victories to the Sox’ bottom line. Lo and behold, we just won the pennant! Who knew?”
I’m curious how far Mr. Borges takes his utter lack of acceptance regarding advancements in technology to the rest of his life. Has he grasped computers? Or is that only for bloggers still living in their moms’ basement while he sticks with the typewriter that worked just fine over most of his career? Does he still have a non-HD TV? Does he eschew the DVR (another funny acronym!) and continue to use VHS to record things? I really want to know how far this guy takes rejecting ideas during this “new millennium.”
“A year ago, the Sox won 95 games despite apparently stumbling around in the field like a half-drunken softball team in a Wednesday night league. Somehow they miraculously finished only eight games behind the Yankees without being able to catch a cold standing naked in the Alaskan wilderness. Fortunately, those Sox have been replaced by guys whose gloves are more valuable than Michael Jackson’s.”
Right, because the Red Sox won 95 games last year (and make no mistake, eight games is A LOT, and they were swept in the wild card round), improving last season’s -16.3 UZR must be a horrible idea (the team also ranked 28th in Baseball Prospectus’ Defensive Efficiency rating). The Yankees won the World Series, so what are they thinking adding Curtis Granderson, Nick Johnson and Javier Vazquez? Morons. What’s truly bizarre here isn’t even the UZR aspect (and yes, defensive metrics are imperfect and introduce subjection into the equation, unlike such useful and objective stats like batting average), but Borges seems to dismiss defense altogether. And not to pile on, but that Michael Jackson joke simply wasn’t funny. Can I try my own? Ron Borges makes Ron Burgandy seem like a Mensa candidate.
“Together, Cameron, Scutaro and Beltre hit eight home runs more than Jason Bay but, as we now know, home runs are meaningless.”
No one is saying this. I believe this is referred to as a “straw man argument.”
“Fortunately Sox fans, so are RBI because Bay had 119, which was 49 more than Cameron, 59 more than Scutaro and please don’t ask how many more than Beltre (all right, 75 if you must know but compare his DVD to Bay’s CD and divide by BVD and see what you get – a pennant, of course).”
There are still people who follow baseball that believe RBI is a useful statistic in measuring player performance? As Dale from “Step Brothers” would say, “The last time I heard that I laughed so hard I fell off my dinosaur.” And yes! More acronym mocking, a staple of writers who don’t get it. (VORP, WARP, DORK, haha!)
“Some might argue that pitching in Fenway Park is not exactly like pitching in Yosemite Park, but Sox’ management has discovered that despite mistaken evidence to the contrary, scoring runs is no longer essential to winning games. Interesting concept.”
I love this logic. Somehow, scoring runs is more important than preventing them. How are they not equals, exactly?
“Moneyball, which became defined as the love of sabermetrics over old-school stats like HR and RBI, has led Billy Beane, the godfather of this con job, to build an economic Oakland A’s team that hasn’t won a pennant in 20 years or a World Series in 21, but did manage to have a best-selling book written about the concept. The A’s did win division titles in 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2006, but what they have actually won during the Moneyball era is nothing. No sequel is planned.”
It’s truly remarkable there are sportswriters out there who STILL don’t get “Moneyball,” which highlighted targeting market inefficiencies (and not just an obsession with OBP). But the arrogance of this paragraph is only matched by its callowness. A team with constantly one of the smallest payrolls in all of baseball won its division just four times over the past decade? Only four?! And anyone who follows major league baseball doesn’t need me to explain the randomness of its postseason, when a sport that relies heavily on big sample sizes is cut dramatically. But forget the A’s, how about the clueless Theo Epstein’s Red Sox, who have only won two World Series over the past six years. Dude must have no idea what he’s doing.
“As the days dwindle toward the start of another spring of hope, let’s pray that’s no longer the case, because if all this talk of OBP, OPS, UZR, DRS and PMR was really only about ATM that’s going to end up BAD for US.”
I see what you did there, Mr. Borges, attempting to make “BAD” and “US” into acronyms through capitalization. You sir, are an IDIOT.
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