Well, Raj. I wouldn’t expect someone who watches the Blue Jays and does not play nor has ever played baseball before to understand what winning baseball is.
Winning baseball: NOT trying to score at the plate early in the game with no outs (Prince Fielder) or trying to reach third with no outs on a close play (Brandon Phillips in the NLDS). Executing the double-cut relay to perfection, which the Giants did to gun down Fielder.
NOT staring at the ball when it hits the third-base bag (Miguel Cabrera) while the runner, who is playing winning baseball, charges hard out of the box and turns a lucky single into a well-earned double.
Understanding that you have to dive for a ball in short center field with a runner at second and less than two outs, knowing that by diving you at least have a chance of catching it, whereas by pulling up the runner scores no matter what anyways. Winning baseball is also not compounding the mistake that Jackson made in Game 4 on Scutaro’s hit by then throwing over the cutoff man, thereby allowing the hitter to advance to second base.
Playing the entire infield in with no outs and the bases loaded and a one-run deficit in the 7th inning. Why the fuck Leyland played the middle infielders back to trade the double play for the run is beyond me. That shit works in the regular season when you have 80 more games to make up for it if the move backfires on you, or you have an offense swinging the bats so well that one more run doesn’t mean shit. Well, the Tigers blew it on both counts. That was absolutely horrendous baseball by the Leyland and the Tigers.
Successfully executing several sacrifice bunts in a tied or one-run game.
Throwing strikes out of the bullpen.
I could go on and on, but I wanted to stay strictly with a few examples of mistakes the Tigers/Reds/Cardinals made that the Giants did not make.
I already addressed the 9 to 11 World Series titles in the previous thread. I suggest you familiarize yourself with it. I only go back as far as 1995 since the nature of the game has changed so much starting around that time with massively-increased salaries that altered the way teams are put together. I live in a post-strike world.
Yes, the Rangers made the World Series despite poor pitching. How many times did they win the Series with poor pitching? They also had average defense and didn’t play fundamentally-sound baseball. They were beat by two teams that were, on paper, well below them in terms of talent. Do you notice a pattern here?
Of course my perception of Zito has changed. HE has changed. He had a pretty good year this year by his standards, and as much as I hate him, he’s a World Series champion. That would change anyone’s perception. Now he’s not Barry the Fucking Waste of Space Zito, he’s Barry the Fucking World Champion Waste of Space Zito. And he outpitched the “best” pitcher in the game in Game One, which can’t be taken away. He’s still Barry Fucking Zito, but now he has earned a ring as well.
Verlander has certainly had insane workloads throughout his career. Funny how that only seems to crop up under the spotlight when facing the NL. Funny how it’s never a factor when he’s throwing 100mph in the 9th inning He’s a good pitcher, but he isn’t great. The great ones throw well in the postseason, they don’t practically double their career ERA in it.
Who the FUCK considers a high LOB% luck??? YOU??? You aren’t qualified to speak on the matter since you’ve never pitched with men on base and left them on base. It is NOT luck, it is a skill and I don’t give a fuck what any stat says otherwise. There are statistical outliers in everything and they exist for a reason. Cain is one of those outliers because he throws well out of the stretch. He has a compact, simple delivery, he throws strikes and there are several things he can do with each of his pitches, he knows how to get a groundball AND he can pitch for the strikeout and he has good stuff. The fact is that there aren’t that many pitchers who can do all of those things, and the ones that CAN are also statistical outliers. I’ve seen Cain pitch through too much shit too many times to assign it to random “luck”. My own personal experience further supports this feeling.
I laugh at how you disingenuously mention Cain’s “regression” last year while failing to mention that he was BARELY below the league average that year. In 8 seasons Cain has only been below the league average twice and both times he was only about 2% below the league average. However, he has been WELL above the league average for most of his career. I would say that if anything, last year’s LOB rate was the result of bad luck since it is clearly a statistical anomaly in Cain’s case.
As far as the bet goes, one year or no bet at all. Put up or shut the fuck up about the AL and sabermetrics. You don’t understand the game outside of the numbers. Like Gammons said, they aren’t the entire equation. They aren’t even half of it. There is no way to quantify human beings or a sport that is played by them. if sabermetrics were completely flawless then the team with the best statistical peripherals would always win, even though the World Series has shown that the NL regularly wins despite being the lesser team, statistically-speaking.
Let’s put it this way, pal. The only person on this site who predicted the Giants winning it all this year, both at the beginning of the year and at the beginning of the postseason, was ME. The one who eschews sabermetrics for good old-fashioned human observation. I use statistics for confirmation of something, not as a way to translate what I see on the field into something I can understand.
