Kershaw is great, but enough with the GOAT

Let me get this straight from the start--I really like Kershaw.  I admire him.  He's a great pitcher.  One of the best of today's game.

Now, I'll blast the talking heads.  HE ISN'T THE GREATEST EVER.

Here's the thing--historically we've always considered innings eating as one of the essentials of a "best ever" type of pitcher.  Clayton pitched 7 innings last night.  That's fairly normal for pitchers today, but the Greatest Ever has to go to pitchers who aren't "fairly normal."  

Quick look.  Bob Gibson in World Series games.

Year	Age	Tm	Lg	Series	Rslt	Opp	W	L	W-L%	ERA	G	GS	GF	CG	SHO	SV	IP	H	R	ER	HR	BB	IBB	SO	HBP	BK	WP	BF	WHIP	H9	HR9	BB9	SO9	SO/W
1964 MVP	28	STL	NL	WS	W	NYY	2	1	.667	3.00	3	3	0	2	0	0	27.0	23	11	9	4	8	2	31	2	0	1	113	1.148	7.7	1.3	2.7	10.3	3.88
1967 MVP	31	STL	NL	WS	W	BOS	3	0	1.000	1.00	3	3	0	3	1	0	27.0	14	3	3	1	5	0	26	0	0	1	98	0.704	4.7	0.3	1.7	8.7	5.20
1968	32	STL	NL	WS	L	DET	2	1	.667	1.67	3	3	0	3	1	0	27.0	18	5	5	1	4	1	35	0	0	0	101	0.815	6.0	0.3	1.3	11.7	8.75
3 Yrs (3 Series)							7	2	.778	1.89	9	9	0	8	2	0	81.0	55	19	17	6	17	3	92	2	0	2	312	0.889	6.1	0.7	1.9	10.2	5.41
3 WS							7	2	.778	1.89	9	9	0	8	2	0	81.0	55	19	17	6	17	3	92	2	0	2	312	0.889	6.1	0.7	1.9	10.2	5.41

Note: Bob Gibson, one of the historic monsters of Stare Down pitching, pitched 8 complete games out of 9 starts.  All in all, he pitched 9 innings per game.  

Bob Gibson is ahead of Clayton Kershaw on the "Best Ever" lists in my opinion.  

Tom Seaver averaged more than 7 innings per post season game.  Overall ERA for those series was 2.77, 3 W's, 3 L's, 8 starts.

Greg Maddux.  11 W's, 14 L's, 3.27 ERA, 30 post season starts.

Nolan Ryan.  2 W's, 2 L's, 3.07 ERA, 63 K's in 58.2 IP.

Steve Carlton.  6 W's, 6 L's, 3.26 ERA, 14 post season starts.

Randy Johnson.  7 W's, 9 L's, 3.50 ERA, 16 post season starts.  132 K's in 121 IP.

These are all historic great pitchers.  All with mediocre post season records.

Now let's look at Curt Schilling, the one cast out by ESPN because they are a purely liberal political organization.

Curt.  11 W's, 2 L's, 19 starts, 19 games pitches, 4 complete games (not a lot compared to the old timers), 2.23 ERA.  

Nice!

Now, one to whom Clayton is often compared.

Sandy Koufax.  4 W's, 3 L's.  That's fairly normal.  0.95 ERA.  I'm going to write that again, to help you see that it wasn't a typo.  0.95 ERA.  0.95 ERA.  8 games started, 4 complete games.

Now, Clayton.

7 W's, 7 L's, 4.21 ERA.  What?  

18 starts, 22 games overall.  113.1 innings pitched.  So... that's an average of just over 5 innings per game pitched.  

Not a best ever.

However, Clayton does have the distinction of being the only player in the history of MLB to win the MVP award after having been in only 1/6th of his team's games.

There ya go.

The Long Ball

I just finished reading (that is, listening to) a book about the 1975 season:

"The Long Ball: The Summer of '75 -- Spaceman, Catfish, Charlie Hustle, and the Greatest World Series Ever Played"

1975 was the year that I fell in love with baseball. My family and I lived in a suburb of Cleveland at the time, so I was initiated into baseball fandom as a Cleveland Indians fan, but my grandparents, who lived in Columbus, were Reds fans. Their fandom rubbed off on me somewhere along the way, perhaps, or I was simply an Ohio fan.

At any rate, I played 2nd base, so two of my favorite players were Cleveland's Duane Kuiper and Cincinnati's Joe Morgan.

We were visiting my grandparents in Columbus while the Reds were playing the Red Sox that fall. My brothers and I got to see the twitchy batting stance of Morgan, the bizzare wind up of Luis Tiant, and the glorious energy of Pete Rose.

What a great year.

The book begins before the season and ends after it, telling lots of little stories along the way. We get glimpses of McNally's difficulties in Montreal and his sudden retirement, Catfish Hunter's free agency, Johnny Bench's preseason wedding (and post season divorce), asides about future famous people like M. C. Hammer and Ricky Henderson, and more.

It is a fun read for any long time baseball fan.

Indians Fans = Imbecilic Rioters???

I'm a lifelong Indians fan.

The mid 90s were great years. Our management was intent on bringing a champion to Cleveland. Mike Hargrove managed a tremendously talented team of power and speed. It was wonderful.

In '95 we lost to the best team of the decade.  The Braves lost most of their World Series appearances, but they won against us.

In '97, though, we lost against a clearly inferior team. The Florida Marlins had spiked at the right time, carrying them from wild card to champs.

The name of Jose Mesa still makes me shiver.  But he did help get us to the big dance.

Then, many more years of tiny, if any, hopes. Three Cy Young winners later, two of which bolted immediately thereafter, there we were in another World Series, due, in large part, to the brilliant leaderahip of Terry Francona.

Up three games to one, I had the idiotic decency to hope the Cubs could win game 5, at home, for their fans.

Then, they did.

I don't blame myself. Nor do I blame Jose Mesa or Ernst Byner.

Congratulations to the Cubs. I'm happy for you. Briefly.

But don't expect me to be happy for you for long. I know Cubs fans are pitied by many. More of their fans this year appeared to be nothing more than bandwagon fans, joining the chorus only because the team was doing so well. But the True fans, some of whom are relatives and friends of mine, I am happy for.

But enough of the pity. Honestly, any Cubs fan who wasn't a fan in 1945 has NO IDEA the pain felt by Indians fans.  They've NEVER lost a World Series. Many of we true Indians fans have lost 3.  You'll get none of my pity.

Now, to the point.

There's an absurd, politically pointed comic online in the last few days. The point of it is to point out the absurdity of the whining, destructive, imbecilic thugs who are rioting and destroying both public and private property in protest of their felonious, treasonous candidate's election loss. 

Please, do not compare Indians Fans to those godless, spoiled cretans.

Thank you,

M

Oddities as of September 24th (primarily due to the dominance of the NL Central)

No, this isn't a post about Yogi Berra.  He was one of the game's all time greats, and his wit will be missed.

Oddities.  

1. The Kansas City Royals are currently the best team in the AL.  If they were in the NL Central, they would be in 4th place.  Realize this--that means they wouldn't even make it into the NL wild card game.
2. One of the top three teams in MLB through the regular season will be out of the playoffs after the initial NL wild card game.
3. The Yankees, who were not picked by many folks to make it this far, have a good grip on the AL 1st wild card.  
4. The Astros... have the 2nd AL wild card currently, but could easily be overcome by either the Twins (picked by almost nobody) and/or the Angels (who were expected to win the AL West... which is led by the Texas Rangers... who pretty much nobody picked).
5. The Mariners, a popular pick to make it to the World Series, are 5.5 games back in the race for the 2nd wild card.  They are not mathematically eliminated, but there's no way they will get close to winning.
6. The Nationals, an almost universally picked team to win the NL, are 10.5 games back in the race for the 2nd NL wild card.  They have played 151 games.  11 to go.  They are probably going to be mathematically eliminated today.
7. The Cubs, the Lovable Loser Cubs, are 89 - 63, have pretty good lock on the 2nd wild card spot.  The Giants, happily not heading for the playoffs (it is an even year, after all), are 9.5 games back in the wild card race.  It would take a historically brilliant collapse by the Cubs (or Pirates) and a historically tremendous run by the Giants to make alter this.  Not happening.  These Cubs are for real.
8. If the NL Central were a team, they would be in
1. 3rd in the AL East
2. 2nd in the AL Central
3. 2nd in the AL West
4. 2nd in the NL East
5. 4th in the NL Central (circular reasoning?)
6. 2nd in the NL West
9. Nobody sucks as bad as the Phillies.  They are probably going to get 100 L's for the year.  Still, they are a mere 28 games back of first place in their division.  The Brewers and Reds are 32 and 32.5 games back in theirs.  Of course, the Brewers and Reds are in the NL Central.  If they were in the NL East, they'd displace both the Braves and the Phillies.
10. These ten items are not in any special order--just the order in which I wrote them.  Also, my Cleveland Indians are in no special order, but doing better than most Cleveland fans expected them to be after seeing that Sports Illustrated put them on their cover.

So there you go.

Why Kershaw shouldn't have been MVP

Kershaw had a tremendous year.  He well-deserved the Cy Young award, though he pitched in less games than every other pitcher who had votes.  Phenomenal year.  That being said... he didn't deserve the MVP award.  

First, the exceptionally easy part--because he only played in 28 freaking games.

That is the easiest, most reasonable answer there is.  He played in 17.284% of his team's games.  Tell me how that was MVP-able.  How many Dodgers contributed in more games than Kershaw did?  15 position players, 7 relief pitchers, and 2 starting pitchers.

Oops.  Wait a minute.  I was wrong on the 28 games.  According to Baseballreference.com, he only played in 27.  That's 16.6667% of the team's games.

Not very MVP-able.

Innings played?  I'm working on the numbers now, but innings played for the regular players isn't something I'm going to catch exactly.  I'll see how close I can get to real data on that without paying for services, but I'd bet he didn't play the most innings in his 28 games, nor 2nd or 3rd or 4th or 5th most innings during those games.  After all, pitchers need relieved.  He only played a whole game 6 times all year.  Eleven regular players played more complete games in Kershaw's 27 games than he did.  Most of those more than doubled him.

So, not only did he play 1/6th of his teams games, but he didn't even play all of most of those individual games.

Here are the players who played more of Kershaw's games from beginning to end:

Kemp	24
Gonzalez	22
Gordon	22
Puig	21
Ellis	20
Crawford	12
Uribe	12
Ethier	10
Van Slyke	9
Ramirez	7
Turner	7

As you can see, even some scrubs played whole games during Kershaw's games more than he did.

What else happened in Kershaw games?  Here are the leaders for a few categories:

Runs - Ramirez, with 18

Hits - Kemp, with 29

RBIs - Kemp, with 18

Walks - Ellis, with 15

Batting Average (minimum 3.1 x 27 plate appearances, which is 83.7) - Kemp, .326.  

On Base Pct (same minimums) - Kemp, .394

By the way, four other batters had higher batting averages in Kershaw-pitched games:

Crawford, .407, 55 plate appearances

Ethier, .378, 49 pa's

Turner, .353, 37 pa's

Ramirez, .329, 82 pa's--just 1.7 too few to count as the leader
Oh, by the way, Kershaw had 67 plate appearances during his 27 games played.

It is a little shocking to read Kemp's name so frequently, knowing that they dumped him within their own division during the off-season.  That ought to make things interesting when the Padres come to town, eh?

It seems like Kemp may have been the MVP of Kershaw pitched games, really.  Maybe Kershaw will buy him a car.

Pete Rose

If you are reading this, you are likely someone who knows that Pete Rose is attempting to get released from his lifelong banishment from Major League Baseball.  

I like Pete Rose.  Last year I went with a friend to hear Pete talk at an event in Dayton, Ohio.  It was fun, but it was also a little weird.  The man was dressed so casually that you might have thought he had been told about the event only moments before.  But, because Pete is a story teller, he came out without any notes and told us stories that kept our attention for ... I don't remember how long.  Two hours?  

In 1975 I was coming to consciousness of major league sports.  Baseball was, and remains, my first love.  I watch some NFL, especially around playoff time, and even more especially if the teams I love or the players I watch are involved.  I never watch any NBA games, though I'm keeping one eye on the sports pages (online, anyway), because I'm a lifelong Cleveland fan, and, gosh, it is a possibility.  I don't pay any attention to hockey at all.  College basketball I do track a bit, especially as a Buckeye fan.  College football, ditto.

But baseball is my sport love.  And, when I was becoming sport-conscious back in 1975, it was a tremendous year to be an Ohio fan.  I watched the Reds and Red Sox, which meant watching Pete Rose hustle, Joe Morgan twitch at bat, and Luis Tiant's bizarre windup.  Though Morgan was my favorite back then, I wish now that he would never ever ever ever talk politics.  Kind of spoils his good image in my head.  

But Pete?  Man... sometimes you wish he would just keep quiet.  

His stories are great.  I've read stories of him in various books over the years.  One of my favorites was of how much fun he had in game 6, even though the Reds lost that one, back in 1975.  His child-like love for the game, even as his team loses a critical game, was a beautiful thing to me.  His hustle was wonderful.  

When I look at his lifetime numbers, I can't help but seeing that he was essentially an accumulator.  But what Hall of Famer wasn't?  Rare are the guys who, like Ruth, could have had Hall of Fame careers if they had played 7 to 10 years less than they did.  Pete wouldn't have.  

So what.

As a ball player I love the man.

But, honestly, if he gets released from this "capital punishment" at this point, how can we not question the integrity of the game?  There's far more evidence of Pete's wrong-doing, even from his own lips, than there ever has been for Shoeless Joe Jackson.  How about we forgive Shoeless first--a genuine Hall of Fame caliber player.  

Sorry, man.