New York Nine: David Ortiz gets things started in Yanks-Red Sox

Thursday, April 23, 2009

David Ortiz gets things started in Yanks-Red Sox

On an aside, after seeing this picture of Joba on deadspin I'm ecstatic that there's a no facial hair rule for the yankees because the dude grows some stupid looking beard, it looks like he's channeling his inner Kyle Orton, horrible just horrible. I digress, if you haven't heard the Red Sox "slugger" batting a crisp .220/.294/.322 called out Joba Chamberlain today, warning him to not thing about throwing at his team.

"None of that, man — just play the game the way it's supposed to be, and that's about it," Ortiz said, referring to Chamberlain. "This is a guy, as good as he is, the next step for him will be to earn respect from everybody in the league. He's not a bad guy, but when things like that happen, people get the wrong idea."

He is referring to Joba's very liberal throwing inside at Kevin Youkilis over the last few years, evidently he doesn't think its very cool. Well David I'm sorry but that's the game and frankly your own teammates, perticularly Josh Beckett love throwing at guys, especially at Yankees like Jeter and A-Rod. And while during the Torre tenure he didn't do it becuase they were "better than that"Girardi is finally taking the gloves off with Joba and other guys saying you know what if you're gong to throw at our guys well we're going to put some of your guys on their asses too and what's wrong with that? I'm not advocating hitting guys but throwing inside giving guys some chin music is part of the game, especially when you're talking about guys like Youkilis who are pratically standing on the fucking plate. Pitchers have always known you can't let a guy get comfortable up there and sometimes the situation calls for it. So "Papi" I say first off start hitting like you're supposed and deal with it, its part of the game, your guys are head hunters, as the situation with Beckett in Aneheim showed, so shut the hell up. Jeter and the rest of them don't run their mouths about because they know it comes in the territory. If you don't like it, find another game because this is how it goes.

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Some Key Terms to Know When Reading

I throw around a lot of numbers and stats so I figured I should probably explain some of them:

wOBA - a new one I'll be using, short for weighted on-base average is essentially an improvement on OPS. Scaled to average OBP (with .330 the league average) wOBA more properly weighs on-base percentage higher than slugging percentage and more accurately weighs extra base hits (a double isn't worth double of that of a single which is what SLG does) to give a better picture of a batter's worth.

.000/.000/.000 is the industry shorthand for the split stats for batting average, on base percentage, and slugging percentage, in that order, these are some of the more commonly used stats to indicate how productive a hitter is.

OPS - shorthand for On-Base Percentage Plus Slugging is becoming more in vogue in the mainstream media to get a better idea of the raw production of a hitter, instead of saying how often they get a hit OPS shows how productive those hits are.

BABIP - Batting Average on Balls in play, its pretty much what it says, how often that a batter puts in ball in play that it becomes a hit, its a stat that shows if a hitter is just having a lot of bad luck or a hot streak is just fluky. For instance a BABIP of .200 is considered unlucky its not that he's not hitting, he just isn't hitting where the fielders are not there.

OPS+ - as the name implies, OPS+ is OPS but with adjustments to park effects and other outliers to normalize the data. Indeed, as most people know some parks are harder to hit at than others, which this stat compensates for, 100 being the baseline of league average

WAR - Wins Above Replacement, as its name suggests, provides an exact number of wins a particular player is worth above what your average AAA player, or replacement player would provide in his absence. Although this is a very difficult stat to explain (I don't totally get it personally) the stat is beautifully simple in that it provides a precise value of either a pitcher or hitter to his particular team, which enables teams to monetize their worth and properly assign a dollar value.

ERA+ - similar to OPS+ its a more highly sophisticated way of evaluating a pitcher's performance adjusted for park effects, this also is on a numerical basis with 100 as league average.

FIP - short for fielding independent pitching, FIP measures the only aspects of the game that a pitcher has total control over, strikeouts, walks, and home runs. Scaled to ERA, FIP gives a truer indication of a pitcher's true talent by removing the luck apparent with balls in play.

WHIP - Walks and Hits per innings pitched, a little more well known stat, but a good indicator of how effective a pitcher is. Chances are if a guy is walking a lot of guys and giving up a hot of hits, he's not pitching all that well.

xFIP- a variation of FIP which normalizes home run rates as a way to discount aberrational home run rates that are either too high or too low to reasonably sustain.

UZR- Short of Ultimate Zone Rating, this is the number of runs above or below average a fielder is in both range runs and error runs combined. This is a difficult stat to understand because it's not one of those stats you can figure out at home, because it includes a bevy of factors including park effects and speed. As a consequence, its not a perfect stat, but its the best defensive stat we have. Also seen as UZR/150 is the Ultimate Zone rating per 150 games.

RngR - Range Runs is defined as the number of runs above or below average a fielder is, determined by how the fielder is able to get to balls hit in his vicinity. Also not a perfect fielding stat, but one of the many fielding stats that help as as fans get a fuller picture of a player's defensive prowess.

New York Nine

Baseball the way it was meant to be, down and dirty with brutally honest analysis

David Ortiz gets things started in Yanks-Red Sox

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