Customary Invective About New York

You didn't really think that I would let a week like this go by without a paragraph on my love for New York sports culture, did you? 

Adrift on a sea of potential ennui, there is one subject that in my experience unites Atlanta sports fans: we hate New York teams. I've yet to encounter a non-Big Apple transplant Atlantan who views the teams from New York with anything but contempt. When their teams come to our venues, we get overrun with loutish, gold chain-festooned former New Yorkers who have John Franco mustaches with no shred of irony and who cheer lustily for teams from a city that they fled because they didn't want to pay $3,000 per month for 500 square feet. When we turn on the TV, we get inundated with news about their teams as if they are our teams. Their shills in the media have completely appropriated baseball history as being the story about New York teams and their games against one another or the Red Sox. Nothing will quite bring out passion quite like being dismissed as a bystander.

Unfortunately, the post then deals with reality, which is that Atlanta teams have a terrible history against New York teams in the postseason.  I missed an opportunity to make a joke about Rutgers football not being in a position to play the Dawgs in a bowl game.  Sorry about that.

The Dwight Howard Pipedream

Two weeks ago, I started a post agreeing with Jeff Schultz that the Hawks should make a play for Dwight Howard and then, in the process of writing it, realized that Howard would never come here because he would end up in a situation that is worse than the one he was leaving in Orlando.  Here was my conclusion:

Additionally, Howard has to be thinking that the biggest obstacle to gaining a higher Q-rating is that he hasn't won a championship and has only made the Finals once.  He needs to go somewhere where he will win.  His issue in Orlando is the supporting cast.  Will it make sense for him to come here to play with Jeff Teague (a player whose promise is based on a six-game series against the Bulls last year), Joe Johnson (holder of one of the worst contracts in the NBA), Marvin Williams (average small forward who escapes being non-descript only because of his Draft position and the careers of the players taken after him), and a power forward to be named later?  And then you add in the fact that Atlanta Spirit has expressed an aversion to paying the luxury tax and in light of the team's revenues, they can't really be blamed, can they?  The end game could well be that Thorpe wants to send Howard to Atlanta, but can't make the trade happen because Howard refuses to agree to a potential extension with the Hawks.

Yesterday, Bill Simmons framed Howard's decision in the same way:

Put it this way: If I'm Dwight Howard, I'm thinking about titles and titles only. I don't care about money — that's coming, regardless. I don't care about weather — I have to live in whatever city for only eight months a year, and I'm traveling during that entire time, anyway. I don't care about "building my brand" and all that crap — if I don't start winning titles soon, my brand is going to be "the center who's much better than every other center but can't win a title." I care only about playing in a big city, finding a team that doesn't have to demolish itself to acquire me, finding one All-Star teammate who can make my life a little easier (the Duncan to my Robinson), and winning titles. Not title … titles. I want to come out of this decade with more rings than anyone else. I want to be remembered alongside Shaq, Moses and Hakeem, not Robinson and Ewing.

Tellingly, Simmons listed five destinations for Howard and Black Hollywood was nowhere in sight, except for a brief mention of the fact that the Hawks were able to beat the Magic last year with a "let Dwight get his; we need to make sure that the Magic shooters don't get theirs" strategy.  For instance, he pooh-poohs the prospect of Howard ending up on the Lakers because he would be playing with Kobe Bryant and a gutted roster.  Would Howard be any more likely to have a desire to play with Joe Johnson, Jeff Teague, Marvin Williams, and then a similarly gutted roster, only in this instance, you have Atlanta Spirit instead of Jerry Buss filling in the remainder?

Simmons' interest in stars going to play for the Bulls is interesting to me.  As he mentions, he wanted LeBron to go there and now he wants Howard to make the same decision.  This preference is to Simmons' credit, as a superpower in Chicago would be detrimental to the prospect of the Celtics winning a title in the next decade.  Simmons is often derided as a Boston homer and he does plenty of things to earn the label, but he is able to put that aside when he pines for Derrick Rose to have a superstar wing man like LeBron or Howard.  I think that there are two things going on here.  First, Simmons is more of a basketball fan than a Celtics fan and he would like to see a memorable team come together instead of the NBA's stars being isolated and surrounded by poor supporting casts.  Second, he wants that memorable team to play in uniforms that mean something and in an environment that makes for good TV.  The Bulls uniform evokes memories of the Jordan dynasty and the United Center has a great atmosphere when the team is good.

I have to admit that I feel the same way.  It's hard for me to reconcile my feelings about Major League Baseball with my current feelings about the NBA.  In baseball, I get very annoyed by the constant focus on the Red Sox and Yankees.  This annoyance extends to those two teams sucking up free agents left and right to cover for the failings of their own farm systems.  In basketball, I liked the idea of Chris Paul and Dwight Howard going to the Lakers because that team would be highly entertaining.  Again, I am going to point to two factors that drive my thinking.  First, basketball is a team game.  Like soccer, it's more interesting to watch great players play with one another because they bring one another to a higher level.  Baseball, on the other hand, is a game with a minimal amount of teamwork.  This makes baseball more conducive to reaching stat-based conclusions with confidence, but it also means that there is no great joy in watching superstars play with one another.  Mark Teixeira driving in A-Rod isn't the same thing as Messi finding Cesc with a defense-splitting pass or Paul hitting Howard with an alley-oop.  Second, I have a lifelong disdain for New York teams.  If the Knicks were the ones assembling a cache of talent, then I would be annoyed because Mike Lupica would be happy.  I don't feel the same "oh G-d, this is going to be intolerable" pangs with Chicago or Los Angeles.

From Each According To His $15M Salary, To Each According To ... Good Lord, We Really Are Going To Blow This!

What the f***?

Those three words best describe the collective feeling of Braves fans on the morning of September 28, 2011? The Braves are one loss from completing one of the great collapses in baseball history. After all of their terrible play over the course of the month, they woke up on Saturday morning with a three-game lead and five games to play. Since that time, they have lost four in a row, scoring a whopping four runs in the process. Last night, with the season very much hanging in the balance, Fredi Gonzalez pulled a Bobby Cox in October special, sticking with the underperforming veteran - Derek Lowe - until it was far too late. Yes, the Braves are in a difficult spot because of the injuries to Jair Jurrjens and Tommy Hanson,* but the rookies who have replaced them have been perfectly fine. Of the Braves' five starting pitchers this month, Randall Delgado and Mike Minor have the lowest ERAs of the five.  How much better would Jurrjens and Hanson have done than a 3.11 ERA in 52 innings?  Maybe they would have pitched a smidge deeper into games, but that's it.  Meanwhile, Derek Lowe, a guy who is taking up a smidge over one-sixth of the team's payroll, has an 8.75 ERA and a 1.99 WHIP in five starts.  He has been the losing pitcher in all five.  If by some simple twist of fate the Braves do make the playoffs** and Lowe pitches in any capacity other than long relief, then Frank Wren ought to relieve him of command on the spot.

* - Was anyone else completely non-plussed when Hanson and Jurrjens failed to return from the All-Star Break with their arms intact?  That's how baseball is now.  You have a good young pitcher and you immediately start counting the days until some arm injury that initially sounds innocuous, then the team can't figure out what's wrong, and then he's finally seeing Dr. Andrews.  Baseball manages to combine a turtle's pace with high-impact injuries.  Bravo, Abner Doubleday!

** - I'd put the odds at this stage at around 30%. They should win tonight with a favorable pitching match-up, but their odds in a one-game playoff will not be good.  The playoff would just be insufferable.  The Cardinals will be up 6-2 in the seventh and then Tony LaRussa will prolong our misery with a bevy of "look at me!" switches.  And G-d only knows what happens when he gets into the One-Game Playoff Supplement to his Compendium of Unwritten Baseball Rules.  Fredi could redeem a season's worth of frustration by decking LaRussa in a stupid, futile gesture at the end of a dispiriting collapse.  That would make the whole thing worthwhile.

And then, let's discuss the offense.  It has been a sore spot all year, with just about every offensive regular underperforming his PECOTA (or whatever Baseball Prospectus is calling it these days) projection, but September has been a total freefall.  The top of the order - Michael Bourn and Martin Prado - both have sub-.300 OBPs this month and have walked a grand total of nine times.  Brian McCann is in free-fall, having slugged .313 in September.  The team collectively has a .301 OBP in the month.  By way of comparison, the Giants - a team that is having a historically bad offensive season - have a .303 OBP for the year.  Parrish raus!

The glass half-full thought for a morning that desperately needs it is that I wouldn't trade places with a Cardinals fan for a second.  Yes, the Cards look likely to pull off a remarkable comeback.  All that gets them is a likely defeat at the hands of the Phillies.  Their franchise player is a free agent, which means that they are either going to lose him or they are going to have to sign him to a payroll-crippling contract.*  They don't have a single good, young position player now that their cantankerous manager chased off Colby Rasmus because his stirrups weren't perpendicular to his big toe or whatever else it is that LaRussa views as necessary to baseball success.  They rely on Dave Duncan to stitch together a pitching staff every year.  Their farm system is blah.  In contrast, the Braves have young keepers at first (Freeman), third (Prado), catcher (McCann), and right (Heyward), assuming that Parrish has not done permanent damage to some or all of them.  We finally have a lead-off hitter.  The Braves have five quality young starters and three quality young relievers, assuming that Fredi hasn't destroyed the relievers with overuse this year.  Do you detect a theme here?  The Braves' future is very bright if the on-field coaches don't screw it up.  Maybe the real silver lining here is that a collapse like this requires at least one fall guy in the dugout.

* - If you think that Derek Lowe making $15M next year is bad, think about paying twice that amount for Albert Pujols' age-39 season.

Question Time

The right honorable gentleman from North-Decatur-upon-Lullwater wants to know two things:

1. If Chipper Jones would have been drafted by the Cardinals instead of the Braves, how would his career have been different?  In other words, how would things be different after the inevitable blow-up between Chipper and Tony LaRussa as to Chipper’s reliance on his father for hitting advice?  That advice surely violates one of LaRussa’s myriad unwritten rules for baseball, like “I get a virgin in heaven for every pitching change I make” and “a pitcher can hit a batter only in one of the following 17 situations…”

2. In light of the fact that Bret Bielema is apparently the best coach in the Big Ten now that Jim Tressel is no more, how many head coaches in the SEC are better than the best coach in the Big Ten?  Put another way, would Georgia fans trade on-a-seat-of-indeterminable-warmth Mark Richt for any coach in the Big Ten?  Would LSU fans take any coach in the Big Ten over Les Miles?  Am I being too partisan here or does Jim Tressel’s demise at Ohio State really bring into full view the sorry state of coaching in a conference that has the money to do so much better?

Stealing the Past

There are few sports topics that are more likely to provoke a reaction in me than the selective telling of baseball history in order to make the game all about a few teams in the Northeast.  I wrote about this topic in January when I noted the difference between the professional way that the NFL mythologizes its past and the way that baseball allows “an especially narcissistic generation of New York writers” (Scott Lemieux’s description) to reduce the sport to being all about the Yankees, Brooklyn Dodgers, and New York Giants.  I had two experiences this weekend that fall into this same category.

The first was reading a passage in Dixie about the importance of the St. Louis Cardinals as background noise at the tail end of Mississippi’s Freedom Summer.  Curt Wilkie describes how most sports fans in Mississippi (and indeed throughout the South) were Cardinals fans who listened to the games, either on local radio affiliates or on KMOX.  In 1964, the Cards staged an epic rally to overtake the Cubs and win the National League.  Wilkie, who was working for a newspaper in the Delta town of Clarksdale that was (not surprisingly) riven by racial problems as the establishment fought tooth and nail against integration, writes about the fact that the Cardinals were a unifying element:

Stan Musial had retired a year earlier, and the stars of the Cardinals were now black men": Bob Gibson, the intimidating pitcher; Lou Brock, the fleet outfielder; Curt Flood, an agile centerfielder; and Bill White, the powerful first baseman.  Race did not factor into their herioics.  When Brock stole second base, it was not a black man’s exploit, but a triumph by a member of the Cardinal team.  Even as we bickered over school integration in Clarksdale, whites and blacks were united in the Cardinals’ pursuit of the championship.

The Cardinals won the pennant on the last day of the season, a showdown game that was not available on TV.  We depended on Harry Caray for the news.  His play-by-play broadcast over the radio triggered my imagination, the same way that Amos ‘n’ Andy had delighted me a decade earlier.  When the Cardinals’ catcher, Tim McCarver, squeezed the pop fly that ended the game, I could see it in my mind, and there were celebrations across the battle lines in Clarksdale.

This makes for a great story.  At the same time that Mississippi was having the most backwards, violent reaction to efforts to end Jim Crow (or at least they were 1a in that department with Alabama), the residents of the state were all rooting for an integrated baseball team from a border state.  Why is this never a part of the story of baseball’s integration.  When the topic of baseball’s color line comes up, the discussion inevitably focuses on Jackie Robinson, in no small part because of the tendency to make baseball history all about New York City.  In the time between Robinson breaking the color barrier in 1947 and the Red Sox becoming the last major league team to integrate in 1959 (and why does that little fact not come up, I wonder), the Cardinals had 17 black major leaguers, which was tied for the most in baseball and was one more than the Dodgers.  The role of the Cardinals of Gibson and Brock as the favorite team of the segregated South is a great story.  Why did a sports fan like me only stumble upon it when reading the memoirs of a Mississippi journalist?

Speaking of the 1964 Cards, Nate Silver wrote a great article for the Baseball Prospectus in 2007 after the Colorado Rockies mounted an amazing comeback in September to pip the Padres for the wild card.  Silver approached the question of the greatest comebacks of all time by looking at playoff odds over the course of a season and concluded that the '64 Cards made the most improbable comeback in baseball history. 

I was reminded of this article during the interminable rain delay at the Ted on Saturday afternoon.  As my four-year old and I sat under the overhang in the upper deck, watching rain pelt the field from a truly awesome, almost Biblical textured gray cloud directly overhead,* the Braves were playing an MLB documentary on the best comebacks in baseball history.  These sorts of lists are a dime a dozen, designed to provoke dumb arguments that are usually based on subjective reasoning.  Sure enough, this list caused exactly that sort of reaction in me.  According to MLB, the five best comebacks are:

5.  The New York Giants over the Brooklyn Dodgers in the ‘51 pennant race;
4.  The Red Sox over the Angels in the ‘86 ALCS;
3.  The Mets over the Red Sox in the ‘86 World Series;
2.  The Yankees over the Red Sox in the ‘78 pennant race; and
1.  The Red Sox over the Yankees in the ‘04 ALCS.

Yup, the four most dramatic episodes in baseball history involved the Red Sox, with the top three involving opponents from New York.  Four of the top five involve New York teams, with the sole non-Northeastern interloper being a team from the tiny hamlet of Los Angeles.  We are all so lucky that we get to watch these stories franchises from the hinterlands of … the rest of the country outside of Peter King’s beloved Acela corridor. 

* – The whole time, I had “Chimes of Freedom” playing in my head.     

There’s no objective basis for this I-95 love-in.  Yes, the Yankees’ comeback in ‘78 was a great comeback, but it just sits in the middle of a list of improbable pennants won by teams that overcame massive odds to make the playoffs.  Yes, the Red Sox coming back from being down to their last strike in 1986 was a great moment, but is it any more improbable than a team coming back from two runs down in the ninth inning in Game Seven of the NLCS?  This crap matters in the characterization of baseball history.  I was sitting with a young, impressionable fellow.  If he is subjected the obscene concept of the Red Sox and various New York teams owning the best jewels of baseball history, then he might become a fan of one of those teams.  Smoking, early fatherhood, and drug use can be the only end result.  So please, MLB, for the good of all of your young, innocent fans, please acknowledge a world outside of a corner of the country. 

I wrote last month about the apparent gaping void where proper statistical analysis should exist for major college football programs and I'm reminded of that post by Bill Barnwell's excellent piece on small market baseball teams applying Moneyball principles years after the rise and fall of Billy Beane's Oakland A's. Barnwell makes the point that MLB teams have the money and incentive to attack the difficult problem of grading fielding:

It was clear even at the time Moneyball was written that fielding would become a battleground for teams looking for an edge, but the sort of data that would be required to do robust analysis on a player's fielding ability really didn't exist. Traditional fielding statistics, such as errors, didn't do the actual act of fielding justice. Fielders with great range rack up errors on plays that mediocre fielders would never have a prayer of getting to. That makes no sense.

In 2011, that's no longer the case. Systems like Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR)3 and plus/minus4 usually disagree on the exact level of a player's glove upon team performance, but they represent a dramatic increase in the level of knowledge and accuracy in fielding analysis that's available to the public. Both UZR and plus/minus attempt to determine how many plays a fielder should have made versus a league-average player at the same position.

The "public" part of that statement is particularly relevant because so much of the work that's been done on fielding since Moneyball has been conducted inside the inscrutable walls of major league organizations, which have both the funding and motivation to sink significant sums of money into the sort of video analysis and quantitative research required to produce advanced fielding statistics.

That last sentence has two important implications for college football. First, college football programs should have even more motivation to apply advanced statistical analysis to obtain a competitive advantage. In professional baseball, teams can pay their players, so there is a natural outlet for revenue. If a team wants to win and it has money coming in from tickets and TV deals, then the blindingly obvious solution is to pay for better talent. Statistical analysis enters the picture only in determining how the team should spend its lucre. In contrast, college football teams cannot (legally) pay for talent. Thus, programs have to re-direct their revenue into other channels, like building palatial facilities to attract recruits or hiring top coaches who can then recruit and develop talent. With all of that revenue and a dam preventing it from its most natural outlet, college programs would do well to spend money on armies of nerds to help their coaches in recruiting players and then developing optimal schemes and tactics.

The second implication is that football results can be quantified. Generally speaking, baseball lends itself to statistical analysis more than football because it's a quasi-individual sport. A batter faces a pitcher and there is an outcome. Football doesn't work like that. It's very hard to isolate one-on-one match-ups because the result of a play is the product of two eleven-man units deployed against one another. That said, as Barnwell notes, defensive outcomes are harder to quantify in baseball. That mystery is what has made defense such a cutting edge topic for analysis. Because every Tom, Dick, and Harry can figure out hitting/pitching success, but not fielding success, there is an advantage to be gained by the team that figures out the best way to analyze the latter. The same is true in football. The teams that figure out the best way to grade individuals in a team sport will have a leg up.

Barnwell also touches on statistical analysis as being critical for have-nots in their efforts to compete with the haves. Doesn't this same reasoning apply to college football programs? I'm thinking of the Big Ten in particular. While the members of the conferences are haves in terms of revenue, they are have-nots in terms of access to talent, especially as compared to the SEC or the elite programs in the Pac Ten (USC) and Big XII (Texas and Oklahoma). Without a bevy of four- and five-star players close to campus, Big Ten programs need to think like the Padres, Indians, and Rays instead of the Red Sox, Yankees, and Dodgers. I have a pet theory that staid Midwestern cultural norms prevent Big Ten programs from leveraging their dollars on top coaches, but wouldn't it be a natural fit for those programs to spend money on the best available statisticians so their coaches are armed with a better way to approach recruiting and play-calling? (This assumes that the grad students and professors on campus wouldn't perform the work for free.) If the Big Ten wants to "win the right way" (i.e. remain the whore who won't do that), then what better way than by imitating Billy Beane?

From Each According to his Ability, to Each According to his Service Time in the Majors

Tommy Hanson's outstanding performance against the Marlins last night drove home a point for me: the Braves' salaries are inversely related to their performance. Jair Jurrjens sports a league-leading 1.75 ERA and is being paid $3.25M.* Tommy Hanson's 2.59 ERA gets him $456,500. Conversely, Tim Hudson and Derek Lowe are being paid $9M and $15M and they both have ERAs a tick over four. If baseball players were paid in a truly free market, then Jurrjens and Hanson would be significantly more valuable than Hudson and Lowe, especially in light of the fact that they are younger. This would have been true even before the season (moreso for Hanson than for Jurrjens, as Jair had an injury-riddled 2010).

* - Jurrjens' ERA is unsustainable at its current microscopic level, but he is doing such a good job of preventing homers and refraining from walks that it's reasonable to think that he'll keep pitching at a high level for the Braves this year, even with a pedestrian 5.5 K/9 ratio.

A true free market does not exist because of the collective bargaining agreement between MLB and the players' union, which forces players to play for six years before they achieve free agency and three years before they are even arbitration eligible. This system makes sense in that it encourages teams to invest in their farm systems, knowing that the players they produce will be captive assets for more than a half a decade, but we shouldn't kid ourselves that baseball players are paid their true worth on an open market.

I bring up the imbalance between pay and performance because it's relevant in the discussion about paying college football players. The argument against the current system (and I have made this argument) is that players generate trmendous revenue for their schools, but they are not rewarded with a cut of the revenue, except in scrip from the company store. A free education may be valuable to some players, but for others, life in a lecture hall is just not their highest and best use. However, college sports are not unique in that they have rules preventing players from capturing the value that they create. American pro sports have similar rules, although there is a difference in scale. It's one thing to be paid six- or seven-figure salaries when you deserve eight; it's another to be paid in a barter system when you deserve thousands or millions of dollars.

There is an additional analogy to be made between college and pro sports compenation: both rely on a deferred compensation element. In baseball, young players perform for lower salaries, knowing that good performances will lead to a payday down the road. Tommy Hanson knows that he's playing for a relative pittance now, but he is positioning himself for a massive deal in 2-3 years, a deal that will be especially big because he won't have to compete against pitchers who come after him because those guys will be restricted from entering the market in the same way that Hanson is now. Likewise, college football players play for classes and room & board in the hopes that their performances will lead to NFL riches. The college system seems less equitable because Ohio State and Alabama don't end up having to pay out the deferred compensation, whereas the Braves will have to do so for Hanson and Jurrjens (or their replacements if Jair and/or Tommy leave). That said, the point remains that the NCAA's amateurism rules seem antiquated, but they are not without parallels in American pro sports. This is not a situation like English footie in days of yore when clubs could not pay their players and the players had no expectation of ever cashing in. The payout may be delayed, but it's not denied.

EBIDTA Says Spend!

I am not as critical of Liberty Media as other in this market.  My view of the entity that owns the Braves is that they should not be expected to take a loss on the team.  The Braves are mid-level in terms of attendance and they are mid-level in revenue, so why would we expect them to be anything other than mid-level in payroll?  Is it written somewhere that owners of baseball teams are obligated to lose money as a social debt to the populace?

That said, if Forbes' analysis of the team's financial situation is right, then there is an argument to be made that fans should expect Liberty Media to take on payroll, especially if the Braves find themselves in contention as the season progresses and there is a player on the market (maybe a centerfielder if Nate McLouth doesn’t turn around?) who could mean the difference between making the playoffs and staying home in October. It might be that the Dan Uggla signing is an indication that ownership is already prepared to spend more money.  If that’s the case, then thank you sir, may I have another?  The Braves’ EBITDA last year was a healthy $22.2 million.*  Between that indication of profit, the increase in the value of the franchise overall, and the tax benefits that Liberty Media has obtained as a result of buying the team, this deal appears to have been a very lucrative one for Liberty Media.  A lot of credit has to go to the team’s management, which has put together a farm system that allows the team to be competitive without spending bushels of money.

For a pair of reasons, this is a particularly good time for Liberty Media to make a push with the team.  First, if Forbes is right that Liberty Media is looking to sell, then another playoff season will be the cherry on top of an appreciating asset.  Second, the NL looks especially winnable because the highest revenue teams are in bad financial straits.  As Forbes makes clear, the Dodgers and Mets face debilitating debt situations.  The Mets have seen their sources of money burn on Bernie Madoff’s pyre, while the Dodgers are crippled by the McCourt divorce.  With the Cubs in their usual state, the NL’s teams in the three largest markets in baseball are all unthreatening.  That leaves a space for smaller markets to make an impression.  The Giants and Phillies, which are in the second tier of markets behind New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, are in the best positions to take advantage.  Atlanta is also in that second tier.  This market is any better or worse in terms of affection for baseball than Philadelphia or San Francisco.  Fans always think that their teams will make back increased spending on payroll because that one expensive player will be the difference between success and failure.  In the Braves’ current position, that thought might actually be true.   

* - It’s a testament to the economic health of baseball that this figure only places the Braves at 13th in Major League Baseball.  The common view is that it is impossible for NFL teams to lose money because of the economic structure of the sport, but baseball is getting close to that point.  Only three teams lost money last year: the Red Sox (who suffered a softening of their local market), the Mets (who are mired in mediocrity, lost their new stadium bounce, and don’t have the advantage of revenue sharing payments to prop them up), and the Tigers (whose local market is a disaster).

For the first time, I am a little sympathetic to the self-interested bleating of the Yankees’ management regarding revenue sharing payments.  Three of the worst-run franchises in baseball – the Nationals, Pirates, and Orioles – are in the top ten in EBIDTA.  The Braves and Marlins were essentially equivalent in EBIDTA.  The Braves were mid-level in revenue, they put a good product on the field, and they drew 2.5 million fans.  The Marlins were low-level in revenue (aside from welfare payments), they put a mediocre product on the field, and they were dead last in attendance with 1.5 million fans passing through the turnstiles at Land Shark Stadium.  Moreover, Miami/Ft. Lauderdale is a slightly bigger market than Atlanta, so the Marlins can’t claim lack of opportunity.  Baseball’s economic situation is such that bad management is not punished financially.  The Marlins’ ownership gets the same EBIDTA as the Braves, despite doing an inferior job in every meaningful respect.  Again, how about relegation and promotion?

Tales of Yankee Power

You want to know what I hate about the "national" media's coverage of Major League Baseball in one tidy article? This article by John Heyman about unresolved spring training position battles is the Platonic ideal of obsession with the teams in the Northeast. Ostensibly, the article is supposed to be about the "more interesting debates" going on as we come closer to the point at which teams will break camp. To Heyman (whose name makes me chuckle every time I say it because it's phonetically the same as the villain in the Book of Esther), "interesting" seems to cling tightly to I-95. Here are the stories on which he spends almost two thousand words in a major sports publication:

Second base for the Mets
Second base for the Phillies
Catcher for the Red Sox
Fourth and fifth starters for the Yankees
Back-up catcher for the Yankees
Fourth and fifth starters for the Rangers
First base for the Giants

There are two aspects that I love about these selections. First, the idea that Heyman would spend time discussing the back-up catcher spot for the Yankees when there are so many teams deciding actual starters is hilarious. This is one step removed from a detailed analysis of what color ink Joe Girardi uses to fill in his lineup card. Second, Heyman throws in the defending league champions at the end as an afterthought, after he has spent 1,387 words dissecting issues of great importance to people on the Acela this morning. "Oh by the way, just to prove that I'm not really Michael Kay in disguise, here are two key positions battles for the two teams that actually played in the World Series in 2010." ESPN has to get Heyman on The Sports Reporters as soon as possible. I'd bet that he would see eye to eye with Lupica and Ryan.

Am I crazy in saying that this sort of obsession with teams from one region is unqiue to baseball (or at least it is especially pronounced in baseball)? If you assume for the sake of argument that people in the Northeast have a special love for their baseball teams in the same way that people in the Deep South have a special love for our college football teams, then I suppose you can make the argument that SI is simply serving the taste of the market. That said, I seriously doubt that we are going to see major publications run articles about position battles in spring practice that are 70% SEC. And that's true even though the SEC has achieved what people like Heyman only dream about for Northeastern baseball franchises: five championships in a row. There is something of a rational basis to slather the SEC with the sort of attention that the national media obsessively bestows on the Yankees, Red Sox, Phillies,* and Mets. In short, I don't think that this is simply a function of the media giving attention to the most popular or relevant teams. Rather, it's at least in part an artifact of where major publications are based and the writers and editors of those publications being affected by where they work.

* - I can live with a lot of attention being given to the Phillies because the pitching staff they have assembled is a genuinely interesting story. That rotation is playing for history, so I don't begrudge them some affection. The Mets, on the other hand, would only be interesting if they were being covered by Michael Lewis wearing his financial writer hat.

And as if on Cue...

Arthur Blank channels Hyman Roth:

The Atlanta Falcons moved a step closer toward a possible new home field Tuesday, after the Georgia World Congress Center Authority signaled it is ready to move into detailed talks on the matter.

The Authority agreed to enter into a “memorandum of understanding” with the Falcons on plans for a potential $700 million open-air stadium downtown.

Both parties emphasized the memorandum does not constitute a done deal, but rather allows them to begin negotiations over details of the project, including financing.

But the Falcons have made it clear that they want a new open-air stadium, rejecting alternatives such as expanding the Georgia Dome, adding a retractable roof to the facility or building a new dome with a retractable roof.

I suppose that we are supposed to feel good that the new stadium is going to be paid for by a hotel tax, so the expense of Blank's new palace will fall on out-of-towners, but why can't we keep the tax and spend it on something useful like, say, roads or college tuition? And has anyone gone to the Dome and said "gee, this facility is inadequate and outdated?" There is nothing wrong with the existing facility and the Falcons are perfectly capable of competing in the NFL with their existing revenue streams. This isn't about keeping the Falcons, improving the fan experience, or maintaining the team's ability to compete. It's simply about maximizing profit for a private entity.

Speaking of revenue streams, it's interesting to me that the socialist structure of the NFL ends up undercutting the rationale of its teams to demand public money. Because Major League Baseball payrolls are uncapped, a baseball team can argue that it needs a sweetheart stadium deal in order to spend on better players. In that instance, the local electorate can weigh the expense against the positive psychological impact of having a winning team. In the NFL, teams are going to have roughly the same player payroll regardless of how much they are making on their stadium. There's no reason for a city to enrich the local NFL team in order to produce wins. Instead, the NFL is ruthless enough to leave the second biggest market in the country without a team as a way to extort other cities, so they provide the stick rather than the carrot.

It’s All Bob Costas’s Fault

According to betting odds, we are headed for a Green Bay-Pittsburgh Super Bowl.  The NFL would have to be pleased by such a match-up, as it would pit two of the largest, most passionate fan bases in the league.  The optics of thousands of Cheeseheads and Terrible Towels descending on Dallas, filling local hotels and driving up the secondary market for tickets, would make for a great event.  Moreover, these two teams are consistent draws on television, so the NFL’s broadcast partners would be happy covering a Super Bowl with extra eyeballs. 

Now think about this: Pittsburgh and Green Bay are two of the smallest media markets in the NFL.  Pittsburgh is the 22nd largest MSA in the country, while Milwaukee is 39th.  It’s a testament to the NFL’s structure that two of its most popular teams come from smaller MSAs.  (One can make the same point regarding the Saints, who have been the “it” team over the past two years and hail from the 46th largest MSA.  The Saints’ crowing achievement was winning a Super Bowl over the team from the 34th largest MSA.)  This would never happen in baseball.

The immediate explanations for why teams from small markets are so successful are the salary cap and revenue sharing.  Teams from the larger markets cannot leverage their natural advantages into success on the field because: (1) they can’t spend much more on players than their smaller rivals can; and (2) they can’t sign lucrative local TV deals based on being in bigger MSAs, as the NFL has national, evenly distributed TV contracts.  Thus, when a team like the Jets makes it to the NFL’s final four, they are doing so on the basis of good player acquisitions and a smart head coach, as opposed to when one of the baseball teams from the nation’s largest MSA succeeds by virtue of the innovative “let’s identify the two best free agents and pay the most money for them.”

That said, there is another factor at play here that further distinguishes the NFL from MLB: the NFL does a much better job of mythologizing its past.  The Steelers were one of my first two rooting interests.  (In case you’re scoring at home, Virginia hoops with Ralph Sampson was the other.)  I became a Steelers fan at age five in 1980 because my Mom would take me to the Charlottesville public library and I would read about Super Bowls.  Because the Steelers had won twice as many Super Bowls as any other team at that time and they had cool helmets, a fan was born.  My rooting interest was cemented by watching NFL Films videos of the Super Bowls.  Super Bowl Sunday was nirvana for me because ESPN would run all of its half-hour Super Bowl programs in order, leaving me with the dilemma of when to watch and when to play outside.  (The good Super Bowls to skip: V, VIII, and XI.)  I suspect that I’m not especially unusual in this respect.  NFL Films does a terrific job of selling the story of past champions.  The Packers – the team that won the first two Super Bowls under Vince Lombardi – and the Steelers – the team that won four of six in the 70s – are the major beneficiaries of the gauzy treatment of the past.

Despite its reputation as a traditional, stuck-in-the-past sport, Major League Baseball doesn’t have any equivalent to NFL Films.  MLB doesn’t create fans of the Big Red Machine or the Earl Weaver Orioles with string music and John Facenda.  (If you want a modern example, compare the America’s Game series on NFL Network with the one-hour documentaries that MLB Network runs on specific baseball seasons.  The former are outstanding; the latter are forgettable.)  In the void left by MLB not producing features on its past that come close to the product of NFL Films, we end up with “blurry-eyed nostalgia about the Only Great Era In Baseball History, i.e. the time in which an especially narcissistic generation of New York writers were growing up.”  Take it away, Scott Lemieux:

But what really gives away the show, I think, is the complaint about too many teams. In large measure, this complaint is about New York sportswriters craving a return to to what Ken Burns called “the Capital of Baseball” era — the 2/3rds of the 50s in which baseball was completely dominated by New York teams and large parts of the nation were deprived of major league baseball. This New York domination was terrible for baseball, of course, creating stagnating or declining attendance during a boom economy, but this is something we’re never supposed to notice. And to draw a line under it, he devotes another long paragraph to the elevently-billionth assertion that the Brooklyn Dodgers mattered more than any team has ever mattered to anyone ever, although this has nothing to do with either Willie Mays or the book under review.

In the end, the NFL ends up as the most popular league in the country because of its ability to create Steelers fans in Charlottesville, Virginia, whereas MLB experiences declining popularity because all it can offer is fetishization of when New York City had three teams instead of two.  The NFL has a democratic structure in which teams from any market can win, whereas MLB has an oligarchy in which the only factor that prevents the rich teams from winning every year is the lottery nature of the playoffs.

Pearls before Swine

Carl Crawford is the most coveted free agent position player in no small part because of his defensive ability.  He’s terrific at covering wide open spaces in left field because he’s lightning fast and gets great jumps on balls.  So which team signs him in the free agent market?  The team with the smallest left field in baseball, naturally.  This makes as much sense as taking a five-star pocket passer and putting him in the Spread ‘n’ Shred. 

Can't you Hear me Knocking on your Window? Can't you? Now? Anything?

I went for a run yesterday morning and was listening to Bill Simmons' podcast with Mike Lombardi. (My opinion on Simmons' podcasts: they are highly dependent on the guest. I pass on any of his interviews with celebrities and his friends. I like the podcasts with subject matter experts. Lombardi falls into the latter category.) Simmons started off by making the point that football has snuck up on us this year because this has been a sports year full of interesting stories. If the American sports scene were struggling for stories, then we would get a lot of college football and NFL coverage because those are the two most popular sports in the country. Instead, we've had the Winter Olympics, above-average NHL and NBA seasons (although the NBA playoffs lacked a compelling series between the first round and the finals, save for the Boston-Cleveland matchup), Tiger's return, the Big Dance (although Simmons was wrong that this year's edition was in any way above average), and the World Cup.


I nodded when Simmons made this point, as he was hitting on something that I've been feeling, as well. Football hasn't grabbed me like it normally does over the summer. I normally get Phil Steele the moment that it hits the rack at Borders, but I got it as an afterthought this year. I had to remind myself to order the Football Outsiders preview, despite the fact that they have done a great job in beefing up the college coverage. I'll freely grant that as someone who has always been a soccer fan and has become more intense in that preference over the past several years - in part because so many games are on the TV and in part as a coping mechanism because Michigan football and the Braves have been weak while Barca has been very strong - I'm not a representative example. Or at least I felt that way until Simmons voiced similar thoughts.

It was interesting to me that Simmons omitted baseball from his list of stories that have reduced the anticipation for the season, especially in light of the fact that he just wrote a column explaining why Red Sox fans are feeling a sense of ennui about this year's edition. If any fan base should be looking forward to football season, it's one with the expectations of Red Sox fans that sees its team well behind the Yankees and Rays in the AL East. Spoiled fans, perhaps? (I don't mean this as a criticism. This hasn't been an especially compelling baseball season in terms of national stories.
Upon reflection, though, the distribution of teams having good season might at least partially explain why college football isn't on the front of our brains in the summer like normal. (Obviously, Simmons wasn’t talking about college football when he said that football has suck up on him this year. As a product of his environment, college football is about the last thing on his radar.) There are two major regions for intense college football interest: the South and the Midwest. The flagship baseball team for the South - the Braves - is in first place. The Texas Rangers are in first place and the Rays are awfully close. In the Midwest, the Twins, Tigers (until recently), White Sox, Cards, and Reds have all had good summers. There was a heavy prevalence of Midwestern teams in the rankings of local ratings that I linked last week. In short, this has not been a baseball season dominated by the coasts, so fan bases that would normally give up on baseball and start obsessing about the depth chart on the offensive line have had their interest held by their local baseball collectives. The fact that the baseball playoffs have been a random number generator for years adds to the interest.

Another factor in the comparative lack of college football dominating my thoughts as it normally would at this stage (and, if I’m representative of other fans, the thoughts of others) is that this season doesn’t have an obvious dominant team(s) to drive attention. At this time last year, we had Tebow and Florida as the kings of the hill and McCoy’s Texas and Bradford’s Oklahoma in challenging positions. With quarterbacks filling a sometimes excessive role as driving attention, 2009 lent itself to a lot of preseason hype, but 2010 is not the same.

The “no alpha male teams” explanation does not apply to the NFL, which finished a banner season in 2009 with the lovable Saints beating Manning’s Colts in exciting fashion. Those teams are back again, as are a number of other very good teams with ready-made plot lines. There’s no reason for the NFL to sneak up on us this year, other than the fact that there has been less oxygen this summer for football stories because of LeBron, Tiger, and the vuvuzela.

Smaller Playoffs, Baseball Edition

Here's Joe Sheehan making a sharp point about MLB avoiding the temptation to imitate the NFL:

For too long now, MLB has tried to be like the NFL, emphasizing the postseason at the expense of the regular season while embracing the idea that every team should be competitive every year. It was a ridiculous notion in 1994, when MLB realigned and foisted a new round of postseason play on us, and it's a ridiculous notion now. MLB has raised a generation of fans who don't appreciate the idea of September, of a long, drawn-out pennant race in which there can be just one winner, who don't understand that sometimes a great team can fall short of the postseason or even be eliminated in it, without changing its greatness. The game has pandered to the modern idea that what matters isn't the 26 miles you run at a steady pace, but the 300-meter sprint to the finish.

The Braves fan in me who had to listen to endless "Buffalo Bills of baseball!" jibes after the local baseball collective would regularly have the best record in the NL and then lose to some annoying wild card entrant in a short series was nodding furiously at that argument. I like the idea of American sports being different, rather than each game having the same regular season/postseason structure. If I were king, I'd follow Sheehan's lead and re-do baseball like this.

20 teams in MLB, divided into a ten-team NL and a ten-team AL.

No interleague play. Each team plays each other team in its league 18 times.

League winners play each other in the World Series. Winning the NL or AL pennant is a big deal in and of itself.

Bottom two teams in each league are relegated at the end of the season to the 20 team league below the AL and NL. (I can't decide how to mesh the concept of a farm system with a European-style relegation set-up where there is a ladder of divisions. By expanding MLB to 40 teams and setting up two divisions, we prevent teams from having their farm teams in the top division, which would be a little awkward when players get called up.)

In other words, college football, but with a much bigger sample size. Added benefits:

1. No more Yankees-Red Sox postseason games. Instead, their interminable four-hour games in the regular season will actually mean something.

2. Bob Costas has a sexy time explosion that baseball has gone back to its roots with no playoffs other than the World Series, not to mention the end of interleague play.

3. Possible redux of the Braves-Giants pennant race of 1993, only without the indignity of the winner having to play the lard-ass Phillies for the right to win the NL.

4. Perennially mismanaged teams like the Pirates get their just desserts.

The one issue that I struggle with: I'd like to create the equivalent of the race for Champions League spots in Europe. Part of what's cool about the big footie leagues is that there are races for first, the top four, the top six, and avoiding relegation. Unfortunately, there is no Champions League equivalent for baseball.

Benching a Legend

Chelsea are facing an interesting problem right now: captain/club legend/Mr. Chelsea John Terry is playing like utter dung. I've never been Terry's biggest fan. I immediately approach all English stars with the assumption that they are overrated by the English media. (I am rethinking that position with every goal that Wayne Rooney scores, now that he's playing with a proper winger instead of a preening ballhog [admittedly, a preening ballhog who scored 42 goals in a season].) Terry always struck me as a guy who played hard all the time and did flashy things like clearing balls off the line, but his positional sense was not perfect and he wasn't the quickest of central defenders. Rio Ferdinand would have gotten Terry's hype as England's best defender if he didn't have cornrows. Still, I was willing to concede that Terry was a good central defender, that he was a capable organizer of a backline, and that he was rock solid in the air.

This season, however, Terry's form has left him. His well-publicized dalliance with the mother of former best friend Wayne Bridge's child and his resulting shaming (including the loss of the captaincy for England) is clearly weighing on him, as strikers are beating him left and right. The Chelsea backline, which was the only defense in Europe to contain Barcelona during its treble-winning campaign, is now leaking goals left and right. This month, Chelsea bled two goals in a loss to Everton, two in a first leg loss to Inter, and then four over the weekend at home to Manchester City. Terry was directly responsible for conceding goals in each of the games. The Blues, who came into the month as favorites in the Premiership and one of the favorites in the Champions League, have now lost their lead in the former and will need to reverse a 2-1 deficit against Inter in the latter. In short, John Terry is blowing his club's chances at winning the two big trophies at stake.

Carlo Ancelotti's dilemma with Terry is interesting to me because it comes up all the time in sports and it is one of the most difficult to resolve: how does a team deal with a declining icon. Florida State went through a decade of declining results because they struggled with a resolution to Bobby Bowden's tenure. Penn State went through a similar funk in the first half of the aughts with Joe Paterno because Joe got the message and became the Queen of England. Moving from coaches to players, the Red Sox are going through such an issue with Jason Varitek and David Ortiz. The Yankees will go through such an issue with Jorge Posada and Derek Jeter. (Mariano Rivera, I'm convinced, is a cyborg.) The Braves went through it with Smoltz and Glavine and may go through such an issue with Chipper, although he appears to have the self-awareness that Bobby Bowden lacks and will take himself out of the picture if he can no longer perform. The Angels went through it with Garret Anderson. The Chargers just went through an issue with LaDainian Tomlinson. The Packers were going through it with Brett Favre before he arrested his decline in 2007. The Spurs may go through it with Tim Duncan.

For Terry and each of the players I listed (save for Ortiz), the difficulty for their employer is doubled by the fact that they are all homegrown. It's one thing to cast aside a mercenary who came to your team; it's another to bench a player who has never worn another uniform. As sports fans, we want to think that the players care as much about the colors as we do. That comforting thought/delusion is easier with players who come up through the youth team/minor leagues/draft. I have one Braves jersey and John Smoltz's name is on the back. I have three Barca jerseys: Messi, Puyol, and Iniesta, all of whom are products of La Masia.

It's easy to call for the benching of a player whose relationship with the team is purely business. It feels disloyal to do the same for players whom we believe to have some sort of familial connection to the team. It's like banishing a son. With crunch games against Inter and Manchester United coming up in the next month, it will be fascinating to see how Chelsea handles its slumping son.

One More Thought on the Yankees

I was talking to my brother tonight about why the Yankees' victory is such an indictment of the way that Major League Baseball runs and I felt defensive enough to explain why my beloved Barca, a team that spends more than every other team in La Liga save one, is not subject to the same criticism. The first two arguments were obvious: (1) Barca has a very productive youth system and you can't criticize them for buying a championship when seven of their eleven starters against United in Rome were home grown; and (2) Barca might out-spend most of the rest of Spain, but there are a number of clubs elsewhere in Europe that spend equivalent amounts, so Barca doesn't stand out like the Yankees do when the latter spends 33% more on salaries than any other team in baseball. I've made these arguments before and I like them.

The third argument came to me tonight. Barca play an exciting style that has a defined formation and thus, a way of playing that is uniquely theirs. Even if Barca spent twice as much as any other club in Europe, it would still need to fit those players into a system where they could work together. Thus, its success would depend on good coaching.

The same is true in the NFL and, to a lesser extent, the NBA. If Daniel Snyder were permitted to spend as much as his heart desired, he could assemble a team full of all-stars. However, football being a structured game that requires teamwork, the Redskins would not succeed without smart coaches fitting the players into the right schemes and then calling the right plays. If Washington won the Super Bowl in an uncapped NFL, there would be some criticism, but we would still have to give credit to the team's management for being smart.

What makes baseball fun to analyze statistically is that there is no scheme, style, or teamwork required. The performance of an individual batter against an individual pitcher can be isolated and the outcome can be graded. One doesn't have to take into account whether the player was on a team that played to his strengths because the player's teammates don't matter. The upshot is that there is no skill required in deploying a roster once it has been assembled. Thus, I don't have to give an ounce of credit to the Yankees' management for being smart in any sense other than marketing the team well and squeezing concessions out of the city in connection with the new stadium. The Yankees accumulated a pile of talent because they have more money than any other team and then simply rolled that talent out onto the field. It didn't take much acumen to sign Sabathia, Burnett, and Teixeira in the winter; it didn't take much acumen to put them in their places in the summer and fall. In the end, don't we want to respect our champions for being a little smarter than the rest?

Six Reasons Why I'm Happy That the Yankees Won Last Night

Also known as the post that I never thought I would write.

For the record, I hate the Yankees as much as any self-respecting Southerner. That said, I found myself in the unique position of not rooting against them last night. I'm still coming to grips with this new feeling, so an explanation is in order:

1. The Yankees achieved nothing other than successfully exercise raw economic power. Honestly, how much of a baseball achievement is it to pay more money than any other team for the three biggest free agents on the market in a winter in which there were three big free agents on the market? It must have taken some real skill for the Yankees to figure out that C.C. Sabathia and Mark Teixeira are good players. And lo and behold, who were the Yankees' heroes in the post-season? Burnett (at least in game two), A-Rod, Johnny Damon, and Hideki Matsui. Mercenaries, all of them. Oh, and let's not forget about the Jeter/Posada/Pettite/Rivera core, who do prove that the Yankees are about more than just offering more money than anyone else in baseball...or at least they were over a decade ago. The Yankees winning is a nice reminder of how baseball actually works, and for that I'm happy.

2. I found the idea of the Phillies repeating to be distasteful. I have nothing against this Philadelphia team, other than the fact that they represent Philadelphia. There's nothing aversive about Utley, Rollins, Howard, Lee, or Hamels. However, I have this gnawing notion that a team that repeats as a champion ought to be a great team. No college football team has repeated since 1994-95 Nebraska. No college basketball team has repeated since 1991-92 Duke. No NFL team has repeated since the 2003-04 Patriots. No NBA team has repeated since the 2000-02 Lakers. No baseball team has repeated since the 1998-2000 Yankees. All of those teams were great. Does this Phillies team fit that bill? A team that won 92 and 93 games in a relatively weak league? (And before 2008, the Phillies had not won 90 games in a season since 1993.) There's nothing awe-inspiring about this Philadelphia team, so my sense of order in the universe has been confirmed by them not winning the title.

[Edit: a helpful commenter pointed out that I forgot that Florida repeated as national champions in college basketball two years ago. I'm comfortable labeling that Florida team as great. I'm uncomfortable with the fact that I complained at the time that Florida would have been viewed as an all-time great team if they were North Carolina or UCLA and now I've forgotten that they repeated. Another commenter has pointed out that I glossed over USC's back-to-back titles in football. I could make the "they didn't win consecutive crystal balls" argument, but I don't really believe that. If you are #1 in the AP poll at the end of the year, you're a national champion, just like you are if you win the BCS trophy. USC and LSU were both champs in 2003. I should refrain from making statements without thinking about them.]

3. It shows that numerous figures in the media were idiots for the "A-Rod is a choker" meme. I have to admit that I'm happy for Alex Rodriguez. One of the dumbest labels in sports is the "he doesn't respond to pressure" tag. The tag is inevitably applied based on a small sample size and selective use of evidence. It assumes that someone who is better than 99.9% of the population at a particular sport suddenly loses the ability to handle performance anxiety. Most importantly, the people who apply it never get that their binary clutch/unclutch worldview is flawed, so when an athlete or coach shatters their perception, they don't admit that they were wrong. Rather, they just move on to the next person to label unfairly.

Bill Simmons, make my point for me:

More than a few Colts fans thanked me during signings this week for "coming around on Peyton" or "finally appreciating Peyton." As if I had been irrationally biased against him this entire time. Look, you can't tell me Manning didn't reinvent himself to some degree in 2008 and 2009. I always thought he was the A-Rod of football: great when it didn't matter, sketchy when it did. You may disagree. But that's how I felt. This season, he has reached "I will never, ever, EVER bet against that guy in a night game" status. Which is saying something. He owns that team. Owns it.

HE'S THE SAME GUY YOU RIPPED AS A CHOKER FOR YEARS!!! It's not like Manning got some sort of personality transplant and he can suddenly respond to pressure whereas before, he wilted. He's the same guy who led his team from behind on a number of occasions in college and the pros, only now, he's not being judged based on a small sample size of road playoff games against a defensive genius at the top of his game deploying excellent personnel. Simmons' refusal to admit that he was wrong illustrates perfectly why clutch/unclutch analysts keep on making the same mistake. So yay for A-Rod (a player who had 1,000+ OPSs in the 2000 and 2004 postseasons) for winning a title and getting a collection of misguided critics off his back. I'm anxiously looking forward to the next highly conditioned, incredibly successful athlete who is going to be portrayed as the Scarecrow.

And before I finish with Simmons, note that he deployed the "that's how I felt" crutch, which is a surefire way to know that someone is wrong because they are substituting their feelings for an actual argument. He's like the opponents of gay marriage who defend their position with the "I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman" claim. That's not an argument; it's a statement of feeling. I don't care what you believe; tell me why you're right...or maybe you can't.

4. Speaking of Simmons, the obnoxiousness of the Red Sox Nation phenomenon has softened my dislike of the Yankees. If nothing else, Boston's emergence as a Yankees-lite franchise has reduced the Yankees' role as an evil hegemon in baseball. (To Simmons' credit, he has acknowledged the Yankees-lite point on a number of occasions.)

5. The Phillies' loss probably annoys Buzz Bissinger. Also, the Yankees winning makes Mets fans even more miserable. Schadenfreude!

6. The Series didn't go seven games, so we won't be subjected to an endless barrage of "what a classic!" myth-making that occurs like clockwork when baseball teams from the Northeast are involved.

I Now Feel Sympathy for the People of Odessa, Texas

Irony: an outcome of events contrary to what was, or might have been, expected. For example, a noted critic of blogs illustrating the usefulness of new media by drafting a piece in a traditional media outlet that is rife with shoddy arguments. Maybe The New Republic was looking to pay homage to running a famously inaccurate piece by Betsy McCaughey attacking the Clinton Administration's 1994 health care reform proposal. Maybe TNR was scratching its noted itch to print pieces that go against conventional wisdom. Otherwise, I'm at a loss to otherwise explain how they ran this screed by Buzz Bissinger attacking Moneyball six years after its publication.

Buzz starts by arguing that money is important after all:

Whatever happens in the National League and American League Championship series unfolding over the next week or so, one outcome has already been decided--the effective end of the theories of Moneyball as a viable way to build a playoff-caliber baseball team when you don't have the money. That no doubt sounds like heresy to the millions who embraced Michael Lewis's 2003 book, but all you need to do is keep in mind one number this postseason: 528,620,438. That's the amount of money in payroll spent this season by the teams still in it--the New York Yankees, the Los Angeles Angels, the Philadelphia Phillies, and the Los Angeles Dodgers. Moneyball? You bet it's Moneyball, true Moneyball, like it always has been in baseball and always will be.

But this is exactly the point that Lewis was trying to make in the book! Lewis viewed Billy Beane as a man ahead of his time because he was able to field a competitive team despite the fact that the Oakland A's had far less money than its rivals and money is important in building a winner. Beane figured out that the wealthy teams could afford players who had everything - athleticism, a good batting eye, power, speed, defensive ability, etc. - and that he had to prioritize certain skills over others because he couldn't afford complete players. Beane figured out that a batting eye was the most important skill for a baseball player and that it was undervalued in the market, so he focused on finding players with that skill. The fact that big money teams have coopted that model doesn't mean that Beane was wrong; it means that he was right and that the market corrected itself. (In his defense, Bissinger does acknowledge that Beane's methods were copied later in the article, but Bissinger doesn't understand that this fact defeats his argument that Moneyball is an overrated book.)

Bissinger then tries to pin all of Oakland's success on Mark Mulder, Tim Hudson, and Barry Zito:

Looking largely at the narrow time frame of 2000 through 2002, Lewis attempted to explain the phenomenon of how the A's had done so well (they made the playoffs all three of those years) with such little dough. The explanation was dazzling, although Lewis barely mentioned the three reasons the A's had been so successful--pitchers Barry Zito, Mark Mulder, and Tim Hudson. The three won an astounding 149 games during that span. Each of them were 20-game winners in at least one of those seasons. The odds of three young pitchers coming together like that on one team was basically a matter of baseball luck, in the same vein at least of Beane saying success in the postseason was a matter of luck because of the limited number of games played (his teams during the 2000-02 period never got past the first round).

Bissinger then attacks Beane's preference for drafting college pitchers:

Except it just hasn't proven itself to work consistently. His theory that only college pitchers should be drafted over high school ones because of their experience sounded plausible. But it flew in the face of the Atlanta Braves, who won their division 14 years in a row from 1991 to 2005, and relied on pitchers drafted straight out of high school all the while.

Buzz, there's this thing called the Internet. And on the Internet, there's this thing called BaseballReference.com. If you are indeed a baseball fan, then you might find it interesting. On BaseballReference.com, you can find from where every modern player was drafted. Lo and behold, it took me five minutes to figure out that Hudson, Mulder, and Zito were all drafted by the A's from college, thus validating Beane's preference. But kudos, in any event, for contradicting yourself within a matter of paragraphs. You're doing a fine job of being the flag-bearer for traditional journalism.

As for the reference to the Braves, Atlanta has exploited a market inefficiency in its own way by concentrating its drafting efforts on local products. The Braves have decided that it's foolish to assume that they can know everything about thousands of players from all around the world, so they are going to focus their scouting efforts on Atlanta and the surrounding areas, thus gaining an advantage over other teams by knowing more about the players that they are drafting. This approach isn't full-proof. Bissinger extols the Braves, but whom did the local baseball collective take in the first round in 2002? Jeff Francoeur, a toolsy outfielder who lacks the batting eye to be a successful major leaguer. In other words, the Braves took a player who validates Beane's criticism of many scouts.

Buzz then moves on to deriding the A's 2002 draft as overrated:

Beane had seven first-round draft picks that year, each of them extolled by Lewis for their buried-treasure status. Three of them are still playing in the majors, none with anything close to superstar careers and all of them long gone from the A's. Three others were busts. Poor Jeremy Brown never stopped being fat and slow and finished with a grand total of 10 major league at-bats before retirement.

Here is the compete 2002 first round. Bissinger has the gall to criticize Beane's draft in an October in which his first pick - Nick Swisher - is starting for the likely AL champions and his second pick - Joe Blanton - is starting for the NL champions. Beane drafted Swisher and Blanton from colleges. The fact that Oakland didn't have the money to keep either player doesn't change the fact that Beane made good picks. OK, Jeremy Brown didn't pan out. You know who else didn't pan out? The guys taken before (Dan Meyer) and after (Chadd Blasko) him. The hit rate for picks in the 30s just isn't very good. But you're a baseball fan, Buzz, you know that. You wouldn't dream of misleadingly labeling Brown a first-round bust, hoping that readers will conflate the value of an NFL or NBA first round pick with that of a MLB first round pick. Right?

This is the paragraph that convinced me that Bissinger is having a laugh, because it can be refuted with one name:

Two of Beane's greatest disciples, Paul DePodesta and J.P. Ricciardi, moved out from the long shadow of their boss to become general managers. DePodesta lasted two seasons with the Los Angeles Dodgers, his last season in 2005 marked by 91 losses and a team chemistry so healthy that barbs of racism were traded back and forth among players. He is now with the San Diego Padres. Ricciardi went to the Toronto Blue Jays and was recently fired after eight seasons. He never made the playoffs, a difficult feat to accomplish when you are in the same division as the Yankees and Boston Red Sox. But he also made some hideous decisions, signing Vernon Wells to an insane seven-year deal for $127 million and Frank Thomas to a two-year $18 million deal.

Theo Epstein. Theo Epstein. Theo Epstein. Theo Epstein. Theo Epstein. Theo Epstein. Theo Epstein. Theo Epstein. Theo Epstein. Theo Epstein. Theo Epstein. Theo Epstein. Theo Epstein. Theo Epstein. Theo Epstein. Theo Epstein. Theo Epstein. Theo Epstein. Theo Epstein. Theo Epstein. Theo Epstein. Theo Epstein. Theo Epstein. Theo Epstein. Theo Epstein. Theo Epstein. Theo Epstein. Theo Epstein. Theo Epstein. Theo Epstein.

Right, Billy Beane is not the "man who changed baseball" . . . other than the fact that big market teams appropriated his methods and one of them used his approach to win its first World Series in 86 years.

Branding

So I click on ESPN.com this morning to take a look at the headlines and who was staring back at me but Derek Jeter. The headline story on ESPN was about the Yankees going to the top of the network's power rankings after a big week. To tease the story, ESPN ran a quintessential picture of Jeter giving a fist bump to a teammate, steely eyes of determination fully deployed. Leader Leader Leader!!! The picture struck me a little funny because I saw the highlights of each of the Yankees-Red Sox games over the course of the weekend (they were hard to avoid) and I don't remember Jeter doing much in those highlights. So I took a quick gander at the OPS of the Yankees starting position players over the past week:

Teixeira - 1.241
Posada - 1.196
Damon - 1.160
Swisher - 1.098
Cano - 1.097
Rodriguez - .833
Matsui - .833
Jeter - .433
Cabrera - .425

It must be nice when the Worldwide Leader in Sports brands you as the reason that your team ascended to the top of its baseball rankings following a week in which you went five for thirty with no walks, one extra-base hit, and six strikeouts. Gillette will be so pleased.

For $20, BurritoBlogging will take you to a Ku Klux Klan cookout

I can't believe we got anything for the Out-o-matic 9000. I haven't seen his numbers this year, but my sense is that Church is a decent player. Anything is better that our former rightfielder, but we actually got a decent player to replace him? And Church is a lefty, which will help a team that struggles against right-handed starters.

Our trading partner makes me feel even better about this deal. Has Omar Minaya done anything good as the Mets' GM that didn't involve prospects drafted by his predecessor or the exercise of naked economic power? If the Mets play Francoeur every day, then we've simultaneously helped ourselved and hurt a major rival. The Braves just sent smallpox to New York. Or, I guess to riff on our nickname, we gave them tobacco.

I listened to the Bill Simmons-Colin Cowherd podcast last night. Although their discussion of blogs was at times fatuous, I was most interested when they both proclaimed how much they have grown to like soccer. Footie-haters, you know your days are numbered when sports talk radio stops treating the sport like Bolshevism run amok. And Simmons is the most popular writer for the WWL, so having him write about watching Spurs can't help but push soccer further into the mainstream. As Cowherd was talking about the NBA and the fact that Americans eat up sports that are all about stars and personalities, I thought that ESPN is really going to be able to sell Barca-Real. La Primera will make sense to the network that adores the Yanks and Red Sox. OK, I need to disinfect after that last sentence.

A full post on the Hawks is coming, but this offseason is going great. Best of all, the fears about Atlanta Spirit being skinflints have turned out to be unjustified. Can they really be losing that much money if they are adding payroll? Am I being greedy in imagining that they resign Marvin and then bring Andersen over from Barca to take Solomon Jones' minutes? That team would be a Lebron injury from being a real contender in the East.

You are looking live at Coors Field... Coors is one of the underrated parks in baseball. The stadium isn't any different from every other new park built since Camden, but the way it is worked into Lodo is really cool. Camden and Coors are the best of the new parks that I've been to. To achieve the same effect, the Ted should have been built...next to Midtown? Maybe along with Atlantic Station?

Raging Burrito was just treated to a great live version of "Some Girls.". Sadly, they have a 300-disc changer here, so the bartender couldn't tell me the bootleg title. "Some Girls" is a great track; a way for a Stones fan to make clear that he isn't a casual, greatest hits guy. Also acceptable: "Memo from Turner," "All Down the Line," and "Sister Morphine.". Speaking of drugs, I scared two co-workers this week by volunteering that rain is a euphemism for heroin, before explaining that I know that because of my favorite Dylan song. "Smack addict" isn't a great niche to fill at a law firm.

John Sciambi needs to meet gay Ben, my stylist. Speaking of which, when the guy cutting your hair wants your opinion regarding the Confederations Cup final, you know that soccer is infiltrating.

The only part of me that is sad about Frenchy's departure is that he was the avatar of the '05 Braves, the last and one of the most enjoyable of the 14 straight division champs. For a summer, he was the mayor. Now, he's a f***'in Met.