Defensive Indifference

The International Olympic Committee is the type of organization that would chastise Usain Bolt for celebrating a gold medal, but willingly ignore decades of human rights violations and blatant rule-bending by the host nation, so I suppose it should be no surprise that they’re basically blackmailing Major League Baseball to get the sport back on the program in 2016.

Jacques Rogge would get a kick out of seeing A-Rod in the Olympics. Probably Dice-K, too. The International Olympic Committee president said Saturday baseball would do itself a big favor toward getting back on the Olympic program by bringing the best from the major leagues, such as the New York Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez or star Red Sox pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka

“It would do good for baseball, like every sport, to have the stars,” Rogge said while attending the bronze-medal game at Wukesong Stadium, won 8-4 by the United States over Japan.

“We have LeBron James in basketball. We had Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen and Magic Johnson on the Dream Team. That trend has continued in basketball, and we have all the stars of the NHL. So we would love to have as many stars of the major leagues as possible. I’d love to see Rodriguez.”

I’ve mentioned in the past that I’m no fan of the Olympics, and this is why. The IOC hides behind the banner of amateur athletics, the virtues of fair play and good sportsmanship, but it is just like any other professional sports league: all about the money. They want stars no matter what affect it has on the game. (Ostensibly MLB is a game that is based on rhythm. A two-week break wouldn’t work like it does in the NHL.)

Frankly, any governing body that considers BMX, Synchronized Swimming and Shooting more valid for international competition than the sport I hold nearest and dearest isn’t worth its time.

The Diamondbacks are one of the youngest franchises in Major League Baseball, and as such haven’t had to worry too much about retiring jerseys. This week, they laid out their policy:

“Our policy is that jersey numbers will be retired only after a player enters the Hall of Fame as a Diamondback,” club president Derrick Hall said.

That would seem to rule out former D-backs like Matt Williams, Jay Bell and Luis Gonzalez.

I’m always interested by this type of thing, and in general, I tend to err on the conservative side. The Yankees have retired far too many numbers over the years. On the other hand, I think the Red Sox’s team policy is far, far too restrictive. For those who don’t know, to get your number up on the right field facade at Fenway Park, a player has to be a Hall of Famer and have spent 10 years with the team.

Any policy that’s going to keep Pedro Martinez’s No. 45 from being retired at Fenway is no good in my book.

CC Sabathia did it again, throwing a complete game for the Brewers to run his record to 8-0 since coming over to the National League. He also threw 130 pitches, compiling that total despite Milwaukee’s comfortable lead in the game (it won 9-3).

This is ground I’ve covered here before, but I’d like to cover it again, and echo David Pinto’s sentiments over at Baseball Musings.

Major league pitchers have thrown more than 120 pitches in a game 49 times this season. Seven of those games have been pitched by Milwaukee Brewers. By my count, no other team has stretched its starting pitchers that far more than three times.

When I first complained about the way Ned Yost handled his pitching staff, a couple Brewers bloggers chided me for perhaps being a bit overprotective.

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Dustin Pedroia and Kevin Youkilis both homered Sunday in Boston’s 15-4 loss. That gives Pedroia 13 on the season and Youkilis 23. Considering both were billed as grinders who would get on base but not provide much power coming through the minors, it’s surprising to see them with a shot (albeit slim in Pedroia’s case) at 20 and 30 home runs, respectively.

The Red Sox have had plenty of players that scouts have loved lately, but I think it’s fair to say Youkilis and Pedroia don’t fall into that category, so I guess you can score one for the sabermetricians in their ongoing, bitter and completely non-existent blood feud with scouts. (We’re past all that, right?)

I’m more interested in where they rank in the wide open AL MVP race. Pedroia and Youkilis are No. 1 and No. 3 in the race for the batting title. Youkilis has a higher OBP and SLG than Josh Hamilton, while Pedroia has more home runs than every other second baseman in the AL besides Ian Kinsler and two fewer extra-base hits than Alex Rodriguez.

I don’t think either player is deserving of the award, but because of the way the BBWAA trims down the field (player must usually play for a contender and be strong in the Triple Crown categories), they’re in the group of eight or so players who seem like favorites at this juncture.

With no one running away with the race, either could win the MVP with a particularly strong finish.

A pitcher with lousy peripherals who seems to get by in the major leagues on smarts? No. But he does appear to be one of the more intellectual ballplayers around.

Says Anderson in an interview with Baseball Prospectus’ David Laurilia of his reading habits:

Reading is exercising a totally different part of the brain, and for me it’s kind of an outlet from baseball. I’ve rarely read books about baseball; I like to read stuff that transports me to places of different thought. Right now I’m reading 1984, and other books I’ve read recently are Watership Down and Lonesome Dove. Probably my favorite authors are Charles Frazier, who wrote Thirteen MoonsCold Mountain, and Barbara Kingsolver, who wrote The Bean Trees and Pigs in Heaven, which I thought was pretty inspirational. It’s amazing to see how creative these people are; what they have in their minds is amazing. People like Tolkien and Orwell created languages to suit the characters in their books, and they’re able to put in multiple stories and tie them together in a non-clichéd, blockbuster-movie kind of way. I think it’s really cool, just how poetic they can be without being cheesy. I just really enjoy reading, man. It’s totally a good way to stay centered.

The whole thing is worth reading, and hey, there’s reason to be excited about Lars Anderson the player too, especially these days. He put up good, though not awe-inspiring, numbers at High-A Lancaster earlier this year and he’s been even better since being promoted to Double-A Portland, posting a .364/.457/.636 line despite facing much tougher competition and moving out of a hitting paradise in Lancaster.

Tom Tango has an interesting plan for how to get on-base percentage to supplant batting average in the consciousness of your average American baseball fan.

And the school of OBP must start with Fantasy Baseball.  Why don’t the Fantasyers simply go with OBP over BA?  If they do that, they’ll overpower those who pray to the church of BA, and OBP will become mainstream.  After we settle that one, then we can figure out Palestine and Israel.

As someone who works in “the biz,” I often forget how powerful fantasy sports have become, but I think Tango is on the right track here — as far as on-base percentage has come this decade, rotisserie baseball might be the key to it replacing batting average as the hallmark rate statistic.

Think about it: baseball fans these days probably peruse statistics more for their fantasy team than for any other single reason. What’s more useful to your average fantasy baseball player — OBP or BA? The answer is so obvious, I don’t even have to say it. BA might be an inferior way of judging a baseball player in the real world, but Ichiro is going to do a lot more to help you win your standard 5×5 fantasy league than Brian Giles, even if Giles might be just as good or even better than Ichiro.

I’ve never understood why OBP isn’t the go-to stat now (though I can understand why the earliest statisticians tracked BA instead because of the way the game was played in the 19th century). Unlike some of the scarier-sounding sabermetric stats, it’s extremely accessible and provides a pretty clear picture of a player’s basic skillset.

But here we are anyway. Like Mr. Tango, I’m not optimistic that OBP will supplant BA in your standard Yahoo public league anytime soon, even if it should.