Tuesday, August 15, 2006
Major League Baseball at its Most Triple A: A Report from Stephen Himes
Stephen Himes is Race to the Bottom's special correspondent on pain. He is an expert on this matter, given that he lives in Kansas and also attends law school. Further, he is a lifelong Kansas City Royals fan who has witnessed his team—in person—on multiple occasions this year. For this he demands your respect.
This is his first report, on a very special meeting between two basement dwellers.
Sabermetricians like to say that baseball regresses to the mean—in other words, the nature of the game gravitates teams to .500. A very good baseball team (say, 90-72) wins 55 percent of the time, whereas a very good football team (10-6 to 12-4) wins 60 to 75 percent of the time. The opposite is also true: A baseball team winning just 35 percent of its games is doing something extraordinary; a team winning only 30 percent of its games is performing at an historically bad level. That team has to be actively, aggressively inept to counteract baseball's natural tendency to regress to the mean.
That's where we stood on June 22 Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City. The hometown Royals, at 22-49, were threatening the 2003 Detroit Tigers, 1962 New York Mets, 1935 Boston Braves, the 1916 Philadelphia Athletics, et al. The visiting Pirates were the worst team in the National League, losers of seven straight. This was the final game of a series between the two worst teams in the majors, with the Royals poised for their second series sweep of the season. This was Major League Baseball at its most Triple A.
Sabermetricians like to say that statistical analysis helps you understand what's happening on the field beyond what your eyes can see. This game had 9 unearned runs on 4 errors, 15 runners left on base, 13 walks, 3 hit batsmen, 2 wild pitches, and 1 passed ball. That's a bad baseball game, even if its recorded in your high school JV team scorebook.
Still, there's one play that I saw with my own eyes that demonstrates beyond statistics how bad these two teams really are. In the sixth inning, with Jason Bay on second and Freddie Sanchez on first and no outs, Craig Wilson launches a major league pop-up (if you could call anything in this game "major league") to shallow right field. Royals second baseman Mark Grudzielanek floated back for the ball to make the routine play. Then Grudz starts waving his arms and yelling that he lost it in the afternoon sun. The umpire doesn't call the infield fly, and the ball lands behind Grudz. Bay and Sanchez, still standing on their bags, kind of half-heartedly run. Grudz picks up the ball, fires it shorstop Angel Berroa and then to third baseman Mark Teahan for the double play.
The production team at The K might as well have played the Benny Hill theme they use for the hot dog derby. The play is remarkable for a few reasons:
The atmosphere at The K almost narrated the badness on the field. Many of the 13,153 diehard fans sat through a forty-five minute rain delay at the start of the game--many of us in the rain, because most people simply bought the $7 Hy-Vee View Level seats and just rushed down to the field box while the ushers hid in the concourse. In fact, I screwed Royals owner and former Wal-Mart CEO David Glass out of $9 by parking across I-70 in the Days Inn lot, trekking over the George Brett Bridge in a steady downpour to avoid the parking fee. This was the last mid-week afternoon game of the season, so our dampness eventually became steam in the Kansas City heat.
Royals fans were really steamed when shortstop and team goat Angel Berroa dropped a pop-up with two outs, allowing two runs to score. Only true-blue Royals fans came to this game, and this was the breaking point. Cheapseaters were behind the dugout, many of us on afternoon benders and wearing damp clothes. The boos rained down. By VORP, a sabermetrician's way of valuing a player's performance against a constant, Berroa is the worst everyday player in the American League. We didn't need to calculate Berroa's VORP, PMLVr, or MLVr to know that, with all his botched grounders, swinging strike threes in the dirt, baserunning brainfarts, and two-run dropped pop-ups, Berroa has to go.
Perhaps new General Manager Dayton Moore will get the message that Angel must go. The flurry of moves Moore made at the trading deadline indicates that, in the least, he knows a team that allows four unearned runs and throws four wild pitches can only beat one team: the Pittsburgh Pirates. And the Royals won't see them for three more years.
This game seems so long ago, but the fact remains that these are the two worst teams in baseball. Both were big sellers at the deadline, and taking into account the value of talent right now in the organization and the vision of the general managers, it looks like the Pirates are going to win the race to the bottom.
Any team that gets swept at The K deserves nothing more.
This is his first report, on a very special meeting between two basement dwellers.
Sabermetricians like to say that baseball regresses to the mean—in other words, the nature of the game gravitates teams to .500. A very good baseball team (say, 90-72) wins 55 percent of the time, whereas a very good football team (10-6 to 12-4) wins 60 to 75 percent of the time. The opposite is also true: A baseball team winning just 35 percent of its games is doing something extraordinary; a team winning only 30 percent of its games is performing at an historically bad level. That team has to be actively, aggressively inept to counteract baseball's natural tendency to regress to the mean.
That's where we stood on June 22 Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City. The hometown Royals, at 22-49, were threatening the 2003 Detroit Tigers, 1962 New York Mets, 1935 Boston Braves, the 1916 Philadelphia Athletics, et al. The visiting Pirates were the worst team in the National League, losers of seven straight. This was the final game of a series between the two worst teams in the majors, with the Royals poised for their second series sweep of the season. This was Major League Baseball at its most Triple A.
Sabermetricians like to say that statistical analysis helps you understand what's happening on the field beyond what your eyes can see. This game had 9 unearned runs on 4 errors, 15 runners left on base, 13 walks, 3 hit batsmen, 2 wild pitches, and 1 passed ball. That's a bad baseball game, even if its recorded in your high school JV team scorebook.
Still, there's one play that I saw with my own eyes that demonstrates beyond statistics how bad these two teams really are. In the sixth inning, with Jason Bay on second and Freddie Sanchez on first and no outs, Craig Wilson launches a major league pop-up (if you could call anything in this game "major league") to shallow right field. Royals second baseman Mark Grudzielanek floated back for the ball to make the routine play. Then Grudz starts waving his arms and yelling that he lost it in the afternoon sun. The umpire doesn't call the infield fly, and the ball lands behind Grudz. Bay and Sanchez, still standing on their bags, kind of half-heartedly run. Grudz picks up the ball, fires it shorstop Angel Berroa and then to third baseman Mark Teahan for the double play.
The production team at The K might as well have played the Benny Hill theme they use for the hot dog derby. The play is remarkable for a few reasons:
- Grudzielanek couldn't even show enough control over a routine play to trigger the infield fly rule;
- the fact that Grudz got an out on the play kept his errorless streak intact, eventually breaking hometown hero Frank White's Royals record;
- Bay and Sanchez just gave up on the play, and had no idea what to do when they could have avoided getting doubled off;
- It is, plain and simple, the apotheosis of two teams that play bad enough to completely reverse baseball's regression to the mean. If the box score is a quantitative sample demonstrating how bad these teams are, then this play is a literary image of Pirate impotence—poetic rendering of Royal tragedy.
The atmosphere at The K almost narrated the badness on the field. Many of the 13,153 diehard fans sat through a forty-five minute rain delay at the start of the game--many of us in the rain, because most people simply bought the $7 Hy-Vee View Level seats and just rushed down to the field box while the ushers hid in the concourse. In fact, I screwed Royals owner and former Wal-Mart CEO David Glass out of $9 by parking across I-70 in the Days Inn lot, trekking over the George Brett Bridge in a steady downpour to avoid the parking fee. This was the last mid-week afternoon game of the season, so our dampness eventually became steam in the Kansas City heat.
Royals fans were really steamed when shortstop and team goat Angel Berroa dropped a pop-up with two outs, allowing two runs to score. Only true-blue Royals fans came to this game, and this was the breaking point. Cheapseaters were behind the dugout, many of us on afternoon benders and wearing damp clothes. The boos rained down. By VORP, a sabermetrician's way of valuing a player's performance against a constant, Berroa is the worst everyday player in the American League. We didn't need to calculate Berroa's VORP, PMLVr, or MLVr to know that, with all his botched grounders, swinging strike threes in the dirt, baserunning brainfarts, and two-run dropped pop-ups, Berroa has to go.
Perhaps new General Manager Dayton Moore will get the message that Angel must go. The flurry of moves Moore made at the trading deadline indicates that, in the least, he knows a team that allows four unearned runs and throws four wild pitches can only beat one team: the Pittsburgh Pirates. And the Royals won't see them for three more years.
This game seems so long ago, but the fact remains that these are the two worst teams in baseball. Both were big sellers at the deadline, and taking into account the value of talent right now in the organization and the vision of the general managers, it looks like the Pirates are going to win the race to the bottom.
Any team that gets swept at The K deserves nothing more.
