MLB

Do the Right Thing

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MLB – Atlanta Braves/Philadelphia Phillies Box Score Wednesday May 3, 2006 – Yahoo! Sports

For the second night this week Rheal Cormier got the win in relief for the Phillies. This bothers me because last week in the Tout Wars claims I did the wrong thing and listed Elizardo Ramirez ahead of Cormier on my sheet. My thinking had something to do with Ramirez’s good game at Washington earlier in the week, but despite his good control the chances of Ramirez having ongoing success are pretty small because he can’t dominate hitters at all. At his best, with the Reds’ juggernaut behind him, he gets a win or two with passable qualitatives. Meanwhile, a reliable middle reliever like Cormier isn’t going to hurt you, and in a week like this one may help a lot. A reminder why it’s better to play safe, rather than try to catch lightning in a bottle.

AL Hitter and Pitcher of the Month

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mlb.com

No point in digging deep into Jason Giambi’s numbers since mid-season last year, yet, but he was certainly the dominant AL hitter in the second half last year and the has continued in that role this spring. I continue to have difficulty ascertaining whether it was steroids that made him a great hitter and an MVP or not.  Certainly the braying of those who thought his accomplishments all came because he was juiced has died down, but we don’t seem to be any closer to agreeing about what steroids can do to improve a hitter’s performance. Assuming Giambi is clean now, since he’s surely tested regularly, how can he continue to rank among baseball’s best hitters?

The Upcoming CBA and the Battles Within It (Part 1)

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The Hardball Times

Maury Brown does  a good job of explaining how increased revenue sharing came to be, and hits the nail on the head with his conclusion. The real question he doesn’t take to the end of the road is why we’re better off with 30 major league teams, rather than real big-league teams in the top 16 markets and a system of Quad-A affiliates in contracted cities like Minneapolis and Kansas City and Miami and, uhm, Oakland.

Do I have the cities wrong? Competition is good, no?

Study Reveals Baseball’s Great Clutch Hitters

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LiveScience.com

This site cites a study by Elan Fuld that uses some interesting and valuable methods to determine whether clutch hitters exist. While Fuld is able to identify a few hitters who exhibited reliable clutch tendencies throughout their careers, their numbers are so small that his ambitious study really seems to support the idea that clutch hitters don’t exist. To the extent Bill Buckner, Eddie Murray and Leo Gomez were clutch, maybe they were just a little luckier than the vast majority of players during the 30 years he looked at who weren’t clutch.

The role of psychological difference in baseball is an important one, and Fuld’s study apparently demonstrates just how narrow a swath the elite of baseball players are drawn from. That this purported science website could so misread the conclusion of this study should be an embarrassment.

Plus, they don’t even link to Fuld’s study, which you can find here.

You can also find a set of other clutch hitting studies compiled by Cyril Morong here.