June 10, 2004

I’m starting to think I’ll never have another original thought. I wrote my pre-season review on the Mets, and subsequently read the review at Battersbox, and my review was almost identical. And Battersbox was published before mine.

At lunch a few months ago, I strolled into the used bookstore next door to the Firehouse Subs. I picked up a year-by-year Mets almanac and Bill Lee’s biography The Wrong Stuff. I recently got my review of the Leigh Montville Ted Williams’ biography written and had started on the latest issue of Pharmagenomics. Okay, it isn’t the latest issue, but it’s the one with "A Functional Genomics Strategy for Plant Drug Discovery." Anyway, I needed something else to read. Once tech journals make their way onto your coffee table, two things have happened – one, you are too busy at work, and two, you haven’t bought anything interesting to read recently enough.

So, I started reading. I like Bill Lee. He pitches some in MSBL (or some other derivation). So did I. We have that in common.

There in Chapter One, I suddenly began reading words that were all too familiar:

"There wasn’t any sense in burning myself out trying to impress people with speed I didn’t have. I always saved myself for the late innings. Strikeouts, from my perspective, are boring things. Nothing happens. They are fascist weapons. I prefer the groundball out and view it as the perfect symbol for democracy."

I was stunned. Holy cow! I couldn’t believe what I was reading. I was very excited about telling you all about this tremendous discovery.

I’m a cautious writer. Also, because I read things like Pharmagenomics, I know to perform a literature search before I make a claim. Let’s make sure that was clear: I know to do it; that doesn’t mean I always do it.

So I calmly googled "Bill Lee Bull Durham." Guess what? This is (relatively) common knowledge. Who was number one to "scoop" me? That’s right, Battersbox. Matthew Elmslie, to be precise. Then there is Ron Shelton telling the story when he introduced Bill for the Baseball Reliquary Induction 2000. He even said he stole the lines. And Sports Illustrated.

I don’t know if I had heard this all before. Old age is hell. And what’s worse, the memory isn’t the first thing to go.

I’m not a big on-pace guy. Mostly because I grew up on Reggie Jackson having about 37 home runs at the All-Star break and finishing with 47. Baseball is a season of streaks. A player gets hot and/or lucky and then goes 0 for 20. Pace just doesn’t work out – and so I don’t get excited about things based on it very much.

However, I think sometimes it is interesting. With the home run record pushed to the asymptote, there just aren’t many big, sexy records to go for. Sure, maybe Hack Wilson’s 191 RBIs, but that’s not going to be chased down anytime soon. Even at one RBI per game, which is a ton, a player will come up nearly 30 RBIs short.

I think this season we can see a record fall. Rob Neyer hinted at it in his column on Cy Young Predictor in his and Bill James’ book about pitchers.

That’s right, I’m talking about the second-most glamorous record in baseball – the single-season saves record.

Danny Graves, through 56 games, has 26 saves. That’s a ton. Okay, the statistic itself isn’t that great, but I must admit I was interested when John Smoltz got close. Rob said Graves won’t keep it up, nor would the Reds, but I’m not so certain. I think the Reds will play mostly close games, and I’m very sure they win 80 games. At his present rate, one save for every 0.76 wins, he’s going to save well over 60 games. As he closes in on the record, he’ll close in on the Cy Young Award. His candidacy will be roundly criticized in these parts, and probably rightly so, but the mainstream media will tout Graves and his value to a pennant-chasing team, and he’ll get really close to the award, whether he wins or not.

I’m excited about it anyway.

The above "On Pace" section was written with delight last weekend. I altered the stats to fit today. What’s so unoriginal about that?

I’m a proud member of SABR (for ten years now). I subscribe to the SABR-L mailing list, with some of you and a bunch of sabermetric bigwigs – Bill James, David Vincent, Mike Emeigh, Clay Davenport – well, you know when people say they don’t want to name people for fear of leaving someone out? That’ll definitely happen here. There is just some great stuff discussed on the list. I get it in "digest" format, and with all the BTF stuff and rsbb, sometimes I don’t get around to reading the digest on the day it arrives. I try to catch up on Sunday evenings.

So, I prepared this column Friday and Saturday evening. As I read the SABR-L list from June 3 and 4 on Sunday night, I came across this:

Sean Lahman, for those of you who don’t know, is the developer and, I suppose, owner, of one of the finest research instruments around – the Lahman database. That’s just what it is called; Sean didn’t name it after himself. It has every year’s stats from 1871 to present. It is essentially the Baseball Encyclopedia in database form. It’s a miracle to have around. And it is free to download.

I suppose I’m supposed to say "Great minds think alike," or some such. My question is, why am I not having these singular, outside the box, thoughts? Essentially, for a couple of months now, everything I think of, someone else is writing just a few minutes ahead of me.

I’m not sure, but I am kind of leaning toward the 10,000 monkeys theory. You know what they say, "it was the best of times; it was the blurst of times."

Barry Bonds is destroying the OBP record too (.631 today – it would be the fifth-highest slugging average). That’s old news. To me, and I hope to all of you, the excitement of him approaching 700 home runs is breathtaking. 700 home runs. It’s still incredible (no, it really is) when a player reaches 500 home runs. 600 is still touched only by 4 men, and I remember when we all thought Mark McGwire would catch Hank Aaron. He couldn’t quite make it to 600. Those last few seasons are a real bear.

Now we are looking at 700. I remember watching Hank Aaron reach 700. Of course, back in those days you only got to see two games a week – Monday Night Baseball and the Saturday Game of the Week. Other than that, it was boxscores and highlights on the news. The visions of Aaron’s home runs were what you played out in your head from seeing his swing for years.

Now I get to see Barry do it nightly. I can watch all his games. And the ones I miss, I can catch on the Internet. 700 home runs. Wow.

I went to a Durham Bulls-Norfolk Tides game last week. Both teams actually have reasonably good players/semi-prospects. As a Met fan, I wear my Mets hat, and the Tides players and coaches appreciate it.

B.J. Upton is the Tampa prospect at shortstop. He still can’t hit a curveball. I did get to see him throw more and he looks like he has a pretty good arm and pretty good range in the hole.

The last reliever the Bulls brought in was Franklin Nunez. Nunez throws really hard. I’ve been to a ton of minor league games, and guys simply don’t hit 95 on the radar gun very often. Almost never. Nunez was consistently popping it up there at 98. The home plate umpire had a strike zone the size of a license plate, so it was hard to tell just how much control Nunez had, but he did appear a little wild. It was pretty awesome to see him hammer the Tides lineup.

The Tides have a few prospects, middling, but some nonetheless. Victor Diaz, Craig Brazell, Tyler Yates, Aaron Heilman, Royce Ring and Jeremy Griffiths. Ring pitched and was impressive. He has a nice curveball. He threw it by Upton in the 7^th inning.

One of the highlights for me was seeing John Stearns. I was always a fan of Stearns when he caught for the Mets, and it was fun to jaw at him and get responses – that’s the fun part of minor league games.

Jeff Duncan, who has gotten some decaf in the majors, missed (at least) a couple of signs (a hit and run when he was batting and a steal when he was on first), and got into a discussion with Stearns, who actually went out to second base to explain it to Jeff. Duncan clearly thinks a good deal of himself. When he came in from left field (Esix Snead was playing center), I yelled from my second row seats, "Hey Jeff, do me a favor, learn the signs!" He looked over and grinned/smirked. Snead, who was jogging in a little ways behind him, gave me a look like "Who are you, again?"

I took Lindsay out to get some beer and when I got back, a man with Yankees shower sandals gave Lindsay a foul ball he caught while we were gone. It was a very nice gesture. Pretty good time – interacted with Stearns and Duncan, took in a ballgame and my daughter got a foul ball.

I suppose these things make up for not being very original any more.