He's on my bizarro team, i need those 4 earned.

Way to keep the focus on the field, Tony.

2008 Douchepoints: 26 and counting!!!

He's probably going to get a cut of Lohse's next contract.

The play was first scored an error, then changed as part of Rockies outfielder Matt Holliday's four-for-four game.

What does that mean, changed as part of his 4-4 game? Originally it was ruled an error, but the Rockies asked for it to be switched to a hit?... just so someone could go 4-4? Geez.

Originally it was ruled an error, but the Rockies asked for it to be switched to a hit?... just so someone could go 4-4? Geez.

This happens all the time. The batter gets an extra hit, and the fielder gets one less error.

Pitchers aren't supposed to complain about earned runs, because that's trying to throw their fielders under a bus and not taking responsibility.

LaRussa is so excited anticipating his rotation's imminent implosion, he's rushing to precipitate it.

Having seen the play, it should have remained an error. But I've seen more egregious defensive conduct ignored by the official scorekeeper, so lord knows that this isn't a great crime if it remains the way it is.

This scoring decision might drive Tony to drink...and drive.

He's probably going to get a cut of Lohse's next contract.

So's your mom.

your mom dot com

If anybody has a complaint about errors being scored hits, it's Mark Buehrle. In his start last night, Orlando Cabrera and Juan Uribe fumbled two straight grounders in the fifth. A bunch of singles and a Vlad Guerrero homer later, he'd lost a shutout and allowed eight runs in 5 1/3.

This happens all the time. The batter gets an extra hit, and the fielder gets one less error.

Pitchers aren't supposed to complain about earned runs, because that's trying to throw their fielders under a bus and not taking responsibility.

Huh. Well the pitcher obviously gets shortchanged when this happens, as you note.

I think scoring should be as objective as possible, i.e., it shouldn't matter who the home team is. This game was played in Colorado... So the home team Rockies lobbied the scorer to switch his ruling from error to hit, thereby helping out home team Holliday get his 4-4. Then, the visiting team Cardinals go over the scorer's head and request an overrule from the League Office, to help their player's statistics? What's next? The Rockies file a grievance with Bud Selig?

What does that mean, changed as part of his 4-4 game? Originally it was ruled an error, but the Rockies asked for it to be switched to a hit?... just so someone could go 4-4? Geez.

The article's wording is unclear--the play was originally scored an error, but it had been changed to a hit by the end of the first inning, before anyone knew Holliday was going to get three more hits. (And even with that hit, Holliday went 4-for-5 in the game, not 4-for-4.)

Ahh... thanks for the clarification DCW3*.

This is why they should get rid of unearned runs.

Way to keep the focus on the field, Tony.

2008 Douchepoints: 26 and counting!!!"

What a stupid comment.
How does trying massage his starting pitcher's bruised ego and confidence qualify as douchbaggery?

Hes a MANAGER.
Its his JOB

This is why they should get rid of unearned runs.

While I agree that runs allowed is probably more useful than ERA (particularly with the state of scorekeeping), the trouble with going in that direction is you'd see even more plays scored hits that should be errors, since there wouldn't be any group of players objecting to such a ruling.

And no, I don't want the game to do away with errors altogether. A ground ball that gets booted by the second baseman or thrown into the stands by a third baseman is an error, and should remain that way.

But Buzz said Tony was old time baseball incarnate. I didn't think he'd care about individual stats.

And no, I don't want the game to do away with errors altogether. A ground ball that gets booted by the second baseman or thrown into the stands by a third baseman is an error, and should remain that way.

I don't see any reason why a crappy break from the CF should be treated differently than a crappy throw from the SS. There is some skill to reaching base via the error so it really should be reflected in a hitter's stat line.

EDIT: Or why Jeter should get credit for a triple when Hinske makes a terrible dive...

You know... as off-base as Bissinger was some of the stupid, pointless, bitter comments here really are great examples of some of the tripe spewed on the internet that he was railing against.

"You want a second opinion? OK, you're ugly, too!"

I don't see any reason why a crappy break from the CF should be treated differently than a crappy throw from the SS. There is some skill to reaching base via the error so it really should be reflected in a hitter's stat line.

What skill is involved in hitting a two-hopper to the third baseman that he chucks into the stands? Or the ground ball that dribbles through the shortstop's legs?

Some ROEs are part skill. I'd guess most are simple good fortune.

You want to see fewer no-hitters?
You want to forever change a radio announcer's end-of-inning call?
You want to do away with the words E-6?
You want to never have to look up to the scoreboard to see what the ruling was on a call that could go either way?

Errors have little use in analysis, and may cloud the average fan's understanding of players' value? But errors are extremely valuable in telling the story of a baseball game? Getting rid of the second part simply because the average fan overvalues fielding percentage or because TLR asks a call to be scored the correct way is ridiculous, IMO.

How does trying massage his starting pitcher's bruised ego and confidence qualify as douchbaggery? Hes a MANAGER. Its his JOB."

Lohse allowed five consecutive batters to reach base after the hit/error in question. The hit/error in question was a rocket shot that was certainly fieldable, but then again, it was hit to a back-up playing maybe his third-best position, and again, it was a shot.

If Lohse was a five-year-old playing T-ball, or something other than a 10-year professional making millions of dollars a year, then maybe I'd have more sympathy for him if he does, in fact, have a "bruised ego." But somehow I have a hard time believing that Lohse's ego at this stage in his career is that fragile.

I'm surprised you're more worried about Lohse's feelings than those of the much-less-experienced Ryan's, but given how TLR has ridden Ryan I'm not surprised he's working this hard to publicly assign the blame to him.

What this accomplishes, now, after the fact (that is, the lost game) is beyond me, except for thrusting back into the spotlight Ryan's failure to make the play and Lohse's subsequent inability to retire the next five hitters.

LaRussa's job (or at least his "styling" of it) more and more seems to entail public airing of grievances. In my book that's the opposite and being dignified and professional, which is why he receives the douchepoints.

Have a nice night!

You pretty much have to fumble the ball, kick it, throw it in the stands and molest a goat all on the same play to get charged with an error in 2008.

What skill is involved in hitting a two-hopper to the third baseman that he chucks into the stands? Or the ground ball that dribbles through the shortstop's legs?

Do you watch baseball games? Oh, boy, that didn't come out right. Do you listen to broadcasters? It's one case where "simply putting the ball in play" is actually valuable.

The article's wording is unclear--the play was originally scored an error, but it had been changed to a hit by the end of the first inning, before anyone knew Holliday was going to get three more hits. (And even with that hit, Holliday went 4-for-5 in the game, not 4-for-4.)

I call bs on that comment, the cardinal announcers noticed the change around the 6th/7th inning it did not happen in the first inning.

What a stupid comment.

you have to understand that on these boards there is a significant majority that attribute every single crime to ever happen in the past 25 years to TLR.... I mean here is a guy who in st louis has not once done anything to indicate he is any where on the level of ############# of a god like Beane or a freaking egomaniac like whitey herzog but heck because some prize winning author rightly claimed him as a genius, the low self esteem nerds on these boards find every single reason to ridicule a guy that is clearly the best manager in baseball (ask someone who's actually done the research-dag nabbit---instead of reactionary idiots like the aforementioned post)

Lohse allowed five consecutive batters to reach base after the hit/error in question. The hit/error in question was a rocket shot that was certainly fieldable, but then again, it was hit to a back-up playing maybe his third-best position, and again, it was a shot.

If Lohse was a five-year-old playing T-ball, or something other than a 10-year professional making millions of dollars a year, then maybe I'd have more sympathy for him if he does, in fact, have a "bruised ego." But somehow I have a hard time believing that Lohse's ego at this stage in his career is that fragile.

I'm surprised you're more worried about Lohse's feelings than those of the much-less-experienced Ryan's, but given how TLR has ridden Ryan I'm not surprised he's working this hard to publicly assign the blame to him.

What this accomplishes, now, after the fact (that is, the lost game) is beyond me, except for thrusting back into the spotlight Ryan's failure to make the play and Lohse's subsequent inability to retire the next five hitters.

It boiled down to the Rockies little baby girls(ooh I'm matt holliday, I'm going to cry to the official scorer during the game to change a number so I can have a good game...wah ####### wah you crying little #####, join the red sox if you want to be this big of a #####. play the game and don't worry about your individual numbers. ####### prima donna whore. )

CFB, my beef with LaRussa is that while his team is nose-diving (what, is that 6 losses in 7 games?) there's an article in which Tony talks about wanting to change the scoring on a play from some game last week, something that has no bearing on what has happened on the field then (they already lost), now (they're still losing), or in the future (they may or may not keep losing, but changing that call from a hit to an error won't make a whit of difference).

Once again, the focus is on Tony whining about something, but only because Tony is whining about something.

just my two cents, but tony bringing the focus on tony might not be a bad thing for the players.

oh, and while i do have issues with tony overmanaging at times, and being in love with small ball at weird moments, i mostly agree with cfb. he came in to st. louis and has won a ton of games and a couple of pennants and is not a crotchety old b@stard like whitey but he still gets p!ssed on by a lot of observers. go figure. third highest total of wins in managerial history, alltime winner in st. louis. what does he have to do?

I call bs on that comment, the cardinal announcers noticed the change around the 6th/7th inning it did not happen in the first inning.

I just reviewed the game thread at birdsonthebat.org, and the change appears to have been made no later than the second inning. It's mentioned by someone 7 minutes after Ludwick's homer in the top of the second and 18 minutes after the first mention of an error by Ryan leading to the Rockies' first run.

I call bs on that comment, the cardinal announcers noticed the change around the 6th/7th inning it did not happen in the first inning.

I was watching the Colorado broadcast on Extra Innings, and the Rockies' announcers noticed the change either in the first inning or the top of the second.

I don't see any problem with what La Russa did. The problem lies with the official scorers who are willing to cave to better player's stats instead of sticking with what they thought was the correct call. If they didn't do that, no one would ask.

If Lohse was a five-year-old playing T-ball, or something other than a 10-year professional making millions of dollars a year, then maybe I'd have more sympathy for him if he does, in fact, have a "bruised ego." But somehow I have a hard time believing that Lohse's ego at this stage in his career is that fragile.

I'm surprised you're more worried about Lohse's feelings than those of the much-less-experienced Ryan's, but given how TLR has ridden Ryan I'm not surprised he's working this hard to publicly assign the blame to him.

If you really think 30-year old pro athletes can not be throw off their game by mental stuff I don't know what to say. Mental stuff is just as crucial in sports as physical stuff.

And some earned runs are a much bigger part of a pitcher's statline than one more error to a fielder. You don't see a guy's fielding% every time he plays in a ballgame, and one error won't do much to it (esp for a IF), but if you are a pitcher that ERA is the first or second thing you see and is the number one thing you glance at if you want to get a quick idea of if the bum is any good or not.


LaRussa's job (or at least his "styling" of it) more and more seems to entail public airing of grievances. In my book that's the opposite and being dignified and professional, which is why he receives the douchepoints.

Really? A manager's duty is to be 'dignified and professional"?
The bulk of baseball history seems to run contrary to that notion

CFB, my beef with LaRussa is that while his team is nose-diving (what, is that 6 losses in 7 games?) there's an article in which Tony talks about wanting to change the scoring on a play from some game last week, something that has no bearing on what has happened on the field then (they already lost), now (they're still losing), or in the future (they may or may not keep losing, but changing that call from a hit to an error won't make a whit of difference).

Once again, the focus is on Tony whining about something, but only because Tony is whining about something.

It just might make a wee bit of difference. A pitcher pitching with confidence is more likely to help you end that losing streak than a bummed out one and Kyle Lohse to getting walk out there and see his ERA a wee bit lower on the jumbotron just might give him a wee bit more confidence.
Its not some mortal lock or anything but it is conceivable and since it doesn't cost LaRuussa or the Cards anything to try why not give it a shot?

And even if it doesn't change anything in the future managing egos is one of the manager's biggest tasks. Why not let one of your starting pitchers know that you have his back?

Why not let one of your starting pitchers know that you have his back?

Because doing so throws the kid, Brendan Ryan, under the bus, and making excuses to help Lohse's self-esteem just sounds a little too bad-parenty to me. Nobody's perfect, not Lohse, not Ryan, not TLR, not me.

But why make that an issue when it isn't one? To me, dwelling on a negative (error on Ryan/another hit off Lohse) that resulted in four runs just keeps the whole mess alive. It's like your son fails a test miserably, and you try to get the teacher to give him an extra five points because one question out of twenty may have been a little vague, but even if he gets the points he still fails miserably, and anyway the teacher is claiming that it doesn't matter if the one question was vague because the kid proved he didn't know what he was doing in the first place. There are bigger issues, Dad, than if one question was vague, or whether it was a hit or an error. But replaying the whole ugly scenario over and over again can't possibly be better for the kid than just putting the mess behind him and striving to do better next time.

Really? A manager's duty is to be 'dignified and professional"?

Never said it was his "duty"---I just said that acting undignified and unprofessional racks up the douchepoints. If the Cardinals don't care if they have a manager who acts like an whiny little baby, then that's their right; it doesn't mean I can't make a note of it, though, and express my hope that he'll eventually cut it out.

If you really think 30-year old pro athletes can not be throw off their game by mental stuff I don't know what to say.

Never said that. I wrote that, a week after the fact, I can't imagine retroactively giving Ryan an error will affect Lohse's confidence one way or the other. In fact, I would say that Lohse was at the time affected by the play, because he allowed the next five batters to reach base. But Tony lobbying to give Ryan an error won't ever change the fact that Lohse collapsed like a wet paper sack, and giving Ryan an error won't magically make Lohse mentally tougher so that he somehow avoids allowing boatloads of baserunners in the future, just as he's done his entire career.

This isn't about making Lohse feel better about himself, and its not a case of Tony focusing on the wrong things. This is about making Lohse more marketable in July. A pitcher with a 4.50 ERA is going to bring a better prospect than one with a 5.00 ERA. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the front office put him up to it.

#37 got my take on it. I also want to say that the article posted doesn't make clear whether it was La Russa or the Cards' FO pushing for the change (despite my misleading headline). I think it's a net negative practice because as many have pointed out, it's choosing your pitcher over your fielder. Insisting it was an error (absent any public comment from Ryan) is absolutely giving Lohse priority and throwing Ryan under the bus psychologically, even though one error won't make much difference to Ryan's stats. But it's all about those 4 ERs coming off Lohse's record so he's a more attractive trade commodity. Absolutely.

I also want to say that notwithstanding a 40-comment thread on BTF, this matter is receiving very, very little publicity. I saw it mentioned in passing in a fantasy comment on Rotowire and had to go find an actual article about it -- which, no joke, took more than 5 minutes of searching, and this tiny blurb at the bottom of a daily Cards Notes column was the only thing I found. I'd be surprised if anybody outside of STL that hasn't read this thread has even heard about it.

Interesting point in #37, cv2002.

You pretty much have to fumble the ball, kick it, throw it in the stands and molest a goat all on the same play to get charged with an error in 2008.

Mark Ellis took an error the other day for a play in which neither he (2b) nor Crosby (ss) covered 2nd base on a steal attempt. Suzuki (c) threw the ball right to the bag and on into centerfield, allowing the runner to continue to 3rd base. The official scorer didn't assign the error to anyone in particular right away. Ellis stated afterwards that he blew the coverage, and the official scorer gave the error to him at that point. I had never seen that before but it made sense to me.

How does trying massage his starting pitcher's bruised ego and confidence qualify as douchbaggery?
Hes a MANAGER.
Its his JOB.

It's his job to lobby the league office to overrule the official scorer's judgement? This shouldn't even happen at all, let alone be the manager's responsibility.

"It's his job to lobby the league office to overrule the official scorer's judgement?"

No, to manage his player's egos.
If that is one way of doing it, so be it. Who cares? How is this some d-bag act to try to get something to break right for his pitcher? How on EARTH does it make him a bad manager or a bad person.

Never said it was his "duty"---I just said that acting undignified and unprofessional racks up the douchepoints. If the Cardinals don't care if they have a manager who acts like an whiny little baby, then that's their right; it doesn't mean I can't make a note of it, though, and express my hope that he'll eventually cut it out.

what managers aren't whiny little babies? Cox has the record for the most times kicked out of a game and then he complains to the press all the time. Pinella? Ozzie? Baker? Torre? please. I mean sure nobody is quite as big of a whiner as Whitey Herzog anymore, but every good manager is a whiny little crybabies. TLR gets hit harder by the people on these boards because of him being actually smarter than the other guys and acknowledged that he is smarter so people like to tear him down. But in his entire time in St Louis he's been treated as if he is worse than he really is.

I find post 37 amusing in that I am pretty darn certain NOBODY has "told" TLR what to do with respect to his team since Hawk Harrelson who was told to go f#ck himself.

Whatever the changes in the Cards front office the DMZ line still exists between the Cards clubhouse and the rest of the world.

And Tony is Kim Jung Il.

And that is written as a compliment.

The front office "told" Tony what to do.

Thanks for the chuckle......

TLR said something about appealing the call immediately after the game during his post game comments, this isn't something that he thought about a couple of days and then decided to do something. He said he was going to look into it from the start.

Imagine that Billy Beane did this, these boards would be creaming their pants talking about how Billy is so brilliant and is working on increasing the perceived value of his players. If Torre did this, these boards would talk about the greatness of Torre and how he takes care of his players. If Ozzie Guillen said this, the boards would call him batshit crazy. Almost none of the people on these boards make a decision about a persons actions without allowing their already messed up incorrect preconceptions to cloud their judgement.

cfb;

By my reckoning Yankee fans here couldn't stand Joe's need to coddle certain players. And with respect to Beane it has gone from admiration to sneering to sheepish compliments teeming with caveats.

The post about BBTF "fawning over Beane" is made more often than actual posts about Beane directly.

In my opinion.

So have it "defending" TLR. Just try a different approach. This stuff isn't that accurate and hence don't help the cause.

I just find it hilarious that even though TLR has done nearly nothing that would cause the disdain that he gets in his time in St Louis (he isn't an ego maniac, he doesn't throw players under the bus, he isn't an active headhunter, he isn't batshit crazy, he allows his players to fail or succeed etc. Yet everytime one of these threads start it's the same)


His biggest real failures as a human is how he may have handled the Julian Tavarez incident (which btw was him being a good guy, but again because of the hatred here he gets blasted) the drunk driving incident, and that is pretty much it.