The Seattle Ballet's performance of #6org closed after the second act.

Trust fall?

Ichiro could've fielded it, if he wanted to.

Send that guy to Atlanta before he kills Ichiro!

Boy, boy, crazy boy, keep cooly-cool, boy!

?????????????????

Dude, I sure hope that's dirt on the seat of your pants.

Sorry, didn't know I could throw you that far!

Do not want.

backup infielder
diving for routine popup
I need a new team.

Is that even legal?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0V2mE_QCpzU

On an annoying note:

That looks like a very odd play. I see the warning track but no foul line so this must be in foul territory.

Fine, foul pop down the RF line often sees the RF and 2B going after it but the 2B would be going after it with his back towards 2B and headed towards the warning track but that's not the direction Wilson is heading. Ichiro too would be headed towards the stand at a more extreme angle whereas he seems to be coming almost straight in.

I suppose if it was a reasonably high pop-up but a crazy windy day Wilson might have gotten there but then had to leap back at the last second.

Or is that a basepath and this is some bizarre play where Wilson is coming out from SS and Ichiro is coming in from RF and the 2B and CF are cracking up yelling "you got it! you got it!"?

#1 wins the caption contest.

Video of the play

Thanks for the vid. Apparently foul lines are just invisible from that angle. Fair territory, Wilson over-ran the ball in the direction of the foul line (maybe windy) and had to dive back.

Look out, we got a badass over here!

Thanks for the vid. Apparently foul lines are just invisible from that angle.

Not invisible, just not in the picture. Pause the vid at around 37 sec, and you'll see that the dirt track extends into fair territory. That's what we see in the photo, the portion of the dirt track in fair territory.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!"

"In my next trick I will levitate an infielder"

In light of Greg Spira's passing I was reading some of his old posts on rec.sport.baseball and came across this post of his re Tony Gwynn from November 1993. It struck me because it sounds similar in many respects to the current Ichiro discussion (specifically, whether his defense as judged by some of the metrics at the time was really great enough to carry his not-very-special offense).

I didn't want to post it in Greg's thread because I didn't want to detract from the remembrances of him there, so I'll just post it here.

I recall that there was a time in the early 90s that people thought Gwynn was overrated and wasn't a Hall of Famer. But the way he finished his career -- with strong hitting despite durability issues -- moved him to a solid middle-tier HOFer.

His discussion of fielding runs below sounds a bit like the current discussions re WAR's defensive ratings.

Greg wrote:

A lot of TP's high rating of Gwynn is based on his really high number of fielding runs. As you probably know, most people here are quite skeptical of fielding runs. If the fielding runs listed for Gwynn are indeed accurate assesments of his defensive value, then I think most
people here would agree that Gwynn belongs in the Hall. Whether his defense is that valuable is a question, and one that I have no answer for. Gwynn is most certainly a very good fielder, but I'm not sure if he's *that* good.

As far as his offense goes, his peak value in terms of batting runs isn't particularly high for an outfielder - 163*. I would *guess* that 80% of the outfielders in the Hall of Fame have higher peak value. His value outside those 5 years isn't extraordinary either - 67 batting runs* + of course this year, probably the 2nd best of Gwynn's career).

*(actually batting runs + stolen base runs)

To argue that Gwynn has produced enough to be in the Hall if he retired today, I think you have to argue that he's had one of the 20 best outfield defensive careers ever. I, myself, am not prepared to believe that, though TB's numbers clearly imply that that's true.

In the end, when he retires, I suspect I will be convinced that he's Hall of Fame quality. I certainly will be if he repeats this past season a couple of times, though I doubt he'll do that, unless the 87/93 effect pops up again. (Whatever it is that ups offense in these
years - and I'm not going to try and guess what it is - seems to have an extraordinary effect on Gwynn).

Greg

Comparing Gwynn through 1993 with Ichiro through 2010 (let's leave out Ichiro's terrible 2011, and actually doing that makes their games played equal) is interesting:

Gwynn thru 1993:
1585 G, 6828 PA, 129 OPS+, 50 WAR (43 oWar; 8 dWAR)
Rbat 246, Rbaser 29, RRoe 2, Rdp 7m Rfld 69, Rpos -69

Ichiro thru 2010:
1588 G, 7339 PA, 117 OPS+, 55 WAR (42 oWAR; 13 dWAR)
Rbat 159, Rbaser 48, RRoe 4, Rdp 44, Rfld 132, Rpos -68

Ichiro's steals and (according to WAR) his baserunning brings him even with Gwynn in offense (see oWAR). Greg was worried that Gwynn's defense was being over-evaluated, and per WAR Gwynn's defense was indeed very good; Ichiro's is off the charts.

Gwynn went on in his next year, 1994, to hit for a 169 OPS+, but because of the strike he only got 110 games in, so his WAR was only 3.4. Ichiro in his next year, 2011, had a horrible season in virtually all respects, finishing with a -0.4 WAR.

This puts the two players virtually even in WAR after 1994/2011. Of course, Gwynn was "only" 35 at that point and had a very good finish to his career, posting 15 more WAR despite his durability issues, which made him an easy HOFer, while Ichiro will be trying to show in 2012 at age 38 that his age 37 performance was mainly a fluke and not the onset of serious decline. Not shown above is a comparison of peak/prime, but what keeps Ichiro even with Gwynn, at least according to WAR, is baserunning and defense calculations that are off the charts.

Extending to Carew through 1978:

1635 G, 6980 PA, 137 OPS+, 62.7 WAR (61.7 oWAR)
Rbat 323, Rbaser 34, Rroe -1, Rdp 15, Rfield 10, Rpos -1

Better hitter in a lower-scoring era -- I assume he crushes them on peak, he was nearly Morgan at his peak although that's also when the switch to 1B occurred -- and most of the rest is positional adjustment vs. Rfield.