Friday, April 26, 2013
Yu Darvish’s Consistent Delivery
(kottke.org)
posted 3 weeks ago by The Clarence Thomas of BBTF (scott) to awesome, gifs, rangers, yu darvish
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28 comment(s)
Read More...One of the most formidable tools in a pro baseball pitcher’s arsenal is the consistency of pitching motion when throwing different kinds of pitches. If your delivery looks the same to an opposing batter when throwing a 95-mph fastball, a 80-mph curve, and a 85-mph change-up, well, you’ve really got something there. Texas pitcher Yu Darvish is ripping up the AL this year with a 4-1 record, 1.65 ERA, and 49 strikeouts, which prompted Drew Sheppard to layer five of Darvish’s pitches on top ...
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1 2 3 4 >Yep. This is an amazing smear job on Hamilton, definitely reminiscent of some of the Boston front office "leaks" -- except Ryan is just rolling in there guns blazing making no bones about it. I guess that's Texas Style for you.
Really, though, what the hell? If you don't want to resign him, then just wish him well and get on with running your club. You made a fair few dollars off of him and a couple of pennants. Sheesh.
Did Hamilton say that he was quitting to improve his health? All the quotes I found from him look like this one:
It seems to me that he's claiming Jesus told him to stop.
It kind of doesn't matter, right? God didn't tell him to start doing something unhealthy, which then hurt his game. It's objectively a good decision for his well-being, and this is a pretty disgusting thing for Ryan to say.
Lucchino is reading this thinking, "so we can just say these things outright? I don't need to keep meeting Shaughnessy in the stall at the Cask n Flagon?"
Jeebus, amen...
I'm the furthest thing from churchy mcchurch, but I'm now firmly rooting for Josh's god to start hurling lightning bolts towards Arlington.
Enough is enough already...
I mean if he was handling snakes, and one bit him, sure. I'm right there with Ryan.
I'll take him at his word when he says that it's because God told him to quit. I'll fully grant that people tend to hear from God things that they already have in their mind and desire to do for non-religious reasons (funny how that works). I don't see him analyzing anything objectively though, it's just this silly sort of, "this makes God mad, I have to stop!" thing.
If quitting really did mess up Hamilton's hitting (which I doubt it did), I think it's worthwhile to criticize him. He stopped performing at his job for personal reasons. The marginal gain for quitting a few months earlier is pretty low, and if I were an organization shelling out millions of dollars for someone to perform, I wouldn't be real keen on them suddenly deciding they had to quit right that moment. Disagreeing with that is fine, but I don't see how it's disgusting. People do things in sports that are surely more detrimental to their health than continuing to chew for a couple extra months, and absolutely do get called out for not doing them.
edit - I'm incredibly biased against Hamilton though, so I could be off base because of that. I just plain don't like the guy.
Yes, as Ryan says, you would have liked Hamilton to take a "different approach."
And how do you account for the fact that MLB as an institution strongly discourages players from using smokeless tobacco, to the point of banning it on the field, in the dugout, and at team events?
Should the Rangers' desires in this matter trump MLB's?
Should the Rangers' desires in this matter trump MLB's?
Is MLB paying his salary?
It's just an undisciplined and weird thing for Hamilton to do. It's not just that he quit (which isn't inherently objectionable); it's that he quit for odd, if not outright spurious, reasons.(*) I don't want that around if I can help it.
Hamilton's way too high-maintenance for my tastes and I've already got great production from him in his prime, for a decent price. Someone else can pay him big dollars as he gets older and odder and his prime fades into the mists of nostalgia.
(*) It's analogous to a guy converting to Islam on August 1, and proceeding to fast and otherwise completely alter his diet. Continuing thinking out loud, you don't even need the Islam part; it's like a guy becoming a vegan on August 1 and proceeding to suck down the stretch. I'd say it's worse than the vegan example.
I want to add that it is curious that one of the strongest anti-PED advocates around here is saying that a player should have continued to use a dangerous drug to help his team. That seems inconsistent but I'm willing to be convinced that it's not.
I was going to write the same thing. MLB policy is to urge players to quit using smokeless tobacco. Among other reasons, MLB wants its players to set an example that discourages young people from taking up the habit. Regardless of Hamilton's reasons for quitting, I don't see how the team's management can criticize him for doing something that is consistent with MLB policy.
It's incredibly inconsistent. Also, the notion that quitting a dangerous and addictive drug is "undisciplined and weird", at any time, is insane.
Very apt.
RIP Alex.
Well, exactly. I mean, one might as well complain that Mike Napoli switched brands of breakfast cereal in the off-season, or that Derek Holland picked the wrong month to get his bathroom remodeled. Quite aside from the utter niaiserie of criticizing a guy for trying to get healthier (on God's advice or Oprah's, who cares?), the idea that you can correlate a player's and a team's success to some factor like that is bizarre. If you could point to the Fourth of July as the day when he quit the chaw, and show that he was hitting .360 before that and .120 for the rest of the season, then, just barely, perhaps, maybe there's a gripe about his performance. But the fact is he just had a subpar September and a very weak June and July. Such things have been known to happen in baseball history.
Silly me.
+10000000000000.
This,for the love of God, (yes pun intended) YES!
It's possible, even likely that Hamilton WAS affected by quitting yet another addiction. I smoked for 25 years. Tobacco is incredibly addicting, and I can see how a "finely tuned athlete" can easily be thrown off his game while going through withdrawal. Or even if it wasn't physical beyond the first couple of weeks, the mental aspect of it is incredibly difficult . (been tobacco free 10 years now and only stopped cravings about a year ago !!!!)
The guy quit tobacco. And Nolan Ryan is being a total ######### in criticizing any aspect of that effort.
And that's why it was counterproductive to quit on a whim, midseason.
Would it be more acceptable to you if he had done it solely for health reasons and did not invoke God or Jesus?
Of course.
What if he was on steroids and wanted to quit? Would you be against that if it depressed his performance?
Didn't catch the bands' name but they rocked the tent.
EDIT: And yeah, Ryan comes across as an a-hole here.
Just a little wad in your jaw
There'll be no more aaaaaaaah!
But you may feel a little sick
Can you stand up?
I do believe it's working
Good
That'll keep you going through the show
Come on it's time to go
Counterproductive to whom ?
It's one less damaging thing going into Hamilton's body. Thats a good thing. Or is EVERYTHING sbjugated to what happens on the field ?
Next time I hear someone say in a time of crisis, "This really puts everything in perspective, and lets you know baseball is just a game", I'll be sure t link this thread.
The team paying his salary.
If Hamilton knew (or even suspected) that quitting midseason would screw with his game, I can understand this perspective. Frankly, I don't know that's a reasonable assumption.
I quit smokeless last year after dipping for 20+ years. I found that this time (compared to previous stops and starts), it was remarkably easy. I'm positive it didn't affect my productivity level at work remained unchanged, at its consistent low level.
It's also possible that Hamilton determined that quitting while he was working, and therefore busy, was a hell of a lot easier than when he had six months of doing nothing. In fact, it's possible he's tried to quit in the offseason and found it too difficult because of the downtime.
Fair enough.
Cool.
Also, I wonder, couldn't he have just gone on the patch or chewed nicotine gum so as not to feel ill?
And is it really that hard to quit dip? When I quit Camels 20-odd years ago, I only recall a bit of pencil chewing & nail biting. I know dip has much more nicotine per dose, but really THAT much? Serious question...
If quitting tobacco makes you healthier I think you can argue fairly easily that Hamilton thought by quitting in-season he was actually going to HELP not hurt the Rangers.
Terry Francona had significant problems with it during his tenure in Boston. There were a couple of years where he would "quit" prior to the season and within about a week of Opening Day he was back at it. I think he eventually did quit but I remember him having some issues.
Sure, but that's not all that people are objecting to.
Yes and no. I probably tried a dozen times over the years, sometimes going as long as two weeks without but eventually giving in and restarting the habit. The last time, perhaps because I sensed a certain now or never aspect to the attempt that was absent previously, it was easy. I've found overcoming the physical craving was always much easier than the mental aspect.
I might be wrong about this, but aren't players' paychecks issued by MLB, rather than the individual clubs?
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