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No, he will finish one at bat short, and not take advantage of the 0-fer rule to get to the requisite number.
I can't see how to hold MLB or Bud at fault here. Bud just said yesterday MLB wasn't going to do anything, then Melky requested this.
More important, I wonder how Sean will handle this.
It was a new punishment above what the drug testing agreement provided for.
It's ridiculous that the MLBPA apparently went along with this. They went along with a player being punished to a degree more severe than the drug-testing agreement, negotiated within the CBA, permitted.
They're not removing any PAs. They're just not adding the 0-fer to get him to the min PAs.
If Melky had enough PA's to qualify, I'd agree. You can't deny math. But in this case he doesn't, so all this is doing is denying him the benefits of a dumb exception rule that shouldn't exist in the first place. Making an exception to the exception, basically.
I guess his fans could argue that he only lost on a technicality, but again, he was only going to be eligible on a technicality anyway, so it doesn't seem too outrageous to me.
Plus, even if we grant that it is a silly technicality, the big difference is that this "new silly technicality" is being done ex post facto.
This is really dumb.
Yes, but this only applies to Chris Volstad.
And there's my spit-take for the day...
Wow. A few thoughts:
1) This sets quite a precedent for other players down the road, although the use of Rule 10.22(a) means that you won't be able to do the exact same thing for every player who has been suspended in-season.
2) How will Baseball-Reference and other statistical providers deal with this? Will they still show Cabrera as the batting average leader?
3) This gives Braun an outside chance at the Triple Crown, right? It was highly unlikely he was going to bat .346, but now the target is .339 and more importantly the target can come down if McCutchen has a bad week.
Well, the silly part is certainly debatable. But you've really never heard of this rule? Gwynn used it to win the batting title in 1996.
Normally I'd agree with everyone that ex post facto decisions are the wrong ones. This one doesn't seem too illogical or unfair to me, though. They're not ignoring undeniable math. They're just using one exception to cancel out another.
My request to Sean is that it display Cabrera as the leader. Whether or not he is awarded the "Batting Title" an accurate reflection of what occurred is that his batting average will have been higher than anyone else's and I think BBRef should reflect that. If I open up Baseball Reference and events that actually took place are not there then it sort of becomes pointless.
Agreed and withdrawn. But only cuz of Gwynn. Screw Melky.
I don't agree. Either ex post facto decisions are a bad idea or they are not. Why doesn't this one seem too illogical or unfair to you? Is it because he was suspended for steroids? If you want to argue that either 1) the exception rule is a bad one and should be changed (thus negating Gwynn's 1996 batting title) or that 2) a rule should be instituted that forbids steroid suspended players from getting the batting title, then fine. I'm not hearing either of these arguments being made, however.
And they are ignoring undeniable math. It is undeniable that with ONE more PA, Melky would qualify for the batting title and that assuming he had that PA and failed to hit, he would still lead the league in batting (assuming no one catches fire and eclipses .346).
The concept that a player needs X number of PAs to qualify for the batting title is in itself an "exception" -- a completely reasonable one. The Rule 10.22 "exception" also seems very reasonable and apparently has precedent that nobody seemed to quibble with at the time or since.
This new exception is all-together unprecedented and done for what reason? To avoid some bad publicity?
Awful decision.
Except the asterisk didn't actually exist.
No because Melky actually did this. As I noted above Melky actually accomplished this feat and pretending otherwise is rewriting history. I could accept barring Melky from receiving votes for an award like the MVP or the Hank Aaron Award but he actually did hit .346. If we are going to make his .346 average ineligible then should we make the Giants ineligible for the post-season and give the American League home field in the World Series?
And that the union also looked at it and decided that it was a reasonable outcome?
They don't need to be, just like Penn State's forfeited football victories from 1998-2011 don't have to -- and don't -- count as wins for the teams they played.
This isn't a matter requiring elegantly balanced double-entry bookkeeping.
Boo-#######-hoo. No sport should want a guy suspended for cheating to hold a performance-based championship or award in the year he cheated. Fans shouldn't want that either. This is major league baseball, not pro wrestling or the Globetrotters.
The number that would have warranted him being granted the batting title was obtained through cheating. How could any serious person who cares a whit about competitive integrity possibly think it should count? It's shocking it took this long for the decision to be made.
It would be even better if Braun is the one that goes on the tear and wins the title (at .346 or otherwise), since this latest "agreement" was done solely for "OMG teh Steroids!" reasons.
Edit: typos
He is not "under consideration." This isn't the Academy Awards. This is a statistical compilation of what happened, and we can't pretend that Melky didn't get all those hits.
Can we retro-actively revoke Norm Cash's batting title too?
My favorite tweet:
I do. But that's irrelevant here. If they want to pass a rule banning steroid-suspended players from receiving awards or "titles" they can do that, and we can debate the relative merits of such a ruling. A one-off exception to a reasonable and well-established rule is dumb for many reasons that have nothing to do with PEDs.
For those of us who care about what happened on the field of play rather than spending our time being morality police it does. It's fine if you are bothered by PED usage but when I look at a record of what happened I want the record of what happened.
Well, it's not denying that he hit .346. It's just denying him the use of a different exception rule that makes him eligible for the batting title in the first place. It's saying that he doesn't have enough PA's to qualify, not that anyone who tests positive will have their numbers ignored (which I would never in a million years support). If he'd had one more PA, this wouldn't have been able to happen.
That said, while this seemed like a good idea to me at first and didn't seem too unfair since he was below the PA threshold to qualify in the first place, upon further thought I think I'm gonna withdraw my initial support for this decision. It's gonna create a slippery slope with too many possible future consequences if rules can just be changed on the spur of the moment to held create more desireable results. So cheerfully withdrawn.
There's no record of Ben Johnson's 100m "victory" in Seoul and the official record of Penn State football has them not winning games they "won."
It's really not that big a deal.
He "hit" .346, but he cheated so he didn't really hit .346. Simple as that.
They're not removing any of Melky's stats from the record book.
You will still see he had the highest BA in 2012; he just won't qualify for the "Batting Title", which is a completely non-existent award anyway.
It's a non-issue either way.
Why not? The rule giving extra PAs to players for the purposes of calculating qualifying BA is enshrined no less officially than any other requirement.
The rule isn't even all that unusual. The rule doesn't really give Cabrera a fictional AB, it just uses a fictional AB to demonstrate that he clinched it. He can't go worse than 0-for-1 in 1 at-bat.
If a team has a 5-game lead at the end of the season but had a rainout, we do the same thing. We add a fictional loss to verify that the team did in fact clinch the divisional title, wild card, etc. That team wouldn't be winning on a technicality - we're just acknowledging that the team could not lose more than a half-game in the standings in that game (whole game if the rainout's against the other team).
Except baseball isn't saying he didn't hit .346. They're saying he didn't have enough PA for the batting title, but his BA will forever be .346.
I'm with Booey. Upon further thought, I think Bud should have publicly thanked Melky and the union for the gracious offer, but it would be a terrible precedent for MLB to begin granting player-requested exceptions to long-established rules governing statistical matterrs. That way, Melky comes off as a sportsman and baseball will have established, firmly, how it will handle these cases and keep itself from gettig enmeshed in this nonsense in the future.
Well, of course you would think that.
Hey there's a "Chalmers 30" at stake here!
159/459=.346 simple as that
That's because there's a less controversial way to get to the same result. Cabrera should have been DQ'd from batting title consideration weeks ago.
Sports more dedicated to honest competition would have done just that; Lance Armstrong has basically been shunned and barred from all serious competitions -- he can't even run the Chicago and NY marathons.
Though I already withdrew my initial approval of this move, this comment here still doesn't really make sense. They're not deleting Melky's numbers, so the above hypothetical would never come into play. They're saying that he doesn't have enough PA's to qualify and they're going to ignore an exception in the rule book that would have allowed him to. That's not suggesting that his .346 didn't happen or that there's going to be a blank line next to his name on the 2012 stat line.
The main source of the anti-anti-roids sentiment is fanboyism and always has been.
They're not. They're saying he didn't have enough PA's to qualify and they're denying him access to a technicality that would have made it so he did. No one (k, maybe one person) is saying that he didn't really hit .346
Edit: cokes
Similarly, Pete Rose's hits in games he bet on shouldn't count toward his hit total?
How is clinching a technicality? If clinching doesn't count, then the Twins didn't win the AL Central in 2002.
I'm not sure what the problem is in altering the way the batting championship is awarded in the course of the season?
Because this isn't Calvinball.
Again, by this logic, the 2002 Twins did not have enough wins to qualify for the playoffs as they only played 161 games.
Cabrera *clinched* it. He doesn't need that rainout PA.
10.22(a) The individual batting, slugging or on-base percentage champion shall be the
player with the highest batting average, slugging percentage or on-base percentage,
as the case may be, provided the player is credited with as many or more total
appearances at the plate in league championship games as the number of games
scheduled for each club in his club’s league that season, multiplied by 3.1 in the
case of a Major League player and by 2.7 in the case of a National Association
player. Total appearances at the plate shall include official times at bat, plus bases
on balls, times hit by pitcher, sacrifice hits, sacrifice flies and times awarded first
base because of interference or obstruction. Notwithstanding the foregoing
requirement of minimum appearances at the plate, any player with fewer than the
required number of plate appearances whose average would be the highest, if he
were charged with the required number of plate appearances shall be awarded the
batting, slugging or on-base percentage championship, as the case may be.
There's a comment to the rule:
If, for example, Abel has the highest batting average among those with 502 plate appearance
in a Major League with a .362 batting average (181 hits in 500 at-bats), and Baker has 490 plate
appearances, 440 at-bats and 165 hits for a .375 batting average, Baker shall be the batting champion,
because adding 12 more at-bats to Baker’s record would still give Baker a higher batting average than
Abel: .365 (165 hits in 452 at-bats) to Abel’s .362.
Except that there's no such rule regarding games played WRT to clinching a playoff spot. Similarly, there's no games played/PA rule with counting stat titles like HR or RBI. If a player hit 50 homers in 80 games and no one else hit more in 162 games, said player would still win the HR title.
With regards to rate stats, there does have to be a minimum. No one thinks a player who hit .400 in 100 PA's should qualify for the batting title or have this be considered a .400 season, do they?
No. All of those stats are in the books. Melky's stats will stay in the books.
But teams all play the same number of games. Andrew McCutchen's BA isn't going to be calculated for 502 PAs. It's going to be for around 675.
There may not be an "award", but MLB apparently believes there is such a thing as the batting championship, since since they have a rule explicitly devoted to determining eligiblity:
So when they start singing "We are the champions", Melky will just have to stay in his seat. He may have led the league in batting, but he is just not a champion.
If his stats are in the books, then he has the highest batting average among qualifying NL hitters.
If he has the highest batting average among qualifying NL hitters, then he led the league in batting average.
If he led the league in batting average, then he's the batting champion.
No semantic wrestling can alter that.
To go all lawyer on this, there's generally a duty to bring good faith to a matter. You can't get caught cheating under a rule, and then turn in the other direction and expect to get the benefit of your cheating. Institutions are allowed to defend themselves a little.
Or you could hit into a triple play with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth down by 1 run and your WPA title could go up in smoke!
This will stand up over the course of history as much as Frick's asterisk did.
Given how many of us remember Frisch's asterisk despite the fact that it never existed I'd say that it has stood up over the course of history pretty well.
On the other hand, Melky not being awarded the 2012 batting title will never be made into a movie by Billy Crystal. Maybe if Melky was still a Yankee.
On b-r, doesn't it already credit Gwynn with an OBP title not officially recognized due to different definitions of PA (whether sac flies count or not)?
Except that the very first sentence of this argument is debatable. He's only a qualifying NL hitter cuz an exception rule says so. Now a new exception rule says that he isn't. It's all just a matter of which exception rule you consider the most valid.
Like I said above, I've come around to the belief that this is a bad idea. But I don't think it's beyond reasonable debate. If Melky had had even one more PA, then I think it would be. But since he needed an exception in the first place to even make this an argument, I don't think it's completely whackadoodle if someone were to consider this new exception rule to be just as valid as the old one. The validity of exceptions are debateable to begin with.
Where's the good faith in changing a rule after the fact?
If you're a lawyer, would you think it OK if your client was given the opportunity to plead guilty and receive a sentence more severe than the maximum the law could provide?
Whether or not Melky agreed with it, this was a bill of attainder, a rule change targeted after the fact and at one individual, and the MLBPA was complicit. It's a shame that Marvin Miller isn't in charge anymore, because this is going to happen again, now that the MLBPA is allowing a coerced player to receive a penalty for drug use that was greater than the penalty explicitly negotiated in the CBA.
He won't and doesn't have the highest BA among those not qualifying. Currently, he's 7th.
So even he understands.
Booey, I commend you for your willingness to amend your stance upon further consideration. But I'm not sure why you continue to beat this drum. The only way the two things are comparable is because you keep insisting on calling both of them "exceptions." It doesn't appear to me that they are remotely equal. The former "exception" is not really anything of the sort, it is a longstanding part of the official rule. The latter is a one-time "amendment" to said rule for dubious reasons. Weighing which one is "more valid" is impossible. They aren't comparable in any way, shape or form.
Player A goes 180/490 .367 BA
The highest batting average among players with 502 or more AB's goes 175/530 .330. The next highest guy goes 220/675 .326.
Without the 0 fer rule, the second guy wins the batting title over the first guy despite having fewer hits in more AB's, and over the third guy despite having many fewer hits in many fewer AB.s. In fact, give player A forty 0 fers to get him the second guys total AB's and he still wins.
Whoever wins this hypothetical batting title, it will be on a technicality.
Why not declare Ty Cobb the hit king retroactively, too?
Bud Selig would out-Bowie Bowie, sitting in the SF stands wearing cutoff shorts and a straw hat for as long as it takes while hurricane winds buffet his scowling face.
But like I said, I do think it's a bad idea, so it does seem kinda dumb to keep nitpicking about phrasing. I'll let it go.
And, and, and .... OMG ... what about teh amps?!?!?!?
I now find myself rooting for weather.
Well, we gotta argue about something.
Booey, the adding-hitless-AB component is only a technicality if you also agree that the 3.1-PA-per-game requirement is also a technicality. Each is stipulated in one sentence in a three-sentence description of the qualifications for the batting championship.
In that case, every batting champion since the rule hit the books won the title on a technicality. Otherwise the guy who hit .364 in 226 PA would be the 1956 batting champ.
That guy gets blamed for everything...
All involved should be ashamed, as should those of you supporting this nonsense.
Hopefully Sean does not go along. If he does, it will diminish the integrity of b-r.
Hard to see why it's dumb from MLB's viewpoint. From their perspective, Cabrera winning the batting title (and Braun having won the MVP) is just bad PR. This way they get to satisfy the punters while also noting that it was the idea of Melky and the MLBPA.
The MLBPA is the one that's opened a can of worms they'd be better off avoiding. But, in a way, they opened that can of worms by even making nonsense like this part of the official rules (which I didn't think it was). Let Stats Inc or b-r or the BBWAA or whoever decide the rules on "official leaders."
And while SBB is being his usual unhelpful self, it is a fair point that Cabrera violated the rules and (judged by severity of punishment) one of the biggest rules you can break. It would hardly be shocking for a sport to decide that people who violate the rules will not be officially recognized for their achievement by the sport's organizing body. (Note, yes, that's not the rule and it's not fair that Melky should have to abide by a rule that doesn't exist.)
it's not. it's the lay of the land. it's part of the rules for determining the league leader in batting average; no technicality needed. it's fair and square, above board, and it's better than previous requirements like 100 games played, 400 at bats, or being Ty Cobb.
edit: half coke to salvomania
This is another thing that lots of people seem to miss. There's no actual award. It's just a question of what name is listed at the top of a statistical leaderboard, so why does anybody get so worked up about it? OTOH, one-time exceptions seem like a ham-handed way to deal with statistical leaderboards. If your motivation here is a belief that players caught using PEDs should not receive awards, then I don't know why you'd find this one time, post hoc, ad hoc resolution particularly satisfying.
Gotta wonder what the zealots would have come up with had Cabrera's suspension come one game later.
Right. So you'll have to root for some kind of cataclysmic event that causes MLB to wipe games off the schedule entirely.
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