Of course, that’s not the proper conclusion. It isn’t any more fair to say that A-Rod improves under pressure now than it was to say that he folded under pressure before. What this is are the vagaries of sample size playing out on a grand theater. A-Rod’s up to 202 career playoff plate appearances. 202 PAs isn’t a whole lot. When you only have 202 PAs, a game like Alex’s today can change your OPS 38 points. Put simply, Alex hasn’t had enough of an opportunity to show us how good he is in the playoffs one way or the other, and he still hasn’t. We don’t know much more about him today than we did two weeks ago. As always, the best assumption until proven otherwise is that there’s nothing magical about playing in the playoffs.
Sample size, naturally, won’t be the theme of the response. People will spin this as Alex being a changed man, as Alex doing something to find his inner peace and stay calm in the spotlight. It’s the only way for his previous critics to stay consistent with the stuff they used to write, because no one wants to admit to having been that wrong that much.
But while that should bother me, it doesn’t, or at least it doesn’t now, because if nothing else, the story’s different. At long last, the story is different. Every article discussing how Kate Hudson is helping keep Alex comfortable is an article that doesn’t unfairly rip him to shreds, and though that may not really seem like much progress, it’s a step along the path towards finally giving due credit to one of the greatest players the game has ever seen.
Must print out..fold over..stamp bogus highball logo on napkin..bring to bar…slide under Yankeelung O’Dooley’s drink.
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1. The importance of being Ernest Riles Posted: October 21, 2009 at 01:32 PM (#3360664)I realize WHY the writer is making that point, but I think it's fairly blind to do so, when most reports about the Yankees have been along the lines that Mr. Rodríguez has handled the press differently, is keeping a fairly low profile (vs. other A-Rod years/seasons - this Kate Hudson 2009 relationship is actually much lower key than Alex's shenanigans in previous years) and apparently has a better relationship with his teammantes.
Being at peace with yourself doesn't guarantee that you'll have a monster playoff series, but since A-Rod has long since been seen as pressing too much in the big spot, I would not disocunt his personality changes.
I agree that some of the people who branded ARod a choker will try to "spin" it like this.
But for others, they're too stupid to realize that they were idiots in the first place. (I mean, you have to be an idiot to arrive at the initial conclusion that ARod was a choker.) So they'll actually believe that ARod is a changed man or whatever rather than it being "spin" for them.
The concepts of "low profile" and "lower key" depends entirely, 100%, on the behavior of the people who are talking about him, not his behavior. In years past we never knew anything about A-Rod's personal life except for various scandalous rumors that A-Rod was probably embarrassed by. Now he and Kate Hudson have their photographs in People Magazine with their adorable kids on a regular basis, and people are saying he's "keeping a fairly low profile".
Britney Spears seems to be keeping a low profile now too. Although she's probably doing the same things she always did, it's just that the paparazzi is tired of writing about her and is tearing down someone else.
To use your Britney Spears example, she is famous for "giving it up" to Papparazzi ("Working with the paparazzi to create memorable shots is called 'giving it up', a sexualized metaphor that neatly captures the masculine-feminine romantic dynamic of need and reluctance that characterizes the relationship between celebrity photographers and their subjects".... But no one in the business compares to Britney").
Surely, if Ms. Spears takes a low profile and stops preening in front of Papparrazzi (in a sense, she stops "giving it up"), her actions would determine her coverage.
Now you can choose to agree or disagree as to whether A-ROd is or isn't keeping a low profile or whether such low profile is in any way affecting his baseball performance. But that doesn't mean that he hasn't indeed changed his actions.
Seattle
1997 ALDS .875
2000 ALDS .615
2000 ALCS 1.253
New York
2004 ALDS 1.213
2004 ALCS .895
2005 ALDS .635
2006 ALDS .205
2007 ALDS .820
2009 ALDS 1.500
2009 ALCS 1.450
Yep, he's much more at peace this year, 32 PA's are proof of that. Those 46 PA's from 2000 and 2004 must have been flukes.
Just a hypothesis.
.305/.390/.576/.965
Alex Rodriguez Career Post-Season Batting Line:
.299/.388/.563/.951
Factor in the probability that post-season pitching, due to the lack of 5th starters and the fact that the teams were good enough to make the post-season, is superior to average regular season pitching, and I don't see any difference worth talking about.
Derek Jeter Regular Season Batting Line:
.317/.388/.459/.847
Derek Jeter Career Post-Season Batting Line:
.310/.379/.481/.860
That's two fallacies in one paragraph. The first one is that you are either implying that I made the argument that his playoff stats are proof that he is more at peace this year (I didn't - I mentioned published reports) or you are being purposefully specious to try to prove a point.
The second one is that you are taking the 2000 and 2004 and using them out of context. On one of the different ongoing threads today (the one about the Verducci comment), mention was made of how Joe Torre dropped A-Rod from the batting order in the 2006 playoffs.
(It's comment 5, by "Jolly Old St. Nick(now, with screen name history", who states: "And he dropped A-Rod in the order in that 2006 playoff for the obvious reason that at the time, A-Rod was hitting like a scared little girl at her first ballet recital. It was a tactical decision that didn't work, but up to then nothing else had worked with A-Rod, either.").
But yes, you can choose to discount the possibility that A-Rod was pressing in 2006 (as proven by Torre bumping him down the order) and that he's more at ease today using the sample size fallacy, if that gets you through the night.
That's a perfectly valid point.
You don't know if he was pressing. Torre didn't know. Players go through hellish streaks all the time, there is so much variance in baseball you can't link it to anything by using anything more scientific than wishful morality tales.
And if you want real laughs, go look at Jeter's post-seasons. Tons of variance as well. Why was he pressing so hard in 2001? Why didn't Torre drop him in the order?
My guess is herpes outbreak, and Torre felt guilty about giving it to him.
Did Kurt do the raising? He's not her father.
EDIT: and wasn't Kurt a ballplayer, too?
EDIT again: He did.
EDIT once more: and he was.
Because by your rationale, Torre moved A-Rod down the order in the 2006 playoffs just because he (Torre) felt like it......
Mind you, you COULD argue that Torre was wrong in what he did or even in what he (Torre) thought he saw. But that is not the argument you are making, and in any case, I would think that Torre was a lot closer to A-Rod and had some first hand knowledge of how A-Rod was acting, feeling and behaving, which informed his decision on where to bat Alex.
(Really, this is the type of attitude that sometimes ticks me off about Primates. They suddenly go into a defensive crouch and start screaming "sample size, sample size", and start discounting everything else which could possibily affect a player).
For an Angels minor league team no less. Thanks a lot Kurt.
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