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Are we supposed to wait until Darren comes out the other side of the time warp before commenting?
Belli did do a pretty good job filling in in 2001 though the whole team fell apart anyway and the myth of Varitek as the true indispensible team leader took a major step forward. "Sure, losing Nomar and Pedro hurt because they're great individual talents, but once Tek went down the team was lost."
If the team craters this month he will forever be Cap'n Indispensable.
And you try getting somebody with indispensable in their name for less than 10M per.
What a great season. I liked that team more than the 2004 one, and would prefer a 2003 WS ring to a 2004 one.
even adding Pokey can't offset that.
And any news about Lowell's foot? Sigh.
We have to face the fact that this team's first place status owed a lot to generally good health and surprisingly good bounce-backs off the plexiglass by Schilling and Lowell. Now, as Darren has aptly summarized, we're likely above the league average for wins lost and payroll dollars wasted to the DL. And a lot of this happened at the worst possible time--right after the deadline.
So we'll see how ingeniuous Theo and the lads are over the next week. Replacement-level bats at 3B and C, a very thin bench, and a struggling back of the rotation won't keep you in the race for long.
Globe
Jason Johnson actually did a relatively good job last night, looked far better than in his first few starts. Maybe we'll get to test whether Varitek's bull-headed pitch-calling has been hurting the team.
I don't understand why the Sox called up Huckaby instead of Corky Miller. Both have MLB experience, and in that time, Miller stands out in that he didn't demonstrate that he's the worst-hitting position player of the last decade.
Huh?
Mirabelli since last July 31: .203/.287/.359 in 153 ABs... just 5HR in that time. Stud who hits bombs my ass.
Not that Varitek was setting the world on fire or anything this season, but it's hard not to notice that Sox are Lara Flynn Bolye thin behind the plate.
Back in Varitek's first full season with the team in '98, all the pitchers seemed to get better results with Hatteberg was catching, too.
This is a guy who was good for 310/420 or so every year from 2000-2005. He's been struggling this year, but it's pretty hard to say much about 100 scattered at-bats, even if you tack on 50 more from last season.
Wasn't Huckaby the guy that seperated Jeter's shoulder?
Uhhh, because it was 12 months ago?
Going back two years Mirabelli's line is: .225/.313/.386 with 11 HR in 311 ABs (8/04)
Going back three years Mirabelli's line is: .240/.327/.447 with 21 HR in 441 ABs (8/03)
Going back four years Mirabelli's line is: .239/.314/.425 with 25 HRs in 616 ABs (8/02)
Going back five years Mirabelli's line is: .243/.322/.450 with 39 HRs in 811 ABs (8/01)
I think its fair to say that Mirabelli was pretty good.. but to say he is good now, that's a stretch - unless you're defining good as "slightly better than Bad Flash Flahrety."
If the Sox give Huckaby regular playing time against the Yanks, I'll be the happiest person on earth.
It's also pretty unlikely that pitchers were doing better with Hatteberg behind the plate. This is a guy who couldn't even stick at catcher, even for the old-school moneyball beer league A's.
Overall, I just think that if the front office believes Varitek's pitch calling is significantly damaging the team they'd talk to him about it, and if he just won't listen, start calling the pitches from the bench.
Who's the fanboy floating this stupidity? Yeah, Jeter and Mirabelli are good comps, and yeah, "offensive stats go up and down." I agree w/the implication: Mirabelli's a star waiting to be born. He's not a 35 yr. old catcher who's never been a starter, he's a young promising hitter who just need consistent ABs! (And, of course, his defense is amazing and V-tek's sucks, so it's actually a boon Tek is hurt, but that goes w/o saying.)
Yeah, McNally's the fanboy.
12 months is a timespan picked out in order to be dominated by Mirabelli's terrible 100 AB this year. Any sample in which 2006 constitutes the majority of the sample will make him look bad. You added 50 AB as if that made it a new insight. It didn't.
Of course.
I think Mirabelli currently projects to hit worse than Varitek had been hitting, because Mirabelli's most recent production has been weak. I doubt the projection difference adds up to a full win over 4-6 weeks.
What methodolgies are those kev? I'm just using Pinto's Day by Database and going back 12 months each time... Do you think a similar study of Jeter starting in May 2004 would show that he sucked?
I mean, I know he's no Rick Burelson or Edgar Renterria, but c'mon now.
Certainly, if they need Varitek in the clubhouse for whatever specialness he brings, ok. But it's hardly "going overboard" to doubt that.
If Varitek were hitting like he did in 03-05, then, yes, definitely, this is a big loss. But he isn't. He's hitting like, well, Doug Mirabelli.
That's probably right, as long as Pena keeps hitting above his head, Lowell keeps hitting above his (wasn't everyone predicting his death before the season began?), and Papi destroys every late-inning reliever. Should any of those flag, however, it may have been nice to hope that perhaps Tek would come 'round and hit more to his career norms.
I guess I never made clear what I thought Varitek actually contributed. No, it's not clubhouse specialness, it's hitting. In this very thread, you are using Mirabelli's past few years to argue that he isn't as bad of a hitter as the numbers he's put up this season, but apparently Varitek is actually a 740 OPS hitter now, at least for the rest of this season?
You point out that Varitek has been hitting "like, well, Doug Mirabelli." Well Doug Mirabelli has been hitting like Ken Huckabay.
I think the difference between the reasonable expected production of the two hitters, 4 out of 5 games, and the difference between Belli and Huckabay in the other 1 (probably more since Belli won't catch that much), is substantial.
I'm very curious to see whether any change in game-calling occurs, and whether it helps. I'm fairly dubious. I suspect Varitek's pitch-calling problems have been overblown around here.
Is picking up Javy Lopez out of the question (either b/c someone will claim him, or because he's not worth it)?
Then why does Mirabelli not get significantly better as the sample gets bigger? He gets a little better, but not very much.
Again, of course. It's nonsense to compare Mirabelli's career pre-2004 to Varitek's current and below par season. I tried to make that point above.
If it were just a month in April, I'd agree here... but when there's only two months to go, losing a month to injury is significant.
And I'm happy I wrecked my car, I needed a new one anyway. I'm happy I got fired, I was tired of that job anyway.
If Mirabelli hits .243/.322/.450 for the duration of Varitek's injury, I'll buy you a sandwich.
Looking at his BB-Ref Page, Mirabelli had a very productive stretch between '03 and '04, but those look fairly out of place with the rest of his career.
The stint on the DL may help him. However, the knee surgery he's having during that rest may counteract the benefit of rest.
I find the Beerabelly highly entertaining and a useful backup catcher, but no one could argue he's exactly the model of conditioning that would lead one to think his numbers would translate perfectly to playing every day.
I will miss that.
My point was that the Red Sox don't substantially downgrade from what they've been doing so far, which includes Tek's 740 OPS.
Yeah, ok then. But as others have pointed out, lots of players have produced at a different level from their projection. Literally all of them have, if you define different sufficiently small. I still think projections based on multiple years are a much better way of looking at what is likely to happen in the future than in year stats-to-date (especially if we roughly adjust the projections for how a player is looking in the current year, taking both methods into acount.)
Before the injury, and ignoring salary, would you have traded Varitek for Lo Duca or Greg Zaun at the deadline? Both of those guys have been better than 'tek this year.
The Red Sox, with Varitek's 740 OPS, have been playing .600 ball. I don't think that they project to drop way under .600 if they have to make do with a 700 OPS or so this month.
So 34yo Varitek has fallen off his career norms, but 36yo Mirabelli is supposed to match his? With a bad back? And more exposure? If I had to guess, I'd put Mirabelli's line as a full-timer at .215/.295/.380. He's older than he was in his salad days and those days were great for a backup, but as a starter, with age and wear now setting in, he won't sniff is career norm.
That said, based on Varitek's "contributions" this season, it won't be much of a drop off.
This just seems like a way of pooh-poohing any injury to a starter that was performing under expectations. Would you be arguing the opposite if a player who was greatly overperforming got injured? Gabe Kapler gets knocked out for 6 weeks, I say "Hey, it's no big deal, Kapler stunk and was taking ABs away from Wily Mo anyway." Would you respond "Kapler's been putting up an 800 OPS this season, and playing a lot since he got back, so the Red Sox are going to have a hard time maintaining their .600 winning percentage."?
This looks like a flagrant strawman argument on my part, in part because it's so silly, but aside from the part about Kapler not really being a starter, how is this not the inverse of your argument? (I would have to dig up other teams' stats for a good example; How about Michael Barret? Are the Cubs royally boned if they lose him?)
Finally, I think we need to come to agreement on the likely length and magnitude of Varitek's injury before there's going to be any agreement on what it does to expected winning percentage, playoff chances, etc. I strongly doubt that he will be back sooner than 6 weeks after arthroscopic surgery, and he's not likely to hit well for another couple weeks. He'll probably be worse than 740, even, but you know he's going to start. That's basically the rest of the season that we're getting replacement level production at catcher.
To me the particulars of this season seem similar to 1978, unfortunately. If you watch the YES Network story of the 1978 season, it starts with the Yankees losing ground while they had a bunch of injuries, then gaining ground as the Red Sox started "choking". In reality, the Sox got their own rash of injuries just as the Yankee regulars were returning, and each team's second half was similar to the other's first half, both in terms of manpower and performance.
The difference this year? Well, there are plenty, but I think the big one is that each team's roster is better equipped to withstand injuries to a handful of key components than they were 28 years ago.
I could take the easy way out and say I would have expected his preseason Zips, PECOTA, or whatever for the rest of the season, but I am a little more pessimistic than that and think this season does reflect a little bit of being cooked. However, I think that cookedness, like most things in life, is not an all or nothing thing, and Varitek could have permanently declined in ability without going all the way down to a true-talent 740 OPS. How's 800 for a guess, about .260 .360 .440? Keeps the patience but loses some but not all batspeed?
I'd like to see how that's going to work. If A-Rod takes an argument out into right field, though, I guess he'd deserve whatever he got. I suppose he could climb the wall at Yankee Stadium and pummel a few fans to even that score, but that would be, well, psychotic.
Their pitching is shakey - the best pitcher is 39 years old and they're counting on a 22-year-old rookie as their #3. Their offense just took a hit and the f***ing Yankees just upgraded on both sides of the ball, and the Twins, Chicago, and Detroit look really good. The Red Sox don't play baseball in a vacuum - I think it's going to be hard for them to make the playoffs this year.
Varitek was having a down year, but, come on, it was about a 90% certainty that he'd outhit Doug Mirabelli going forward. We'll never know, but this sure doesn't help the sox. Add to that the fact that Mirabelli's at bats will now be taken by Ken Huckaby, who, unless he bulldozes and injures Derek Jeter again, will not help the Sox.
Basically, this hurts the Sox depth tremendously, but I expect very little offensive front line impact from RF, and a small but noticeable decline at catcher.
Wow, Varitek has thrown out 12 runners out of 40? Maybe Belli will help.
You've lost your mind. No other snark. You've just lost your mind.
Oh, the park effects!
I think that was the only area that Varitek was better than Posada, skills wise.
First base coach Tony Pena might have something to do with it?
We mock, but Georgie's wife is smokin'.
I hadn't considered this.
I'm going to throw gamecalling out the window - I see no particular way to measure it, so I'll ignore it.
But I love how Fasano receives the ball - he gets lower than anyone I'vr seen since Pena retired.
Only because there's that commercial featuring her pooper. Shoot other big leaguer's wives from below/behind, and we can compare apples to apples.
What commercial is this?!?
What the hell???
Thats funny, I remember Posada getting into Pedro's dome so hard during the 2003 ALCS that Pedro jus'about pooped himself on the mound.
Jorge, his wife, and his kid shot a PSA for the foundation which does research into little Jorge's medical condition.
The end of the commercial has a camera at ground level watching Jorge holding his son's hand who is holding Mrs. Jorge's hand walking away. She had jeans on, and it was fairly impressive.
They showed it on YES like twice an hour a few years ago - I rarely watch commercials now.
So now fighting abilities have something to do with being a good catcher? (I don't even remember this, btw. Who is Bobby Smith?)
Game calling must be a wash at best. I do agree that Posada's hands are a bit suspect, but he never seems to have more passed balls/wild pitches than average.
Posada's arm seems to be far and away superior.
Pena has definately been working with Posada on his throwing this year according to reports.
Rick Burelson would have killed either A-Rod or Posada with just one roundhouse kick to the face.
I can't remember one they came out on top of.
Easy...the Benitez fight in, IIRC, 1996.
But the larger point, that the Yankees have been big pussies in the post-dynasty era, is partially true. I'd have beaned Ortiz years ago.
My goodness you are exceedingly groan enducing.
Anyway, it very well could have happened, I would just like youtube confirmation, or confirmation from another, nonkevin source.
Did anyone lose the Pedro gets shelled and throws at Garcia's head playoff game fight? Don Zimmer, but he is 100.
Here is the thing, nobody ###### with the Yankees when Straw was around, straw will hit a ############ in front of his momma. Straw was a crazy, arthur rhodes hitting mother ######. We could use a little straw.
hahahahhaaaahahhahahaaaaa
wait are you serious?
are you out of your mind?
the yankees lost all aspects of that brawl
Kevin's no Madeliene Albright.
wait are you serious?
are you out of your mind?
No, I'm just correct, while you've been brainwashed by two years of media Red Sox ballwashing and Jimmy Fallon movies.
The Yankees lost the only thing that matters, which is the game. Saying Varitek somehow won that fight is beyond stupid.
Sorry, but I just don't see that. Tek tried to take him down, and was unable too. A-Rod could quite easily lock down on that position. Also, I'm sure that in terms of brute size and strength, A-Rod has a huge advantage. I have no idea if he's a "brawler" or not.
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