Pitching an idea for wins and losses

Batters don’t get “wins”; should pitchers?

It’s hard to believe that the 2024 major league baseball season is already 25% complete. Of course, it’s hard for me to believe that it’s already Wednesday as I write this, but I digress . . .

It seems that starting pitchers are pitching less than ever and are increasingly removed before completing five innings, which a starter must do in order to qualify for a win. That statistic—“the win,” as well as “the loss”—is no longer valued in this analytical day and age because too many factors may account for a team winning a game on any given day. Two big factors include how well a pitcher’s defense plays and how many runs his teammates score for him. A team could commit three errors that lead to an unearned run while scoring no runs on offense resulting in the pitcher being tagged with a 1-0 loss. Conversely, a starter could surrender nine runs in five innings, but his teammates scored ten in the first four and thus, he is credited with the win.

As it is the rule requiring a starting pitcher to pitch five innings in order to qualify for a win was an arbitrary decision made in 1950. All kinds of rubrics were used before then to assign individual wins, including “injury wins” and “World Series warm up wins.” In baseball’s formative years i.e. the 1860s and 1870s no pitcher was credited with a win because it didn’t make sense to say that one player was more responsible for a win than another, an argument that sounds rather modern. (For a fascinating history of how wins were awarded to individual pitchers see Frank Vaccaro’s article, “The Origin of the Modern Pitching Win.”)

There is a simple solution for the problem of how to assign pitching wins: Every pitcher who pitches in a game that his team wins is credited with a win. We get rid of the “hold” statistic and that meaningless save statistic. The one exception would be that if a pitcher comes into a game and surrenders the lead, even if his team then comes back to win, that pitcher is not credited with a win. He’d get nothing. The guys who pitched before him and after him get a W, but not that guy. Yeah, I can think of all kinds of exceptions, but let’s keep it simple.

As for losses, I wouldn’t bother assigning them at all. They’re just not the same as wins. If you pitched in a winning game and never surrendered the lead, then you contributed to the win. If you pitched in a losing game, you might not have contributed to the loss. For example, say a starting pitcher—we’ll call him Bob—gives up one run in five innings, but his team doesn’t score while he’s in the game. Both teams go on an offensive tear over the last four innings and Bob’s team loses 10-9, but never at any point does it tie the game or take the lead. Under the current rules, Bob would get the loss, but is that one run the one that beat Bob’s team?

Pitchers have all kinds of statistics to measure how effectively they pitched that have nothing to do with whether the game is won or lost. In fact, hitters are judged based on how well they hit the baseball, not whether their hits contributed to a win.

I may be missing something in all this. . . . Actually, I’m pretty sure that I’m missing something, but such a revision in the rules would 1) more closely reflect the current situation and 2) simply make more sense than quantifying the idea that one guy is responsible for his team’s “win.” At the end of the season, the most valuable pitchers would certainly be evident. They’d be the guys who pitched in the most winning games.

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Project complete

Project completed!

Yesterday, the Cincinnati Reds became the 1964 World Series Champions. How can that be? Three years ago, on March 21, 2021 I began playing a 90-game 1964 Major League season with my 1964 Strat-O-Matic table-top baseball game. That is to say, the player-cards reflected their statistical performances from 1964. With 10 teams in both the American and National Leagues back then, this represented 900 games. Naturally, I kept a stat sheet on each team and am working on an analysis of how my Strat-O-Matic players and teams compared to the real thing. With the NL analysis complete, I can say that the results were very realistic with just enough differences to add to the fun. Yesterday, the Reds defeated the New York Yankees 5-1 at Yankee Stadium in Game 5 of the World Series (you think I wouldn’t play a World Series?) The Reds took the Series four games to one.

Playing 900 games means that on average, there has been a game from 1964 unfold on my basement folding table on four out of five days over the past three years.

I sent weekly reports to my buddy Al, who followed the pennant races as enthusiastically—if not more so—than he followed the actual pennant races over the past three years. We remembered many names from George Alusik to Pete Ward and Steve Boros to Gerry Zimmerman. Others we didn’t exactly remember, but we remembered what their baseball cards looked like. Here’s Dave McNally’s Topps card from 1964. McNally, one of my favorite players, was such a baby face; young and eager to start a major league career. Just like we were even if we were in elementary school and he was already in the majors.

I cannot say that this was a labor of love—there was no labor involved at all. And while I’ll miss those guys from my childhood—I chose the 1964 set because that was the first year that I began to follow baseball—I already have a 1941 season mapped out. Can’t wait to see if Joe DiMaggio puts together a lengthy hitting streak and if Ted Williams tops the .400 mark. Perhaps, history will repeat itself and I’ll be there for every pitch.

Here’s Ted Williams 1941 Strat-O-Matic card. We’ll see if the Splendid Splinter can bat .400 in my basement
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Diamond in the rain

The Men Who Saved Baseball and other baseball stories debuts one week from today! Remember, if you would live in the greater Winchester area and would like a signed copy, please message me and I will be sure to order a copy for you.

The vignette that follows is not included in The Men Who Saved Baseball for the very good reason that I wrote it after the book was assembled and submitted for publication! So for the moment, think of me as the guy at Costco standing there with some really expensive toothpicked cheese and consider the below a free sample.

***

I happened by our local ballpark recently on a gray, damp day that is not unusual for January here in the Mid-Atlantic. Mother Nature could not make up her mind whether to simply hang her clouds low or just go ahead and get foggy. Nor could she make up her mind whether to full-out rain or simply drizzle, and so she vacillated between the two.

Having poured throughout the night, the all-dirt diamond glistened like the actual jewel. It had rained so hard that even the outfield sported puddles to go along with the universal pools around first base, in front of the rubber, and, of course, the right handed batter’s box. Still, I was called to pull over, get out of my car, and contemplate this soggy scene through the backstop fencing. As I peered through the chain link and the rain, I had the sense that this ballfield was quietly waiting.

Hibernating might be a better word than waiting. Having fattened itself on last summer’s joy, it was simply in a hazy slumber knowing it would grow vital again on next summer’s hopes and heroics.

As I gaze, I don’t see any ballplayers out there in the field, only Robert Frost emerging from the wood on a snowy evening to stand nearby and look out over that diamond with me. Frost was a big baseball fan, and a pretty fair ballplayer in his youth. We strike up a wordless conversation, then nod to one another when I head back to my car and he heads off to . . . a horse-drawn sleigh, I suppose.

I turn the windshield wipers up a notch as Mother Nature seems to be leaning more towards rain than drizzle at the moment, but I drive off into a much brighter day.

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An interview with Mo Weber, an “inspirational character”

I have made many wonderful friends through baseball, and one of my most treasured baseball buddies is Mo Weber, who rounded third for the last time in July of 2019 and headed for Home after 96 years, 64 of which he spent coaching. I knew quite a bit about the game, but my baseball education didn’t really begin until I met Mo, who is the basis for the character Max McGowan in “I love it here in Indiana!” That story appears in The Men Who Saved Baseball and other baseball stories which will be released two weeks from today.

The story revolves around three younger men who must decide the best way to honor Max now that he has died. They vow to spread Max’s ashes on his old ball diamond back in Indiana, but they run into complications. When I outlined the plot to Mo, he said in his usual dry way, “How about you keep me alive in the next story?”

I interviewed him about the coaching he did in the semi-pro leagues in South Dakota in the early 1950s, and that interview appears below. Watch and meet the inspiration for Max McGowan. If you knew Mo, I’m sure this will bring back warm memories.

A NOTE: If you live in the greater Winchester, VA area and would like to order a paperback copy, please let me know and I will include your order with my initial author-copy order. That way, the next time I see you, I can hand you your autographed copy. Thank you, and enjoy the chat with Mo.

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The Men Who Saved Baseball

There are two joys associated with the Christmas season. One is the joy of the season itself with decorating and baking and visiting friends and family. The other is getting back to the regular routine.

As you all know, part of my regular routine is writing and now that the 2023 Noel is no more I am putting the finishing touches on my latest project, The Men Who Saved Baseball and other baseball stories. This collection of fiction, essay, and memoir also includes “Their Glorious Summer,” the story of the 1981 Valley League championship race. This article has been available as a free download (and continues to be available as such) but is now available in paperback for as part of this collection.

The Men Who Saved Baseball and other baseball stories will be released on February 6th—Babe Ruth’s birthday. After all, with his prodigious home runs and larger-than-life personality, the Babe saved baseball in the wake of the Black Sox scandal. To provide quick perspective, eight White Sox players, including Shoeless Joe Jackson were banned for life from baseball in 1921 for allegedly throwing the 1919 World Series. But the talk of baseball that year was Ruth who Ruth out-homered every other team in the major leagues.

Major League Baseball, in the eyes of many of us, needs to be saved once more only this time from itself. The gimmicks, the over-extended playoffs, and—ironically enough—the emphasis on gambling has detracted from the game. Simply put, the MLB Powers That Be don’t appreciate their own product. I fixed that, at least in my imagination. You see, in the titular story of The Men Who Saved Baseball, a Midwestern soybean researcher, James “Dutch” Sojabonen, develops a gasoline additive that makes him a fortune. An avid baseball fan, he starts his own professional league. The first year of the All-American League is modestly successful, but when Dutch signs “Sweet Daddy” Davidson, he finds the league’s version of Babe Ruth. The entire nation discovers the league and the fact that baseball has never lost its magic.

The Men Who Saved Baseball and other baseball stories will be available in paperback or e-book form on February 6th. Please mark the date and order yourself a copy!

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Corporate Pomposity

I recently came across two interesting notices, one in an annual report and the other on a milk carton. Beginning with the latter, take a look at the photo below.

On the front of its milk carton, Glenview Farms wants you to know that their reduced fat milk comes “from cows not treated with the hormone rBST.” But on the back, Glenview Farms concedes that “no significant difference has been shown between milk derived from rBST treated and non-rBST treated cows.” . . . The hand of pomposity is quicker than the eye of common sense.

Nevertheless, the winner in the Most Pompous Corporate Notice for 2023 is Wesley Theological Seminary’s statement on the inside cover of its 2023 Annual Report. (It is also entered in the Most Convoluted Sentence of 2023.) It reads, “Printed with zero VOC ink on paper containing postconsumer content, and/or manufactured with hydroelectric power, acid free/alkaline, elemental chlorine free, mixed credit or certified sourcing.” I have no idea what that means, but can you assure me that no whales were harmed during the printing of this annual report?

Books always make great gifts for Christmas! Please peruse my book pages (see banner above), as there is bound to be something of interest to everyone on your gift list. Several of these volumes are slim and easily read in a single sitting, perfect for when you need take a little me-time during the Holidays. So rest in front of the fire with a hot chocolate in one hand and Time Is A Pool or any volume from the Swing Time series in the other.

If you haven’t done so already, please like my author page on Facebook. You can find it here.

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Nothing can be “overcrowded.”

I recently attended a meeting at which several candidates for our local school board here in Frederick County, VA spoke. All decried the “overcrowded conditions” in our schools. I decry the use of the term “overcrowded.” People use this term without thought and have done so for some time (since 1725 according to one source) but I’m asking YOU to think about it.

Even the dictionary has trouble defining this absurd word. Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary defines the word as “crowded or filled to excess: having too many people or things.” In other words, overcrowded has no meaning beyond the word crowded. And, if something is “filled to excess,” then it is not crowded, it is spilling. It is impossible to “fill to excess” because once a thing is filled, it is filled. If the “excess” is coffee, it has spilled into your saucer; if the excess is people, they have spilled out the door. In fact, I believe the word would be overflowing.

Far more precise—and a word that actually makes sense—would be the phrase over capacity. That could actually be measured and a school board candidate could tell us that, for example, the Samuel Johnson Elementary School is 10% over capacity.

As it is, the intelligent use of language is increasingly decreasing. Words are precious things. Words have meaning. When they cease to, chaos will ensue. Let us not be lax in the use of our language even if that language has a long-standing history.

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is a large difference indeed; it is the difference between the lightning and the lightning bug.~~Mark Twain

The video below illustrates how a room can go from crowded to overflowing:

***

Speaking of words, could we as a society quit shortening words? In an article in this month’s Progressive Farmer I recently came across the word preg in reference to cross-breeding in cattle. As in “preg rates stayed pretty good.” Abominable.

And what kind of lazy word-bastard do you have to be that you say or write merch instead of merchandise? It’s a horrible-sounding word; like the nickname of that annoying kid who laughed at in appropriate times back in 9th grade. I’m surprised some ad agency hasn’t devised the slogan, Purch our merch.

People who do that are ridic. Unstand what I mean?

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Gold Glove, Golden Memories: So long, Brooks

I have dreaded this day since I was old enough to truly appreciate the perspective that mortality brings. I just heard that Brooks Robinson has died. It must be true because something is gone inside of me. Maybe the last vestiges of childhood innocence that have hung around for these 66 years. Maybe the ultimate rejection of that fantasy that somehow Life will go back to the way it was, and once again we’ll be in the early morning of our hopes and dreams. Yes, this baseball player meant that much to a generation of Baltimoreans; a ballplayer about whom as Gordon Beard, a former AP sports writer once remarked, “Brooks never asked anyone to name a candy bar after him. In Baltimore, people named their children after him.”

I once wrote Scholastic Magazine a scathing letter when they dared run an article proclaiming that Ron Santo was the best third baseman in baseball. I was personally affronted. I have gained perspective over the years, however, and I can acknowledge that George Brett was a much better hitter, Eddie Mathews and Mike Schmidt had more power, and yeah, Ron Santo was pretty good, too, and should have been in the Hall of Fame a long time ago. But those guys weren’t Brooks. They weren’t Brooks.

It would not have been that hard to find somebody in Timonium or Dundalk or Fells Point or any other Baltimore neighborhood who had a better arm than Brooksie. It would have been downright easy to find someone faster than he was. It would have been impossible to find anybody nicer. I think this was Brooks’ appeal. He was that nice guy who you wanted as a neighbor, who actually looked more or less like your neighbor until someone hit a hot smash down the third base line or dropped a bunt up the third base line and suddenly! The flash of lightning leather, the ball seemingly on its way to first before you could blink. Everyone who frequented old Memorial Stadium saw that kind of thing routinely and we still wonder, how did the neighbor guy do that? The 1966 World Series ranks as the biggest thrill for us old Oriole fans, but that 1970 World Series was personally joyous. What? You didn’t know our buddy could do that? We’ve been cheering that for years. That’s just Brooks. Our Brooks.

I first “met” Brooks Robinson in 1965 when he came to the Carroll Manor recreation baseball program as the honored guest for the Opening Day ceremonies. My father took some shaky, silent home movies of this star with the host of little planets swirling around him. He signed everything thrust in front of him and I remember him joking “I think some of these kids are coming back for seconds!” I know I got my glove AND my 1965 Official Orioles Yearbook signed that day. My parents took me to Brooks Robinson Night that year, when he was honored for winning the 1964 American League MVP. My fiancé and I attended Thanks Brooks Day when he retired in 1977. That same girl, now my wife, went to Brooks Robinson Hall of Fame Night in 1983, as well as to the induction ceremony in Cooperstown. Fifteen years later or thereabouts, we took photos of our two daughters flanking the #5 statue at Camden Yards. Tonight, we’re sitting here in tears.

That first time I met Brooks I was eight and he was 28. Now I’m 66 and he’s gone. How could that happen? I understand the biology of it, I just can’t comprehend it.

Our younger daughter Sarah called us with the news. She didn’t want me to “just hear it,” but thought she should be the one to break the news. Our older daughter commiserated with me on the phone. Had either turned out to be a boy, she would have been named, “Brooks.”

The friends from my youth and I all agree that we were lucky to have Brooks as a hero while we were growing up. As of today I guess, we’re all grown up.

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Major League Baseball Needs a Salary FLOOR

Wow! I can’t believe that my last post was way back on July 20th!

Part of that failure to post stems from the notion that if you have nothing to say, then you shouldn’t speak. Or write in this case. Actually, getting old has been a big topic in my circles of friends lately, but that topic gets old.

Part of not posting for so long IS related to getting older, because getting older has completely affected my relationship with Time. It just goes by too fast, (which, by the way, is a much more comforting explanation than the notion that I am now processing it too slowly.)

Did that thing happen yesterday? Last week? Last year?

It’s September? What happened to August?

Part of not posting for so long is also because I have been working on a lengthy short story titled, “The Men Who Saved Baseball.” This is a tale set in the future, when one man from Iowa comes into a fortune large enough to begin his own professional baseball league. By involving the right people and signing the right players, and with a little luck and fortunate timing, the All-American League becomes a giant success, a success made possible by Major League Baseball continuing to shoot itself in the foot.

To that end, I have some advice for MLB, not that they’re going to listen. Here’s my tip, Commissioner Rob Manfred on how to stop shooting yourself in the foot, assuming that you have any toes left: You have too many weak franchises; it’s time to implement a salary floor.

Establish a policy that every Major League baseball team must spend a minimum on player salaries. Make sure that every franchise maintains a minimum standard of quality. You know, like the McDonald’s franchises do.

That salary floor should be set at $100 million. According to a 2022 article in Baseball Prospectus (cited here in a Los Angeles Dodger blog) the most recent national television deal results in $60 million going to each team. Couple that with local TV deals worth at least $40 million and there’s your floor. That means, MLB owners that your profit will come from how many tickets, hot dogs, and parking spaces you sell. You’ll become like a regular business, the kind that needs to please its customers in order to make money.

According to USA Today, eight teams are currently under that proposed floor: Baltimore, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Kansas City, Miami, Oakland, Pittsburgh, and Tampa Bay. That’s 25% of all major league teams, and payrolls range from Oakland’s $56,895,000 to Kansas City’s $92,468,100. (The Nationals rank ninth, by the way with player salaries totaling $101,190,153.) The Orioles are 29th in player salaries with a total of $60,722,300, but keep in mind, Chris Davis, who was injured and no longer playing—is still collecting a paycheck on a long-term contract. In fact, Davis receives $9.16 million for the next three years, which is 15% of Baltimore’s total payroll. (Click here for the entire list of team salaries.)

A salary floor would not just force these small market teams to hire better employees as it were, it also means that the big money franchises would have less talent on which to lavish their money.

Of course, there are details to work out and nuances to be un-nuanced with this idea, but the basic principle can’t be denied. Major League Baseball, as a corporate entity, should hold its franchisees to a minimum standard. That would produce a more satisfying customer experience, attracting more fans, which increases profit.

Unless of course, the goal for the owners and their lawyers and henchmen (is that redundant?) is to milk this cow for all its worth and then get out of the dairy business, hanging us fans and the cow out to dry. I wonder anymore.

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Gullible goofs from the past . . . and present?

Here’s a little tidbit that appeared in the July 17th, 2023 edition of the Winchester Star’s “Out of the Past” column:

July 12, 1923

HAYFIELD — There has been a noticeable deficiency of precipitation in the past two years, particularly during the last twelve months, which is having a telling effect on those subterranean reservoirs that feed wells and springs, causing many intermittent springs and streams to cease flowing.

The shortage of rain has been attributed to the extraction of electricity from the atmosphere by the flight of airplanes and Zeppelins.

If this theory is correct and the air becomes the national highway of travel, rain will ultimately cease to fall and famine prevail.

The temperature last month was the hottest experienced in June for more than thirty years and the driest since 1918. [STOP]

What a bunch of gullible goofs!

Wonder what they’ll think of us 100 years from now?

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