Surge Due To Ichiro’s Departure?
August 2nd, 2012 by terrybenishThere have been many folks opining that the upsurge in the
Mariner’s performance has been due
to the soul cleansing, de-toxing, surgical removal of an impediment
to the team playing well. Ichiro per se.
Larry Stone in eight hundred and eight (808) words takes umbrage with that notion. The word count does not include the headline, because I’m not sure he wrote the headline. In Peabody’s world, my world, I write the head line. But the world of the Times blogger includes trips all over the country, Larry’s in New York now and had a nice dinner there. I love New York, but well Peabody’s budget is not there, so I figured there is a probably a guy who works for the Times Sports Editor who writes headlines for the blogs and the articles. So I did not count the headline which was six words and would push the word count up to eight hundred fourteen (814).
The link is below, I’d reprint it but all the local beat writers, current and former (whole lots of former guys, some working for gas stations which is fine and Microsoft…eesh the Borg) thrashed me and said that by reprinting the words it would reduce the hit count to their website and that was tantamount to being a plagiarizer. I asked if they owned their words or if the paper did and where did their union figure into it and I was shushed loudly. I asked if they understood markets for labor and other stuff, and I might as well as dropped a deuce in the punch bowl, with a splash.
I took that for a big NO. New world I said, organize sell your words to the paper. Stupid thing to say I was told, I didn’t understand how the business model for newspapers had failed, advertising revenue etc. I said surely it’s not rocket science and then a few guys told lies and I was thrown out of the party. The lot of a writer is to be screwed, whether they are employed by dodo bird like organizations like newspapers, or they publish or they work for production companies in Hollywood. That’s why Scott Fitzgerald and Hunter Thompson self medicated, they felt abused.
So Stone is mad that anyone would see Ichiro in that light (i.e. tumor) and he throws out some phrases about statistics that he found somewhere and says no it ain’t so and its unfair to Ichiro. The statistical work asserting losing Ichiro=winning baseball is maybe random, maybe not, let’s let it play out and see.
The team is on this trip to New York, Baltimore and Los Angeles, now. Radio talkers are saying, “Well, umh, yeah sure we’ll see where they’re at on this trip?” Who says this stuff? Are the Mariner marketing people sitting in a warehouse throwing Ichiro bobble heads away? Then they rush in and type of PR sentences and send them to the talkers, or text them?
As Stone tweeted last night they’re 7 1/2 behind the second wild card spot. Is that where we go with this? Are those the expectations? We go from pumping out article after article that the rebuild has failed, fire Zduriencik and now we spin around like meth-crazed ballet dancers and it’s, “Shoot this trip is make or break?”
Really? That’s what passes for analysis? No, they need to shoot towards a .500 hundred trip and keep playing hard. I love Lucas Leutge dumping Raul on his keister, when he was leaning in…Yeah, that is what it’s about, playing hard day in and day out and if you want to measure how good somebody is if they do a Peguero, they’re gone, if they hit and run into walls and second basemen, well that’s some baseball and let us see how the stats progress.
What’s unfair is Ichiro getting paid as an important player, a critical player, a bell cow player and that is something he has never been and now he’s not even what he was, whatever that was, Harry Hooper reborn, a center fielder in King Arthur’s right field. I’ve beat that to death before and he’s gone, best of luck, etc.
Scripps Interactive Newspapers Group
August 4th, 2012 at 3:08 pm
Terry,
Read the comments to yesterday’s game thread (Game No. 108) on the USS Mariner website. Amazing, vituperative stuff. Some people just don’t want to hear the truth.
August 4th, 2012 at 5:07 pm
Dave Cameron is intolerant and has been intolerant for as long as I’ve read the site. It is his site and he has curried beliefs amongst the guys that read it which I no longer to, although he only rarely writes there any further and you have to say what the sycophants want to hear or like a pack of weasels with a keyboard they savage you. The thing is Cameron in the last month or so has written that Ichiro can’t play any more and that the team is better and while those occurred in separate pieces, as a general statement throwing it together is fine. He’s done. If you cover a team as a beat writer and I don’t, nor does Cameron, you enter into relationships with players, coaches, managers, general managers and scouts. They tell you stuff for attribution and stuff they don’t want repeated. Having talked with reporters since 1977 and I can tell you that there is a code about behavior in the clubhouse and out. If I were to write you that the last four managers felt very bad about his behavior towards the rest of the team as well as how he played, that would be a bad thing for me to write, even if I knew it to be true. I’ll just leave it at that. I’m optimistic about how the team is playing now collectively and about certain individuals growth and improved performance and look forward to the balance of the season, whereas before the trade and demotion of Smoak, it had become hard to watch them play.
August 4th, 2012 at 6:25 pm
Terry,
I guess you figured out my handle for comments on Cameron’s site. For me, and it’s an odd feeling, with the trade a cloud lifted and I began enjoying listening to the games again. Even Rick Rizzs. Thanks for writing, you bring an interesting perspective, one that recognizes stat analysis but is not wholly dependent on it.
August 4th, 2012 at 9:07 pm
No problem. Thanks for writing.
August 4th, 2012 at 9:28 pm
So much of the analytical stuff is illuminating. Especially around transitional players, guys getting older breaking down. Over and over again though it needs to be tempered with what you see. There are lots of examples that I can cite where players have just been missed. It is not especially good in identifying young players and the folks at the site that trashed you have missed players. Not always, but they have. Nobody is perfect. Nobody understands how to effectively measure defense. UZR is hugely flawed and thus blows up WAR. I can watch Michael Saunders or Wells and tell you they both have good tools and the basic stuff will confirm that. This team now is more fun to watch now than any Mariner team in years for a lot of reasons.