Results tagged ‘ Aaron Hill ’
Gearing up for the second half
I feel bad I haven’t written anything since pop-up-fly-gate, I keep coming back to the blog and 
feeling a slight sense of guilt that there’s been nothing new for ages and the last entry features a possibly oversized picture of Luis Castillo looking stupid. I guess to some it must look like the Mets’ run of form since that Friday night in Yankee stadium has made me hang up the keyboard and call it a day on this season. This is, I suppose, partially true. Every time I feel like writing something I hold back the urge, lest it turn into a boring rant about the Mets’ inadequacies and the various ruminations and turning of brain-cogs that leave me sitting agog as I watch Daniel Murphy leave the game to be pinch hit for by Argenis Reyes.
Anyway, this is a blog about baseball, not just the Mets. That’s why I have the snazzy MLB logo instead of a Mets one as my enforced background.
I fully intend to dwell on the things in baseball that make me smile over the next few entries on this blog and to be a better blogger in general.
SOME THINGS I’VE BEEN DOING SINCE LUIS FORGOT HOW TO CATCH:
- Watching Ken Burns’ Baseball on DVD, which was bought for a mere £8 used from amazon.co.uk. Nearly 1000 minutes documenting the story of baseball from 1846 to 1994, this is clearly the bargain of the century.
- Reading John Feinstein’s Living on the Black. A book about Tom Glavine and Mike Mussina’s strangely similar 2007 seasons. I’m only 150 pages in but it’s pretty good so far. I might post a fuller review when I’ve finished it.
- Making my own spreadsheet where I can work out player’s WAR and then realised I could just look it all up on fangraphs.com
- Discovered www.retrosheet.org and looked up the box scores for the Major League games I’ve been to. Turns out I’ve seen Ty Wiggington start a game as a lead-off hitter and players with the surname Wolf have featured in 60% of games I’ve attended!
- Awaiting a letter of thanks from Toronto 2B Aaron Hill after this blog laid out the various scenarios that would await Hill depending on if he was voted into the All-Star starting lineup and encouraged fans to vote him in. Hill did, indeed, start the game and NTIG’s influence was felt around the world.
More stuff coming soon, I promise. Thanks for reading – if anyone still is!
All-Star Voting: American League
The All-Star game matters. We’re told this constantly. So it’s pretty much your responsibility if you’re a player voted into the game in St.Louis to play to your best and try and gain World Series home advantage for your league. And the All-Star game is absolutely the best way to decided how the World Series pans out. Why use such dated and anachronistic methods such as best regular season record when it can come down to who is the better pitcher between David Wright and J.D Drew, as nearly happened last year? 
So, the players probably know their responsibility but how do they get there in the first place? Selected by the managers of the NL and AL champions? Nope! Major League Baseball gives each one of us a vote and why have just one vote when you can have TWENTY FIVE? So, how best to use your 25 bites at the All-Star cherry?
Understandably, the All-Star voting is one of the most talked about
topics right now. It’s hard to know what sort of fresh discussion you
can bring to the table so I thought I’d just publish a load of lists,
yeah?
If You Think Adam Dunn is Overrated
AKA, if you are impressed by a high batting average. By far the simplest way to select a team. The 2009 American League All-Stars would look like this if everyone had made their selection using just BA and if the internet died tonight, thus meaning no more votes could be submitted for the rest of the season. A stretch, I know.
C.Victor Martinez (CLE) .351
1B. Kevin Youkilis (BOS) .358
2B. Aaron Hill (TOR) .328
3B. Michael Young (TEX) .333
SS Jason Bartlett (TB) .373
OF Ichiro Suzuki (SEA) .353
OF Adam Jones (BAL) .347
OF Carl Crawford (TB) .319
Not a bad team. a bit of power and lots of speed. Aaron Hill would obviously win the home run derby, earn himself a big money mid-season trade to the Yankees whereby he would be named World Series MVP in October and go on to forge a career as a grittier version of Joe Morgan as a pundit on Sunday Night Baseball.
If You Think David Eckstein is Overrated
AKA, if you’re wowed by some of the more well-thought out stats in baseball you may wish to select your team by their value over a player of ‘replacement level’ (VORP). Put simply, how many wins a player is worth over an average major leaguer playing his position (10 VORP points is roughly 1 win).
C, Joe Mauer (MIN) 36.4 VORP
1B. Justin Morneau (MIN) 31.2 VORP
2B. Ian Kinsler (TEX) 21.0 VORP
3B. Evan Longoria (TB) 29.4 VORP
SS. Jason Bartlett (TB) 31.3 VORP
OF. Adam Jones (BAL) 37.6 VORP
OF. Jason Bay (BOS) 26.0 VORP
OF. Torii Hunter (ANA) 24.7 VORP
A far less balanced team than their BA counterparts relying almost entirely on power but seems to have a bit more of that All-Star sheen about them, In this reality Aaron Hill is lucky to make the bench and grounds into a double play in his only plate appearance in the 14th inning, Bud Selig forces him to quit baseball soon afterwards and live on a ranch with David Wells and Kirk Gibson.
I know, its not exactly hardcore baseball analysis and VORP probably isn’t even the best stat from the sabermetric family to use in this case but it’s pretty fun to see how different the two teams look depending on how you look at baseball. It’s also pretty cool to see Adam Jones actually has a good case for being an All-Star (although he’s currently 10th in the voting). In reality people probably use a mixture of statistics and plain rooting for their favourite guys, hence Junior and Josh Hamilton’s relatively high positions in the voting thus far. Anyway, I hope at least someone enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed rooting through stats and writing it. I’ll do the National League in the next couple of days. In the mean time vote early and vote often – Aaron Hill is depending on you.
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