ALDS Coverage: Notes on a BM
It’s not really going out on a limb to say that Fire Joe Morgan was a great site. Before the identities of its authors were revealed, I used to read it and think, “Who are these anonymous superstars of the prose form?” After I found out their identities, I used to read it and think, “Figures.” But another thing I thought was, “I love this so much I want to marry it.”
What made it so excellent? Well, it was about baseball, for one. And also, it had a great Revenge of the Nerds vibe to it. I mean, sure, Bill Plaschke could talk about heart and guts and grit all he wanted, but he was very clearly less smart than the FJM entourage — and FJM represented us. Ultimately, though, it was just the excellence of the writing that made the site what I like to call a Triumph of the Human Spirit. Honestly, I’m pretty sure it could’ve been a blog about Ugandan tapestry and I would’ve been on board with it.
Despite the wild success that was FJM, sites that have attempted to mimic its formula often come off as clumsy and/or mean-spirited. I’m not smart enough to know why exactly. Maybe because that particular ship has sailed. Maybe because the newer versions tend more towards the ad hominem side of things. Maybe because announcing (and sportswriting) is actually pretty hard and anyone, when absolutely required to produce content with some frequency, will have to sacrifice quality occasionally.
Having said that, I think that it’s probably also the case that many announcers make it hard on themselves when they provide absolutely nothing in the way of evidence to support certain of their claims. Or so was my thought process while listening to Buck Flippin’ Martinez today.
This was the first game of the Angels-Red Sox series that I watched in a residence — as opposed to the area watering hole where I generally partake of America’s Pastime. Accordingly, it was the first in which I was privvy to the musings of Mr. Buck Martinez. Buck — who I’ll refer to as BM — BM was talking a lot today, and I thought it would make sense to apply a little due diligence to some of his more notable claims.
Below are five of BM’s statements. For each statement, I’ve provided the context in which it was made and also a brief commentary.
Commençons!
#1
The Context
BM is mentioning how L.A. is facing Clay Buchholz for the first time since last summer.
BM Said
“They’ll be anxious to take a lot of pitches and see his stuff.”
Comment
When I heard that, man-oh-man, did I laugh snarkily. I says to my friend, I says, “Has this guy ever seen the Angels bat?! Sure, Figgins and Abreu are patient, but the rest of the team is a giant whiff factory.”
There were a couple flaws with my statement. First, there’s actually no such thing as a whiff factory. Second, BM is almost right. Almost.
It’s true, the Angels don’t walk too much. They finished 18th in that category this season at 8.9%. However — and this is kinda interesting — the Angels also don’t swing that much. L.A. actually finished with the seventh lowest Swing%, with a mark of 43.7%, behind teams you’d expect, like the Yankees and Red Sox.
Score half a point for Buck.
#2
The Context
BM is analyzing Buchholz’s prospects for pitching a good game.
What BM Said
“Buchholz will be good, so long as he doesn’t start improvising on the mound.”
Comment
I assume that what BM means is that Buchholz ought to stick to his team’s game plan and just throw whatever Victor Martinez says. He (i.e. BM) mentioned something to this effect in the fourth inning or so. In any event, is that really the thing that’s separating Buchholz from greatness? Is Buchholz some sort of rogue loner who throws his way or no way at all? My guess is no. My guess is that BM just said whatever he wanted to say.
The thing separating Buchholz from greatness is probably the fact that his K- and BB-rates are almost exactly league average and his HR/FB rate was a little high (15.7%) this season.
#3
The Context
BM is giving entirely anecdotal reasons for the Angels success this season.
What BM Said
“… and Torii Hunter’s enthusiasm is infectious.”
Comment
This is probably not the main reason for the Angels’ success this year. I’m sure, yes, it makes the games much more fun. But scoring runs and preventing runs: that’s how you win games.
Also, it makes Torii Hunter sound like a sick person. “Hey, everyone, just a reminder: don’t forget to get immunized this year. Torii Hunter’s enthusiasm is infectious.”
#4
The Context
Abreu takes second after Buchholz’s pick-off attempt gets by Youkilis.
What BM Said
“A lot of times we discount the stolen base threat.”
Comment
I would say that never before have I heard an announcer discount the stolen base threat. You know what I have heard? I’ve heard announcers talk ad nauseam about the “pressure” a base stealer puts on the defense, or how a base stealer is able to “distract” the pitcher.
Baseball Prospectus covered this in Baseball Between the Numbers. If I remember correctly, yes, there is a small gain in batter OPS when a bonafide base stealer occupies first. But even then it’s negligible, and way overstated by the announcerati.
#5
The Context
Dustin Pedroia is batting (both in the first and fifth — almost identical comments!).
What BM Said
“Pedroia loves anything hard.”
Comment
Because you are very probably a man between the ages of 18-49, I’m sure I don’t have to explain how many entendres there are in such a statement. What BM meant, of course, is that Pedroia likes fastballs. Fastballs are his favorite things to hit. It’s fastballs or bust for Little Dustin Pedroia.
Because you are also very probably a baseball nerd, your inclination is to probably go to Pedroia’s FanGraphs player page and look up his Pitch Type Values. Well, no need; I already did it.
BM is right to say that Pedroia hits fastballs well — he’s got a wFB/C of 0.63. But he also has a 0.92 wSL/C and 2.56 CB/C. So, sure, Pedroia hits the fastball well. But to say he loves anything hard… well, that’s inappropriate in more than one way, turns out.
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So long as Buck Martinez didnt’ follow that up with a comment about him “taking one in the dirt”…
Great stuff Carson. For some reason I always imagine you sounding like Tobias Funke, which makes your articles just that much more enjoyable.
“But to say he loves anything hard… well, that’s inappropriate in more than one way, turns out.”
I still only count one.
“A lot of times we discount the stolen base threat.” HAHAHAHAHA!
On the Buchholz improvization thing: as a watcher of lots of BoSox baseball, I would say (purely anecdotally) that when he gets into trouble, he tends to shake off signs a lot. In particular, he falls in love with his changeup and then hitters just sit on it, and not surprisingly hit it. After Clay’s last start of the reg season, Francona’s succinct assessment of the game was “Clay shook off Victor too much.”
I didn’t realize Francona had said that, or that it became a real issue. Thanks for the info. Another half a point for Buck?
Oh, I suppose when you fire a shotgun, you’re bound to hit something.
Figures that BM, a former catcher, would tell a pitcher to listen to his catcher more. What do they know, right? Tools of ignorance, I say.
joe magrane is a veritable potpourri for amazingly stupid anecdotes. i have my own FJM site, literally, as it’s named after jerry manuel, and realized that it is incredibly hard to do what they did without being meanspirited/unfunny/etc.
but yea, joe magrane is brutal. when asked about nathan blowing the save and whether his teammates have any confidence in him, he said “he’s just fried from having to protect one run leads all of the time because the twins don’t score a lot of runs.”
that sentence alone is completely ridiculous in at least 5 ways. a mcgriddle of stupidity, if you will.
One of the most irritating things an announcer can say is when a certain player “loves to hit the fastball.” Well, no s***, Sherlock. If he doesn’t like to hit fastballs, he wouldn’t be in the major leagues right now.
Concerning #2, Buccholz does indeed tend to shake off his catchers. That fact could more clearly function as a cause of diminished “greatness”/”goodness” than K, BB, and HR/FB rates. The rates aren’t a cause of diminished performance but rather indicators; that is, the rates and his performance are synonymous semantically. A cause would be something like the state of his stuff, pitch selection, and the state of his mechanics…
You’re exactly right. Is should’ve been more precise. It’s still the case, I think, that Martinez is overstating the case in re Buchholz and shaking off signs. That’s not the only impediment between him and elite status. But you’re right, his indicators only measure the results; to look at the cause itself (movement? velocity? a hundred other things?) would be the correct — if considerably more difficult — way to approach it.
Carson went from being my least favorite author on this site to my favorite. I honestly can’t believe it, keep it up
It was Mike Schur aka Ken Tremendous who made that site. The Office hasn’t been the same since he left.
BM pointed out that Pedroia likes anything hard:
hard fastballs
hard curves
or hard sliders
So I think you have to give him credit there (unless you want to go about defining what a hard curve is and running the numbers again — something tells me that curves that don’t curve are the ones he probably feasts on, rather than the knee-buckling variety).
Wouldn’t it be a more valid analysis of the last statement to look at Pedroia’s swing percentage on fastballs, versus his performance?
Pedro Feliz loves first pitch sliders at his shins, he offers at them more than any other hitter in the Phils lineup. Doesn’t mean he hits them well. Minus half a point for you on that one
Let me just preface that I found Buck Martinez at least as annoying as anyone else on the planet over the course of the series. However I think that you Carson, may be be doing him a disservice as far as the stolen bases thing goes.
It was mentioned above that Buck was a catcher at the major league level, and further, many other sports broadcasters, also played at the major league level as pitchers or what have you. It seems to me that what Buck (and the other announcers you decry in your post) is relating to is his own experience where pressure on the defense is concerned. After all, he was the catcher. The amount of distraction it caused him when a really fast guy was on first base is something wholly relevant to the game and understanding the psychology of players on the field.
That players at the major league level are able to fight past this distraction to the point that barely any difference shows on a macro scale isn’t really surprising–we’re talking about the best players in the world. If a famous concert pianist told you he found a piece particularly challenging and you replied “But I measured it and there’s barely any difference in the accuracy of your play from these other pieces” he would look at you like you are an idiot, and you would deserve it.
One of the problems I always had with FJM was their refusal to distinguish between Joe Morgan’s utter inability to grapple with the great mass of facts and figures at his disposal, and Joe’s very real, quite keen sense of the ebb and flow of the game, the attitudes of the players and his perceptions from his own time as a player. Being good at math and attaching abstract numbers to players isn’t really required to be good at playing baseball, and we should keep that in mind when listening to players’ experiences. The key is separating the points at which the player has absolutely no idea what he is talking about from what he does know. (Baseball journalists get less of a pass, as stat-tracking is supposed to be part of what they do.)
As an Angels fan for whom most games are broadcast in part by Rex Hudler, I’ve grown accustomed to doing this pretty much every night. Rex’s understanding of statistics and which stats matter and which don’t is paper-thin, but his intuitive grasp of things like a batter’s swing/hand position or a pitcher’s arm slot or a defender’s positioning is actually pretty good.
I guess my point with all this is that of the uncountable multitude of things Buck Martinez said over that series that were headache-inducing, relating the pressure put on the defense when a basestealer is on first seems kind of petty to complain about.