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Kevin Youkilis: Filing the Short Form
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Jon Paul Morosi - he of "Ichiro Interview on Page A-1 of the P-I" fame - reports that five teams have talked to Kevin Youkilis. Among them, the Mariners.
You know what the conditions were regarding SSI's interest in Nick Swisher, right? That he get exactly 50% of the 7 years bandied about, and that he be the secondary player of the offseason, second to Gordon or Butler or Stanton or whoever.
Well, applying that logic, where would Youkilis fit into the picture? As the tertiary, quarternary or dingleberry? Anyway, the discussion revolves around him in a bridge season, if Smoak's gone, whether he could be one of those Scrubs finds that key a Cinderella season. Nobody's talking about him as The Big Add.
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The arguments against Youkilis are simple and, at first sight, devastating. He's age 33 turning 34, has always been brittle, and his glide path down looks convincing:
| Age | OPS+ |
| 29-31 | 144 to 157 |
| 32 | 123 |
| 33 |
99 |
| 34 | You'd be buying the next number in this sequence |
Cue video of Billy Idol's "White Wedding" with hammers pounding nails into a coffin, to the beat of the music. Bamp-bamp BAMP BAMP.
Are there any arguments on the other side of this question? Could Youkilis' surface numbers be deceiving? Should the Mariners move Justin Smoak in another deal, would Youkilis be a feasible 1- or 2-year bridge man?
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Youkilis' swings outside the zone were actually better in 2012 than they were in his prime, meaning that he wasn't necessarily starting the bat early. His swings inside the zone were about the same, his Z-contact rate was normal, and his line drives were normal.
His BABIP was wayyyyy down, from .340 (in Fenway) to .268. Because he wasn't hitting the ball hard? Well, his HR% per fly ball was 15%, same as always.
The only weird thing: lots of ground balls. He used to be an extreme fly ball hitter; the last two years he's been getting on top of the ball, apparently pulling it too much. This happens when a hitter is out of synch and lunging at the ball. For example, when the clubhouse is in mutiny and the hitter is throwing away AB's.
Anyway: the BABIP could be deserved. OR: maybe it wasn't. It wouldn't shock anybody for Youkilis to revert to a .300/.380/.500 line next year, if healthy. At least, it wouldn't shock Dr. D.
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Youkilis' ability to play backup 3B, along with 1B, is a major asset. At 1B he's a defensive plus, or has been. You've got a good glove at 1B as well as the extremely valuable ability to cover your roster at 3B.
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Youkilis created 5.2 runs per 27 outs for the White Sox (4.9 overall). John Jaso last year created more. Michael Saunders and Kyle Seager created less. Everybody else created a LOT less. Justin Smoak created 3.5.
In other words, in last year's catastrophe season, Youkilis still would have been the Mariners' 2nd-best hitter. Then you've got the possibility of a bounceback.
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He's just a great-looking ballplayer all the way around. I'd get to hear Cindy shudder at the onset of every at-bat. Yes, I meant to write it that way.
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Obviously he could just be done. But the premise here is a 1-year make-good contract.
Where does Dr. D put Youkilis' chances of a bounceback? If you want to see one whale of a scary comps list, here y'go amig-O. But Youk's strike zone judgment was pristine in 2012 and it's easy to imagine his 2011-12 problems coming from injury and attitude. Making him play for his $$$ is a sure cure for the attitude.
Dr. D's worries would be more about health than anything. And if you've got a 9-to-make-5 scenario going at the corners, then those DL stints don't bite you very hard.
Let's say that the M's landed Alex Gordon and Nick Swisher - sending Justin Smoak to KC or elsewhere in a 3-way. Take a shot at a Youkilis/Carp battle for 1B?
Billy Beane might try it.
BABVA,
Dr D
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It's Not Enough to Be a Good Player - You Also Gotta Play Good
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Let me ask you a question. You'll enjoy it more if you take 10 seconds, come up with a tentative answer, and then proceed before reading my own answer to it.
You know "The Double" by Edgar Martinez in 1995. The one off Jack McDowell that drove in Joey Cora and Ken Griffey Jr. to put the Mariners in the ALCS. The one that is memorialized in stainless steel at Safeco. That double?
Does that double add any real value to Edgar's career, any inherent value to his contribution to the 1995 season, beyond his double on April 30th that came in a 10-1 loss to the White Sox?
In that situation against McDowell, Edgar had about a 10.7% chance* of getting an extra-base hit. The Mariners' first baseman Tino Martinez had about a 10.5% chance. Is that how we should view Edgar's double ... he had a 2-in-1000 better chance than Tino, and the dice fell in?
The question. Does The Double count for more contribution in 1995 than the April 30th double? I mean, beyond linear weights for game situation. Should history acknowledge that Edgar was a hero that day?
If you just joined us, Edgar did a lot more than double in that 1995 ALDS. He batted .571 (!!) for the series and slugged 1.000. When the Mariners were behind 2-1 in games and 5-0 on the scoreboard, game Four, trust me on this one: it was over. The feeling was sickening.
Edgar hit a 3-run home run to single-handedly put the M's back in the series. In the 8th inning, with the Mariners behind, Edgar hit a grand slam off super-closer John Wetteland to force game Five.
So Edgar batted .571 in that series, batted .571 WHEN .571 decided who won. Should this be regarded as a special contribution to the 1995 season, or should we just take Edgar's overall stats and not credit him for when his hitting occured?
Hmmmmm...
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When Vladimir Kovacevic sat down to play Bobby Fischer at Rovinj-Zagreb 1970, Kovacevic (playing Black!) won a spectacular game based on a theoretical gamble. After the game, Fischer was still the theoretically better player. Did the game matter? Chess history regards Kovacevic with more respect because of his victory over Fischer. Who cares? Nothing changed as to their theoretical ratings.
You take this xFIP logic far enough, do we even still continue to play the games?
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Bill James Online said:
Bill, how willing would you be to agree with something like this? 1. Imagine two teams, a division-winning team with 101 wins and a non-postseason team with 100. It's reasonable to think the first team's accomplishment is more than 1% more "valuable," although reasonable people would also differ about how much more. 2. It might also be reasonable, in some contexts, to credit some part of that accomplishment's "bonus value" to the first team's individual players. 3. MVP voting is a context where this is reasonable at least sometimes.
Asked by: mvandermast
Answered: 11/17/2012
In a certain context, yes. One of the things that makes Sandy Koufax singular is that Koufax had more impact on pennant races than any other pitcher of the 20th century. Koufax went 25-5 with a 1.88 ERA in 1963, when the Dodgers won the pennant by six games, but the six games are an illusion because they opened it up in the last week of the season. In 1965 Koufax went 26-8 with 382 strikeouts, and the Dodgers won the pennant by two games. In 1966 Koufax went 27-9 with a 1-something ERA and 300-some strikeouts, and the Dodgers won the pennant by two games.
You can look at it this way: If, in any of those seasons, Koufax had been MERELY outstanding, the Dodgers probably wouldn't have won any of those pennants. If Koufax had finished just 20-12 with 250 strikeouts and a 2.70 ERA, the Dodgers certainly would not have won in 1965 or 1966, and probably would not have won in 1963. No other pitcher in the 20th century had the same impact on pennant races by his more-than-excellent performance.
If there is a concept of "Wins Above Replacement", there could be a more sophisticated or later-developing concept called "Wins Above Excellence" or something. Impact Wins. Koufax' exceptionalism is based on his Impact Wins.
There are also times when won-lost records of teams are misleading because teams are just mailing it in the last two-three weeks of the season. We should note that the 2012 Trout/ Cabrera debate is not an example of this, in that both teams were still playing competitively essentially to the last out.
There are times when won-lost records are misleading because the schedules are not even. A few years ago, when the AL East was fantastically strong, a team that finished 85-77 in the AL East was almost certainly more impressive than a team that finished 95-67 in the NL West.
We can't attribute to player X that which is done by his teammates. In trying to identify the best player, we can't slip into sloppy attribution, and I'm not suggesting that we should. At the same time
1) Winning IS the point of the game, and
2) Analysis DOES evolve, and should.
On (1) above. . .let's assume that Alabama is in fact the best football team in the NCAA. Should we recognize Alabama as the best team in the country anyway, even though they stepped on their shoelace against Texas A & M? Or should we say, "No; winning is the point. Being the best team isn't the point; WINNING is the point."
On (2) above, I can remember analysts who screamed at the first people who tried to value the innings of closers above the innings of starting pitchers. PITCHING IN THE NINTH INNING IS NOT MORE IMPORTANT THAN PITCHING IN THE FIRST INNING, they would shout, and A RUN IS A RUN. Eventually somebody created the concept of leveraged innings and a way to measure it, and we all said, "Oh. I see." You can't rule out by force or volume the possibility that there is a better way to look at the issue.
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Dr. Detecto looks at baseball stats MOSTLY as a way to predict the future. There's value in saying, "Felix Hernandez' xFIP is running around 3.15; the best guess at his ERA next year is 3.15, adjusted for park. xFIP predicts ERA better than ERA predicts itself." There's value in having a best guess at the future.
But I think that, in our zeal to predict 2013, we should not completely dismiss 2012. We shouldn't be SO concerned about what they coulda done, that we blow off what they did done.
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The Angels' failure to make the playoffs does not count against Mike Trout. Not one iota.
But Miguel Cabrera's .667 SLG, and 26 home runs in the second half -- to put the Tigers in the playoffs by 3 games -- that sure as shoot counts for him. Imagine if Edgar had done it.
BABVA,
Dr D
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Evil Is Good: Villainous Art
Above pic by Jack Kirby
There are many awesome things about MODOK, the least among them not being that his name stands for Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing. I’ve been kind of bummed that he hasn’t really done much since Fear Itself, but hopefully Jeff Parker will bring him back in the Red She-Hulk title.
By Katie Cook
By Eric Powell
By Paul Sizer
By Evan Shaner
By David Finch
By Ronald Salas
By Sebasebs
Six tips for a happy Thanksgiving
On paper, Thanksgiving is a fabulous family holiday filled with gratitude and the sharing of a bountiful feast. In reality, the picture of the decadent meal served on fine china to a well-dressed and dimpled crowd of thankful, smiling faces gives way to a pack of hungry football fans hoping to get back to the game before another round of “You know what's wrong with this _____?” (fill in the blank with “country,” “family,” “turkey” or something of your own) begins.
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Let someone else cook. When Aunt Agnes asks who will be hosting Thanksgiving this year, look down at your feet until some other sucker makes eye contact with her. It's a rookie mistake that will ensure the hassle, mess and bulk of the financial obligation will fall on his or her shoulders.
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Choose pants with elastic waistbands and never wear white. You will overeat, and during the savage consumption of your three plates of turkey and gravy, the cleanliness of your clothes will be sacrificed along with your status as a civilized human being.
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Don't talk about anything remotely controversial. Anything from politics to whether or not you liked The Culture Club in 1984 is off limits. Don't go there. It won't end well.
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Avoid alcohol. Not only will it lead to a fight or embarrassing two-hour episode of “No, I love YOU, man,” but it will fill you up quickly and you won't have any room for your cousin Ellen's famous strawberry rhubarb key lime surprise. It's an all around party foul.
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Don't get fancy with your dish to pass. If you get some crazy idea to try one of the 8473 recipes you found on Pinterest...stifle it. The fancier you try to be, the more things go wrong and better your chances are of having to find a store open on Thanksgiving Day.
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Be thankful in blanket statements. Don't try to be specific about why you're thankful for each person in your family. Inevitably, you will say something that will offend someone and you'll forget to be thankful for your wife. Or your mother. Or your Mother-in-law. Or all three. Say you're thankful for your family and live to see another Thanksgiving.
Turkey Day & Pigskins
Thanksgiving Day became a fixture on the late-November calendar about the same time that football was taking hold of the American sports imagination. So it was probably inevitable that the two would become inextricably linked.
- Reportedly, the first college football game held on Thanksgiving Day pit Yale against Princeton on November 30, 1876. It was just 13 years after Abraham Lincoln had declared Thanksgiving a national holiday. Yale won, 2-0.
- Among historically African-American schools, Alabama State and Tuskegee have played on Thanksgiving since 1924.
- The best college game on Thanksgiving was also perhaps the best college football game ... period. Undefeated and No. 1 Nebraska faced undefeated and No. 2 Oklahoma in 1971. They were not just the two best teams in the nation, they were also rivals in the old Big Eight Conference (in those days, conferences with numbers in the name actually had the number of teams identified in the number, a quaint practice that is no longer applicable in the modern world). Paced by the classic punt return of Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Rodgers (see video above), Nebraska won the back-and-forth contest, 35-31, and went on the win the national championship.
- In the NFL, the Detroit Lions have hosted a Thanksgiving game since 1934. Various other teams had Turkey Day games, but only the Lions have continued the tradition. They were joined in 1966 by the Dallas Cowboys. In 2006, the NFL added a third game, played at night, with rotating home teams.
- The first NFL game to be televised on Thanksgiving was in 1953 on the DuMont network, thus adding "falling asleep in front of the TV" to the list of holiday traditions.
- The most memorable play on Turkey Day came in 1993, when Cowboys defender Leon Lett mistakenly tried to recover a blocked kick, but the ball squirted away and the Dolphins recovered, allowing Miami to get the game-winning field goal. NFL.com has a retrospective of the play here. Lett is now an assistant line coach for the Cowboys.
The evil of tofurkey
If you ever have the delightful opportunity to visit the sixth level of hell, you'll find that it's populated by large sentient globs of tofurkey, the most evil food on the Earth. What? Do I hear a chorus of vegans sobbing in the distance at the mere mention of this most sacred meat substitute?
Before the national tofurkey alliance slaps me with a restraining order, let me get a few things of my hairy man chest. While I understand the need for people who don't like or choose not to eat meat to have alternatives on Thanksgiving, that doesn't mean you should shape some pliable mass of soy into the vestige of a turkey.
I don't care how much non-chicken or non-beef gravy you smother it in, it's not going to taste like turkey. Sure, you can shape it into something resembling a drumstick, but you can do the same thing with a large pile of cow poop as well. That doesn't mean you should eat it.
If you want to have a nice salad or steam some vegetables or even go for some vegan stuffing, that's fine with me, but don't tell me an artificially flavored loaf of meat substitute is going to taste as good as a gravy covered pile of fresh, moist turkey.
You may not realize this, but tofurkey is actually classified as evil. It's true. Look it up! OK, so maybe evil might be a little strong, but you can't tell me that when Satan sits down to Thanksgiving dinner and gives thanks for his endless eternity of torture that he's not carving a tofurkey loaf.
There are so many alternatives that vegetarians can use, so why bother with the tofurkey? When in doubt, just eat ham.
Turkey Day trials, tribulations and triumphs
Being the epicenter for my extended family’s Thanksgiving celebrations over three decades has brought about a few challenges that I’ll always remember and definitely keep in the history books. Surprisingly, there’s really just three such fabled tales to tell –thus far.
At number three, it was the year I bought a super-sized turkey and forgot about defrosting it until T-minus six hours. With so many other cooking details and preparations to orchestrate, this certainly could have been a full-on disaster. But some quick online research and an audibly thanked new and unused trash can later, and that Thanksgiving went off seemingly without a hitch to all who gathered at our table that year.
Coming in at number two was the year my daughter was exposed to chicken pox weeks prior to Thanksgiving. No symptoms, but the very fact that she might be a carrier was sufficient enough for the rest of my family to put us under quarantine. For Thanksgiving.
Once again though, I prevailed. In fact, that year was deemed my very first Thanksgiving Triumph by my daughter, mother and of course, me. Never having been responsible for a full Turkey Day menu before, I was not very confident in my resulting efforts, while my daughter was highly doubtful at best. But the food was delectable.
My little girl couldn’t stop eating or praising the dishes I prepared for our intimate feast. Later on, she related by phone to my mother how delicious everything was and sealed my fate by remarking, “It’s even better than your food, Nana!”
The following October, my mother announced that she was handing over Thanksgiving to me.
The years rolled in and out, and like the changing tides, brought many flavorful feasts upon which my family could rely. I had become a well-oiled Thanksgiving machine, and could make most mainstay dishes from memory.
Everything ran like clockwork until the year my daughter became a vegetarian. While she would consume dairy products, the site and smell of meat rendered her nauseous. This was serious. The little girl who’d always loved my meat-based cuisine was now threatening to boycott Thanksgiving and come only for dessert.
I promised to master two main vegetarian dishes for her by the big day… and I did. Yet again, all doubters were pleasantly surprised to witness my daughter scrape the plate and demand seconds of the rich mushroom sauté and three-bean salad I had prepared in her honor.
And that’s when it hit me. “The art of cooking” is like most other endeavors in life: it’s all about the love you have to put in to it. Call it seasonal corn, if you will, but my experience lends the following advice to all cooks in the Thanksgiving Day kitchen: Keep all the love you have in your heart and your mind, and it will come out through your hands and onto the table.
New DVD releases this week: The pickings are slim
Unfortunately, this week's new DVD releases just don't look that great. You'd expect better things during Thanksgiving week, or am I totally wrong? I know several stores will be having major DVD and Blu-ray sales for Black Friday, but I actually thought this was prime new release time. Silly me.
To be honest, there's really only one truly notable new DVD release this week: the Simon West-directed action thriller The Expendables 2. See? Told you it was rough.
I have nothing against The Expendables movie franchise. I saw the first installment and it was enjoyable enough. Action movies, to be honest, really aren't my thing. I still managed to enjoy the movie, so I'll probably watch The Expendables 2 DVD as well. Liam Hemsworth eye candy is never a bad thing (he's the new member, Billy the Kid). Here's the trailer for The Expendables 2:
If you love Sly Stallone, Jason Statham and/or Jet Li, you'll probably be perfectly happy watching this Expendables installment. Reviews for it were overall pretty favorable. This isn't some fancy, slick, totally deep kind of action movie -- it is what it is, and if it's what you like, good on you.
The rest of November looks a bit better as far as DVD releases go, so at least we have that to look forward to. December 2012 promises a slew of excellent Blu-ray releases, most notably The Dark Knight Rises and Ted, so hang on to your hats and get ready to update your Netflix queue or open your wallets.
Has anyone seen The Expendables 2 yet? Is it worth buying, or can we just rent it instead?
Thanksgiving in Alabama: Food, family and football
Nothing, I mean absolutely nothing, is more popular in my home state of Alabama than college football. And yes, that includes all major holidays. College football in Alabama, I dare say, is pretty much bigger than Christmas. That being said, when a holiday coincides in some way with a major football game, it's a win-win for everyone. Once again, the annual Iron Bowl, between bitter in-state college football rivals Alabama and Auburn, falls on the Thanksgiving weekend. Specifically, the 77th Iron Bowl will be played on Saturday, November 24, 2012, just two days after Turkey Day.
Now some of you are probably saying, "So what? Just watch the game and enjoy leftover turkey sandwiches." Oh, if it were only that easy. You see, in our family, we are sharply divided: Half of us went to Alabama (or pull for the Crimson Tide, no matter what our alma mater) and half of us went to Auburn. How do we keep the peace and continue to be thankful for each other on Thanksgiving?
I'll tell you what works for my family: During Thanksgiving dinner, we can discuss all manner of subjects -- even politics and/or religion. But bringing up college football, at least while we're all gathered around stuffing our faces with, well, stuffing (or "dressing" as most of my family calls it), is absolutely forbidden. You will not hear a muffled "Roll Tide" or "War Eagle" while we're sitting around my sister-in-law's elaborate feast. Anyone who dares to utter either phrase is immediately banished, with no pecan pie for dessert.
Once the Thanksgiving meal ends, all bets are off. That's usually when the spirits are imbibed, and lips get pretty loose. Trash talking about the Iron Bowl ensues. This is when Crazy Uncle Bill (and no, his name isn't Bubba or Cooter so just hush) will no doubt start going on and on about how mad he is that even if Alabama wins out this season, they'll miss out on another national championship "on account of that unfortunate Mayans thing." Once he gets going, I usually escape to a back bedroom to watch Wheel of Fortune with my great grandmother ("Buy a vowel, you ninny!") and curse the SEC for once again scheduling The Game over the holiday weekend. Ninnies, indeed.
Despite the harsh words that sometimes pass between the "Bammers" and "Barners," eventually at some point, usually after the post-turkey nap, everyone apologizes and agrees to play nice. We all share one common thing we're thankful for on this holiday, after all: Football. Roll Tide, and gobble gobble, y'all. I hope the Mayans weren't right...