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The thing is, it’s not their job, either. We make a big deal about how kids should respect their parents and behave and all of this baloney, but the fact is kids don’t ask to be born. They don’t owe us anything. If they choose to have kids, they owe them, sure, but us? Nada. I’m in George Carlin’s camp and agree that respect needs to be earned and should be based on parents’ performance.

All of this said, I still think it’s kind of funny when our kids don’t see us as people. They see us as—well, I’m not quite sure what they think we are. But when my daughter dumps her jacket on me at the park to go run off with her friends, or climbs on me to get a better view of something, or thrusts her half-eaten Reece’s peanut butter cup in my hand in the darkness of the movie theater (something that made me laugh so hard I actually couldn’t speak or breathe—I still giggle thinking about it, and how I tried to give it to her father, who thought it was poop), I can’t very well be a person, can I? A coat rack, a step stool, or a table, maybe, but not a person.

It’s just a funny observation among so many I am enjoying during this whole parenting adventure. My role continues to shift in her life—I can remember when she asked me to marry her when she was three!—and I look forward to its constant growth throughout both our lives.

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=== The UGLY ===

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BIll your thoughts on Brandon Webb. Yes he did have a short career but he did dominate to an extent. You can't hold a guy at fault for an injury unless he did something stupid to cause it. If he never throws another pitch again do you think he deserves some sort of recognition/respect from the HOF/MLB? Not saying he deserves his name on a plaque in Cooperstown but the guy was on the way to having one

Asked by: Anonymous

Answered: 8/24/2010

1) I believe that you're exaggerating what he has accomplished. There are a dozen pitchers who have careers like that in every generation. 

2) In terms of special recognition, he would rank far behind Saberhagen, David Cone, David Wells, Dwight Gooden, Orel Hershiser and others. They were more dominant than he was, and they lasted longer. 

3) Let's not assume that Webb is finished. 

4) I've said it a thousand times, but. . .I don't believe in ground ball pitchers. I don't trust them, I don't want them, and I don't believe one should ever invest money in them. 

In theory, a ground ball pitcher with a good strikeout rate is the best of both worlds. But the problem is, there just aren't any pitchers like that who are consistently good; they all either get hurt or they lose home plate. The only pitcher like that who has had a great career in the last 30 years was Kevin Brown. The overwhelming majority of the consistently good pitchers are the guys who live off of the high fastball--Clemens, Schilling, the Unit, Pedro, Santana, King Felix, Verlander, Sabathia, etc.

 

There are a lot of things I'll disagree with James on.  I *think* that I, and Tango, just somehow managed to eke out a 4-3 extra innings score against the Grand Old Man on the Wil Myers Incident.  But I sure don't want to be on the other side of him when he's bringing huge, over-arcing, Baseball Almanac type perspectives like this one to bear.

Anyway, groundball pitchers got a Big Idea to let the batter HIT the ball.  Vot a Kountree! 

They're betting their paychecks on the idea that "I bet I can make you hit it kinda bad."  They're telegraphing the timing of the pitch, letting the hitter load up, and they're saying "I can locate it so that you are swinging at a pitcher's pitch."

Does that sound, sound to you?

Anyway:  me, personally, I have a rough time watching guys who can't put a hitter away with two strikes.  I hate to watch them pitch.  Baseball shouldn't be such a chore.  Now, Drew Smyly, there's a guy who's easy on the eyes....

If the Tigers shopped Porcello to the Red Sox, James would certainly do all he could to talk them out of it.

I'm biased against Rick Porcello, and biased against him a lot.  Get that straight.

.................

Also ugly:  the fact that the very moment that Paxton and/or Hultzen and/or Maurer and/or Taijuan have six Erasmo Ramirez starts, six blinkin' starts if they impress, we won't be having this conversation any more.  Of course, one of them might be gone.  For Rick Porcello.

.................

Also in this sub-header:  if Porcello were to plateau-leap in Seattle, he'd have to do it with Jesus Montero catching him.

..............

Okay, so... 

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=== The BAD ===

Jason Vargas and Rick Porcello, as this song goes, are roughly equal in quality.  However, Jason Vargas is a flyball lefty who is skittering away from Green Monster West, whereas Rick Porcello is a groundball righty would would be throwing 3.50 ERA's in front of baseball's best SS glove (for sure) and one of its best 2B gloves (according to the stats, but Dr. D demurs).

Vargas was in his walk year; Porcello has three years of arb left.  Prest-O Change-O, we just threw Jason Vargas into a Calvin & Hobbes Trans-Mog-ri-Fier and got a considerably better version.

:: shrug:: It could happen.

Why's that bad?!  The bad news is, an enhanced Jason Vargas is no ball of fire.  Especially when you got K-Pax and Deuce Hultzen whose innings he is going to be swiping.  But, we've got to admit:  Rick Porcello is better than Jason Vargas.  His WAR, by the way:

John Benson Roto Rule:  judge a pitcher by his WORST recent season.  Do you have any idea how many pitchers would have a "better worst" year than Porcello, 2009-12?  I'm guessing that Porcello is on a list of about fifteen or twenty pitchers who have notched 2+ WAR in EVERY season since 2009.

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NEXT

I used to doubt unschooling. I know many other parents who sometimes did, too, until it finally “clicked” one day while their kids were reading by themselves, or getting into college, or acing classes without having spent a day in a classroom before… Normally I can trust my kiddo these days, too, but sometimes I still have doubts. Who wouldn’t, in the culture we were raised in, where education by “professionals” rather than experience is hailed as the be-all, end-all?

But every day my child proves to me, over and over again, that she can learn without my help. She’s seven and she’s teaching herself to read and write. Without me. I’m almost jealous as I watch her figure out the words on her own, sounding them out, occasionally asking me how to write a letter or sound out a word she wants to know. It’s kind of amazing, too.

Sometimes I’ll be doing laundry or working in my office, and I’ll think, “Boy, there are so many kids in classrooms right now doing worksheets and learning about math. What about my kid?” And I don’t panic, not yet, anyway, and I slink off into the living room or the front yard (where I can easily see her outside my office window) or the kitchen only to find her doing things that reassure me—true experiments with altering variables, solving problems, reading, building boxes out of Legos with secret passageways and hidden compartments, designing buildings. She’ll show me something she’s made or explain how something works and all I can do is scratch my head and almost say, “Duh.” This kid is smarter at seven than I was at ten, maybe even twelve.

She’s full of ideas. Brimming with them. Ideas about how to solve world problems or just how to make the car warmer in the morning before the heat works in it. She has even written the president. She is seven. She’s into mythology and Star Wars, Harry Potter and monster books, all kinds of animals and herbs and dirt and bike riding and sports and—well, at her age, I don’t think I had even a third of her interests, and if I did, I sure as hell didn’t have time to explore them. Compulsory school took care of that! I was too busy cutting pictures and pasting them and making little paper clocks and memorizing incorrect “facts” about Christopher Columbus and putting on genocidal plays for white parents to smirk at.

Ahh, I sound bitter. I don’t mean to. I went to college to become a teacher, after all, and teachers have good intentions in their hearts. The system, however, is designed to make us average. We need to change our entire culture. I think any child given the time to explore his or her own interests like this with so much passion and encouragement could be exceptional—and imagine where we could be if we allowed all of our children to be exceptional.

On-base percentage, as you probably know by now, is one-half of OPS, and, therefore, one-half of OPS+.  It is even more than half of the "hip and sophisticated" wOBA and wRC+.

Now, don't get me wrong.  I'm a huge proponent of "Plate Skills" up and down the lineup, and I've been super-downbeat about guys like Carlos Peguero and Casper Wells for precisely that reason.

On the other hand, I have now come to believe that guys whose value is heavily weighted toward OBP can become overrated and miscast, in part due to the influence of these composite stats.

Cases in point: Justin Smoak and John Jaso.

• Here's the thing with Justin Smoak.  He's big and strong and he has that big-ol'-country-boy persona (see commercial embedded above).  But he's been miscast from the beginning.  Let's get this straight:  Justin Smoak has never been a .200 ISO hitter.  Ever.  Smoak has never had a full season with a .200 ISO, and I'm not sure he ever will.
• Smoak's plate skills in the minors "covered up" the fact that he didn't quite hit for the power that folks were expecting.  His OBP skill made him look like a guy ready to step into the middle of the order, but he wasn't.
• Smoak came to the majors and attempted to "fulfill his destiny" as the slugging first baseman.  He was trying to be Prince Fielder, when he's really just a "thicker" version of John Olerud.  It didn't work.

So what about John Olerud?

• Olerud proves that one can be a successful MLB 1b even if your value is heavily weighted toward OBP over SLG.  Olerud was over .200 ISO just once, in his near-MVP age-24 season.  He knocked on the door a few other times, but his career ISO is .170.  (Smoak right now is at .153, but I bet he'll end his career around .170 as well.)
• But ... every successful Mariner team with Olerud had three other guys with .200 ISO -- Edgar, Boone and Cameron.  Indeed, Edgar's massive value was that he brought perhaps the best Plate Skills of any right-handed hitter ever, and a career .204 ISO.
• So ... would Olerud have been as valuable without Edgar and Boone?  No way.  He would have been miscast as the key MOTO bat, as Smoak was, and folks would have been disappointed.

Enter Mike Morse, who had .229 and .247 ISO in his last two healthy seasons.

Enter Kendrys Morales, with a .263 ISO in his breakout year, and .197 and .194 is his last two part-healthy seasons.

Now Eric Wedge says Smoak can be his everyday 1b.  And he can, if he's just asked to be super-sized Ole, and not the MOTO beast.  The Mo-betta boys will need to bring the bigger lumber.

Which brings us to John Jaso.

• Jaso was second on the team with a .180 ISO (Saunders had .185), but we know from his minor-league track record that's about as high as he'll ever get.
• Jaso's value is strongly weighted toward OBP, and that is a great thing, particularly from a catcher (and a left-handed catcher at that).  Compare to, Olivo, Miguel.
• But, my understanding is that the catching experts determined that Jaso was not athletic enough to catch more than two days in a row.  The word was "gassed," if I recall.
• So Jaso's value would have to come as a part-time catcher and part-time DH.
• And the ruling of the field is: as a DH, Jaso would not bring enough ISO to the table.

Accordingly, the more I look at it, if, in fact, the Mo-betta boys bring their .200 ISOs to the table, then the Jaso trade was right.

And, again, that's not denigrating OBP.  I love OBP, and I want my sluggers to have it. But I also need my sluggers to have ISO, and leaving Smoak and Jaso to be the middle of the order wasn't going to do it.