I have to admit that the television coverage of the MLB draft has been more interesting than I expected. I'm enjoying the little highlight packages pumped in around the comments of Steve Phillips, Peter Gammons and Keith Law. But it's not good enough to hold me.
The expected flaws of televising the MLB draft are present. Most people have never really heard of any of these guys. Then, of the people who have heard of these guys, most of them haven't really heard of these guys. There are the five or six well read minor league prospect mavens who may actually have something to add about these guys and then the mainstream writers, blogsphere and people who fancy themselves as mavens regurgitating what they've read from the real mavens.
During the NBA and NFL drafts there's room for a real difference of opinion and fan opinion. Someone might come up with a decent argument for Kevin Durant as the number one pick in the NBA draft. Better yet, there will be real discussion of picks three, four and five based on fans actually knowing about the players involved (except for the Chinese player). Likewise, there was real fan involvement in the discussion of Brady Quinn's fall in the NFL draft. There's none of that with the baseball draft.
If you hear someone refer to David Price as can't miss or worry about Matt Wieters' "signability," they're just regurgitating what they've read or seen from Keith Law or Kevin Goldstein-types. Worse yet, some of these would be knowledgeable fans will be regurgitating blogs, maybe like this one, that are simply regurgitating the Law-Goldstein-types. These fans may not even realize they're playing a virtual game of "telephone," regurgitating a regurgitation of the couple of people who actually know a bit about this.
But worst of all for the MLB draft coverage is that unlike the other two major televised drafts, it has to compete with its own sport. Half of the brilliance of the NFL draft is that it gives a bunch of football-starved, lunatic, NFL fans a day to ease the wait for the NFL network's coverage of Bengals spring minicamp (sans pads). Likewise the NBA draft gives fans a night--a week after the finals--to wind down before we worry about the annual Team USA, non-Olympic Summer Games Crisis.
While Phillips and Gammons keep talking, I'm flipping over to watch Roy Oswalt pitch while I wait for the Red Sox game to start. Curt Schilling is trying to help the Sox avoid being swept in Oakland. When that game ends, John Maine looks to help the Mets avoid being swept by Cole Hamels and the Phillies.
I can read about what Goldstein and Law thought of the draft tomorrow.
Thursday, June 7, 2007
Friday, June 1, 2007
Buzzing Bissinger
In Buzz Bissinger’s piece in the New York Times’ new Play Magazine, he puts forth the idea that increasing a minor league pitcher’s innings is more important in preventing injury than monitoring pitch counts at the major league level. Of course, as the article goes on, he details the high pitch counts of Mark Prior and Kerry Wood (the article’s focus), but implies that they were harmful because of the relatively light inning loads of the two pitchers in the minors.
Bissinger, who in print and interviews shows a sporadic interest in facts, cites the large number of innings pitched by some household names. His numbers cited:
Pitcher, Minor League Innings
Curt Schilling, 701.7
Tom Glavine, 536.7
Greg Maddux, 491.3
Randy Johnson, 418.3
Mark Prior, 51 (Bissinger, for some reason, acknowledges just one of Prior’s USC seasons)
Kerry Wood, 281.3
Bissinger qualifies Wood’s innings by saying they were on a strict pitch count. We’ll never know what might have happened had he not been on a strict pitch count in the minors. Bissinger would like us to believe that he would have survived the high pitch counts in the majors. Bissinger clearly did not consider that Wood might have broken down before reaching the majors (just as he did not consider, when noting the recent uptick in the percentage of disabled players who are pitchers, that these trips to the DL may be a precautionary complement to pitch counts rather than a result of players being weakened by pitch counts).
Using the Minor League inning totals of the four future Hall of Famers above is the classic baseball debate technique of using the few guys that everyone’s heard of, who have done something you think should be common place, as proof of a model. Bissinger writes, “The rule of thumb is that a pitcher should get some 400 innings of work in the minors before being called up.” Here’s how Bissinger would respond to his own nonsense:
Pitcher, Minor League Innings (numbers courtesy of The Baseball Cube)
Steve Carlton, 306
Nolan Ryan, 287 (and quoted by Bissinger in the piece)
Don Sutton, 249
Tom Seaver, 210
Jim Palmer, 129
Bert Blyleven, 123
And a few current players with no durability issues:
Johan Santana, 334
C.C. Sabathia, 232.7
Mike Mussina, 178
Bissinger left these guys out, most likely, because they interfere with his ability to make sweeping generalizations based on the four guys at the top. The fact that he would quote Ryan in the piece, but not mention his minor league innings numbers, is deceptive to say the least.
Finally, in yet another act of deception, in the paragraph that begins with the 400-inning rule of thumb, Bissinger writes:
“Francisco Liriano, in his first full season with the Minnesota Twins in 2006, went 12 and 3 and seemed destined for greatness, but he will miss the entire 2007 season after undergoing ligament replacement surgery — the so-called Tommy John procedure — on his elbow last November.”
Liriano, 484.3 minor league innings pitched. I wonder why that wasn’t mentioned.
Nobody has all the answers on pitching and few people claim to, but if there has to be a voice shouting down from the mountain about baseball, it shouldn’t be Buzz Bissinger.
Bissinger, who in print and interviews shows a sporadic interest in facts, cites the large number of innings pitched by some household names. His numbers cited:
Pitcher, Minor League Innings
Curt Schilling, 701.7
Tom Glavine, 536.7
Greg Maddux, 491.3
Randy Johnson, 418.3
Mark Prior, 51 (Bissinger, for some reason, acknowledges just one of Prior’s USC seasons)
Kerry Wood, 281.3
Bissinger qualifies Wood’s innings by saying they were on a strict pitch count. We’ll never know what might have happened had he not been on a strict pitch count in the minors. Bissinger would like us to believe that he would have survived the high pitch counts in the majors. Bissinger clearly did not consider that Wood might have broken down before reaching the majors (just as he did not consider, when noting the recent uptick in the percentage of disabled players who are pitchers, that these trips to the DL may be a precautionary complement to pitch counts rather than a result of players being weakened by pitch counts).
Using the Minor League inning totals of the four future Hall of Famers above is the classic baseball debate technique of using the few guys that everyone’s heard of, who have done something you think should be common place, as proof of a model. Bissinger writes, “The rule of thumb is that a pitcher should get some 400 innings of work in the minors before being called up.” Here’s how Bissinger would respond to his own nonsense:
Pitcher, Minor League Innings (numbers courtesy of The Baseball Cube)
Steve Carlton, 306
Nolan Ryan, 287 (and quoted by Bissinger in the piece)
Don Sutton, 249
Tom Seaver, 210
Jim Palmer, 129
Bert Blyleven, 123
And a few current players with no durability issues:
Johan Santana, 334
C.C. Sabathia, 232.7
Mike Mussina, 178
Bissinger left these guys out, most likely, because they interfere with his ability to make sweeping generalizations based on the four guys at the top. The fact that he would quote Ryan in the piece, but not mention his minor league innings numbers, is deceptive to say the least.
Finally, in yet another act of deception, in the paragraph that begins with the 400-inning rule of thumb, Bissinger writes:
“Francisco Liriano, in his first full season with the Minnesota Twins in 2006, went 12 and 3 and seemed destined for greatness, but he will miss the entire 2007 season after undergoing ligament replacement surgery — the so-called Tommy John procedure — on his elbow last November.”
Liriano, 484.3 minor league innings pitched. I wonder why that wasn’t mentioned.
Nobody has all the answers on pitching and few people claim to, but if there has to be a voice shouting down from the mountain about baseball, it shouldn’t be Buzz Bissinger.
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