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

So Baker decides I've traded on his fame and fortune one too many times, such as this time, and posts a Cage Match Call-Out on his website.  To Baker's surprise, Dr. D signs up, and the venue is set:  the Seattle Mariners clubhouse carpet.

Baker, pre-match, is perfectly coherent.  He's an athletic young football player, and I'm a 49-year-old out-of-shape blogger, so his plan is --- > to show a little mercy after I've learned my lesson.  Maybe.

Dr. D's plan is what it always is, against an unfamiliar sparring partner.  Keep the hands high and extended, "tangle" the punches, and at the right moment when he's engaged at chest level, surprise him with a power front kick or two.  After a few of these, he'll try a kick back, and when he does I'll trap the leg.  My "signature move," as it were, Mojo.

We're both coherent as we square off, Mariners forming a no-escape circle and cash flying into the hands of the clubhouse bookie, whom we presume is Brendan Ryan...

........

Baker doesn't come in hard, to my surprise.  He circles, buying time and letting me get out of breath - yes, in boxing you get tired even if you don't throw punches.  I get a little bit confused.   Fortunately, Aiki-Doc has done his cold-water bathing.  How's that for an obscure reference?

Time is on the youngster's side.  So wanting to get things over with sooner rather than later, I come in, fake a few half-position punches and .... huh!  They're kinda scarier than Baker expected, at least coming from a dancing Panda, anyway...  He gets a little bit rattled.  I throw a front kick to get things going.  To my surprise, he hops back in plenty of time, despite the fact that he was focused on my hands.  But he didn't like the look of it.  We're both thinking very little at this point.  

And at the speed this match is occurring -- the whole thing will be over in 45 seconds -- do we have time to re-evaluate new plans?  Nooooo wayyyyy.   Now we're not thinking.  We're in brainless mode.

.........

I try my third front kick, Baker steps back, and then DIVES in with a football tackle, taking me down easily.  Here's the point:  imagine you're me as you back-roll over to go with the tackle.  At this moment, does anybody even remember my pre-match plan?  When Ichiro's on first and Chone Figgins just saw a pitch he didn't even expect, does he even remember his plan against this pitcher?  I bet he doesn't.

Geoffy himself is surprised and confused to find out that I wrestle, and I hook a shoulder, going with his momentum, and reverse him.  It suddenly occurs to him that I've got about sixty pounds on him, and maybe he didn't want this to go too the ground.  However, he doesn't know that I pulled a lat muscle flipping him over, although he does know that I'm sucking wind hard and he probably suspects the truth, that I'm actually seeing stars because of O2 deficit.  

All right.  We kind of lock up in a wrestling stall as we both try to figure out new plans...

.

=== Chaos and Confusion ===

If Chone Figgins has an OBP of .350 this year, I won't assume that it's because he's a little jerk, or that it's because he's stupid, or that he has a personality disorder, or any of that other kind of stuff.  I'll assume that it was because he was confused at the plate last year.

If you're not an athlete, that's great, but .... it's hard to convey just how easy it is to become confused.  And therefore passive.  In the chaos of real action, sometimes it can take a miracle to become coherent.

Moving Chone Figgins to leadoff will, we hope, make him automatically coherent.  He forgets the runners, and his job (be standing on 1B) is primally clear, loaded into the primitive part of his brain.  As the Hultzen changeup pops a parachute, Figgins is coherent even then.  His job is basal.

.

=== Coaching ===

Sabermetricians don't like the idea that a manager might coach an ML player and make the player better than he was expected to be.  Tell a sabermetrician that Chone Figgins might perform better, leading off, and he'll react like he'd stepped in something brown and unpleasant.

But coaching occurs in baseball.  Weaver On Strategy contains many examples of this .... one pitcher, Weaver couldn't understand why he wasn't moving off the plate on 0-and-2, or something, and it suddenly occurred to Weaver that the player was just not very intelligent.  Weaver took to explaining things very slowly and very simply:  "On 0-and-2, aim for six inches off the plate.  Always."  And the player got better.

........

Other examples?  You could say that EVERY time a player gets better -- by an unexpected amount, now -- that he's been coached towards it.  

Jason Vargas was coached, by Felix Hernandez, to turn his front shoulder and throw harder.  Mike Carp was coached, maybe by himself, to do the Earl Weaver thing:  "Look to hit the 2-0, 3-1 pitch out of the ballpark."  Coaching occurs all the time; it's merely that sabermetricians do not credit breakthroughs, or even UP seasons, to coaching.

Ichiro has been the subject of brilliant coaching this offseason, his own coaching.  Whether it will work, we'll see.

.........

There's nothing farfetched about the idea that Chone Figgins might get coached -- via the lineup move -- to go at his job more simply and coherently.  In Chone Figgins' case, it seems particularly feasible, doesn't it?  Dumb it down for him.

That's what the confused virtual Doc needed in his cage match:  somebody to dumb it down for him -- but to dumb it down into the right direction.  "He's in a lower weight class.  Wade in there firing away as hard as you can for as long as you can."  Or whatever the key was.  For virtual Geoffy, the Troy strategy:  "Make him swing and miss.  He'll tire quickly."  Suddenly we've both leaped a plateau; we're doing what we do good, and doing them simply.

Sports are confusing.  Any time you can find coherency, you've got a shot to leap a plateau.