Of Tipping Points and Powder Kegs
Q. Is there really such a thing as a team that "gets caught up in the excitement"?
A. Sabermetricians have tried to tell people in uniform certain things, and the players and managers have resisted believing those things.
But! The reverse is also true. Everybody in uniform will tell you that teams hit "Tipping Points," because they have been there when it happened. Lou Piniella saw it in 1990, and 1995, and 2001. Pat Gillick knows what it's all about. Billy Martin created a "Tipping Point" every single time he took over a new team, 6 consecutive times.
It can be elusive, like falling in love with your soulmate. Some people have tried, five different times, to find True Love. They didn't find it, and they will tell you that True Love doesn't exist. They point at all the times people try and fail.
Sabermetricians look at GM's who try to bring in a Straw That Stirs, and it doesn't work, and they conclude that there is no such thing as a Straw That Stirs.
If they took a moment, they might ponder the fact that all GM's believe in the idea of a Straw That Stirs. We all know about July 31 in baseball.
SSI didn't concoct the idea of Tipping Points. It is simply trying to listen to GM's, to add GM's knowledge light bulbs to its own sabermetric light bulbs. Like Joe Morgan said of Sparky Anderson, "a lot of what Sparky says makes sense if you just listen to him." Or something :- )
If SSI seems like it is inventing ideas, it just points up how utterly deaf we are sometimes to what baseball men are trying to tell us.
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Everybody who has been there, will tell you there is a Culture of Winning, and a Culture of Losing. They've been in the clubhouses, and they've breathed the air. Some teams go out wondering what will go wrong tonight, and others go out expecting to find a way to win. I don't know why non-athletes hate this concept so much. :: puzzled ::
Erasmo Ramirez throws a slightly different pitch to Erick Aybar in the 4th inning on Tuesday, Aybar knocks in two runs, and the Angels turn around the game. James Paxton throws a slightly different pitch to Albert Pujols in the first inning Wednesday, and Pujols creams it, and maybe in 2013 that's exactly what happens.
In the NBA that doesn't happen; no one play matters much. But 100 years ago, John McGraw talked about "the game of inches." It's ridiculous how hair-fine the margin between winning and losing is. Depressed, beaten athletes sometimes give up those inches.
Not this team, baby. The more they win, the more they'll fight to make those great pitches.
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Two years ago, at age 49, I finally managed to get into shape. It wasn't any one thing. The motivational scales had been teetering for a long time, and then they tilted a little more, and then ...
.... one day I saw my blood sugar hit a number that I (not my wife, not my friends, but I) didn't like.
The next day, I was running stairs. A year later, I had a new wardrobe. A Tipping Point that I'd chased for 20-odd years, finally arrived. It's elusive, the Tipping Point. But it's out there somewhere. Keep chasing it, my friend.
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Bill James, some years ago, studied history's Cinderella teams. He found that they did indeed get an extra 1-2 WAR* (* = I know, I know) from a lot of different players, up and down the lineup. They're basically just caused by everybody having a good year together. And the cause of that is usually 2-3 team captains starting out hot, and causing others -- Bill's words -- to "get caught up in the excitement."
You realize that the 2001 Mariners, who won 116 games ... they lost -25 more games the year before, and -23 more games the year after. With all the same players!
What happened in 2001? Ichiro arrived, winning the ROY and the MVP. The flamboyant, cocky Bret Boone went nuts, like 37 HR and 141 RBI. Then, everybody* else had good seasons around them. Every night that year, the M's couldn't wait to get to the ballpark.
Supposing the 2014 M's implode, and lose 90 games, would that change the fact that sometimes Cinderella teams jell, and surprise everybody?
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Jack Zduriencik knows about Tipping Points, and that was what he was trying to chase when he grasped for Hamilton, and then Fielder, and now Cano. Often, you try and you fail. But there is such a thing as "tipping" a team into that realm to where everybody is suddenly fighting each other, to get up to the plate.
Felix by himself couldn't tip it. But if Cano, and Miller ... and then Cano's protege, Smoak, did succeed in teaming with Felix to create that Tipping Point? It's okay by Dr. D.
Cheers,
Jeff