And now for something completely different
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Meg Rowley looks at each of the 197 ejections that occurred last year, and writes them up using a Listverse-caliber sense of color and inventiveness. Probably the most sheer fun we've had reading baseball since the Royals lifted the cup ... wait, who won last year? The Astros pulled it out, right? And is it a crsytal bowl or a real "pennant" or what do you get...
That's way off topic. Rowley starts with Buck Showalter and the lines we draw between Some Talking, A Lot of Talking, I Kept Talking, and so forth:
But they don’t stay at Some Talking. The lousy trick of Some Talking is that it assumes, despite innings and innings of evidence to the contrary, that talking will be persuasive. And, of course, it isn’t. Buck isn’t going to get this umpire to ask his colleagues for help or to put the runner currently on third back on second or to avoid extra innings. And once the guy doing Some Talking realizes he’s not getting that called third strike back, his loquacious little heart Keeps Talking, so he is soon doing A Lot of Talking. The stages of I Kept Talking can change on you so quickly.
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Meg's fine, colorful writing goes even better with the animated .gifs therein. Next up, she considers Joe Girardi's "persnickety, fussy" approach to arguing with umps, and jumps from there to a random case, that of Josh Donaldson (intentionally?) getting the ax after 18 innings' worth of play.
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Most ejections seem to occur after a player or manager argues balls and strikes, as this USA Today slideshow indicates. Fangraphs has an analysis that says the run environment would go from 4.1 runs per game to nearly 5, finishing with the delicious conclusion that some players (like Robinson Cano) might NEVER strike out. Well y'know. For some hitters, the "generous outside corner" seems to be the main way they find strike three.
Eric Byrnes, who has pushed for the robot umpiring, thinks that the main obstacle to the automated zone is that --- > the PLAYERS don't want it. Now here is where the article stops, because somebody ELSE will have to tell ME why that is. I'd really like to know. Baseball would be such a tremendous game if it were played with real balls and strikes. Justin Verlander "hitting" a strike would be like Steph Curry hitting a three, with the swish of a net (a bank of red lights behind the catcher lighting up).
Hope we see it in my lifetime. Occasionally you find yourself in a situation where you KNOW, absolutely, that 50 years from now, we'll all be doing a certain thing a certain way. Nobody will be texting while driving, for example, because the tech will prevent it. You find yourself fighting an imperative, you're being a fool.
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The Mariner point of view here, always included free with your BOGO purchase, is that --- > the sooner the umpires treat the Seattle Mariner as equals to their opponents, during the game, the happier Dr. D will be.
One last Mainframe Crunch in this rhapsody of a chaotic post: Mike Zunino is an authoritative hitter now, and he barks at the ump after blown strike threes. This is a marked plus, as it pertains to Zunino's career arc, but. Do you think this will affect his framing results? No idea myself.
Besides this morning's two articles, there are two more perfectly decent weekend articles to your right, awaiting discussion. 'ave at thee, varlet.
Enjoy,
Dr D