Daily Archives: October 12, 2009
I’m a sucker for offensive line play, so I figured I’d point this out here at halftime of the Jets-Dolphins game. D’Brickashaw Montgomery Ladarius Fantana Ferguson, as he’s known, is having an awesome game.
I’m pretty certain he’s only missed one block all day when he couldn’t catch up with a Dolphins cornerback on a wide receiver screen. He also got called for holding once, but he’s been primarily in one-on-one assignments on the Dolphins d-ends and he’s completely neutralizing them. Pay attention if you’re watching, it’s cool.
A couple of times, on run plays, he has driven his man 5-10 yards downfield. And a lot of the Jets’ running yards have come right off his hip.
I was one of legions of Jets fans who wanted the team to pick someone at a more exciting position when they took Ferguson, and I was unimpressed with his play in his first couple of seasons. I thought it was a bit ridiculous when he talked about making the Pro Bowl in the preseason this year, but if he plays like this all season he should be All-Pro.
If I remembered we were going to do this video Jets preview with Brian Bassett of The Jets Blog, I might have shaved or not worn the orange sweater my mom gave me.
But whatever, it’s not about me or my sweater, it’s about Bassett and all the interesting things he has to say about Gang Green.
In a column for the Philadelphia Daily News, Marcus Hayes rubs salt in the wounds of New Yorkers everywhere by comparing Chase Utley to Brett Favre. 
OK, I’ll admit that Chase Utley is awesome. He’s a spectacular baseball player.
But a couple of things:
First, responsible members of the media must never, ever bring up Brett Favre when he is not directly involved in the story. Brett Favre is an overrated media jester who can cry on command. He gets too much attention as it is. Don’t fuel the stupid, nonsensical, fawning fire.
Utley’s ninth-inning heroics, celebrated here, were on account of dumb luck. Yes, he hustled, and for that we should all be very proud of him. But the ball was foul and the umpire botched it. That is not heroism. That’s good fortune.
John Harper, in today’s Daily News, channels Murray Chass to show how relying on numbers ruined the Red Sox last night.
Harper’s point is that Terry Francona elected to have Jonathan Papelbon walk Torii Hunter to get to Vlad Guerrero because Hunter had more success against Papelbon this season, and obviously Guerrero made the Sox pay.
I can’t speak for Francona or why he made the decision. It baffled the crap out of me at the time. But I can point to the great Joe Posnanski, who uses numbers to show why the decision was a terrible one.
Harper concludes:
And while Francona was just managing by the numbers the Red Sox love so much, you wonder if his gut would have made the same call.
Ugh. I wanted to put together a well-reasoned response to Harper’s column but I don’t have the patience right now.
Look: Francona made a bad decision, and he paid for it. When he was asked to justify it afterwards, he cited a stat based on a terribly, pitifully small sample size, and John Harper went to town.
But what Harper entirely misses is that the Red Sox likely wouldn’t have even been in the playoffs without loving those numbers so much, and wouldn’t have won two World Series in the past five years.
I have no beef with people who choose not to view the game the same way I do. When they’re smart about it, I love nothing more than engaging them in respectful debate about how to put together a team or fill out a lineup card. It’s fun, and I’m certainly willing to recognize that the numbers I trust are not the be-all and end-all of baseball analysis.
But nothing bothers me more than how anytime someone with some ties to the so-called “Moneyball” school of thought does something dumb, stodgy columnists come out of the woodwork to bash the entire concept. It’s cherry-picking at its worst, and it’s the same type of polarizing discourse that makes me hate politics.
Tito Francona makes a bad decision and John Harper wants to know, essentially, “where are your precious numbers now?”
But the numbers I hold precious show me that baseball is a hilariously random spectacle, and that a single at-bat is never, ever, ever reasonable grounds upon which to make blanket statements.
I missed this the first time around, but here’s a funny feature on the dude who presses the home-run apple button at Citi Field. I’ve always wondered about that.
Former Met Ed Hearn has a kidney disease and takes 20 medications a day. Yikes. Rough story, but a good read.
Sam at Amazin’ Avenue points out how silly it’d be for the Mets to sign Hideki Matsui. Of course, he could have shortened the piece by just relying on the age-old argument, “Duh.”
This is also a few days old, but Paul at Section Five Twenty-Eight writes his first 25 John Olerud facts. Some of the highlights: “John Olerud collects bird houses,” “John Olerud has a pleasant singing voice,” and “Back in 1992, John Olerud had a white wine spritzer.”
Kerry Rhodes says the Jets are “more swaggerlicious.” That’s one of the best marketing lines I’ve ever heard. The 2009 Jets: Now more swaggerlicious! I’m sold.
