The MLB regular season has just finished. This means the end of the 6 months of fantasy baseball stat-watching.
In the end, team Alsorans ranway with the Jack Kerouac Memorial League, pretty much winning it from the second week of April onwards to the end, with a few tense moments punctured in the middle there. My team, the Combat Wombats, finished 6th. It's a bit of blow not to finish in the top 3 this season, but it was a hard-fought season right down to the end. My guys had too many patches where they didn't quite produce the sort of numbers they should have. Having said that, I did discover Cleveland catcher Victor Martinez this year, as well as reaped the investment on Hideki Matsui at long last.
For those of you who hate me talking about Baseball, there'f still the Play-Off Season to get through. :)
Slap-Hitting The Moneyball Guy
The Oakland A's finished with a 91-71 record, coming 1 game behind in the AL West. Suddenly there is a raucous disucssion about the nature of the A's missing the Play-Offs for the first time in 4 years. Over at The Hardball Times, Aaron Gleeman has penned this decent, sobre and sane article.
Even while missing the postseason for the first time since 1999, what Beane and the A's do -- whether you want to call that "Moneyball" or something else -- worked. Consider the details of their season that Beane and the A's are likely most concerned with: winning and money.
Team / WINS / TEAM SALARY
Anaheim / 92 / $101,909,667
Oakland / 91 / $59,825,167(Salary data courtesy of ESPN.com.) The reason "Moneyball" works is that Beane is able to build a team that competes for and, before this year, secures a spot in the postseason, despite a small payroll. The Angels were able to win one more game than the A's this season, and it was an incredibly important one game, but also worth noting is the fact that Anaheim out-spent Oakland by over 70%, a difference of $42,084,500, in order to get that one extra win.
Which of course was the point of the book. Losing by 1 game is no shame; esepcially when you look at the oppponents. You'd have to be twsited as a Red Sox fan to get the torches and pitchforks out for the GM of your team who manages to come in second by 1 game. Okay, they missed the post-season even with the Wild Card system in operation, yet bottomline they were beaten by teams with a much larger pay-roll. At a certain point, as much as we hate to admit it, there's a limit to the edge 'clever' can deliver. All the same I do imagine that people will be dancing on Billy Beane's name and this 'failure' for the next six months until the 2005 season opens. *sigh*.
Viva Ichiro!
I have Ichiro on my Jack Kerouac Memorial League team. I traded Alfonso Soriano to get Mariano Rivera and Ichiro, back in April. I did it to get saves, keep some steals and shore up my Batting Average. Of course I struggled for the rest of the seaosn when it came to filling my 2B slot, but that's life in Fantasy Baseball for you. Anyway, both Rivera and Ichiro went on to have career seasons of sorts. Ichiro in particular broke George Sisler's 1920 record for single-season hits of 257, finishing the season with 262. There have been a few interesting discussions and articles about this feat.
By breaking Sisler's 84-year-old record for most hits in a season. With 262. And that, ladies and gentlemen, sure is a lot of hits. It's nearly twice as many, for example, as the NL batting champ, Bonds, (who got 135). And it's 100 more than the career high of Jim Thome, Javy Lopez or Rondell White.
It's also kind of hard to believe that Ichiro had more five-hit games after July 1 (four) than Bonds had five-at-bat games (two). Or that he had more singles (223) than anyone else had hits. Or that he had almost as many infield singles (57) as Bonds had singles (60). But all it proves is that there is no hitter in baseball quite like him.
Most players, Seattle hitting coach Paul Molitor told the Tacoma News Tribune's Larry LaRue, look out there from home plate and "see the fielders. But Ichiro doesn't. He sees the holes."
"We don't have enough defenders for him," Rangers manager Buck Showalter told the Fort Worth Star Telegram's T.R. Sullivan. "You get the feeling that if you have
15 defenders, he'd hit the ball in the seats."So is there any way to stop a man who has gotten more hits just in four American seasons (924) than former teammate Pat Borders has in a 16-season career?
"Sure," Rich Donnelly said. "Take first base and move it out to the outfield grass. That would help. It would cost him about 97 hits a year."
People do say the funniest things. :)
As for Ichiro's record, it's one of those amazing, historic things that just don't register. Not much, really. However, I guess I was some kind of net beneficiary, as he boosted the sagging batting averageof my Combat Womabts. Good on you Ichiro!
- Art Neuro
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