Tagged: Albert Pujols

February 1, 2012

St. Louis Cardinals 2012 Offseason Recap and Preview

What can I say? The Cardinals were World Series champions with one of the best runs for a team. Ever.

Offseason Grade: D

Notable Additions:

Carlos Beltran, and J.C. Romero.

Notable Subtractions:

Albert Pujols, Octavio Dotel, Ryan Franklin, Gerald Laird, Cory Patterson, and Nick Punto.

Why?: The most exciting things to pay attention to this offseason concerning the Cardinals were the loss of Pujols and the addition of Beltran. Looking at just these two, the Cardinals didn’t do that poorly this offseason. However, if you look at all of the names on the list, the Cardinals actually have had some bullpen trouble. I personally don’t think that either Dotel or Franklin can be compensated for by J.C. Romero, much less the loss of both of them. Also, Arthur Rhodes is on the market and common wisdom dictates that he will probably not be coming back

As far as the other “notable subtractions”, it really just takes away from the depth of the team. Now, if a Catcher, Outfielder, or Infielder goes down, the player called upon to replace his spot will be a lesser quality replacement than it otherwise would have been. Also, there are less possible pinch-hitters to be called upon to hit for the Pitcher. Of course, the depth of the team matters less this year than it would have last year as Mike Matheny is the manager and not Tony LaRussa.

There really weren’t that many moves made on the part of the Cardinals. That’s why there isn’t that much to talk about. So this is it, I guess.

Predicted Record Range: 80-85 wins.

Next up:

January 22, 2012

Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim 2012 Offseason Recap and Preview

Vernon, oh Vernon, where wert thou?

Grade: A-

Notable Additions:

Albert Pujols, C.J. Wilson, Brad Mills, Chris Iannetta, Latroy Hawkins, and Jorge Cantu.

Notable Subtractions:

Fernando Rodney, Joel Pineiro, Jeff Mathis, Scott Kazmir, and Tyler Chatwood.

Why?: The Angels did do an A+ job in getting their team better for this year, but I am not a big fan of paying big dollars for players in their older years. Yes, Albert Pujols is worth $25+ million NOW. Actually, he’s probably worth more than that, but he showed signs of regression this year, having one of his worst seasons to date. Will he be worth $25+ million ten years from now? Ten years is almost half of a career for most players. Will he even be a $15 million player at that stage of his career? Well, it doesn’t matter, because the Angels will still be paying him $27.5 million.

I am more okay with C.J. Wilson’s contract, but I still wouldn’t do it myself. I liked him the first season he was a starting pitcher, and was amongst the first people to identify him as an ace as I actually said he was an ace in the first (real) entry I ever wrote on this blog. The main beef I have with it is that he does only have two seasons as a starting pitcher. He has been really good in those two seasons, but I predict that he will pitch less than 200 innings in one of the next two seasons due to injury. Another thing is that I think they over-paid for him, because it was a pitching starved market. I think they should have waited until next year to sign a pitcher. The only benefit I can see from signing a pitcher this year is that it takes away an ace from the Angels ~~primary~~ only competition in the AL West in the Rangers and it probably led them to overpaying for Yu Darvish

Besides this, they did lose Fernando Rodney from a bullpen that was a far cry from those of the early 2000’s, but it is still pretty solid and the improvement in the rotation more than offsets his loss, because they might not need a stellar bullpen with their starters constantly going 7 innings.

Just something I want to throw in,I do think that Pujols’ impact on the offense is overrated, though. The offense may indeed be a good one, but if it is, it won’t be because of Pujols alone. Lost in all of this hoopla is that Kendrys Morales, the main anchor of the line up in 2010, will be back in 2012. Also, the line up last year wasn’t all that good to begin with. I saw them for three games last year (linked here, here, and here) over “Balhawk Fest” weekend. I think there was no Slugging Percentage over .500 in the line up and no OBP over .400. The two most feared bats in the line up were rookies!

Predicted Record Range: 92-97 wins

P.S. Sorry to the person who voted for the Mariners, but I had already written this entry when I saw your vote. So, to make it up to you, I will vote for the Mariners to give them an extra vote.

Up Next:

March 27, 2011

Survey of Adults’ Perception of Baseball

I may have mentioned this is some other entry but here’s the actual layout of the survey:

I wanted to see how the average adult viewed baseball. So, instead of running up and down Fordham Road trying to get the ideas of random adults, I asked my 19 former and current high school teachers (20 if you count the baseball team’s pitching coach). The process went like this:

1. Ask teacher who their favorite baseball player was.

1a. If yes, why this was their favorite player

2. If no, what they would like to see in athletes as role models.

3. Wait a few weeks and then follow up with them if they gave me a name for the first question.

4. Asking who their favorite player was outside of New York.

5. Again, asking why.

The purpose of asking them their favorite player instead of outright asking what they think of the game is to see how well their ideals (or lack there of due to them compartmentalizing) matched up with what they think of the game. This is most evident in why they picked a certain player over another. Oh, and keep in mind that I am doing this in a private school in the Bronx so the results will be how adults view baseball in New York.

The Results:

5 Do not follow baseball

93% of favorite players were of New York teams (shocker) leading me to make step 4 (the one teacher that mentioned a non-New York player was a coin flip away from picking David Wright)

10 of those had a favorite player on the Yankees

5 of those had a favorite player on the Mets

The Players chosen for question 1:

Derek Jeter 6

David Wright 2

Jose Reyes 2

Pittsburgh+Pirates+v+New+York+Mets+sBhfaN_0XwOl.jpg

Mariano Rivera 2

Jorge Posada 2

Andy Pettitte 2

Robinson Cano 1

R.A. Dickey 1

Tim Lincecum 1

But like I said above, this study isn’t about the players themselves but how the teachers view the game. Let’s start with the teachers who don’t follow baseball:

This was by far the most varied bunch that I can categorized. With five different people there were five different answers, connecting occasionally but still, varied.

3 were about attitude

2 were about integrity

Because they were all different I will sum them all up (this is again, what they would like to see in athletes).

This teacher actually watched as a kid but stopped in the 90’s because of the McGwire and Sosa steroids issue. His answer was: he would like to see more integrity in the game, less money, and more teams made up of non-superstars.
I actually never asked him question 1 because he mentioned in a class that he didn’t watch sports. His answer was: An athlete should be gracious in both defeat and success. He repeated the same concept in different forms trying to get it just right. I have a feeling about what he meant. He was trying to get at that an athlete should not cry in defeat nor should he dance in victory. He should have grace no matter what the outcome. For example, if he loses, he should just walk off the field, comfort other teammates, and start preparing for the next game (professionally).
He just thinks that professional athletes are a spoiled bunch. (Can anyone argue that this isn’t true in New York?) His answer was: he wanted to see less athletes living the fast life (he gave the example of Derek Jeter but I hope he meant it in terms of attitude because has anyone seen his mansion:

Over 5,000 square feet). He wanted athletes to be down to earth and to play hard and work hard.

4. He simply doesn’t follow baseball, no special story. He wanted to see more well behaved and humble baseball players.

5. The last again did not have any special story and simply did not want to see PEDs in baseball.

I think that there is a relationship between the fact that these people don’t watch baseball and their opinions are so varied. I think that it is because baseball is so big in the country that morals are shaped by it.

The people who gave me a name were far more uniform. Probably because most of these centered primarily on one player and one team.

The top five characteristics listed are:

The player tries his best 7
The player is a good teammate 6
The player is a good role model 5
The player is a leader 5
The player is a hard worker 4

Remind you of anyone? This is mostly why I think that for those who watch it, baseball shapes the person more than the other way around.

Because I was getting so many Jeter and Yankee responses, I thought I should add another question to get a truer response. I wanted to see if their beliefs for why they picked the first player held up for the second one or if they had picked the first one by his play and created a list of his positive attributes to justify it to themselves (sorry to the teachers but a lot of people do this).

Obviously I did not follow up with those who don’t watch baseball but the results were:

43% were players who played in this past World Series (counting the Lincecum fan from question 1)

36% were players from the rival of their favorite team because they had respect for what that player can do.

29% of teachers were completely stumped. Taking over 3 minutes to answer the question because they had never thought about it before.

There were three teachers that picked Albert Pujols. I think it might have been that he is the best player in baseball.

The remaining teacher picked Jeff Francouer because he used to be on the teacher’s favorite team, the Mets, and threw him a ball during bp (I have much to teach that one).

The players for step 4:

Tim Lincecum 3

Albert Pujols 3

Cliff Lee 1

Buster Posey 1

Jeff Francoeur 1

Ryan Howard 1

Ryan+Howard+San+Francisco+Giants+v+Philadelphia+g2hCHZW4AYAl.jpg

David Ortiz 1

Josh Hamilton 1

Carl Crawford 1

Roy Halladay 1

Dustin Pedroia 1

Chase Utley 1

and if you can’t believe that no one picked a certain bearded World Series hero. Well, neither can he:

The top five characteristics for this group were:

1. The player is very talented ( it could have been worded differently like: “He is a five tool player” but the gist of the teacher’s reasoning was talent) 7

2. The player is a professional 3

3. The player is a teammate 3

4. The player is determined/persistent 3

5. The player is a family man 3

Now, there are two similarities between the two lists but the major difference shows in that the #1 attribute by far for the non-New York players was the player’s talent. This is because when a player is from your favorite/local team you are more apt to chose him as a favorite player. When the player is not on your local team, you differentiate based on the actual attributes you value in a player. The reason for the overlap of the two categories is because when amongst your local team, you find a player who fits your attributes you are more likely to see him as your favorite.

Of course, this is just my opinion of the numbers. The beauty in statistics is that as empirical and objective as the numbers themselves may be. The interpretation of those numbers is entirely subjective.

*No teacher’s names were mentioned in the process of making this blog. Any physical or emotional damage is done at the risk of the teacher for reading this entry and Observing Baseball and all of its employees cannot be held accountable for any lowering of self-esteem that occurred from this entry. However, any praise for his entry is freely accepted at fischerm@fordhamprep.org