Baseball

Tuesday 9/19/23

Walter Johnson is the best pitcher in baseball history, and Ty Cobb hit .366 off of Walter Johnson. He didn't do it in a small sample size either, but rather 328 at-bats, so, about a half season's worth.

Justin Turner could reach 100 RBI. Allowing that he does reach the century mark, would he be the oldest player to do so for the first time in his career? This is his age thirty-eight season (he turns thirty-nine in November). Hold on--I think I may have just answered my own question. It could be Paul Molitor. Yes, it must be Molitor. Or one would think so. He reached 100 RBI for the first time during his age thirty-nine season.

I wish the Red Sox would clean house with their booth. I can't stand Dave O'Brien. He sounds so insincere and that cliched yuckers voice is the worst. Makes me think of someone calling AHL games in Binghamton in 1982. You can just bin all of the analysts as well. For so long, the Red Sox had a broadcast team worth tuning in to in and of itself almost. Now, it drives me away, when the product on the field--and the front office--already does plenty of that.

It's really something else to look at the OPS+ marks for the Yankees' primary starters at each position this year and see only two guys over 100. How does that happen on the Yankees? No one on that team has more than 65 RBI. It's kind of funny how offensively anemic they are. When do you ever see numbers like this in today's game? Never mind with a franchise like this one?

Gerrit Cole will win the Cy Young though, albeit with 14 wins. I hate that. Eh, screw wins. How many strikeouts did you have? The strikeout is perhaps the most meaningless statistic in all of sports but people are so stupid now that they think it signifies how amazing someone automatically must be.

Think about it. It's not that you got the outs or how many you got, it's how you got them. Can you imagine someone scoring 70 goals in hockey but people thinking less of that achievement because not enough goals came from this distance from the net vs. that distance from the net? Who the fuck cares? It's a goal, man. Same with an out. And a strikeout is a less valuable out than a first-pitch slow bounder to the second baseman, because you only get to stay in the game for so many pitches, and thus it follows that the outs to be prized are the outs that require less pitches.

I hope the Dodgers and Braves meet in the playoffs. That could be a stupendous series.