I wrote this a few days ago instead of a Brewers series preview but didn't have as much to say as I thought (laughing). Congrats to Rodrigo for having a great season.
I had a hard enough time finding enough to write about in the last Brewers-Cubs series preview last week, so I figure the most interesting thing to look at would be Ramirez's first season with the Brewers. As has been pointed out many times, the Cubs have had a bit of a hard time replacing his production at 3b this year. With their powers combined, the mighty team of Ian Stewart, Joe Mather, Luis Valbuena, Jeff Baker, and Josh Vitters have posted a .204/.282/.339 line on the year, "good" for a 66 OPS+. They have hit eleven HRs to noted power hitter Darwin Barney's six. Rodrigo, meanwhile, has posted a .292/.355/.527 line on the year, not so far from the .306/.361/.510 that he posted in 2011. He's also leading the NL in doubles.
(aside: can you believe that Ramirez only made two all-star teams during his years with the Cubs? FFS, All-Star voters).
It's especially surprising to see Ramirez's season line when you look at his production through the first month of the year. On May 1 he had a .205/.253/.364 line Since then Ramirez hit .310/.375/.561, with 18 homers and 37 doubles in 96 games.
Ramirez is signed for two more years, and the Brewers are on the hook for another $26m plus a meaningless $14m mutual option or $4m buyout for an extra year. It's always nice to see former players that you like doing well, even if they're wearing different laundry.
You’re welcome.
GW wrote:
Isn’t that part of the criteria for ascension? You have to be able to maintain the discreditationableness of OV.
It seems like DeJesus has heated up a bit in the last few weeks/month or so. I figured there should be an article about how he heats up after the season the lost so he can pad his stats. Isn’t there one on ARam that we can just do a find and replace with?
(dying laughing)
This play could’ve been really stupid:
http://chicago.cubs.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=24361219&c_id=mlb&topic_id=vtp_blackberry
GW wrote:
You’ll never see written that Chris Volstad threw 5.2 IPs, allowed 5 Hs, 2 Rs, 2 ERs, 2 BBs and 3 Ks today. Starlin Castro doesn’t have 21 SBs. Soriano doesn’t have 13 UZRs, 3.1 WARs and -2 BsRs in 486 PAs. There are no PKs, WPs, PBs, HLDs, Ss, BSs, SBs, CSs, DRSs, As, SFs, SHs, BKs, Es, 2Bs, 3Bs, HRs, POs, etc. The Cubs don’t have 51 Ws and 80 Ls,
RBI is unique because it’s one of few (only?) statistics that has the ‘s’ added almost every time it’s written.
GW, in the future if you want to embed those tweets, make sure you put the code in the excerpt section (if you don't see that, click on screen options (upper right corner) and select it so it's seen.
@ SVB:
I think it is confusing because he looks white, but has a Hispanic last name, so fans don’t know how to react.
@ mb21:
most of those are rarely used in sentence form, though. rbi tends to be, because it is longer, i guess. abbrev’s in the box score, or player line listings is a different story.
@ mb21:
I really don’t care how it’s written. But I’ll always say “RBIs” because it sounds like people who say “RBI” think they’re being all smart because they’re speaking in Latin or something. Like a single run batted in would be an arbius.
@ mb21:
yeah, b sent me an email, so i have handy reference to it now. it was the excerpt portion that got me.
@ AndCounting:
I’m sure some say it for that reason. I actually say it because it makes more sense to me. I don’t pluralize other statistics when I abbreviate them so I don’t do it for RBI either. Like you, I don’t care one way or the other. I don’t think one is right and the other wring. It’s just a preference for me and I don’t intend to change anyone’s mind. It’s just not that important. I know what people mean when they say RBIs and they presumably know what I mean when I say RBI. That’s good enough for me.
GW wrote:
I use them here, but I admit that you’ll not often see those abbreviated in newspapers. My only point was that we have all these other statistics and I can’t find one that is commonly used in the same way RBI is. I actually looked over the official statistics. Unless I overlooked a few, there isn’t another one. So I think people who use RBI are more than justified in doing so and I completely understand some prefer RBis. As long as we understand one another it’s irrelevant in my opinion.
@ mb21:
“K” is one that does show up abbreviated often, and the “s” is usually added, albeit with an apostrophe.
Aramis’ third straight slow start reminds me that I’d love to see somebody do a study on whether early/late season splits are real. People like him, Mark Teixeira, and Ryne Sandberg all seem to hate April, and I wonder how much of that is coincidence and how much is skill.
I set up a college football thread in the forum.
@ Rizzo the Rat:
In response to this, I wonder how many players are opposite of the “Ramirez” type. Ie. how many players play well, but when the stats don’t matter they say fuck it. I know it would be hard for me to stay motivated after a fire sale and the team is trying to lose, but I guess I’m not as competitive as an athlete. Plus they have a future contract to play for.
@ Rizzo the Rat:
My recollection is that about half the time he has a good April and the other half it’s terrible.
@ mb21:
Yeah, I’m not so much interested in Aramis specifically, but players in general. There are more extreme cases than his, though his career numbers in the first 2 months of the season are well below his career norms.
However, I think there’s a lot of observational bias involved. People notice slow starts more than they notice, say, a slow month of June, the reason being that a person’s April stats comprise his whole season stats at the time, and are therefore more visible. I still think it’s an interesting question whether some players are true “slow starters,” (i.e., that it’s more than random statistical variation that some players have slow starts) though.
I just noticed that the second sentence in my last post is one hell of a run-on. Oh well.
@ Rizzo the Rat:
Comma splice, technically. Consider yourself warned.
Wouldn’t this be similar to hot hand/cold hand? If I recall from The Book, there is something statistically significant about being cold, but not hot. Is that correct?
@ WaLi:
The future contract is a huge incentive.
@ mb21:
Even aging ball players want to get paid. You’re talking about a job where you retire at age 40, if you’re extremely lucky.
Here is my extremely scientific assessment of the use of plurals for baseball stats. I searched Google for “baseball” and “{stat}” (or {stats}). Here are results; numbers are hits.
GW: Sit on hands and recite the flaws in the study to yourself. You too MB. (dying laughing) This is what you get for 6 minutes of research.
Conclusions: Abbreviations of longer phrases are frequently referred to in plural form. Single letter abbreviations are hard to search in Google (“E” brings up E-mail, and player initials, for example. K also includes player initials, so the % for Ks/K is probably too low.) No one cares about FLDP. SVB is home alone on a Friday night and the Cubs game is over.
RBIs, singular, %
6550000, 45400000, 14
GIDPs
65300, 452000, 14
ERAs
3130000, 141000000, 2
OBPs
116000, 8330000, 1
FLDPs
1100, 8630, 13
SVOs
9350, 5960000, 0.2
HRs
9590000, 81600000, 12
K
15100000, 253000000, 6
@ SVB:
I’m glad my off-handed remark has culminated in this. This is as close as I’ll ever get to being Ghengis Kahn.
@ josh:
Instigator
Sorry to hear you’re having a tough time finding a roommate, rizzo
http://chicago.craigslist.org/sox/roo/3231843829.html
@ Berselius:
What do you think the odds are that Rizzo gets the roommate he’s described?
@ Berselius:
That’s like half the ads in craigs list (in Chicago). I seriously used to see ads exactly like that at least twice a week when I was job hunting there.
@ Berselius:
I’m not that picky.
Weird game for the Phills. Halladay was wild, gave up 2 homers, and didn’t last 5 innings. And Cliff Lee came in as a pinch-hitter.
@ Berselius:
ROFL. I thought that was an ad by the Rizzo on the Cubs. Well played.
http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=24357017&topic_id=&c_id=mlb&tcid=vpp_copy_24357017&v=3
@ GW:
I did laugh but I felt very bad about it. It looked like his knee locked which caused his ankle to plant weird and thus induced the wild flip. That really sucks.
@ GW:
That’s really going to hurt the Astros playoff chances
@ Berselius:
don’t worry, KG is on it.
@ GW:
Saw that too. Looks painful. His leg locks up when he hits the bag. I did that once (minus the catapult effect). Hurts like hell.
@ Berselius:
Considering the Astros were officially eliminated…
Hell of a way to end a game. If you watch about halfway through they show the runner after he gets up. I guess he must have faceplanted, because he’s all bloody:
http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=24378735&topic_id=11493214
@ josh:
Wow. Pena got a hit?!?
Who says Mark Reynolds can’t play D?
http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=24375309&topic_id=28033182
@ Rizzo the Rat:
A non-homerun hit, too!
New Comic. Testing out a slightly different format:
http://www.obstructedview.net/comics/6131.html