STAT'S ALL
Want numbers? We got ’em … even if they don’t mean anything
WHERE dat stat at?
With baseball now a game that includes a statistic to explain (and confuse) everything, we’re often left without the stat to explain why one team won and the other lost. In an age when WHIP, OPS and RISP are presented as statistical insight, the irrelevant often supplants the relevant.
On Monday, the Mets trailed the Blue Jays, 32, in the bottom of the 11th when, with one out, Ruben Tejada walked. Michael Cuddyer next grounded to second baseman Danny Valencia for what could have, would have and should have been a gameending (walkoff) 463 double play.
But with Tejada running toward second and nearly within arm’s reach, he braked then ran back toward first. He was tagged out, while Cuddyer was safe at first. Two batters later the Mets, instead of losing, won, 43.
Now, given that Tejada’s baserunning decision very likely made the difference between winning and losing, where is the stat for that? Does he receive a KGA (kept game alive), or a PFOFBMAHTTEW (prevented final out from being made allowing his team to eventually win)?
And what of Valencia’s play? Does he merely get a BFD (bad fielding decision), or does he get a BFDTECHTTG (bad fielding decision that eventually cost his team the game)?
We’re now forcefed stats to explain (and confuse) everything, but there’s no stat for the kind of plays and decisionmaking that determine the only stats that count: the final score, the winner and loser!
Same game, same Met in the bottom of the sixth. Tejada doubled past right fielder Jose Bautista. The ball rolled all the way to the wall. But Tejada, off to a jogging start as he watched Bautista, only made second base, though he should have been on third.
That’s the kind of minimal, gamechanging baserunning now seen virtu ally every game. So where’s the stat for those? Where’s TTID (turned triple into double), or LDIS (loafed double into single), or HRPCHTALOB (home run pose cost his team at least one base)?
But Monday was one of those Enough Already! nights.
Over on Ch. 11/YES, Inspector Al Leiter of the Pitch Police, Investigation Unit, was working the night shift.
In the third inning of the YankeesMarlins game, Giancarlo Stanton hit into a 643 double play on a 21 count. Stanton hit it so hard that he only made it twothirds to first; Michael Kay commented that shortstop Didi Gregorius didn’t catch the ball, “the ball caught him.”
It was then that Ch. 11/ YES presented Leiter starring in his latest “PitchByPitch” forensics show and tell, telling and showing us that the 10 slider thrown by Masahiro Tanaka at which Stanton had swung and missed, was still “in his head,” two pitches later — thus the double play.
Yep, according to Leiter, Tanaka got into Stanton’s head; played him like a fiddle, read him like a book, set him up like a bowling pin, had his number … so much so that on a 21 pitch Tanaka was able trick Stanton into hitting a ball so hard that the shortstop either could have caught it or have been killed by it.
But hey, what do I know? I just work here.
Talk to the manager.