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"Tom Tango" brought up a point, at Bill James Online, that led to a very pleasant baseball insight:
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What We're Talking About
COHERENCY has always been a key part of public speaking, blog writing, tech writing, radio, TV ... any form of idea exchange. That's x3 in the internet age.
It needs to be easy to follow the storyline, and not because people are dumb. As Albert Einstein said, "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." The "Physics for Dummies" books might alienate the experts, but it's the way to write in 2014.
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It hadn't occurred to me that a parade of relievers --- > violates this principle of idea transfer, but it surely does. We as fans don't know who's coming next, aren't eager to see who's coming next, we have to re-boot our confused minds as to what to expect in the battle of "Kyle Seager vs Strange LH Shlabotnik" ...
In other words, the Reliever Parade is fundamentally wrong. Because it is not fan-friendly. It's for the actors and the director, not for the customer who just paid $14 to see the movie. The actors and director don't get to do that!
Dr. D might add that baseball is much slower to grok this problem than other major sports. Baseball doesn't care about customers; it cares about wallets. More so than some sports do.
Listen to a ex-ballplayer analyst talking about the next rule change. Everything he says will revolve around the players, not the 40,000 in the stands.
All of this is reflected in the fact that baseball --- > has problems in prospering at the level the NFL and EPL do. It's much less concerned with what the fans want.
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James, of course, is quick to acknolwedge exceptions to a general (and valid) rule. Tango followed up, cheerily, with:
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The 2014 Seattle Mariners are a delicious exception. Their "Lawn Maurer" bullpen is itself jelling into a coherent storyline -- as was the 2001 Sasaski-Nelson-Rhodes bullpen.
You got two Cy Young candidates. With the other three -- Elias, K-Pax, and To Be Announced -- the storyline is "can we get to the bullpen?" No, really, this storyline can start from pitch one. There have been teams -- such as the early 70's A's -- who manufactured runs in the first inning, to get to the bullpen.
The White Sox, on Saturday, can't let the Mariners take a lead after 5, or any later point. That's a rare, and very cool, storyline.
Below, a Mariners native is sighted in the wild, stalking the victory during pregames ...
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Again we give up a ::golfclap:: to Jack Zduriencik.
- At first, SSI saw the bullpen as the Fatal Flaw of 2014
- After signing Rodney, and click-ratcheting everybody down a slot, SSI saw the pen as average
- On the "real" grass of the American League, it has become the Mariners' storyline
I dunno if you saw Friday's game. Yoervis Medina fired two 94-95 fastballs to get ahead of Alexi Ramirez 0-2 and then he cracked off an 86 MPH curve. Ramirez fell down in the box, we mean fell down ducking away from the beanball, and then it broke over the plate for called strike three. The M's bench spent the next five minutes taking turns congratulating Medina. It was a pitch you might wait your whole life to throw.
Medina -- with 8.7 strikeouts a game and a 2.29 ERA -- being the worst M's reliever, after Beimel. This makes Yoervis Medina, what, the M's 17th-best pitcher. But we've seen M's teams where he woulda closed.
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Thanks for the tagline Moe,
Dr D
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