Some Friday Night Baseball Stupidity
I’m sitting here watching the Tigers playing the White Sox on ESPN, struggling to find a topic to write about, and then the Sunday night baseball crew starts
discussing the NL Cy Young race. Now, I’ve learned to just ignore virtually all of what I hear during baseball games on ESPN (mainly what I hear from Steve Phillips and Joe Morgan), but I guess this one just got me at a bad time.
The three candidates they were discussing were Carpenter, Wainwright, and Lincecum. Lincecum, the most deserving candidate, was hardly even mentioned, aside from Rick Sutcliffe implying that he had stopped leaning towards him when the Giants fell out of playoff contention. Now, that’s a very silly reason to rule out a pitcher, let alone the best pitcher in the league, from Cy Young contention, but it was far from the stupidest thing said in the discussion.
Phillips and Sutcliffe each went on to make cases for their respective picks; Phillips for Chris Carpenter, Sutcliffe for Adam Wainwright. Phillips’ reasoning for favoring Carpenter was that “he’s been able to do what he’s done” (no, he did not elaborate), that he’s “been able to limit the losses”, and his ERA numbers. That kind of criteria is exactly what’s wrong with the Cy Young award – now I can understand weighing ERA heavily, as that’s extremely common and I’ve learned to accept it, but limiting losses? Really? Yes, Carpenter has had a fantastic season, but as bad a stat as wins are, losses are even worse. I mean, if you’re looking for a stat that pitcher’s don’t have very much control over, look no further than losses.
Then, Sutcliffe chimed in. He stated that he was “leaning that way when the Giants fell out of playoff contention, but he had recently heard Chris Carpenter endorse Adam Wainwright for the award”. He basically went on to explain that that was enough for him. I haven’t heard Sutcliffe all that much, and I don’t have anything against him, but that’s ridiculous. So you aren’t interested in stats – not the good ones like tRA and FIP, and not even the bad ones like win-loss record and ERA – all you need to hear is a little bit of praise from a teammate. What exactly would you expect Carpenter to say? “I deserve the award”? Of course not – ballplayers are generally pretty humble guys, and in most cases will avoid self-praise. CC Sabathia has endorsed Felix, Felix has endorsed Greinke, Carpenter endorsed Wainwright – are you seeing a trend here?
I’m plenty used to stupidity, and as stupidity goes, this was fairly low on the scale, but there’s something that rubs me the wrong way about hearing such blatant stupidity on the biggest sports network in the country.
And that’s what really grinds my gears.
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