WBC and Other Thoughts

I have been enjoying the World Baseball Classic immensely...thanks to a local station picking up some of the games shown on tape delay on ESPN, I have been able to watch and score thirteen games. While many of the games have been clunkers, I have enjoyed watching players from foreign leagues who nobody had ever heard of before. The games should be better as the bottom feeders have been weeded out.

There were no real shockers in the eight teams that advanced--I correctly predicted six of them, not that this is any great feat--it is probably below average in fact. I thought for some reason that Canada would edge out Mexico, which wasn’t a horrific pick as both went 2-1, although Mexico trounced Canada head-to-head. And I also thought that the Cubans were over-hyped and not at the caliber of the other power countries--and you could glean support for that viewpoint from their drubbing at the hands of Puerto Rico, but I overestimated the Panamanian team and had no idea they would get no-hit and mercied by the Dutch. Unfortunately that game was not one of the ones I got to see, so I have yet to see a no-hitter from start to finish.

The favorites to advance from this round would have to be the US, Japan, DR, and Venezuela, although Canada showed us that anything can happen. It is only a three game pool, so nothing would be shocking. But I think Korea, Mexico, and Cuba are clearly inferior on paper to their pool opponents. Puerto Rico could surprise, though, although their pitching is not as deep as the Dominican and nowhere near the caliber of Venezuela. But I think they definitely have the best chance to beat out one of the favorites.

On Cuba, I think that the love of Yulieski Gourriel is just a bit excessive. Sure, he looked awesome against Panama and the Netherlands, but Puerto Rico held him in check. He certainly looks like a very talented player, and a great prospect, but some have made claims like he could be a major league star right now, and I just don’t see it. Logically, without considering Gourriel in particular, he is twenty-one years old. How many 21 year olds have ever been among the best players in baseball? Sure, there are some: ARod, Mantle, Kaline, Pujols, and others. But most of those guys are among the truly elite players in the history of the game. The likelihood of any particular player being in this group is small. Like I said, I would think Gourriel would be a top major league prospect, but not a star in the majors. Yet.

I think that what you will see in the next round is that Cuba has no idea what they are up against when playing elite players. Their dominance of international competition has come against amateurs and minor leaguers. I think that their isolation from the rest of the baseball world severely hurts them. Cuba has a population of 11 million, while the Dominican has 9 million. There is no doubt that Cuba is baseball-mad as the Dominican is, and so I have little doubt that Cuba could be a talent source like the Dominican Republic is. But I also think that their relative isolation from the rest of the baseball world can not be good for their player’s development. This also showed with the bush league jawing of their catcher at every call and the batter, I believe it was Urrutia, who felt the need to make a hand signal to the umpire telling him the pitch was outside. I would have drilled him in the ear.

Also, I would not want to be a Cuban pitcher under any circumstance. They have had them on an incredibly short leash. Against Puerto Rico, they ran through four pitchers in the fourth inning. The one poor guy, Suarez, came in with the bases loaded, issued a four pitch walk, and was yanked. That said, the Cuba/Panama game was as gripping and exciting as any game you are likely to see this season.

On other baseball issues, I still do not care about Barry Bonds and steroids. Sorry.

Cuban government officials think that they can control fans’ signs in San Juan. Sorry.

The Book by Tango, MGL, and Andy Dolphin is good. You should get it. I’ll probably post a review eventually, probably eight months after it came out like most of my other reviews have been.

Al Leiter being on the national team of the United States is like...I don’t know, I can’t think of a bad enough analogy. I’ll leave it at, it’s real bad.

Brian Kenny, who did play-by-play for some of the games in San Juan, is one of the worst baseball commentators I have ever heard. He makes me plead for John Kruk and Harold Reynolds. First, he seems to have a chip on his shoulder, a real negative outlook on just about everything and everybody. Second, he several times referred to sabermetrics while making outlandish statements that are not supported by sabermetrics. The one that sticks out was when he complained about the Netherlands batting Andruw Jones fourth instead of third, and saying that this does not make “sabermetric sense” because over the course of a season, the third-place hitter will get 50 more plate appearances. Now leave aside the issue of batting order construction for a moment, and just consider the claim. 50 more plate appearances? For one lineup slot? That does not pass any logical check, let alone actually looking it up like a sabermetricians would do. Thanks to The Book, though, I have a handy table that shows me that the third place hitter gets .11 more PA/game then the cleanup man, and that this difference is pretty constant down the lineup. .11 PA/game is 18 over the course of a season--it would take nearly 3 lineup slots to get a 50 PA difference.

The last piece on rate stats is flawed because I did not use custom LW for the players I added to theoretical teams. I was fully aware of how to do this, of course, I just figured it wouldn’t be necessary. What I failed to think of is that changing the LW value of a home run by even .05 makes a huge difference when your player hits 200 home runs. So whenever I get around to part seven, I will start by going back over those examples.